80 Cunning Quotes

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

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

Cleverness is not wisdom. — Euripides

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

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

Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

A clever enemy is better than a stupid friend. — Turkish Proverbs

Coquetry is the art of successful deception. — Louise Colet

One must be a fox to recognize traps and a lion to frighten wolves — Niccolo Machiavelli

The clever cat eats cheese and breathes down rat holes with baited breath. — W. C. Fields

O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! — Sun Tzu

Short Cunning Quotes

  • Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
  • Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise. — Francis Bacon
  • Cunning men deal in generalizations. — American Proverbs
  • Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables. — Sappho
  • Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods. — Iris Murdoch
  • There is a cunning which we in England call the rning of the cat in the pan. — Francis Bacon
  • Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld
  • 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
  • Wise men have but few confidants, and cunning ones none. — Josh Billings

Cunning Image Quotes

Cunning Man Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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More Cunning Quotes

The Communist threat from without must not blind us to the Communist threat from within. The latter is reaching into the very heart of America through its espionage agents and a cunning, defiant, and lawless communist party, which is fanatically dedicated to the Marxist cause of world enslavement and destruction of the foundations of our republic. — J. Edgar Hoover

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

I want the Brahmins to realize that the Dravidian people today are very much hating those who cunningly cheated them with absurdities. They are now aware of the particular community making a living by spreading the foolishness. People have begun to hate god, religion, caste, mythologies (puranas) and so on. — Periyar E. V. Ramasamy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew! — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) raises the hackles of the conspiracy theorists, the Bilderberg meetings must induce apocalyptic visions of omnipotent international bankers plotting with unscrupulous government officials to impose cunning schemes on an ignorant and unsuspecting world. — David Rockefeller

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

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning. — A.E. Housman

In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit. — Charles Krauthammer

In order to get the power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, cruelty. — Leo Tolstoy

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning. — A. E. Housman

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

A cunning woman is her own mistress because she confides in no one. She who deceives others anticipates deceit, and guards herself. — Ninon De L'Enclos

It is not true that fate slips silently into our lives. It steps in through the door that we have opened, and we invite it to enter. No one is strong enough or cunning enough to avert by word or deed the misfortune that is rooted in the iron laws of his character and his life. — Sándor Márai

Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz. — Paul Desmond

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