Wit & Attitude Quote by Aeschylus

Wisdom, Aeschylus suggests, isn’t just what you know; it’s what you choose to let other people think you know. “Profitable” is the tell. This isn’t a moral maxim about humility for its own sake, but a tactical note from a playwright steeped in courts, choruses, and volatile civic pride. In a culture where public reputation could turn on a single performance - in the theater or the assembly - seeming foolish can be a kind of armor.

The line works because it reverses the expected hierarchy. Foolishness reads like weakness, yet Aeschylus treats it as leverage: a way to defuse envy, lower others’ guard, and avoid becoming a target. The wise person understands that intelligence is socially expensive. Flaunting it invites rivalry and suspicion; masking it buys time, information, and room to maneuver. There’s also a faintly tragic sensibility underneath: in Aeschylean worlds, the gods punish overreach, and hubris isn’t only arrogance, it’s visibility. To “seem foolish” is to step out of the spotlight where fate and resentment do their worst work.

Context matters: Greek tragedy is full of characters undone by misreadings - of omens, of motives, of themselves. Aeschylus is alert to how perception becomes destiny. The quote isn’t celebrating deception so much as acknowledging a grim social physics: appearances govern outcomes. The wisest move may be to let the room underestimate you, and keep your real competence offstage until it’s useful.