“Only boys were so foolish that they actually believed their arguments were their reasons.”
Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)
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Orson Scott Card 586
American science fiction novelist 1951Related quotes

Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln Douglas Debates http://archive.li/CFqbg (1959), p. 195
1950s
Context: Lincoln was again and again to refer to the proposition, 'all men are created equal', as an 'abstract truth', a truth which was the life principle of American law. The implications of this truth were only partially realized, even for white men, and largely denied as far as black men were concerned. Yet it supplied the direction, the meaning, of all good laws in this country, although the attempt at that time to achieve all that might and ought ultimately to be demanded in its name would have been disastrous. A law is foolish which does not aim at abstract or intrinsic justice; and so is it foolish to attempt to achieve abstract justice as the sole good by succumbing to the fallacy to which the mind is prone, which regards direct consequences as if they were the only consequences. Those who believe anything sanctioned by law is right commit one great error; those who believe the law should sanction only what is right commit another. Either error might result in foolish laws; and, although a foolish law may be preferable to a wise dictator, a wise law is preferable to both.

"Discussion on Making All Things Equal"; Variant: If right were really right, it would be so different from not-right that there would be no room for argument. If so were really so, then it would be so different from not-so that there would be no room for argument.
“The foolish big boys who fight with their toys are so sadly silly.”
"Dear Mr. Crow "
A Picnic of Poems in Allah's Green Garden (2011)

Explaining Labour's defeat in the 1983 election in an interview in Marxism Today (April 1986) http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/86_04_24.pdf
1980s
(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

“But them I'm not so foolish to believe.”
The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Bucolicks