A Quote by Benjamin Franklin

Wise men learn by others' harms, fools scarcely by their own.

Benjamin Franklin

Quote Topics

Fools Learn Men Others Own Scarcely Wise Wise Men

Quote Author

Benjamin Franklin
American - Politician
January 17, 1706 - April 17, 1790

Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.

Plutarch

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.

Cato the Elder

Fools learn nothing from wise men, but wise men learn much from fools.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

Cato the Elder

Wise men have more to learn of fools than fools of wise men.

Michel de Montaigne

A wise quote can only change a wise man! Therefore, wise sayings are for the wise men, not for the fools! The sunflowers turn their face toward the Sun, the fools, toward the darkness!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Wise men are more dependent on fools than fools on wise men.

Cato the Younger

Love works in miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and stretching the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favouring the passions, destroying reason, and in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy.

Margaret of Valois

Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.

Thomas A. Edison

Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and half-wise that are dangerous.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way - and the fools know it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

There is nothing by which men display their character so much as in what they consider ridiculous... Fools and sensible men are equally innocuous. It is in the half fools and the half wise that the great danger lies.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wise men say, only fools rush in. Wise men are so slow.

Bob Saget

It is ignorance that is at times incomprehensible to the wise; for instance, he may not see 'the positive person' or 'the negative person' in a black and white way as many people do. A wise man may not understand it because, as a catalyst of wisdom, but not wise in his own eyes, even he can learn from and give back to fools. To think that an individual has absolutely nothing to offer to the table is counter-intuitively what the wise man considers to be 'the ignorance of hopelessness'.