“The exemplary person wishes to be cautious in speech and quick in action” appears in Book Four, “Li Ren”, of the Analects. Here, being cautious does not mean refusing to speak or praising slowness. It means not rushing to make claims or promises; being quick refers to timely, diligent action.
The preceding passage says that people of antiquity were reluctant to speak because they considered it shameful if their conduct failed to catch up with their words. Read together, the two passages place speech and action on the same scale. Words create expectations, so they should be measured; action should be prompt enough to carry what has been said.
The sentence need not turn silence into a virtue. When something must be explained, challenged or stopped, clarity still matters. Its more restrained lesson is to avoid claiming a result in advance through impressive words, and to let judgement follow what has actually been done.
https://ctext.org/text.pl?if=gb&node=1192&remap=gb&show=parallel
https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hans/論語/里仁第四
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