tis better to be thought a fool, than to speak and leave no doubt. Does anybody know who said this???

Answer 1

Just as a point of interest, there's some debate as to who actually said it.

Depending on who you ask, the quote has been attributed to Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, and Ralph Waldo Emerson in turn.

As far as it goes, I was always in the Mark Twain camp, at least that's what I always was told. One thing you might want to try to find out is where or when it was said. If a very public individual like one of these three said it, and it was remembered, then it's probably documented somewhere where it was spoken...

If you can't find a definitive source for it, it's quite possible that none of them said it, and it's just been mistakenly attributed to one or the other of them for all this time.

Answer 2

That was said by Abraham Lincoln.