„Visionaries of uncomfortable truths are mostly dismissed as fools.“
— Erwin Chargaff Ukrinian-born biochemist who emigrated to the United States 1905 - 2002
Unsourced
„It is such an uncomfortable feeling to know one is a fool.“
Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Last update May 22, 2020. History
L. Frank Baum108
Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter 1856 - 1919Related quotes
„It's not the uncomfortable feelings themselves that hurt, it's our resistance to the uncomfortable feelings that causes us pain.“
— Teal Swan American spiritual teacher 1984
„I feel as comfortable anywhere as I feel uncomfortable anywhere“
— Kiran Desai Indian author 1971
Interview http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/oct/12/bookerprize2006.thebookerprize (12 October 2006), The Guardian
„You have a responsibility for the way you make the audience feel, and I want them to feel uncomfortable.“
— David Fincher American film director 1962
„The whole point of extravagance is to act like a fool and feel like a fool, but enjoy it.“
— Alfred Bester, book The Stars My Destination
Source: The Stars My Destination
„Wisdom is, I suppose, the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.“
— Charles Spurgeon British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist 1834 - 1892
The Fourfold Treasure (1871) No. 991 http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0991.htm
„If I'm in a bad mood, or if I'm uncomfortable, it's probably what I'm wearing that's making me feel that way.“
— Billie Eilish American singer-songwriter 2001
„I like people who shake other people up and make them feel uncomfortable.“
— Jim Morrison lead singer of The Doors 1943 - 1971
Source: Eyes: Poetry, 1967-1971
„The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.“
— William Shakespeare, As You Like It
Touchstone, Act V, scene i
Source: As You Like It (1599–1600)
„The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.“
— Anatole France French writer 1844 - 1924
Touchstone, Act V, scene i
Misattributed
„Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.“
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Poet, essayist, physician 1809 - 1894
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.
„Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change. You know, I mean, Jesus was a white man too, but, you know, it's like — We have — He was a historical figure, that's a verifiable fact, as is Santa. I just want the kids at home to know that.“
— Megyn Kelly American reporter 1970
Regarding a magazine article proposing making Santa Claus a penguin,
„Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.“
— Bertrand Russell logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist 1872 - 1970
"A Liberal Decalogue" http://www.panarchy.org/russell/decalogue.1951.html, from "The Best Answer to Fanaticism: Liberalism", New York Times Magazine (16/December/1951); later printed in The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1969), vol. 3: 1944-1967, pp. 71-2
1950s
Context: The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:
1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
„You know, they are fooling us, there is no God.“
— Joseph Stalin General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1879 - 1953
A teenaged Stalin to a fellow student while studying to become a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, as quoted in Landmarks in the Life of Stalin (1942) by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, p. 9
Contemporary witnesses
„If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man’s life would only serve to make a chronological table — a fool’s notion of history.“
— Honoré de Balzac French writer 1799 - 1850
Pour juger un homme, au moins faut-il être dans le secret de sa pensée, de ses malheurs, de ses émotions; ne vouloir connaître de sa vie que les événements matériels, c'est faire de la chronologie, l'histoire des sots!
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart
„A man never knows what a fool he is until he hears himself imitated by one.“
— Herbert Beerbohm Tree English actor and theatre manager 1852 - 1917
Quoted by Max Beerbohm in Hebert Beerbohm Tree: Some Memories of Him and of His Art Collected by Max Beerbohm http://books.google.com/books?id=wM08AAAAIAAJ&q="A+man+never+knows+what+a+fool+he+is+until+he+hears+himself+imitated+by+one"&pg=PA312#v=onepage (1920).
