Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

The saying captures a familiar social dynamic: reasoned advice or plain truth can be received as insult by someone committed to ignorance or vanity. The “fool” lacks the self-awareness or intellectual humility to recognize sense as sense; instead, he reinterprets it as pedantry, arrogance, or stupidity in the speaker. The line also warns the prudent speaker about the limits of persuasion—wisdom is not merely having good arguments but knowing when an audience is incapable of hearing them. In that way, it aligns with a long classical tradition (Greek and later) that contrasts the wise person’s measured speech with the fool’s reflexive contempt.