Q0327

Thomas Aquinas

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Prudence is right reason applied to action.
Thinker Thomas Aquinas
School Scholasticism
Source Summa Theologiae II-II, q.47, a.2
Theme Wisdom
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Summa Theologiae II-II, q.47, a.2, within the tradition of Scholasticism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of wisdom, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Thomas Aquinas's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Thomas Aquinas. (n.d.). Prudence is right reason applied to action. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0327

MLA: Thomas Aquinas. “Prudence is right reason applied to action..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0327.

Chicago: Thomas Aquinas. “Prudence is right reason applied to action..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0327.

Same thinker

More from Thomas Aquinas

  1. Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.
  2. Good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided.
  3. Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.

All quotations by Thomas Aquinas

Same theme

More on wisdom

  1. The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
  2. What I do not know, I do not claim to know.
  3. Let us not become haters of argument — that is a great danger to the soul.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Of all that wisdom provides for the happiness of a whole life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.

Browse the wisdom theme