Quotes about fool (1637 quotes, page 16)

“You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)
Context: In spite of a good foundation of sound morals, the natural offspring of the Divine principles which had been early rooted in my heart, I have been throughout my life the victim of my senses; I have found delight in losing the right path, I have constantly lived in the midst of error, with no consolation but the consciousness of my being mistaken. Therefore, dear reader, I trust that, far from attaching to my history the character of impudent boasting, you will find in my Memoirs only the characteristic proper to a general confession, and that my narratory style will be the manner neither of a repenting sinner, nor of a man ashamed to acknowledge his frolics. They are the follies inherent to youth; I make sport of them, and, if you are kind, you will not yourself refuse them a good-natured smile. You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools. As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe each other. But on the score of fools it is a very different matter. I always feel the greatest bliss when I recollect those I have caught in my snares, for they generally are insolent, and so self-conceited that they challenge wit. We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a victory not to be despised for a fool is covered with steel and it is often very hard to find his vulnerable part. In fact, to gull a fool seems to me an exploit worthy of a witty man. I have felt in my very blood, ever since I was born, a most unconquerable hatred towards the whole tribe of fools, and it arises from the fact that I feel myself a blockhead whenever I am in their company. I am very far from placing them in the same class with those men whom we call stupid, for the latter are stupid only from deficient education, and I rather like them. I have met with some of them — very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools. They are like eyes veiled with the cataract, which, if the disease could be removed, would be very beautiful.

Fools

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Rogers Commission Report (1986)
Context: Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality in understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts, in estimating costs, and the difficulty of the projects. Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Fools , Nature , Reality , Success

“Now and then there's a fool such as I am over you.
You taught me how to love
And now you say that we are through.
I'm a fool, but I'll love you dear
Until the day I die
Now and then there's a fool such as I.”

Bill Trader (1922–2003) American singer-songwriter

(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I (1952)

Fools

“When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Salon interview (1996)
Context: When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language. Most people in India are multilingual, and if you listen to the urban speech patterns there you'll find it's quite characteristic that a sentence will begin in one language, go through a second language and end in a third. It's the very playful, very natural result of juggling languages. You are always reaching for the most appropriate phrase.

Fools

“His majesty recollected the celebrated quack doctor, who when asked why his patrons were more numerous than those of regular practitioners, replied, that he was patronised by the fools, who are numerous in every community”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

The Philosophical Emperor, a Political Experiment, or, The Progress of a False Position: (1841)
Context: His majesty recollected the celebrated quack doctor, who when asked why his patrons were more numerous than those of regular practitioners, replied, that he was patronised by the fools, who are numerous in every community, while regular physicians are patronised by the wise, who are few. His majesty could not see why the principle was not applicable to politics. He resolved to try it. He would so govern as to be patronised by the numerous class, and leave the desires of the few to be regarded by some future emperor, who should choose to make so unpromising an experiment.

Fools , Communication

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right to work.' It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Speaking on right-to-work laws in 1961, as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986)
1960s
Context: In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right to work.' It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. It is supported by Southern segregationists who are trying to keep us from achieving our civil rights and our right of equal job opportunity. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.

Law , Fools , Fight , Falseness

“Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

Tecumseh (1768–1813) Native American leader of the Shawnee

As quoted in A Sourcebook for Earth's Community of Religions (1995) by Joel Diederik Beversluis; but also ascribed to some of the Wabasha chiefs, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Wovoka, according to Ernest Thompson Seton, The Gospel of the Red Man: An Indian Bible, San Diego, The Book Tree, 2006, p. 60
Disputed
Context: So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

Death , People , Fear , Food

“Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Source: The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)
Context: Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong's first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

Fools , Thinking

“The fool hath said … The fool hath said
And we, who deemed him wise,
We, who believed that Thou wast dead,
How should we seek Thine eyes?”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Dedication, later published as "A Prayer in Time of War"
A Belgian Christmas Eve (1915)
Context: p>The fool hath said … The fool hath said
And we, who deemed him wise,
We, who believed that Thou wast dead,
How should we seek Thine eyes?How should we seek to Thee for power,
Who scorned Thee yesterday?
How should we kneel in this dread hour?
Lord, teach us how to pray.</p

Fools , Dead

“I will give you my definition of metaphysics: Two fools get together; each admits what neither can prove, and thereupon both of them say, “hence we infer.””

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: There is, however, no propriety in wasting any time about the science of metaphysics. I will give you my definition of metaphysics: Two fools get together; each admits what neither can prove, and thereupon both of them say, “hence we infer.” That is all there is of metaphysics.

Fools

“I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 66.
Context: I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

Faith , Fools , Way

“Life is not fair…Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 111 (p. 634)

Life , Fools

“That, my dear sir, or something not unlike, is what you could have said to me, had you the smallest leaven of letters or wit; but of wit, O most pitiable of objects made by God, you never had a rudiment, and of letters, you have just those that are needed to spell "fool!"”

Edmond Rostand (1868–1918) French writer

Act IV, scene 1, as translated by Getrude Hall
Cyrano de Bergerac (1897)
Context: Valvert: Your … your nose is … errr … Your nose … is very large!
Cyrano: [gravely] Very.
Valvert: [laughs] Ha!
Cyrano: [imperturbable] Is that all?
Valvert: But …
Cyrano: Ah, no, young man, that is not enough! You might have said, dear me, there are a thousand things … varying the tone … For instance … Here you are: — Aggressive: "I, monsieur, if I had such a nose, nothing would serve but I must cut it off!" Amicable: "It must be in your way while drinking; you ought to have a special beaker made!" Descriptive: "It is a crag! … a peak! … a promontory! … A promontory, did I say? … It is a peninsula!" Inquisitive: "What may the office be of that oblong receptacle? Is it an inkhorn or a scissor-case?" Mincing: "Do you so dote on birds, you have, fond as a father, been at pains to fit the little darlings with a roost?" Blunt: "Tell me, monsieur, you, when you smoke, is it possible you blow the vapor through your nose without a neighbor crying "The chimney is afire!"?" Anxious: "Go with caution, I beseech, lest your head, dragged over by that weight, should drag you over!" Tender: "Have a little sun-shade made for it! It might get freckled!" Learned: "None but the beast, monsieur, mentioned by Aristophanes, the hippocampelephantocamelos, can have borne beneath his forehead so much cartilage and bone!" Off-Hand: "What, comrade, is that sort of peg in style? Capital to hang one's hat upon!" Emphatic: No wind can hope, O lordly nose, to give the whole of you a cold, but the Nor-Wester!" Dramatic: "It is the Red Sea when it bleeds!" Admiring: "What a sign for a perfumer's shop!" Lyric: "Art thou a Triton, and is that thy conch?" Simple: "A monument! When is admission free?" Deferent: "Suffer, monsieur, that I should pay you my respects: That is what I call possessing a house of your own!" Rustic: "Hi, boys! Call that a nose? You don't gull me! It's either a prize parrot or a stunted gourd!" Military: "Level against the cavalry!" Practical: "Will you put up for raffle? Indubitably, sir, it will be the feature of the game!" And finally in parody of weeping Pyramus: "Behold, behold the nose that traitorously destroyed the beauty of its master! and is blushing for the same!" — That, my dear sir, or something not unlike, is what you could have said to me, had you the smallest leaven of letters or wit; but of wit, O most pitiable of objects made by God, you never had a rudiment, and of letters, you have just those that are needed to spell "fool!" — But, had it been otherwise, and had you been possessed of the fertile fancy requisite to shower upon me, here, in this noble company, that volley of sprightly pleasentries, still should you not have delivered yourself of so much as a quarter of the tenth part of the beginning of the first … For I let off these good things at myself, and with sufficient zest, but do not suffer another to let them off at me!"

God , Fools

“Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

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.

Men , Fools , Way

“He is a fool who looks at the fruit of lofty trees, but does not measure their height.”
Stultus est qui fructus magnarum arborum spectat, altitudinem non metitur.

Quintus Curtius Rufus Roman historian

VII, 8.
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book VII

Fools , Tree

“A prosperous fool is a grievous burden.”

Aeschylus (-525–-456 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Fragment 383, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Fools

“Come out, my lord, it is a world of fools.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

Act iv, scene 3
Queen Mary: A Drama (published 1876)

World , Fools

“We affirm it and we shall proclaim it from the mountaintops, that all people – be they black or white, be they brown or yellow, be they rich or poor, be they wise or fools, are created in the image of the Creator and are his children!”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Also quoted in Nelson Mandela: from freedom to the future: tributes and speeches (2003), edited by ‎Kader Asmal & ‎David Chidester. Jonathan Ball, p. 332
1990s, Speech at the Zionist Christian Church Easter Conference (1992)
Context: Yes! We affirm it and we shall proclaim it from the mountaintops, that all people – be they black or white, be they brown or yellow, be they rich or poor, be they wise or fools, are created in the image of the Creator and are his children! Those who dare to cast out from the human family people of a darker hue with their racism! Those who exclude from the sight of God's grace, people who profess another faith with their religious intolerance! Those who wish to keep their fellow countrymen away from God's bounty with forced removals! Those who have driven away from the altar of God people whom He has chosen to make different, commit an ugly sin! The sin called Apartheid.

Children , People , Fools

“Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

The First Step http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=145&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)
Context: Just to be on the first step
should make you happy and proud.
To have come this far is no small achievement:
what you have done is a glorious thing.
Even this first step
is a long way above the ordinary world.
To stand on this step
you must be in your own right
a member of the city of ideas.
And it is a hard, unusual thing
to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.
Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.

Fools

“7) Any damn fool can predict the past.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Unsourced variant: Any damned fool can predict the past. And most do.
Niven's Laws

Fools , Past

“Shelley was a young fool; so are these cocksparrow revolutionaries. But it is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Context: All error, not merely verbal, is a strong way of stating that the current truth is incomplete. The follies of youth have a basis in sound reason, just as much as the embarrassing questions put by babes and sucklings. Their most antisocial acts indicate the defects of our society. When the torrent sweeps the man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory. Shelley, chafing at the Church of England, discovered the cure of all evils in universal atheism. Generous lads irritated at the injustices of society, see nothing for it but the abolishment of everything and Kingdom Come of anarchy. Shelley was a young fool; so are these cocksparrow revolutionaries. But it is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God’s sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! As for the others, the irony of facts shall take it out of their hands, and make fools of them in downright earnest, ere the farce be over. There shall be such a mopping and a mowing at the last day, and such blushing and confusion of countenance for all those who have been wise in their own esteem, and have not learnt the rough lessons that youth hands on to age. If we are indeed here to perfect and complete our own natures, and grow larger, stronger, and more sympathetic against some nobler career in the future, we had all best bestir ourselves to the utmost while we have the time. To equip a dull, respectable person with wings would be but to make a parody of an angel.

Life , Stupidity , Fools , Dead

“Don’t fool yourself that you are going to have it all. You are not.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

The Successful Woman : How You Can Have a Career, a Husband, and a Family — and Not Feel Guilty About It (1988), p. 18
Context: Don’t fool yourself that you are going to have it all. You are not. Psychologically, having it all is not even a valid concept. The marvelous thing about human beings is that we are perpetually reaching for the stars. The more we have, the more we want. And for this reason, we never have it all.

Fools

“Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Dedication (1960)
Context: Everyone knows the glory of the twain
Who gave America the aeroplane
To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.
Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.
Our venture in revolution and outlawry
Has justified itself in freedom's story
Right down to now in glory upon glory.

Life , Fools , Art , Heart

“A man of special learning may be a fool as to common relations. And that he who passes for an intellectual prince may be a moral pauper there are examples enough to show.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Introduction : The Reason for the Examination
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
Context: The respect for authority, the presumption in favor of those who have won intellectual reputation, is within reasonable limits, both prudent and becoming. But it should not be carried too far, and there are some things especially as to which it behooves us all to use our own judgment and to maintain free minds. For not only does the history of the world show that undue deference to authority has been the potent agency through which errors have been enthroned and superstitions perpetuated, but there are regions of thought in which the largest powers and the greatest acquirements cannot guard against aberrations or assure deeper insight. One may stand on a box and look over the heads of his fellows, but he no better sees the stars. The telescope and the microscope reveal depths which to the unassisted vision are closed. Yet not merely do they bring us no nearer to the cause of suns and animal-cula, but in looking through them the observer must shut his eyes to what lies about him. That intension is at the expense of extension is seen in the mental as in the physical sphere. A man of special learning may be a fool as to common relations. And that he who passes for an intellectual prince may be a moral pauper there are examples enough to show.

Fools , Learning

“Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavelli's teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), p. 223
Context: Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavelli's teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful. Nor is it Neronian. Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.

Fools , Angels , Color , Science

“There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Also in Fallen Angels (Baen Books, 1992) as: "Niven's Law: No cause is so noble that it won't attract fuggheads."
Niven's Laws
Context: 16) There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
To prove a point, one may seek out a foolish Socialist, thirteenth century Liberal, Scientologist, High Frontier advocate, Mensa member, science fiction fan, Jim Bakker acolyte, Christian, witch, or fanatical devotee of Special Interest Lib. It doesn't really reflect on the cause itself. Ad hominem argument saves time, but it's still a fallacy.

Fools

“Make peace, you fools!”

Gerd von Rundstedt (1875–1953) German Field Marshal during World War II

Message given to a staff officer after calling Hitler's headquarters. Quoted in "SS Steel Rain: Waffen-SS Panzer" - by Tim Ripley - History - 2002

Peace , Fools

“So there was hostility and there was contempt, and there was avoidance To-day, by the verdict of the Court, one of these three situations has disappeared.
I suppose that after having been condemned, I will cease to be called a fool, and for me it is a great advantage.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

Address on sentencing (1885)
Context: The Court. has done the work for me, and although at first appearance it seems to be against me, I am so confident in the idea which I have had the honor to express yesterday, that I think it is for good and not for my loss. Up to this moment, I have been considered by a certain party as insane, by another party as a criminal, by another party as a man with whom it was doubtful whether to have any intercourse. So there was hostility and there was contempt, and there was avoidance To-day, by the verdict of the Court, one of these three situations has disappeared.
I suppose that after having been condemned, I will cease to be called a fool, and for me it is a great advantage. I consider it as a great advantage. If I have a mission, I say "If " for the sake of those who doubt, but for my part it means "Since," since I have a mission, I cannot fulfil my mission as long as I am looked upon as an insane being-human being, at the moment that I begin to ascend that scale, I begin to succeed.

Hostility , Fools

“Doth some one say that there be gods above?
There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool,
Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.”

Euripidés Bellerophon

Bellerophon
Context: Doth some one say that there be gods above?
There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool,
Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.
Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words
No undue credence: for I say that kings
Kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud,
And doing thus are happier than those
Who live calm pious lives day after day. All divinity
Is built-up from our good and evil luck.

God , Fools , Falseness

“They new the old folk wisdom: what has been built might be really crap and therefore it doesn’t make any sense to dig it, for the smell could make the life really impossible. They regarded Gorbachev exactly that kind of a fool, who had broken the rule.”

Aleksandr Zinovyev (1922–2006) Russian writer

Katastroika (1988)

Life , Wisdom , Fools , Sense

“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The Weight of Glory (1949)
Context: Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Fools , Sex , Imagination , Drink

“Today, you see a generation of young Iranians who are committed to fight even if it means risking and losing their lives to ultimately get rid of this regime and achieve full freedom. This is no longer a debate over more moderation or for awhile being fooled by the idea that there is any reform possible by this regime -- not only from the domestic perspective but from the international perspective. Today, the fight is led by people who are committed to a campaign of hidden resistance. The discipline of non-violence has been for the most part observed by the protestors and I think at the end of the day, this movement could culminate into something that could be a well-organized or orchestrated campaign of resistance: perhaps even labor strikes that could in fact bring the regime to its knees and ultimately cause its demise. This is the best way for Iran to not only achieve its goal of freedom, which would immediately have a positive impact and ramification not only in our area, but on the rest of the world. It is the ultimate guarantee by bringing in democracy and secularism as a means to preserve our cultural and religious identities and to guarantee self-determination and human rights. Iran is a country that has always and throughout its glorious history been contributing to world civilization as opposed to a clerical regime that is asking for its demise under a very utopian ideology that only a few at the top believe in, and not the rest of the population.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted by Felice Friedson, Iranian Crown Prince: Ahmadinejad's regime is "delicate and fragile" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=459&page=2, August 12, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

People , World , Fools , Way

“The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Fools , Heart

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools learn in no other.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

School , Fools , Learning

“I've been in the inventor business for 33 years and my experience is that for every problem the Lord has made, He has also made a solution. If you and I can't find the solution, the let's honestly admit that you and I are damn fools but why blame it on the Lord and say He created something 'impossible.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

Fools , Business , Problem

“Come hither, my boy, tell me what thou seest there. — A fool tangled in a religious snare. ”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Fools , Boy

“A man and his art are like a fool and his king. ”

Корри Алюс

Fools , Art

“The truth is I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't. When they found this out, they would blame me for disillusioning them and fooling them.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

My Story (1974; co-written with Ben Hecht; 2007 edition), p. 133 Variant: The truth is I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't. When they found this out, they would blame me for disillusioning them and fooling them. As paraphrased in On Being Blonde : Wit and Wisdom from the World's Most Infamous Blondes (2004) by Paula Munier, p. 52

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Marilyn Monroe / Quotes
On Being Blonde (2007)

Love , Truth , People , Fools

“Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Steve Jobs

Fools , Freedom

“A society without democracy is a society of slaves and fools.”

Zaman Ali (1993) Pakistani philosopher

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9672836-a-society-without-democracy-is-a-society-of-slaves-and

Democracy , Fools

“In a word, human life is more governed by fortune than by reason; is to be regarded more as a dull pastime than as a serious occupation; and is more influenced by particular humour, than by general principles. Shall we engage ourselves in it with passion and anxiety? It is not worthy of so much concern. Shall we be indifferent about what happens? We lose all the pleasure of the game by our phlegm and carelessness. While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone; and death, though perhaps they receive him differently, yet treats alike the fool and the philosopher.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 18: The Sceptic
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)

Indifference , Game , Fools , Pleasure

“Only fools offend me, woman, and they but once.”

C. L. Moore (1911–1987) American author

Jirel Meets Magic (1935); p. 94
Short fiction, Jirel of Joiry (1969)

Fools

“Mr. President, I rise today to say: enough. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes the normal. With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Speech on not seeking another term in the U.S. Senate (2017)

Making love , Fools

“And yet we must believe, on pain of being communal, that no system of law has guaranteed as many rights to women as shariah, that no religion is as solicitous of them as Islam. ... The argument can fool no one but the determined apologist.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

The World of Fatwas (Or The Shariah In Action)

Pain , Religion , Law , Fools

“I amuse myself, not by making people believe what I wish, but by letting them believe what they wish. These fools of Parisians declare that I am five hundred, and I confirm them in the idea since it pleases them.”

Alessandro Cagliostro (1743–1795) Italian occultist

Cagliostro: the Splendour And Misery of a Master of Magic by W.R.H. Trowbridge, (William Rutherford Hayes), (August 1910) https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Trowbridge%2c%20W%2e%20R%2e%20H%2e%20%28William%20Rutherford%20Hayes%29%2c%201866%2d1938

Idea , Making love , People , Fools

“Time was when men of Horse Watson’s profession typically never slept sober, and died with their livers eroded. It must have been fun to watch the literate swashbucklers make fools of themselves in the frontier saloons, indulging in horsewhippings and shoot-outs with rival journalists and their partisans. But who stopped to think what it was to have the power of words and publication, to discover that an entire town and territory would judge, condemn, act, reprieve and glorify because of something you had slugged together the night before? Because of something you had handset into type, smudging your fingertips with metal poisons that inexorably began their journey through your bloodstream? For the sake of the power, you turned your liver and kidneys into spongy, irascible masses; you tainted the tissue of your brain with heavy metal ions until it became a house haunted by stumbling visions. Alcohol would temporarily overcome the effect. So you became an alcoholic, and purchased sanity one day at a time, and made a spectacle of yourself. It was neither funny nor tragic in the end—it was simply a fact of life that operated more slowly on the mediocre, because the mediocre could turn themselves off and go to sleep whether they had done the night’s job to their own satisfaction or not.”

Algis Budrys book Michaelmas

Source: Michaelmas (1977), Chapter 3 (pp. 36-37)

Sleep , Time , Night , Housing

“The holy fool who’d dragged the solar system into war and seemed utterly blind to the damage he caused. An idealist. The most dangerous kind of man there was.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Caliban's War (2012), Chapter 45 (p. 493)

War , Fools

“But the blot on the encyclopedia’s fair name is not just in the wrongness of the statement, but in its partisan and non-encyclopedic nature…. If Wikipedia wants to live up to its promise of being a reliable encyclopedic source, it will strike this and all sentences resembling it from its article on me. At most, it can use me as an example of how it was fooled by some of its all-too-partisan collaborators. Speaking of whom: the history page accompanying my page proves forever that some Wikipedia collaborators wanted to inflict on me the maximum harm possible, an attitude incompatible with work for an encyclopedia. Shouldn’t Wikipedia fire them and wipe out everything they wrote? Of course they can still contribute blogs and columns, by preference under their own full names, but they have proven themselves not to be encyclopedic authorities. …”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

http://koenraadelst.blogspot.com/2012/04/meera-nanda-against-hinduism-and-its.html
2010s, The argumentative Hindu (2012)

History , Fools , Nature

“There were the Chârvâkas, who preached horrible things, the most rank, undisguised materialism, such as in the nineteenth century they dare not openly preach. These Charvakas were allowed to preach from temple to temple, and city to city, that religion was all nonsense, that it was priestcraft, that the Vedas were the words and writings of fools, rogues, and demons, and that there was neither God nor an eternal soul. If there was a soul, why did it not come back after death drawn by the love of wife and child. Their idea was that if there was a soul it must still love after death, and want good things to eat and nice dress. Yet no one hurt these Charvakas.”

Charvaka An unorthodox school of Hindu philosophy

Swami Vivekananda as recorded in the complete works of Swami Vivekananda https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_2/Jnana-Yoga/Maya_and_the_Evolution_of_the_Conception_of_God.

Hurt , God , Soul , Religion

“I’m very aware of the time I have on this planet…I lost loved ones at a young age. I realise the platform I have and the responsibility I have, and I’m aware of my mortality. No one like me has ever had this opportunity, so I’d be a fool not to make the most of it.”

Reggie Yates (1983) English actor, television presenter and radio DJ

On the scope of his current projects in “Reggie Yates on The Insider: ‘What I’m doing, no one else is doing’” https://www.thejackalmagazine.com/reggie-yates-interview in The Jackal Magazine (2017 Mar 10)

Time , Fools , Age , Love

“It is a government agency. And government agencies are run as bureaucracies. There is a role for bureaucracy; it’s very useful for certain tasks. In particular, it facilitates standardization and interchangeability. Bureaucracies excel at performing tasks that must be done consistently whether the people assigned to them are brilliant performers or bumbling fools. You can’t always count on having Albert Einstein in the patent office, so you design its procedures to work even if you hire Mr. Bean by mistake.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 13, “Fimbulwinter” (pp. 258-259)

People , Fools

“The Guide sang: The new age, the new art, the new ethic and thought, And fools crying, Because it has begun It will continue as it has begun! The wheel runs fast, therefore the wheel will run Faster for ever, The old age is done, We have new lights and see without the sun.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Though they lay flat the mountains and dry up the sea, Wilt thou yet change, as though God were a god?
Pilgrim’s Regress 186–187
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Light , Sun , Fools , Art

“Andrei Kovalenko runs over Patrick Roy, and Patrick slugs him! Watch him use his blocker here. Don’t fool with Patrick!”

Don Cherry (1934) ice hockey coach, television commentator

In the "Crease Crashers" segment of the <i>Rock'Em Sock'Em Six</i> hockey highlights video.

Fools

“This man was a fool because he failed to realize his dependence on God… this man-centered foolishness is still alive today. In fact, it has gotten to the point today that some are even saying that God is dead.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

The thing that bothers me about it is that they didn't give me full information, because at least I would have wanted to attend God's funeral. And today I want to ask, who was the coroner that pronounced Him dead? I want to raise a question, how long had He been sick? I want to know whether He had a heart attack or died of chronic cancer. These questions haven't been answered for me, and I'm going on believing and knowing that God is alive. You see, as long as love is around, God is alive. As long as justice is around, God is alive. There are certain conceptions of God that needed to die, but not God. You see, God is the supreme noun of life; He's not an adjective. He is the supreme subject of life; He's not a verb. He's the supreme independent clause; He's not a dependent clause. Everything else is dependent on Him, but He is dependent on nothing.
1960s, Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool (1967)

Dead , God , Fools , Dependency

“In my own world, sir, sad to say, human prejudice is matched only by human folly. Not a soul claims to be prejudiced, of course, as there are few who would describe themselves as fools…”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Elric, chewing on a piece of barely palatable salt beef, remarked that this seemed a quality of a good deal of society, throughout the multiverse.
Book 2, Chapter 4 “Land at Last!” (p. 241)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

World , Sadness , Fools , Soul

“Who do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs? I’d have killed Mundt if I could, I hate his guts; but not now. It so happens they need him. They need him so that the great moronic mass that you admire can sleep soundly in their beds at night. They need him for the safety of ordinary, crummy people like you and me.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

Source: The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963), p.231

Sleep , Hate , Night , People

“It is wonderful that certain people and circles still believe I have the aspiration to become Chancellor and receive nightmares from this thought. How often I have declared that I would have to be a fool if I wanted to strive for this really unenviable position! I have already achieved some time ago everything a soldier can achieve, I hold a post that involves little work and no agitation or anger, and I know the position of a Chancellor under Kaiser Wilhelm II only too well that I would have to be mad to desire it.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary c. December 1901

Time , Anger , People , Fools

“The first duty of the revolutionaries is to tell the truth. Fooling the people, promoting illusions, always brings the worst consequences, and I believe that the people should be warned against excessive optimism. How did the Red Army win the war? By telling the truth. How did the dictatorship lose the war? By deceiving the soldiers.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Camp Columbia, Havana (Jan. 8th, 1959), Fidel Castro Reader, pp. 133

Optimism , War , People , Fools

“Neglect not your time, nor use it haphazardly; on the contrary, you should bring yourself to account. Structure your litanies and other practices during each day and night. This is how to bring about spiritual blessing in each period. If each of your breaths is a priceless jewel, be not like the deceived fools who are joyous because of each day their wealth increases while their life grows ever shorter.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

Time , Night , Wealth , Fools

“Would you not think him an utter fool who wept because he was not alive a thousand years ago? And is he not just as much of a fool who weeps because he will not be alive a thousand years from now? It is all the same; you will not be, and you were not. Neither of these periods of time belongs to you.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXVII: On Taking One’s Own Life

Thinking , Time , Fools

“The working rhythms are exhausting, so much so that the average life of an actress is only six months; for an actor, on the other hand, if he can manage himself without being fooled by the initial euphoria and the consequent physical decline, he can be better …”

Rocco Siffredi (1964) Italian pornographic actor, director, producer and entrepreneur

Interview by Andrea Di Marcantonio

Life , Fools

“He was passionate and thought he was wise; I was a fool and suspected it; I was nearer to wisdom.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Il était passionné et se croyait sage; j'étais folle, mais je m'en doutais, et, sous ce point de vue, j'étais plus près que lui de la Sagesse.
Maximes et Pensées, #562
Maxims and Considerations

Passion , Wisdom , Fools

“You would be a fool to be tempted to bat like Rohit because he is in a different class. He is on a different planet altogether when he gets going.”

Rohit Sharma (1987) Indian cricketer

You would be a fool to bat like Rohit Sharma, he is in a different class: KL Rahul, The Indian Express, 3 July 2019 https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket-world-cup/rohit-sharma-kl-rahul-opening-india-vs-bangladesh-5812681/,
About him

Fools

“Gurnemanz is still not absolutely certain that Parsifal is pure and a fool, as he makes the decision to lead Parsifal to the castle of the Graal, for Gurnemanz sang after they both had walked a while: Now pay attention, and let me see, if you are a fool and if you are pure …!”

Theodor Reuss (1855–1923) German singer

The test, if he is a pure fool, shall come to Parsifal first in the Temple of the Graal! This point cannot be worked out further here.
II. Main Part : The Unveiling of the Secret.
Parsifal and the Secret of the Graal Unveiled (1914)

Making love , Fools , Decision

“Need one comment on that fool? He is not a foreign minister but a blind adherent of Hitler. He is also personally disagreeable and vain.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) German general

Erhard Milch to Leon Goldensohn, March 13, 1946.

Personality , Fools

“His central characters are the pioneer, the doctor, the scientist, the businessman, and the feminist. The appeal of his best fiction lies in the opposition between his idealistic protagonists and an array of fools, charlatans, and scoundrels - evangelists, editorialists, pseudo-artists, cultists, and boosters.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

Martin Light in The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis (1975)

Fools

“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. … It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods — trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries … God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests

Singing , God , Tree , Beauty

“Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Fear , Fools , Angels

“All I ask for is a chance to have the same kind of forum, the right to speak, the same credibility as thee wrong-ass ignant fools. But the producers of these types of shows think tht I will only talk about tai chi, where to get the best sushi on the West Side, how to feng-shui your office…the fact that the media at large look at my race before they hear my voice = fucked up shit.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, INVISIBILITY

Thinking , Fools , Chance

“Don’t fool yourself that you are going to have it all. You are not. Psychologically, having it all is not even a valid concept. The marvelous thing about human beings is that we are perpetually reaching for the stars. The more we have, the more we want. And for this reason, we never have it all.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

The Successful Woman : How You Can Have a Career, a Husband, and a Family — and Not Feel Guilty About It (1988), p. 18

Star , Fools

“I do not feel brave. I am not the center of this symphony. No one even cares if I am here.
Where is the immortal majesty the poets promised me? Where is the stern will my ancestors preached to their children?
It was just an illusion conjured by fools who never left their libraries, or by agents of necessity.
This is the Noble Lie.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 10: The Ash Rain; Lysander

Lie , Children , Feeling , Fools

“Children and fools speak the truth; and somehow they find happiness in their sincerity.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 1 : Our life begins

Happiness , Children , Fools , Truth

“He was so crafty and cunning in petty things, as the circumventing of any great man, the change of a Favourite, &c. insomuch as a very wise man was wont to say that he believed him the wisest fool in Christendom, meaning him wise in small things, but a fool in weighty affairs.”

James I of England (1566–1625) king during union of English and Scottish crowns

The Court and Character of King James I, commonly attributed to Anthony Weldon
About James

Fools , Change

“So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should ashamed—after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels—to call our "lives,") let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and "art" or "the arts." Let us not forget that every authentic "work of art" is in and of itself alive and that, however "the arts" may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as "beauty."”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

This being so, our three ring circus is art—for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of "beauty" is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is "childish," is idiotic.
"The Adult, the Artist and the Circus." Vanity Fair (October 1925)

Forgetting , Beauty , Fools , Art

“This was the work that the nineteenth century had done among men, and was continuing in glorious, fashion to do,—that century of sterility, that century of domination, that century of decadence, that century of degradation, as it is called by the pedants, the rhetoricians, the imbeciles, and all that filthy brood of bigots, of knaves, and of sharpers, who sanctimoniously slaver gall upon glory, who assert that Pascal was a madman, Voltaire a coxcomb, and Rousseau a brute, and whose triumph it would be to put a fool's-cap upon the human race.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Fashion , Fools , Men

“Anyone who rushes toward an unknown peril simply to satisfy a desire for excitement is a fool.”

Roger Zelazny book Today We Choose Faces

Part 2, Chapter 3 (p. 78)
Today We Choose Faces (1973)

Fools

“A blessing for a wise a curse for a fool I often call it wealth.”

Albara Almerf (2000)

Wealth , Fools

“Love and devotion, deep as any ocean
don't play by anybody's rules
With your carousel of horses
and your unforeseen forces,
you're running with the caravan of fools
Caravan of fools, caravan of fools
You're running with the caravan of fools”

John Prine (1946–2020) American country singer/songwriter

Caravan of Fools (co-written with Dan Auerbach and Pat McLaughlin)
Song lyrics, The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)

Horse , Love , Making love , Fools

“The dark and distant drumming
The pounding of the hooves
The silence of everything that moves
Late at night you'll see them
decked out in shiny jewels
the coming of the caravan of fools”

John Prine (1946–2020) American country singer/songwriter

Caravan of Fools (co-written with Dan Auerbach and Pat McLaughlin)
Song lyrics, The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)

Silence , Distant , Night , Fools

“The deceiver is really the fool.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 101
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Fools

“Given the evidence at our disposal, only a fool would put any faith in the organic and the machine living harmoniously for the rest of time.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 38 (pp. 501-502)

Faith , Time , Fools

“Mercy from the Father and the Mother, mercy from the Sister and the Brother, Mercy from the Bastard, five times mercy, High Ones, we beseech you.… Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000)

Sister , Justice , Fools , Time

“Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal. That’s all.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 2 (p. 36)

Lie , Law , Fools , Men

“You’re a damn fool, boy. I want you to know that now, in case I don’t get a chance to tell you later.”

Stephen Baxter book Flux

Source: Flux (novel) (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 554)

Fools , Chance , Boy

“What are you trying to do, Kerouac? I'd ask myself in my sleepingbag at night, trying to deny reality with all this Buddha stuff, ya jerk?... Poor detailed immaculate incarnate fool, and you call yourself Self ... Take off your coat and crash wits.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

And I realized that all this Buddhism was a STRAIN at telling the untellable emptiness yet that nothing was truer, a perfect paradox.

Meditation in the Woods (1958)

Night , Fools , Self-confidence , Reality

“Bloody and hideous facts; acts of revolting superstition, arrests, and executions of stupid ferocity. "Burn every body!" the Inquisition seemed to say — God will easily sort out His own! Poor fools, hysterical women, and idiots were roasted alive, without mercy, for the crime of "magic."”

Eliphas Levi book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie

But, at the same time, how many great culprits escaped this unjust and sanguinary justice! This is what Bodin makes us fully appreciate.

Quoted in Isis Unveiled, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. II, Chapter III (1877)
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1856)

Fools , God , Women , Stupidity

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as "right to work."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. It is supported by Southern segregationists who are trying to keep us from achieving our civil rights and our right of equal job opportunity. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.

Speaking on right-to-work laws in 1961, as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986)
1960s

Fight , Falseness , Fools

“What a fool I was. I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power.”

Edward Carson, Baron Carson (1854–1935) Irish politician, barrister and judge

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1921/dec/14/address-in-reply-to-his-majestys-most#column_44 in the House of Lords (14 December 1921)

Game , Fools

“For the holy are susceptible too to evil, even as you and I, signori; they too are helpless before sin without God's aid… and the holy can be fooled by sin as quickly as you or I, signori. Quicker, because they are holy.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

"Mistral" (1931)

God , Evil , Fools

“Lo these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd,
And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield.
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!
So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe.”

Alexander Pope Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady

Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 45. Compare Pope's The Odyssey of Homer, Book XVIII, line 269

Heart , Soul , Fools

“We have magnificent brains—and use them to believe nonsense and behave as fools. . . . We are enslaved to delusions and too often the servants of subconscious biases. . . . Our great challenge is to use our brains to overcome our brains.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

Fools

“Ther are not two sides to any question that really concerns a man, but only one, and this side only a fool can fail to see if he tries.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Aurea Dicta XX, p. 8.
The Rod, the Root, and the Flower (1895)

Fools , Question

“I'm your narrator. It's my task to say
Just where and how things happen in our play,
Set the bare stage with words instead of props
And keep on talking till the curtain drops. …
It's an old task — old as the human heart,
Old as those bygone players and their art
Who, in old days when faith was nearer earth,
Played out the mystery of Jesus' birth
In hall or village green or market square
For all who chose to come and see them there,
And, if they knew that King Herod, in his crown,
Was really Wat, the cobbler of the town,
And Tom, the fool, played Abraham the Wise,
They did not care. They saw with other eyes.
The story was their own — not far away,
As real as if it happened yesterday,
Full of all awe and wonder yet so near,
A marvelous thing that could have happened here
In their own town — a star that could have blazed
On their own shepherds, leaving them amazed,
Frightened and questioning and following still
To the bare stable — and the miracle.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Narrator
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Faith , Question , Star , Heart

“With regard to domestic policy, the current burning issue is the racial question. Also in this field we will adopt the necessary solutions. Those who believe that we have obediently imitated anyone, or worse, acted on suggestions, are poor fools toward whom we do not know if we should direct our contempt or our pity. The racial problem did not suddenly burst out of nowhere, as those who are accustomed to brusque awakenings think — since they are used to long armchair naps. It is in relation to imperial conquest; because history teaches us that empires are conquered by arms but are held by prestige. And for prestige it is necessary to have a clear, severe racial consciousness, that establishes not only the differences, but also very clear superiorities.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech held in Trieste (September 18, 1938)
Source: Il discorso di Trieste, archivioluce, 2021-01-04 https://www.archivioluce.com/2019/09/18/il-discorso-di-trieste/,

History , Question , Fools , Problem

“Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent. If we're wrong, we will be made fools of, but if we're right a lot of them will go to jail. Let's have trial by combat.”

Rudy Giuliani (1944–2001) American businessperson and politician, former mayor of New York City

Quoted by * 2021-01-06
Rudy Giuliani Loses Honorary Degree From Middlebury College in Capitol Riot's Aftermath
Alexandra Garrett
Newsweek
https://www.newsweek.com/rudy-giuliani-loses-honorary-degree-middlebury-college-capitol-riots-aftermath-1561331

Fools

“If a man who claims to see the future is a fool,
how much more so, the man who believes he can control it?
We think we steer the ship of fate,
but all of us are guided by unseen stars.”

Megan Whalen Turner book Thick as Thieves

Enoclitus (Epigraph)
Thick as Thieves

Fate , Future , Star , Fools

“The last year has really brought home that it is truly a matter of life and death. The tangible, human stakes, the real-life consequences when we are led by fools, and when we are led by people who are more concerned with their own enrichment than they are with the financial well-being of the families that pay their salary. We can get direct financial relief to people fast, and I know that this incoming administration wants to do it. But if we don’t win these Senate races, they’re gonna block help for the people because they’re not going to want to relieve suffering. If the Republicans hold the Senate, they’re gonna block it... Every vote will count, every vote will matter, and we saw in November how every vote mattered. And the second is, there will be a big difference in your daily life depending on the outcome here.”

Jon Ossoff (1987) American politician

Quoted in Jon Ossoff Talks With Rasheeda About What Dems Can Achieve If They Win Georgia Runoffs, By Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone (magazine), (4 January 2020)

Family , Home , Dependency , Help

“I knew it long ago: I’m a compulsive teacher, but I can’t teach. The godawful state of today’s education system isn’t what’s stopping me. I lack at least two of the essential qualifications.
I cannot “suffer fools gladly.””

Larry Niven book N-Space

The smartest of my pupils would get all my attention, and the rest would have to fend for themselves. And I can’t handle being interrupted.
Writing is the answer. Whatever I have to teach, my students will select themselves by buying the book. And nobody interrupts a printed page.
Foreword: Playgrounds for the Mind (pp. 26-27)
Short fiction, N-Space (1990)

Education , Suffering , Fools , Teachers

“For, as blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Whore , Sense , Making love , Fools

“In modern language we think of "idiot" as someone who is stupid or a fool. That is not the classical meaning... An idiot is someone who cares only about himself and has no regard for anyone else, and that's terribly important when you think about tyrants. ...We think of tyrants as people who are horrible... oppressors. ...In its classic historic meaning, tyrant was simply someone who ceased power.”

David Cay Johnston (1948) Investigative journalist and author

The Tyrant Next Time (November 7, 2019)

Thinking , People , Fools , Stupidity

Quotes about fool page 16

Quotes about fool
page 16