“These are fools that men adore; both their Gods & their men are fools.”
I:11.
The Book of the Law (1904)
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Aleister Crowley 142
poet, mountaineer, occultist 1875–1947Related quotes
“Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.”
Act V, scene i.
All Fools (1605)
Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IV, Line 843.
“Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.”
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Context: Do you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy?
Don't know what it means? - Well, I will tell you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.
“Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.”
Plutarch's Life of Cato
Variant: Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.
“To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.”
Rire des gens d'esprit, c'est le privilège des sots.
56
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation
“5779. Wise Men learn by other Men's Harms; Fools, by their own.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.”
“Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.”
Brickhill 1954, p. 44. Note: (also quoted as "...for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.") In Reach for the Sky, this quote is attributed to Harry Day, the Royal Flying Corps First World War fighter ace.