It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.

This line traces directly to Maurice Switzer's 1907 humor collection Mrs. Goose, Her Book, where it appears verbatim on page 29 — a satirical book of twisted nursery rhymes and quips written, as Switzer joked, for adults despite its title. The exact wording ("at the risk of being thought a fool... and remove all doubt of it") is confirmed both in full-view scans of the original edition and in the scholarly Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (Yale University Press, 2012). The maxim is far more famously — and wrongly — pinned on Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain, but those credits surfaced only long after both men had died and rest on no primary source in their writings. While the underlying sentiment is ancient, echoing Proverbs 17:28 ("Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise"), the specific modern phrasing belongs to Switzer, who remains the earliest documented source for it. On the strength of that dated, page-cited primary publication, we regard the attribution as verified.