“He that would live in peace and at ease, must not speak all he knows nor judge all he see. ”
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Benjamin Franklin 183
American author, printer, political theorist, politician, p… 1706–1790Related quotes
“I think God would not be the Almighty, the All-Wise, the All-Good, if he were the judge”
As quoted in Florence Nightingale's Theology: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale (2002) by Lynn McDonald, pps. 177-179 (Add Mss 45783 ff65-67)
Context: Perhaps it is not true to speak of God as a judge at all, or of his judgements. There does not seem to be really any evidence that His worlds are places of trial but rather schools, place of training, or that He is a judge but rather a Teacher, a Trainer, not in the imperfect sense in which men are teachers, but in the sense of His contriving and adapting His whole universe for one purpose of training every intelligent being to be perfect. … I think God would not be the Almighty, the All-Wise, the All-Good, if he were the judge, in the sense that the evangelical and Roman Catholic Christians impute judgement to him. … Our business is, I think, to understand, not to judge. What He does, as far as we know, to rule by law down to the most infinitesimally small portion of His universe, not to judge.
Eulogy http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ekennedytributetorfk.html for Robert F. Kennedy at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York (8 June 1968)
Ancient Work
Source: The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XII - The Enfant Terrible of Literature
Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 2
Context: While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.
Tribune Rally, 29 September 1954, in response to Clement Attlee's wish for a non-emotional response to German rearmament. The remark 'desiccated calculating-machine' is often taken as a Bevan jibe against Hugh Gaitskell who became Labour Party leader the following year.
1950s
“He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.”
Variant: Those who know, do not speak, those who speak, do not know.
Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 56
