“A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
“Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.”
Plutarch's Life of Cato
Variant: Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.
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Cato the Elder15
politician, writer and economist (0234-0149) -234–-149 BCRelated quotes
Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher
Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“5779. Wise Men learn by other Men's Harms; Fools, by their own.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“4833. The wise Man draws more Advantage from his Enemies, than a Fool from his Friends.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1749) : The wise Man draws more Advantage from his Enemies, than the Fool from his Friends.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.”
Francis Bacon book Essays
Of Boldness
Essays (1625)
Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel
En toutes compagnies il y a plus de folz que de sages, et la plus grande partie surmonte tousjours la meilleure. <br class="br"> Chapter 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=wfRKAQAAIAAJ&q=%22En+toutes+compagnies+il+y+a+plus+de+folz+que+de+sages+et+la+plus+grande+partie+surmonte+tousjours+la+meilleure%22&pg=PA285#v=onepage. <br class="br">Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Pantagruel (1532)
“Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Context: Do you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy?
Don't know what it means? - Well, I will tell you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (1956) spiritual leader
Source: Celebrating Silence: Excerpts from Five Years of Weekly Knowledge 1995-2000
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)