Quote of the day 17th September 2026

"It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it."

(Maurice Switzer.)




















I had always believed that this quote, in a slightly shorter form, was from Abraham Lincoln, but this afternoon a friend mentioned it to me and attributed it to Mark Twain, so I decided to check where it actually comes from.

There are attributions to both Lincoln and Twain going back a long way - Golden Book magazine attributed it to Lincoln nearly a century ago, in 1931, in the form which I remember, and in 1953 a newspaper in Canada attributed it to Mark Twain.

However, neither the Yale Book of Quotations or the Quote Investigator website were able to find any attribution to the former US President or the author earlier than 1931 or 1953 respectively, and the saying was in use for several decades prior to 1931 without any attribution to either.

The Bible does contain an idea very similar to the first part of the quote above, in Proverbs 17:28. The New International Version of that verse reads

"Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue."

The King James Version of the bible has this verse as

"Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."

However, the biblical verse does not have the amusing contrast with the man who does speak and removes all doubt.

The earliest version of the full saying which Quote Investigator could find was from a book called “Mrs. Goose, Her Book” by Maurice Switzer, copyright 1906 and published in 1907, in the form given at the top of this blog post. They conclude that Switzer has the strongest claim to be the true originator of the full quote.

You can read the Quote Investigator page for this quote in full at:

Quote Origin: Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt – Quote Investigator®

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