Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.

Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Francesco Guicciardini
Francesco Guicciardini

Conspiracies, since they cannot be engaged in without the fellowship of others, are for that reason most perilous; for as most men are either fools or knaves, we run excessive risk in making such folk our companions.

George Berkeley
George Berkeley

He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.

George Savile
George Savile

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.

John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier

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.

Justin Chadwick
Justin Chadwick

My first lead role was a stage play called 'A Kestrel for a Knave'. I was 11.

Karl G. Maeser
Karl G. Maeser

He who cheats others is a knave, but he who cheats himself is a fool.

Mary Wortley Montagu
Mary Wortley Montagu

We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.