Facts are stupid things.

Wise men speak when they have something to say, fools speak because they have to say something

A fool is known by his speech, and a wise man by silence.

A prudent silence will frequently be taken for wisdom and a sentence or two cautiously thrown in will sometimes gain the palm of knowledge, while a man well informed but indiscreet and unreserved will not uncommonly talk himself out of all consideration and weight.

Speak wisdom to a fool and he'll think you have no sense at all

the wise may be instructed by a fool

Many men talk like philosophers and live like fools.

The wise man through an excess of wisdom is made a fool.

The pathetic superstition prevails that by knowing more and more facts one arrives at knowledge of reality. Hundreds of scattered and unrelated facts are dumped into the heads of students; their time and energy are taken up by learning more and more facts so that there is little left for thinking. To be sure, thinking without a knowledge of facts remains empty and fictitious; but “information” alone can be just as much of an obstacle to thinking as the lack of it.

where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant

Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.

I sometimes, in my sprightly moments, consider myself, in my great chair at school, as some dictator at the head of a common-wealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have several renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep-projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockleshells, etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society …. At one table sits Mr. Insipid foppling and fluttering, spinning his whirligig, or playing with his fingers as gaily and wittily as any Frenchified coxcomb brandishes his cane and rattles his snuff box. At another sits the polemical divine, plodding and wrangling in his mind about Adam’s fall in which we sinned, all as his primer has it.

It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.