A Quote by Benjamin Franklin

The first Degree of Folly, is to conceit one's self wise; the second to profess it; the third to despise Counsel.

Benjamin Franklin

Quote Topics

Conceit Counsel Degree Despise First Folly Profess Second Self Third Wise

Quote Author

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

Whoever is wise is apt to suspect and be diffident of himself, and upon that account is willing to "hearken unto counsel"; whereas the foolish man, being in proportion to his folly full of himself, and swallowed up in conceit, will seldom take any counsel but his own, and for that very reason, because it is his own.

John Balguy

God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.

Victor Hugo

Some indeed there are who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are nevertheless to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it.

Charles Caleb Colton

The first word gives origin to the second, the first and second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and so on. You cannot begin with the second word.

N. Scott Momaday

No man is so foolish but may give another good counsel sometimes; and no man is so wise, but may easily err, if he will take no others counsel but his own. But very few men are wise by their own counsel; or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself had a fool to his master.

Ben Jonson

I will ever be grateful for the wise counsel of a strong and inspired father when he taught, "If you always say no to the first temptation, you will not have to worry if you will be able to say no to the second one."

Harold G. Hillam

There are three stages in the revelation of truth. The first is to be ridiculed, the second is to be resisted and the third is to be considered self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The tripartite structure - so you remember the third brother, second brother, first brother, or the first dervish, second dervish, and third dervish. This is very like embroidering a cloth, as you have to know where you are with the knots.

Marina Warner

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool; And to do that well craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time, And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practise As full of labour as a wise man's art For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.

William Shakespeare

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer

But the conceit of one's self and the conceit of one's hobby are hardly more prolific of eccentricity than the conceit of one's money. Avarice, the most hateful and wolfish of all the hard, cool, callous dispositions of selfishness, has its own peculiar caprices and crotchets. The ingenuities of its meanness defy all the calculations of reason, and reach the miraculous in subtlety.

Edwin Percy Whipple

Who will ever give counsel, if the counsel be judged by the event, and if it be not found wise, shall therefore be thought wicked?

Philip Sidney

You must see that if two things are alike, then it is a further question whether the first is copied from the second, or the second from the first, or both from a third.

C. S. Lewis

As I saw my 60th birthday approaching, I thought,What did 60 mean to me? I figured I'd probably live until I'm about 90, which meant that I was at the beginning of what I call my third act. As an actress, I know how important the third act is. It makes sense of the first and second acts. You can have first and second acts that are interesting, but you don't know what they mean. Then a good third act pulls it all together. And so I knew that, because I sat by my father's side over the long months when he was dying.