Knave Quotes

I am always afraid of a fool one cannot be sure he is not a knave. (William Hazlitt)
No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool. View quote
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax
Titles are marks of honest men, and wise The fool or knave that wears a title lies. View quote
Edward Young
He who cheats others is a knave, but he who cheats himself is a fool. View quote
Karl G. Maeser
Now will I show myself to have more of the serpent than the dove; that is, more knave than fool. View quote
Christopher Marlowe
The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My first lead role was a stage play called A Kestrel for a Knave. I was 11. View quote
Justin Chadwick
The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave. View quote
Alexander Pope
I have sinned and I have suffered, Played the hero and the knave; Fought for belly, shame, or country, And for each have found a grave. I cannot name my battles For the visions are not clear, Yet, I see the twisted faces And I feel the rending spear. View quote
George S. Patton
A knave, when tried on honesty's plain rule, And, when by that of reason, a mere fool. View quote
William Cowper
Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil. (Thomas Babington Macaulay)
The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older. View quote
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave. View quote
David Hume
O heart, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What's not for their applause. View quote
William Butler Yeats
He that first started that doctrine, that knavery is the best defense against a knave, was but an ill teacher, advising us to commit wickedness to secure ourselves. View quote
Plutarch
More knave than fool. View quote
Miguel de Cervantes
Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool. View quote
Voltaire
There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief - resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave. View quote
Abraham Lincoln
A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer --that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffling, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two. View quote
William Hazlitt
How easie is it to call Rogue and Villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a Man appear a Fool, a Blockhead, or a Knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! View quote
John Dryden
None are so busy as the fool and the knave. (John Dryden)
We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts. View quote
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I could see how "democracy" might do very well in a society of saints and sages led by an Alfred or an Antoninus Pius. Short of that, I was unable to see how it could come to anything but an ochlocracy of mass-men led by a sagacious knave. View quote
Albert Jay Nock
The honest man takes pains, and then enjoys pleasures the knave takes pleasure, and then suffers pain. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave: Though at the same time, it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should be true in politics, which is false in fact. View quote
David Hume
📖 Knave Proverbs