
“There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.”
Of Boldness
Essays (1625)
Il est dans la nature humaine de penser sagement et d'agir d'une façon absurde.
Le livre de mon ami http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Livre_de_Pierre_-_Premi%C3%A8res_conqu%C3%AAtes#II._La_Dame_en_blanc (1885): Le livre de Pierre, part I, ch. II: La dame en blanc
Il est dans la nature humaine de penser sagement et d’agir d’une façon absurde.
Variant: Il est dans la nature humaine de penser sagement et d'agir d'une façon absurde.
“There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.”
Of Boldness
Essays (1625)
Source: 1960s, Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, 1968, p. 141 as cited in John Laurent (2003) Evolutionary Economics and Human Nature. p. 175
Improvement Era (October 1958) pp 718-719
Context: Next to life we express gratitude for the gift of free agency. When thou didst create man, thou placed within him part of thine omnipotence and bade him choose for himself. Liberty and conscience thus became a sacred part of human nature. Freedom not only to think, but to speak and act is a God-given privilege.
Chapter 2, section 2: The Self as Nought (II) http://books.google.com/books?id=tWZQPAoh3ZQC&q=%22There+is+no+fashion+so+absurd+even+grotesque+that+it+cannot+be+adopted+given+two+things+the+authority+of+the+fashion+setter+Dior+Jackie+Onassis+and+the+vacuity+or+noughtness+of+the+consumer%22&pg=PA23#v=onepage.
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)
“1579. Fools may invent Fashions, that wise Men will wear.”
Similarly in French: Les fous inventent les modes et les sages les suivent.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)
Quoted in Really Reading Gertrude Stein : A Selected Anthology with essays (1989) by Judy Grahn (Crossing Press ISBN 0-895-94380-8, p. 253
Notes of Six Lectures on Landscape Painting (1836), C.R. Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable (1843), p. 343
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)
Source: Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority (1943), p. xii.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.