Better be a fool than a knave.
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.
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.
For my part, if a man must needs be a knave I would have him a debonair knave... It makes your sin no worse as I conceive, to do it à la mode and stylishly.
None are so busy as the fool and knave.
Who grins in official circumstances?
Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.
Honest men are the soft easy cushions on which knaves repose and fatten.
He who cheats others is a knave, but he who cheats himself is a fool.
Necessity makes an honest man a knave.
The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.
My first lead role was a stage play called 'A Kestrel for a Knave'. I was 11.
It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts.
You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools.
Clucky: [smacking Prince John on the head with the golden arrow] Take that, you scurvy knave! Prince John: Seize the fat one!
History – An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
It means that you two, precious father and son, would be a pair of knaves if you had sense enough; but, failing in that, you are only a pair of fools!
Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all.
