100 Cunning Man Quotes

Following is our list of cunning man quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about cunning.

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Famous Cunning Man Quotes

Cunning surpasses strength. — Proverbs

Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom. — Plato

Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery. — Ovid

The weak in courage is strong in cunning. — William Blake

The trickster, the riddler, the keeper of balance, he of the many faces who finds life in death and who fears no evil; he who walks through doors. — Christopher Paolini

The primitive magician, the medicine man or shaman is not only a sick man, he is above all, a sick man who has been cured, who has succeeded in curing himself. — Mircea Eliade

In fact, to gull a fool seems to me an exploit worthy of a witty man. — Giacomo Casanova

To make women learned and foxes tame has the same effect - to make them more cunning. — King James I

A tailor, though a man of upright dealing,-- True but for lying,--honest but for stealing,-- Did fall one day extremely sick by chance And on the sudden was in wondrous trance. — John Harington

The craftiest trickery are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart. - Johann Kaspar Lavater

The craftiest trickery are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces. - Jonathan Swift

A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces. — Jonathan Swift

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile. — Albert Schweitzer

The fox will catch you with cunning, and the wolf with courage. — Albanian Proverbs

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest. — Benjamin Franklin

A wise man turns chance into good fortune. — Thomas Fuller

Short Cunning Man Quotes

  • Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise. — Francis Bacon
  • Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. — Upton Sinclair
  • One must be a fox to recognize traps and a lion to frighten wolves — Niccolo Machiavelli
  • Deception is the knowledge of kings. — Cardinal Richelieu
  • A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. — Albert Einstein
  • Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties. — Emil Nolde
  • Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
  • The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool. — Rudyard Kipling
  • Man has the supreme knack of deceiving himself; the Englishman is supremest among men. — Mahatma Gandhi
  • He that will play with Satan's bait, will quickly be taken with Satan's hook. — Thomas Brooks

Cunning Man Image Quotes

Cunning man quote Do not correct a fool or he will hate you. Correct a wise man and he will appreciate you.
Do not correct a fool or he will hate you. Correct a wise man and he will appreciate you.

Being Cunning Quotes

Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end. — Carl von Clausewitz

Watchfulness is the only guard against cunning. Be intent on his intentions. Many succeed in making others do their own affairs, and unless you possess the key to their motives you may at any moment be forced to take their chestnuts out of the fire to the damage of your own fingers. — Baltasar Gracian

Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends. — Charles De Gaulle

Cunning man quote Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.
Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.

Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends. — Giorgos Seferis

Why is the tao so valuable? Because it is everywhere, and everyone can use it. This is why those who seek will find, And those who reform will be forgiven; Why the good will be rewarded, And the thief who is cunning will escape. — Lao Tzu

Though we may not desire to detect fraud, we must not, on that account, endeavor to be insensible of it, for, as cunning is a crime, so is duplicity a fault, and if men dread knaves, they also despise fools. — Norm MacDonald

Cunning man quote The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute. The man who does not ask, is a fool for life.
The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute. The man who does not ask, is a fool for life.

Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices. — Amos Oz

In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches. — Herman Melville

The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better.". — Friedrich Nietzsche

Writing can be a bit like unfolding something...Slowly, the writer reveals what's happening. But that's only half of what's going on. Writers are very cunning people who are not only unfolding and revealing. Just like conjurors and magicians, they are hiding stuff too. — Michael Rosen

Cunning Quotes

It's those changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes nothing remains quite the same. With all of our running and all of our cunning, if we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane. — Jimmy Buffett

The function of law and theology are the same: to keep the poor from taking back by violence what the rich have stolen by cunning. — Robert Anton Wilson

History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done. — Sydney J. Harris

Cunning man quote Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him.
Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him.

It is a matter of common knowledge that the government of South Carolina is under domination of a small ring of cunning, conniving men. — Strom Thurmond

Cunning men deal in generalizations. — American Proverbs

Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables. - Sappho

Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables. — Sappho

Cunning man quote A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything.
A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything.

Bondage is the life of personality, and for bondage the personal self will fight with tireless resourcefulness and the most stubborn cunning. — Aldous Huxley

They're the smartest, most cunning, slick, coolest group of people on the planet. Generation Z, I love y'all. — Logan Paul

As Friedrich Hayek put it: I don't believe we'll ever have good money again until we get the thing out of the government's hands, that is, we can't violently take it out of the government's hands, all we can do is somehow cunningly introduce something that they can't stop. — Saifedean Ammous

If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, rebellious, you're on the right track. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Clever Man Quotes

The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart. — Chinua Achebe

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. — Naguib Mahfouz

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil. — C. S. Lewis

Cunning man quote The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise man grows it under his feet.
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise man grows it under his feet.

Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

What clever man has ever needed to commit a crime? Crime is the last resort of political half-wits. — Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Cunning man quote Words of comfort skillfully administered are the oldest therapy known to man.
Words of comfort skillfully administered are the oldest therapy known to man.

Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours? — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The students in your youth ministry don’t need your clever ideas and great programming skills. They need a living model—a man or woman of God who is passionate about his or her faith. — Doug Fields

Don't cry for a man who's left you--the next one may fall for your smile. — Mae West

All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything. — Napoleon Bonaparte

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More Cunning Man Quotes

Life, faculties, production- in other words, individuality, liberty, property- this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. — Fr

It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less. — Francis Bacon

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review. — Edward Dahlberg

Cunning man quote No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

There is a cunning which we in England call the rning of the cat in the pan. — Francis Bacon

There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat" in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he says it as if another had said it to him. — Francis Bacon

A cunning man overreaches no one half as much as himself. — Henry Ward Beecher

It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld

The cunning man steals a horse, the wise man lets him alone. — Benjamin Franklin

The perfection preached in the gospels never yet built an empire. Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning. — Charles De Gaulle

Truth, but not the whole truth, must be the invariable principle of every man who hath either religion, honour, or prudence. Thosewho violate it, may be cunning, but they are not able. Lies and perfidy are the refuge of fools and cowards. — Lord Chesterfield

Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. — Thomas Carlyle

Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. — Frederic Bastiat

Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me. — Amy Tan

The bounds of a man's knowledge are easily concealed, if he has but prudence. — Oliver Goldsmith

Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning. — Samuel Johnson

The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses. — Robert Ardrey

Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom. — Joseph Addison

The Death Star is just full of British actors opening doors and going,Oh... I... oh... What is it Lieutenant Sebastian? It's just the Rebels, sir... they're here. My God, man! Do they want tea? No, I think they're after something a bit more than that, sir. I don't know what it is, but they've brought a flag. Damn, that's dash cunning of them. — Eddie Izzard

Every human being should be taught that his first duty is to take care of himself, and that to be self-respecting he must be self-supporting. To live on the labor of others, either by force which enslaves, or by cunning which robs, or by borrowing or begging, is wholly dishonorable. Every man should be taught some useful art. — Robert Green Ingersoll

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 whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two. — William Hazlitt

The animals to whom nature has given the faculty we call cunning know always when to use it, and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning he blunders and betrays. — Thomas Paine

What man so wise, what earthly wit so ware, As to descry the crafty cunning train, By which deceit doth mask in visor fair, And cast her colours dyed deep in grain, To seem like truth, whose shape she well can feign, And fitting gestures to her purpose frame, The guiltless man with guile to entertain? — Edmund Spenser

Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood. — Herman Melville

One Man may be more cunning than another, but not more cunning than every body else. — Benjamin Franklin

Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion? — David Hume

What is denominated discretion in man we call cunning in brutes. — Jean De La Fontaine

To see a man as beautiful – means to make him really beautiful. There is no cunning, no deceit; this happens every time, everyone knows that. — Simon Soloveychik

An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie. — H. G. Wells

Disease an never be conquered, can never be quelled by emotion's willful screaming or faith's symbolic prayer. It can only be conquered by the energy of humanity and the cunning in the mind of man. In the patience of a Curie, in the enlightenment of a Faraday, a Rutherford, a Pasteur, a Nightingale, and all other apostles of light and cleanliness, rather than of a woebegone godliness, we shall find final deliverance from plague, pestilence, and famine. — Sean O'Casey

Thou shalt understand that it is a science most profitable, and passing all other sciences, for to learn to die. For a man to know that he shall die, that is common to all men; as much as there is no man that may ever live or he hath hope or trust thereof; but thou shalt find full few that hath this cunning to learn to die. I shall give thee the mystery of this doctrine; the which shall profit thee greatly to the beginning of ghostly health, and to a stable fundamental of all virtues. — Heinrich Suso

Don't think so much of your own Cunning, as to forget other Men's; a Cunning Man is overmatched by a cunning Man and a Half. — Benjamin Franklin

May the merciful god, if indeed there be such, guard those hours when no power of the will, or drug that the cunning of man devises, can keep me from the chasm of sleep. Death is merciful, for there is no return therefrom, but with him who has come back out of the nethermost chambers of night, haggard and knowing, peace rests nevermore. — H. P. Lovecraft

A cunning fellow is man, inventive beyond all expectation, he reaches sometimes evil and sometimes good — Sophocles

No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavoring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself. — Thomas Carlyle

Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he does not. — Francis Bacon

Our spiritual history is the history of God-ventriloquists! The truth is that the voice of God is the voice of cunning Man, the ventriloquist's voice! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

One man may be more cunning than another, but no one can be more cunning than all the world. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy. — Lord Chesterfield

Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld

In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result,but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man.... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work. — Henry David Thoreau

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. — Sir George Savile, 8th Baronet

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