Quotes about Prudence
We must believe what is good and true about the prophets, that they were sages, that they did understand what proceeded from their mouths, and that they bore prudence on their lips.
— Origen
A wise bird does not lend even the smallest of its feathers to a hunter.
— Matshona Dhliwayo
For surely to be wise is the most desirable thing in all the world.
— Cicero
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too confident a security.
— Edmund Burke
Therefore, blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has hidden the way of truth from the wise and prudent and revealed it unto simple laymen and little priests who choose rather to obey God than men, who in acts generically good and acts neutral have the life of Christ before their eyes and obey prelates so far as these acts, modified by circumstances, can be reasonably put into practice for edification through the imitation of Christ.
— Jan Hus
He had the kind of character in which prudence is a vice, and good advice the most dangerous nourishment.
— Edith Wharton
Perhaps, if I hadn't been, once beforeāI mean, if I'd always been a prudent deliberate Ralston, it would have been kinder to Tina in the end." Dr. Lanskell sank his gouty bulk into the chair behind his desk, and beamed at her through ironic spectacles. "I hate in-the-end kindnesses: they're about as nourishing as the third day of cold mutton.
— Edith Wharton
Rage and phrenzy will pull down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in an hundred years.
— Edmund Burke
I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one.
— Edmund Burke
My principles enable me to form my judgment upon men and actions in history, just as they do in common life, and are not formed out of events and characters, either present or past. History is a preceptor of prudence, not of principles. The principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged; and I neither now do, nor ever will, admit of any other.
— Edmund Burke
and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things, too; and without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men. But liberty, when men act
— Edmund Burke
If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.
— Alexander Hamilton