Cunning Quotes

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Plato

Knowledge, Wisdom, Justice

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

Wisdom, Low, Mimic

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

Life, Fight, Self

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

Him, Cannot, Greatness

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Knowledge, Wisdom, Justice

The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Self, Others, Sure

The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
William Blake

Courage, Strong, Weak

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.
Alexander Pope

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
Francis Bacon

Men, Hurt, Wise

The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user.
John Tillotson

Art, Less, Deceit

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
William Hazlitt

Art, Weaknesses, Defects

The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
Carl Sandburg

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear - and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.
George W. Bush

Freedom, Fear, Greatest

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

Makes, Step, Difference

Envy, like the worm, never runs but to the fairest fruit; like a cunning bloodhound, it singles out the fattest deer in the flock.
Francis Beaumont

Envy, Fruit, Worm

With care, and skill, and cunning art, She parried Time's malicious dart, And kept the years at bay, Till passion entered in her heart and aged her in a day!
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Time, Art, Heart

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

Great, Strong, Pride

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.
George Savile

Fool, Enough, Play

People don't realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a level of providence to his every decision but he was a cunning and calculating politician; from the cultivation of his image as a hayseed from Illinois, to his ability to keep this country together under dire circumstances.
Henry Louis Gates

Decision, Together, Country

This is the great fault of wine; it first trips up the feet: it is a cunning wrestler.
Plautus

Great, Wine, Feet

Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?
Pablo Casals

Heart, Made, Complex

A lot of film directors are quite scared of actors. They are a bit of a nightmare sometimes, but I like them. It looks like cunning, but you try to get extra things from them all the time, by stealth, by making them feel confident, so they trust you and you can push a bit.
Danny Boyle

Trust, Time, Try

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.
Iris Murdoch

Art, Human, Soul

The English are good at bad guys - the James Bond-style villain, cunning, slow-burning. The Americans are much more obvious about it.
Idris Elba

Good, Bad, Guys

Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.
Mikhail Lermontov

Success, Happy, Nothing

Silence, exile, cunning and so on... it's my nature to keep quiet about most things. Even the ideas in my work.
Don DeLillo

Work, Nature, Silence

Do not let the Obama administration fool you with all their cunning Alinsky methods. And if you don't know what that method is, I implore you to get the book 'Rules for Radicals,' by Saul Alinsky. Mr. Obama is very well trained in these methods.
Jon Voight

Fool, Book, Rules

I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.
Jean Genet

Beauty, Deep, Traitors

Cancer is such a ruthless adversary because it behaves as if it has its own fiendishly cunning agenda.
Paul Davies

Cancer, Ruthless, Agenda

The fact is that America's weapons systems have made it impossible for anybody to confront it militarily. So, all you have is your wits and your cunning, and your ability to fight in the way the Iraqis are fighting.
Arundhati Roy

Fight, Made, America

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