Origin unknown; reported as an "old proverb" in The Consensus: Volumes 7-8 (1922), p. 35; appears as part of a larger phrase in Hugh James Rose, The Commission and Consequent Duties of the Clergy (1831), p. xiv: "The ' little learning' which makes men despise what they do not understand, must finally, (though, perhaps, not till it has ruined what it cannot repair,) give place to that more benevolent wisdom which, as it seeks to promote God's will by promoting man's good, despises not, and knows https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Contempt