"The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is that we may listen the more and talk the less."
— Zeno of Citium
The Reason Why We Have Two
The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is that we may listen the more and talk the less.
About this quote
This version of the saying appears in Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book VII, as a direct statement attributed to Zeno of Citium about his own anatomy. A slightly different formulation (quote 524 in this collection) circulates as a looser paraphrase. The anatomical rationale — we have twice as many ears as mouths, therefore nature designed us to listen twice as much as we speak — was a rhetorical device Zeno used in teaching, consistent with the Stoic doctrine that the sage speaks sparingly and only after careful consideration. Epictetus explicitly quoted the two-ears-one-mouth argument in his Discourses.
Source
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book VII
