“I suffer fools gladly because I am one of them.”
Harry Secombe (1921–2001) British entertainer
Reflections
Original: (fr) M... me disait que j'avais un grand malheur: c'était de ne pas me faire à la toute-puissance des sots. Il avait raison, et j'ai vu qu'en entrant dans le monde, un sot avait de grands avantages, celui de se trouver parmi ses pairs. C'est comme frère Lourdis dans le temple de la Sottise.
Original: (fr) Maximes et Pensées, #197
“I suffer fools gladly because I am one of them.”
Harry Secombe (1921–2001) British entertainer
“Suffer fools gladly; they may be right.”
Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) British journalist
Platitudes in the Making http://books.google.com/books?id=r8trG_FywFAC&q=%22Suffer+fools+gladly+they+may+be+right%22&pg=PA20#v=onepage (1911)
“Several people have told me that my inability to suffer fools gladly is one of my main weaknesses.”
Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist
Dijkstra (1978) The pragmatic engineer versus the scientific designer http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD690.html (EWD 690). <br class="br">1970s
“The fool has one great advantage over a man of sense — he is always satisfied with himself.”
Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
“I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof.”
Andrew Wiles (1953) British mathematician
Nova Interview
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
As quoted in Lincoln; An Account of his Personal Life, Especially of its Springs of Action as Revealed and Deepened by the Ordeal of War (1922) by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson.
1860s
Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist
The Fourfold Treasure (1871) No. 991 http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0991.htm