Quotes about fool
page 3
The Long Walk (1979)
Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 10 “An Age of Miracles” (p. 215; epigram)
“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.
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
Part I, ch. 1.
The Compleat Angler (1653-1655)
“Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.”
Qui stultis videri eruditi volunt stulti eruditis videntur.
Book X, Chapter VII, 21
See also: An X among Ys, a Y among Xs
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)
“None but a fool is always right.”
Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 445.
Misattributed
“No fool can be silent at a feast.”
Epictetus, Fragment 71, translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0237&query=chapter%3D%23192&chunk=book
The Lazio Speeches (1936), as quoted in The Book of Italian Wisdom by Antonio Santi, Citadel Press, (2003) p. 87.
1930s
To A Young Beauty http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1728/, st. 3
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
“It is Ill-manners to silence a Fool, and Cruelty to let him go on.”
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections
“To be
the eyes
and ears
and conscience
of the Creator of the Universe,
you fool.”
Kilgore Trout's unwritten reply to the question "What is the purpose of life?"
Breakfast of Champions (1973)
“In the abundance of water a fool is thirsty.”
Rat Race, from the album Rastaman Vibration
Song lyrics
BBC News 'On this day' http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/31/newsid_2510000/2510755.stm, August 31.
Reaction to the 1977 general election in which his government was re-elected overwhelmingly.
As quoted in "The 90%" http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/the-90-/934145/0, The Indian Express (9 April 2012)
Loving: Act 3, Scene 1.
Days Without End (1933)
Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)
Mysterium Coniunctionis http://books.google.com/books?id=fqt-AAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+wise+man+who+is+not+heeded+is+counted+a+fool+and+the+fool+who+proclaims+the+general+folly+first+and+loudest+passes+for+a+prophet+and%22+%22and+sometimes+it+is+luckily+the+other+way+round+as+well+or+else+mankind+would+long+since+have+perished+of+stupidity%22&pg=PA549#v=onepage (1955)
"The Creatures on My Mind" in Unlocking the Air and Other Stories (1996), p. 65
Manuscript poem, as a teenager (ca. 1824–1826), in "Lincoln as Poet" at Library of Congress : Presidents as Poets http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/prespoetry/al.html, as published in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) edited by Roy. P. Basler, Vol. 1
1820s
“They are too green", he said, "and only good for fools.”
The Fox and the Grapes, fable 11; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Fables (1668–1679)
“At times discretion should be thrown aside, and with the foolish we should play the fool.”
Those Offered for Sale, fragment 421.
“I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it.”
Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)
Fragments: Notes for Speeches, September 1859, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) Vol. III; No transcripts or reports exist indicating that he ever actually used this expression in any of his speeches.
1850s
Attributed in Instructions to Young Sportsmen (1824) by Colonel Peter Hawker
Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 157.
“Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.”
Act V, scene i.
All Fools (1605)
“The next time I send a damn fool for something, I go myself.”
Reported in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 41-42.
Misattributed
1953 talk, transcribed in: [Irving Langmuir, 1989, October, Pathological Science, Physics Today, 42, 36-48]
Fischerisms (1944)
“The fool wonders, the wise man asks.”
Count Alarcos: A Tragedy Act IV, sc. i.
Books
Concepts
Vol. I; CCCXXII
Lacon (1820)
“The Services in war time are fit only for desperadoes but, in peace, are fit only for fools.”
Book I, Chapter 9.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)
Mr.T and the T-Force, Issue 1
Quotes from acting
“They hate you if you're clever, and they despise a fool.”
"Working Class Hero"
Lyrics, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970)
A Prayer
as quoted in Pushkin, Alexander (2009). Selected Lyric Poetry. Northwestern University Press, p. 199.
"James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years" The Independent (January 16, 2006)
“You know, they are fooling us, there is no God.”
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
“The fool has one great advantage over a man of sense — he is always satisfied with himself.”
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
"Consistency", paper read at the Hartford Monday Evening Club on 5 December 1887. The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, p. 582 http://books.google.com/books?id=sujuHO_fvJgC&pg=PA582&dq=%22When+the+doctrine+of+allegiance%22 (First published in the 1923 edition of Mark Twain's Speeches, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine, pp. 120-130, where it is incorrectly dated "following the Blaine-Cleveland campaign, 1884." (See Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals (1979), ed. Frederick Anderson, Vol. 3, p. 41, footnote 92 http://books.google.com/books?id=kMbeUm4pJwsC&pg=PA41) Many reprints repeat Paine's dating.)
Actually written by E. F. Schumacher in a 1973 essay titled "Small is Beautiful" which appeared in The Radical Humanist: volume 37, p. 22 http://books.google.com/books?id=oA0IAQAAIAAJ&q=%22more+violent%22#search_anchor. Earliest published source found on Google Books attributing this to Einstein is BMJ: The British Medical Journal, volume 319, 23 October 1999, p. 1102 http://books.google.com/books?id=bQk7AQAAIAAJ&q=%22more+violent%22#search_anchor. It was attributed to Einstein on the internet somewhat before that, for example in this 1997 post http://groups.google.com/group/alt.weemba/msg/2bbf56ab8f4f757d?hl=en.
Misattributed
Source: Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, 1999, p. 15
“5272. Travel makes a wise Man better, but a Fool worse.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Dionysian-Dithyrambs (1888)
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”
Il est bien malaisé (puisqu’il faut enfin m’expliquer) d’ôter à des insensés des chaînes qu’ils révèrent.
Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Troisième Entretien
Citas
"Is There a God?" (1952)
1950s
Sakhi, 171; translation by Yashwant K. Malaiya based on that of Puran Sahib.
Bijak
“4537. The Fool is busy in everyone's Business but his own.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)
as quoted in: Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings. ed. Stiles, Kristine and Selz, Peter (LA: University of California Press, 1996), p. 405; Cited in: John D. Powell. Preserving the unpreservable: A study of destruction art in the contemporary museum. University of Leicester, 2007. p. 30
Quotes, 1960's, untitled statements in 'Zero 3', (1961)
Still, A. T., Dr. A.T. Still's Department, Journal of Osteopathy, p. 413-414. https://www.atsu.edu/museum/subscription/pdfs/JournalofOsteopathyVol4No91898February.pdf/ Note: The first ASO class had 5 women members..
“Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.”
Citas, Candide (1759)
“We do not learn this only from the event, which is the master of fools.”
Book XXII, sec. 39
History of Rome
Wisconsin Medical Society http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/kimpeek.cfm
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 186.
Conference with his officers (1 August 1944), as quoted in General Patton : A Soldiers Life (2002) by Stanley P. Hirshon, p. 502
"The Fool-Killer"
The Voice of the City (1908)
Context: I know you. I have heard of you all my life. I know now what a scourge you have been to your country. Instead of killing fools you have been murdering the youth and genius that are necessary to make a people live and grow great. You are a fool yourself, Holmes; you began killing off the brightest and best of our countrymen three generations ago, when the old and obsolete standards of society and honor and orthodoxy were narrow and bigoted. You proved that when you put your murderous mark upon my friend Kerner — the wisest chap I ever knew in my life.
“Your learned pandit is my great fool,”
Lunatic. 5
पागल (The Lunatic)
Context: I called the Navab's wine blood, the painted whore a corpse, and the king a pauper. I attacked Alexander with insults, and denounced the so-called great souls. The lowly I have raised on the bridge of praise to the seventh heaven. Your learned pandit is my great fool, your heaven my hell, your gold my iron, friend! Your piety my sin. Where you see yourself as brilliant I find you a dolt. Your rise, friend-my decline. That's the way our values are mixed up, friend! Your whole world is a hair to me. Oh yes, friend, I'm moonstruck through and through- moonstruck! That's just the way I am.
“Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.”
"Trees" - This poem was first published in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 2 (August 1913). The first two lines were first written down on the 2nd of February 1913.
Trees and Other Poems (1914)
Context: I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Context: The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
Nītiśataka 8; translation of K.M. Joglekar
Śatakatraya
“Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice.”
The Curse of Chalion (2000)
Context: "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.
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book IV, Ch. 4.
Source: Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, 1999, p. 15
“To teach fools like you to stop wasting their time worshiping Masters.”
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 127
Context: A disciple, in his reverence for the Master, looked upon him as God incarnate.
"Tell me, O Master," he said, "why you have come into this world."
"To teach fools like you to stop wasting their time worshiping Masters."
Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)
Context: Religion merges into mysticism and metaphysics and philosophy. There have been great mystics, attractive figures, who cannot easily be disposed of as self-deluded fools. Yet, mysticism (in the narrow sense of the word) irritates me; it appears to be vague and soft and flabby, not a rigorous discipline of the mind but a surrender of mental faculties and living in a sea of emotional experience. The experience may lead occasionally to some insight into inner and less obvious processes, but it is also likely to lead to self-delusion. <!-- p. 14 (1946)
“The three greatest fools of History have been Jesus Christ, Don Quixote... and me!”
Words reportedly said to his physician in his final days, but not his last words, as quoted in Our Lord Don Quixote : The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, with Related Essays (1967) by Miguel de Unamuno, as translated by Anthony Kerrigan, p. 386
The exact word used by Bolívar in Spanish is "majadero", whose meaning is "a person who insists with inopportune obstinacy in a pretension."
Variant translations or versions:
The three greatest fools of history have been Jesus Christ, Don Quixote — and I!
As quoted in Simón Bolívar and Spanish American Independence, 1783-1830 (1968) by John J. Johnson and Doris M. Ladd, p. 115
The three greatest idiots in history, have been Jesus Christ, Don Quixote, and myself.
As quoted in Nineteenth-century Gallery : Portraits of Power and Rebellion (1970) by Stanley Edward Ayling, p. 122
In the course of history, there have been three radicals: Jesus Christ, Don Quixote, and... me.
The three biggest fools in the world have been Jesus Christ, Don Quixote, and... me.
Jesus Christ, Don Quixote and I: three greatest fools of history.
We have sewn the sea — Jesus Christ, Don Quixote and me: the three great fools of history...
I’ve been plowing in the sea. Jesus Christ, Don Quixote and I — the three great mavericks of history.
Source: http://dle.rae.es/srv/fetch?id=NwsNlzj
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius; translation from C. D. Yonge (trans.), The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (London: H. G. Bohn, 1853), p. 196.
Said "when a man preserved a strict silence during the whole of a banquet".
Book X : The Pope.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
Context: What wonder if the novel claim had clashed
With old requirement, seemed to supersede
Too much the customary law? But, brave,
Thou at first prompting of what I call God,
And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend,
Accept the obligation laid on thee,
Mother elect, to save the unborn child,
As brute and bird do, reptile and the fly,
Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant
And flower o' the field, all in a common pact
To worthily defend the trust of trusts,
Life from the Ever Living: — didst resist —
Anticipate the office that is mine —
And with his own sword stay the upraised arm,
The endeavour of the wicked, and defend
Him who, — again in my default, — was there
For visible providence: one less true than thou
To touch, i' the past, less practised in the right,
Approved less far in all docility
To all instruction, — how had such an one
Made scruple "Is this motion a decree?"
The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV
Context: I thought of all those wise men, poets, artists before me who had suffered, wept, and smiled on the road to truth. I thought of the Latin poet who wished to reassure and console men by showing them truth as unveiled as a statue. A fragment of his prelude came to my mind, learned long ago, then dismissed and lost like almost everything that I had taken the pains to learn up till then. He said he kept watch in the serene nights to find the words, the poem in which to convey to men the ideas that would deliver them. For two thousand years men have always had to be reassured and consoled. For two thousand years I have had to be delivered. Nothing has changed the surface of things. The teachings of Christ have not changed the surface of things, and would not even if men had not ruined His teachings so that they can no longer follow them honestly. Will the great poet come who shall settle the boundaries of belief and render it eternal, the poet who will be, not a fool, not an ignorant orator, but a wise man, the great inexorable poet? I do not know, although the lofty words of the man who died in the boarding-house have given me a vague hope of his coming and the right to adore him already.
Source: Instructions to his Son and to Posterity (published 1632), Chapter III
Context: Take care that thou be not made a fool by flatterers, for even the wisest men are abused by these. Know, therefore, that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors; for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing; but so shadow and paint all thy vices and follies, as thou shalt never, by their will, discern evil from good, or vice from virtue. And, because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the additions of other men's praises is most perilous. Do not therefore praise thyself, except thou wilt be counted a vain-glorious fool; neither take delight in the praises of other men, except thou deserve it, and receive it from such as are worthy and honest, and will withal warn thee of thy faults; for flatterers have never any virtue — they are ever base, creeping, cowardly persons. A flatterer is said to be a beast that biteth smiling: it is said by Isaiah in this manner — "My people, they that praise thee, seduce thee, and disorder the paths of thy feet;" and David desired God to cut out the tongue of a flatterer.
But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend. A flatterer is compared to an ape, who, because she cannot defend the house like a dog, labour as an ox, or bear burdens as a horse, doth therefore yet play tricks and provoke laughter. Thou mayest be sure, that he that will in private tell thee thy faults is thy friend; for he adventures thy mislike, and doth hazard thy hatred; for there are few men that can endure it, every man for the most part delighting in self-praise, which is one of the most universal follies which bewitcheth mankind.
"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.
To Thomas Wentworth, cited by Luca Codignola in The Coldest Harbour of the Land (Québec, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988), p. 43.
Context: [B]eing bound for a long Journey to a Place which I have had a long Desire to visit, and have now the Opportunity and Leave to do: It is Newfoundland I mean, which imports me more than in Curiosity only to see; for I must either go and settle it in a better Order than it is, or else give it over, and lose all the Charges I have been at hitherto for other Men to build their Fortunes upon. And I had rather be esteemed a Fool for some by the Hazard of one Month's journey, than to prove myself one certainly for six Years by past, if the Business be now lost for some want of a little Pains and Care.
Ch. XXXVIII http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5811/5811-h/5811-h.htm
Following the Equator (1897)
Letter to Lambertus Grunnius (August 1516), published in Life and Letters of Erasmus : Lectures delivered at Oxford 1893-4 (1894) http://books.google.com/books?id=ussXAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA180&lpg=PA180&dq=%22is+no+discipline+and+which+are+worse+than+brothels%22&source=bl&ots=PnJjrkSLNB&sig=JPY0PhTf2YgYwJlf3uH2eTvCJeA&hl=en&ei=BGwXTNqTA5XANu6_pJ8L&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22is%20no%20discipline%20and%20which%20are%20worse%20than%20brothels%22&f=false edited by James Anthony Froude, p. 180
Ante-Nicene Christian Library: v. 3 p. 27
Address to the Greeks
"Lettre XII: sur M. Pope et quelques autres poètes fameux," Lettres philosophiques (1756 edition)
Variants:
He looked on everything as imitation. The most original writers, he said, borrowed one from another. Boyardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariofio Boyardo. The instruction we find in books is like fire; we fetch it from our neighbour, kindle it as home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
Historical and Critical Memoirs of the Life and Writings of M. de Voltaire (1786) by Louis Mayeul Chaudon, p. 348
What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
As translated in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2008), by James Geary, p. 373
Original: (fr) Ainsi, presque tout est imitation. L’idée des Lettres persanes est prise de celle de l’Espion turc. Le Boiardo a imité le Pulci, l’Arioste a imité le Boiardo. Les esprits les plus originaux empruntent les uns des autres. Michel Cervantes fait un fou de son don Quichotte; mais Roland est-il autre chose qu'un fou? Il serait difficile de décider si la chevalerie errante est plus tournée en ridicule par les peintures grotesques de Cervantes que par la féconde imagination de l'Arioste. Métastase a pris la plupart de ses opéras dans nos tragédies françaises. Plusieurs auteurs anglais nous ont copiés, et n'en ont rien dit. Il en est des livres comme du feu de nos foyers; on va prendre ce feu chez son voisin, on l’allume chez soi, on le communique à d’autres, et il appartient à tous.
“Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little”
Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 4.
Often attributed to Plato, it cannot be found in any of his writings ( see this http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=796). The quote is attributed to Plato in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (page 560) by Tryon Edwards.
Misattributed
“You can never fool an audience.”
"No one can get greedier for you than you. Because everything is in your sphere if you can deliver. It's so simplistic. If you can't deliver, you're out of there. It doesn't matter. And you can never fool an audience. You have to gain their trust by giving them the feeling that every time you perform you have done everything to present them your best. They will know. And that is the way they will stay loyal to you."
Source: Interview at the City University of New York's Arts & Leisure Weekend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeKRKDoNXqY&feature=youtu.be&t=349
“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”
Now or Never
Focus Fourteen
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
Source: 1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
Context: At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this quotation, I meet that argument — I rush in — I take that bull by the horns. I trust I understand and truly estimate the right of self-government. My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me. I extend the principle to communities of men as well as to individuals. I so extend it because it is politically wise, as well as naturally just: politically wise in saving us from broils about matters which do not concern us. Here, or at Washington, I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia, or the cranberry laws of Indiana. The doctrine of self-government is right, — absolutely and eternally right, — but it has no just application as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, in that case he who is a man may as a matter of self-government do just what he pleases with him.
But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to say that he too shall not govern himself. When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government — that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.
Source: The Last of the Red-Hot Vampires