Foolishness Quotes

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Mark Twain

If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.

Kurt Vonnegut

Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.

Bertrand Russell

The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.

Arthur Schopenhauer

On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks.

H. Allen Smith

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

Samuel Butler

He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

In short, no association or alliance can be happy or stable without me. People can't long tolerate a ruler, nor can a master his servant, a maid her mistress, a teacher his pupil, a friend his friend nor a wife her husband, a landlord his tenant, a soldier his comrade nor a party-goer his companion, unless they sometimes have illusions about each other, make use of flattery, and have the sense to turn a blind eye and sweeten life for themselves with the honey of folly.

Desiderius Erasmus

The entire world is my temple, and a very fine one too, if I'm not mistaken, and I'll never lack priests to serve it as long as there are men.

Desiderius Erasmus

Fools are without number.

Desiderius Erasmus

The folly of all follies is to be love sick for a shadow.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favor.

Henry Fielding

The fool within himself is the object of pity, until he is flattered.

Sir Richard Steele

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?

Maurice Freehill

That's the penalty we have to pay for our acts of foolishness -- someone else always suffers for them.

Alfred Sutro

There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured.

Henry Ford