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.
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.
Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.
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!
Wise men say, only fools rush in. Wise men are so slow.
Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.
Wise men have more to learn of fools than fools of wise men.
Wise men are more dependent on fools than fools on wise men.
Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.
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.
Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.
Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and half-wise that are dangerous.
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way - and the fools know it.
I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.
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.
Fools learn nothing from wise men, but wise men learn much from fools.