Quotes, aphorisms and phrases about cunning, considered by some to be a vice and by others a virtue, an attitude that exploits one's mental abilities to obtain advantages, sometimes using ingenious expedients.
Quotes on cunningness
- For someone, arrogance takes the place of greatness; inhumanity that of firmness; and cunning that of the spirit. (Jean De La Bruyere)
- What makes us so angry at those who behave with us with cunning is the fact that they think they are smarter than us. (François de La Rochefoucauld)
- There are more fools than smart in the world, otherwise the smart ones would not have enough to live. (Samuel Butler)
- On the field you have to be a little smarter, you have to quickly realize what is happening, how the opponent is playing and what he does. Little things that help you a lot, and make you win the game, like against Sampras. (Marat Safin)
- You'll never be as fast as Storm ... but you can be smarter than he is. (Chris Cooper)
- It is a great cunning to be able to hide one's cunning. (François de La Rochefoucauld)
- It is only fair that everyone is astute for their interest. (Tito Maccio Plauto)
- Man is getting smarter and weaker. Indeed it is understood that his cunning increases in proportion to his weakness. (Italo Svevo)
- The birth of crime is the secret investment in the cunning of all the faculties of intelligence. (Daniel Pennac)
- A free man always acts in good faith and does not resort to cunning. (Baruch Spinoza)
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- When an alliance is established between the imbeciles and the clever ones, be careful that fascism is upon us. (Leonardo Sciascia)
- And when you're happy, but just what you say happy, then you're even more afraid, because you're not used to it. I think that a clever man should make sure that he is unhappy like nobody else, so he wouldn't be afraid of dying. (Romain Gary)
- Nothing causes more damage in a state than the clever pass for wise. (Francis Bacon)
- Cunning is not a quality neither too good nor too bad: it oscillates between vice and virtue. There is no meeting in which we cannot and, perhaps, we should not replace it with prudence. (Jean de La Bruyère)
- I send you like sheep in the midst of wolves. So be wily as snakes and innocent as doves. (Matthew's Gospel)
- You can be smarter than another, but not smarter than everyone else. (François de La Rochefoucauld)
Aphorisms about cunning
- It is difficult to decide when stupidity takes on the appearance of rascality and when rascality takes on the appearance of stupidity. Therefore it will always be difficult to judge politicians fairly. (Arthur Schnitzler)
- It's like the fox, which erases its tracks in the sand with its tail. (Niels Henrik Abel)
- The more clever a person is, the less he suspects the danger that certain insignificant questions present, so you have to make him fall so that he doesn't notice. (Fedor Michajlovic Dostoevskij)
- The sure way to be deceived is to believe oneself smarter than others. (François de La Rochefoucauld)
- The reason why fools and villains are better off in the world than wiser and more honest men is that they are closer to the general character of humanity, which is nothing more than a combination of deception and stupidity. (Samuel Butler)
- Whoever arrives well starts, but the second mouse takes the cheese. (Steven Alexander Wright)
- You think you're smart, but you're just stupid. (Raymond Chandler)
- If there were less stupid, the so-called smart or skilled would be less; and less would be those who derive vanity and as much merit from having been able, during the entire course of their lives, to deceive others. (Jean De La Bruyere)
- When the lion's skin is not enough, it's time to sew on the fox's. (Lysander)
- I seem to have grasped the cunning and if I have grasped it well, it also seems to me that it is too strong, as the driver said to the snow that took him to the mountains. (Charles Dickens)
- Women have an unfair advantage over men: what they cannot achieve by being clever, they get by doing fools. (Yul Brynner)
- The arrow thrown by the archer can kill only one person and not always. But the machinations hatched by the astute man can even take the lives of babies in the womb. (Kautilya)
- You should never form a company with the strongest and smartest because the weak or the naive will always come out with broken bones. (Phaedrus)
- Children use all their tricks to get what they want from adults. Adults do the same with children. (Mason Cooley)
- When two crafty meet one of the two is forced to change category. (Michelangelo)
- The clever ones deceive themselves. (Raymond Chandler)
Phrases about cunning
- Nothing causes more damage in a state than the fact that the clever pass for wise men. (Francis Bacon)
- The dog has rarely managed to raise man to his level of sagacity, but man has often lowered the dog to his own. (James Grover Thurber)
- Looks like the innocent flower, but be the snake under it. (William Shakespeare)
- People don't care about loyalty and fairness. It's all about being successful and getting away with it. (Wilbur Smith)
- From a certain age every crafty person appears dangerous. (Elias Canett)
- With the elimination of the right of the fittest, the right of the smartest was introduced. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- Cunning hides the pervert, time unmasks it. (Publilio Siro)
- First rule of a magician: Always be the smartest one! (Jesse Eisenberg)
- To be smart enough to earn all that money, you have to be stupid enough to want it. (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)
- The smart ones always fuck us at the right time, in the right place, with the right smile. They walk with contempt even over their shit. (Charles Bukowski)
- If a man were smart enough to hide his madness, he could drive the whole world crazy. (Soren Kierkegaard)
- Even if the ability to cheat is a sign of acuteness and power, the intention to cheat is undoubtedly a sign of malice or weakness. (Descartes)
- Cats are much smarter than dogs: have you ever tried to induce eight cats to pull a sled in the blizzard? (Jeff Valdez)
- The reason why fools and villains are better off in the world than wiser and more honest men is that they are closer to the general character of humanity, which is nothing more than a combination of deception and stupidity. (Samuel Butler)
- Cunning is not an aspect of intelligence, but the hidden face of dishonesty. (Pino Caruso)
- With foxes we have to act like foxes. (Thomas Fuller)
