1 the state of being careful in the way you make decisions or spend money so that you avoid unnecessary risks:
2 the principle of not showing assets or profits to be greater than they might be, or losses to be smaller than they might be, in a company's accounts:
The prudence principle states that businesses should report their assets and liabilities in the most unfavorable position.
She edits a personal-finance magazine that preaches fiscal prudence.
Prudence demands preserving as much of forest systems as possible.
Casinos stay in business because few of the people who visit them have the prudence to walk out while they're ahead.
Prudence directs theoretical activity (whose end is truth) toward the investigation of certain truths; however, prudence cannot tell theory what to find.
Merchants pragmatically expressed their indignation at usurers and bankrupts as violators of the charity, moderation, and prudence they themselves claimed to display.
The preoccupations of this administrative elite prove remarkably similar to the topics of deliberative oratory : the competing claims of prudence, honour, and necessity.
Since prudence determines what we should and should not do, its exercise is the focal point of ethics.
In contrast, prudence is ' dictative ' because it dictates that an act should be done.
