There are some who open their mouths just long enough to change feet. We say that we have our foot in our mouth when we say something that is embarrassing, foolish or wrong—something we wish we had not spoken.

It is better to slip with your foot than it is to slip with your tongue. In either case, a fall is the result. When we slip with our foot, we hurt ourselves; when we slip with our tongue, we can hurt others as well as ourselves (James 3:3, 8).

When a person says little, people consider him to be wise. We can prevent a lot of slips of the tongue by learning to listen and to pause and think before we speak. There is no antidote for foot-in-mouth disease. Sometimes it destroys the whole person. But we can start anew each day to be better than before. Prevention is the cure.