One of my favorite lines in Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization appears on page 564 of Volume 8 (The Age of Louis XIV). More specifically, it is the concluding line of Durant’s discussion of Thomas Hobbes — a philosopher who, for all of his faults, wrote clearly. Hobbes’s clarity of expression inspired Durant to write that
every art should accept the moral obligation to be intelligible or silent.
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I believe Mark Twain said:
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool
than to open your mouth while driving a motorcycle through a swarm of bees.