
“Simpletons talk of the past, wise men of the present, and fools of the future.”
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)
“Simpletons talk of the past, wise men of the present, and fools of the future.”
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“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.
“Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen.”
Frequently attributed to Muir without source. An extensive search of Muir's published and unpublished writings found several sharp and cogent observations concerning society (see above) but not this one.
Misattributed
“Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.”
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.
“Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.”
“Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.”
Brickhill 1954, p. 44. Note: (also quoted as "...for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.") In Reach for the Sky, this quote is attributed to Harry Day, the Royal Flying Corps First World War fighter ace.
From Miscellaneous Thoughts, lines 283-290 ; as contained in The Poetical Works of Samuel Butler: A Revised Edition with Memoir and Notes, Volume 2, Samuel Butler, G. Bell & Sons (1893), pp. 275-276
“5779. Wise Men learn by other Men's Harms; Fools, by their own.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.”
1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)