Wisdom Quote by Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet

Temple frames the mind as a battlefield where your closest ally and most dangerous adversary share the same address. The line works because it collapses “wisdom” from an abstract virtue into something intimate and practical: a friend you can lean on when no one else is around. “Folly,” by contrast, isn’t an outside villain - it’s a betrayal from within, the self sabotaging the self. That internalization is the hook. It’s not a warning about bad influences; it’s a warning about the parts of you that feel like you.

The aphorism leans on a tight symmetry: best friend / worst enemy, wisdom / folly. That balance gives it the snap of moral arithmetic, the sense that life’s outcomes are less mysterious than we pretend. Temple’s intent isn’t just to praise intelligence; it’s to elevate judgment as a form of companionship. Wisdom doesn’t merely help you win arguments - it keeps you from making choices you’ll have to spend years explaining, paying off, or undoing.

There’s also a quiet protest against victim narratives. If your worst enemy is folly, then misfortune can’t always be blamed on fate, society, or rivals; sometimes it’s you, chasing the short-term rush and calling it freedom. Read in a religious or pastoral context - likely for a figure like William Temple, associated with moral instruction - the line doubles as a call to self-governance: cultivate the friend, starve the enemy, and treat the inner life as consequential as the public one.