Quotes and Sayings about Fools
"New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time."
- James Agate
(Related: Time, Fools, New year)
"Three things have been difficult to tame: the oceans, fools and women. We may soon be able to tame the oceans; fools and women will take a little longer."
- Spiro T. Agnew
(Related: Women, Fools, May, Oceans, Will)
"At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose."
- Alcuin
(Related: Men, Athens, Fools)
"Yet with great toil all that I can attain by long experience, and in learned schools, is for to know my knowledge is but vain, and those that think them wise, are greatest fools."
- William Alexander
(Related: Experience, Knowledge, Fools, Schools)
"Wise men argue causes; fools decide them."
- Anacharsis
(Related: Men, Causes, Fools)
"Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody."
- Dick Armey
(Related: Politics, Fools, Will)
"It works both ways: there are victims of tragedy who come to me who have experienced grief of such magnitude that they cannot reconcile. Likewise, I cannot change the mentality of those who committed the crimes or the fools who followed them."
- Paddy Ashdown
(Related: Change, Fools, Grief, Tragedy, Victims)
"Fools rush in where incumbents fear to tread."
- Norman Ralph Augustine
(Related: Fear, Fools)
"Silence is the virtue of fools."
- Francis Bacon
(Related: Virtue, Fools, Silence)
"Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men."
- Douglas Bader
(Related: Men, Fools, Guidance, Obedience, Rules)
"When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools."
- Russell Baker
(Related: People, Cowards, Fools)
"It's the actors who are prepared to make fools of themselves who are usually the ones who come to mean something to the audience."
- Christian Bale
(Related: Actors, Fools)
"Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society."
- Honore de Balzac
(Related: Nature, Society, Animals, Dumb, Fools)
"For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth."
- Honore De Balzac
(Related: Intelligence, Fools, Idiots, Passion, Youth)
"The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible."
- Bernard Baruch
(Related: Men, Purpose, Fools)
"Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us."
- E. T. Bell
(Related: Time, Comfort, Fools)
"Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony."
- Robert Benchley
(Related: People, Drinking, Fools)
"Bad experience is a school that only fools keep going to."
- Ezra Taft Benson
(Related: Experience, Fools, School)
"Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: Art, Eloquence, Fools)
"History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: History, Events, Fools, Soldiers)
"Every man must wear out at least one pair of fools shoes."
- Earl Derr Biggers
(Related: Fools, Man)
"Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn't be any fun living in it, or profit."
- Josh Billings
(Related: Fools, Fun, Living, Profit, World)
"There are two kinds of fools: those who can't change their opinions and those who won't."
- Josh Billings
(Related: Change, Opinions)
"I'd rather be the king of kids, than the prince of fools."
- Jack Black
(Related: Fools, Kids)
"People who don't see their nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are lairs and fools."
- Bodhidharma
(Related: Nature, Time, People, Fools, Practice)
"The world is full of fools; and he who would not wish to see one, must not only shut himself up alone, but must also break his looking-glass."
- Nicolas Boileau
(Related: Fools, World)
"Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
(Related: Fools, Word)
"We must fight as a race for everything that makes for a better country and a better world. We are dreaming idiots and trusting fools to do anything less."
- Ralph Bunche
(Related: Country, Fight, Fools, Idiots, Race, World)
"There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon."
- Samuel Butler
(Related: Fools, World)
"Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."
- Lord Byron
(Related: Fools, Reason, Will)
"Fools are my theme, let satire be my song."
- Lord Byron
(Related: Fools, Satire, Song)
"What is wealth? A dream of fools."
- Abraham Cahan
(Related: Dream, Wealth, Fools)
"Those who claim to have had happy lives seem to be silly fools."
- Taylor Caldwell
(Related: Fools, Silly)
"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do."
- Dale Carnegie
(Related: Fool, Fools)
"Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that."
- John le Carre
(Related: Fools, Language, Linguists)
"Is not this whole world an illusion? And yet it fools everybody."
- Angela Carter
(Related: Fools, Illusion, World)
"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."
- Giacomo Casanova
(Related: Blood, Company, Fact, Fools, Hatred)
"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."
- Giacomo Casanova
(Related: Intelligence, Fools, Sense, Stupidity)
"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
(Related: Conscience, Fools, Will)
"The public! the public! how many fools does it require to make the public?"
- Thomas Chalmers
(Related: Fools, Public)
"There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools."
- Nicolas de Chamfort
(Related: Ideas, Fools)
"Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools."
- George Chapman
(Related: Men, Fools, Old)
"No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing."
- Anton Chekhov
(Related: Fools, Nothing)
"Fools are more to be feared than the wicked."
- Queen Christina
(Related: Fools)
"With the hugely talented women I've worked with or observed, it's not a question about temperament or ego; it's a question about getting it right. If they've got a reputation for being difficult it's usually because they just don't suffer fools."
- Glenn Close
(Related: Women, Being, Ego, Fools, Question, Reputation, Right, Temperament)
"The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love."
- Paulo Coelho
(Related: Love, Fool, Fools)
"I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is - the enormous prosperity of Fools."
- Wilkie Collins
(Related: Society, Fools, Prosperity)
"Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Religion, Bigotry, Fools)
"Come, come, leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools: they have need of 'em: wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occupation, and let father Time shake his glass."
- William Congreve
(Related: Business, Time, Wisdom, Father, Occupation, Pleasure, Wit)
"Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything."
- Frank Dane
(Related: Fools)
"I love fools' experiments. I am always making them."
- Charles Darwin
(Related: Love, Fools)
"The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes, but in peace are only fit for fools."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Peace, Fools)
"Despair is the conclusion of fools."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Despair, Fools)
"I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry."
- John Donne
(Related: Poetry, Fools, Saying)
"The appalling thing is the degree of charity women are capable of. You see it all the time... love lavished on absolute fools. Love's a charity ward, you know."
- Lawrence Durrell
(Related: Love, Women, Time, Charity, Fools)
"Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools."
- Albert Einstein
(Related: Anger, Fools)
"Men who know themselves are no longer fools. They stand on the threshold of the door of Wisdom."
- Henry Ellis
(Related: Men, Wisdom, Fools)
"Fools are without number."
- Desiderius Erasmus
(Related: Fools)
"Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Related: Life, Genius, Feet, Fools, Wonder, World, Youth)
"Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform, and mortal men lay hold on heaven."
- Aulus Persius Flaccus
(Related: Men, Work, Day, Fools, Heaven, Reform, Tomorrow)
"The fools ran after me and I ran after the whores, foolish though I realized such a proceeding to be."
- C. S. Forester
(Related: Fools)
"It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools."
- E. M. Forster
(Related: Fate, Fools, Temperament)
"Silence is the wit of fools."
- Anatole France
(Related: Fools, Silence, Wit)
"Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Experience, Fools, Will)
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Fool, Fools)
"Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Experience, Fools, School, Will)
"Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Fools, Practice, Treachery)
"Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Men, Advice, Fools)
"Change of weather is the discourse of fools."
- Thomas Fuller
(Related: Change, Fools, Weather)
"Fools may our scorn, not envy, raise. For envy is a kind of praise."
- John Gay
(Related: Envy, Fools, May, Praise)
"It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Related: Fools, Fortune, Merit, United)
"The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy."
- Oliver Goldsmith
(Related: Company, End, First, Fools, May, Melancholy, Smile)
"Independence is all very well, but we animals never allow our friends to make fools of themselves beyond a certain limit; and that limit you've reached."
- Kenneth Grahame
(Related: Animals, Fools, Friends, Independence)
"Without a notion of the transcendental, human beings would, indeed, be animals; however, only fools can be convinced of it, and only degenerates need such a conviction."
- Franz Grillparzer
(Related: Animals, Conviction, Fools)
"My new movie, Fools Rush In, is a romantic comedy and the girl I play in that is very warm, very sweet."
- Salma Hayek
(Related: Comedy, Fools, Play, Romantic)
"There are more fools in the world than there are people."
- Heinrich Heine
(Related: People, Fools, World)
"To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves."
- Claud-Adrian Helvetius
(Related: Books, Fools, Insult, Nation, Press, Reading)
"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."
- Ernest Hemingway
(Related: Time, Fools, Man)
"Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools."
- Thomas Hobbes
(Related: Money, Men, Fools, Words)
"Words are the money of fools."
- Thomas Hobbes
(Related: Money, Fools, Words)
"Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools."
- Thomas Hobbes
(Related: Money, Men, Fools, Words)
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts."
- James P. Hogan
(Related: People, Fanatics, Fools, World)
"Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
(Related: Men, Controversy, Fools)
"While fools shun one set of faults they run into the opposite one."
- Horace
(Related: Faults, Fools)
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes."
- Horace
(Related: Life, Fools, Right)
"It is the false shame of fools to try to conceal wounds that have not healed."
- Horace
(Related: Fools, Shame, Wounds)
"Only fools are positive."
- Moe Howard
(Related: Positive, Fools)
"The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen."
- Aldous Huxley
(Related: Appearance, First, Fools, Majority)
"I am content with nothing, restless and ambitious... and I despise myself for the vanity, which formed half the stimulus to my exertions. Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: Content, Fools, Nothing, Vanity)
"Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: Men, Consequences, Fools)
"Suffer fools gladly; they may be right."
- Holbrook Jackson
(Related: Fools, May, Right)
"No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks."
- Erica Jong
(Related: Wisdom, Being, Fool, Fools, Public, Race, Rest, Writers)
"Fortune, that favors fools."
- Ben Jonson
(Related: Favors, Fools, Fortune)
"There was no doubt that there was a vast organization which was making fools of all the liberals in Hollywood and taking their money, that there was a police state among the Left element in Hollywood and Broadway."
- Elia Kazan
(Related: Money, Doubt, Fools, Hollywood, Liberals, Police, State)
"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: Brothers, Fools)
"In the days of Caesar, kings had fools and jesters. Now network presidents have anchormen."
- Ted Koppel
(Related: Fools, Kings, Network, Now)
"Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever."
- Charles Lamb
(Related: April, Fools, World)
"The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools."
- Doug Larson
(Related: Fools, Old)
"In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools."
- Doris Lessing
(Related: Fools, Law, Learning, University)
"Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools."
- Og Mandino
(Related: Fools, Tomorrow)
"The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places."
- Bryant H. McGill
(Related: Cowards, Fools, World)
"Neither man nor woman can be worth anything until they have discovered that they are fools."
- William Lamb Melbourne
(Related: Fools, Man, Woman, Worth)
"I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to fools, for 'Tis only to them that they are blessings."
- Mary Wortley Montagu
(Related: Blessings, Fools, Hate, Titles)
"Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky."
- Michel de Montaigne
(Related: Fools, Fortune)
"Journalists, who are skeptical to begin with, simply do not like to be lied to or made fools of."
- Roger Mudd
(Related: Fools)
"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools."
- John Muir
(Related: God, Disease, Fools, Trees)
"Nations have come under the control of haters and fools."
- Carroll O'Connor
(Related: Control, Fools, Nations)
"Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools."
- Blaise Pascal
(Related: Fools, Reason)
"Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall."
- Jean Paul
(Related: Flies, Fools, Party, Study)
"Saw a wedding in the church. It was strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition."
- Samuel Pepys
(Related: Wedding, People, Church, Delight, Fools, Poor)
"Strange, to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition, every man and wife gazing and smiling at them."
- Samuel Pepys
(Related: Wife, People, Delight, Fools, Man, Poor)
"Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it."
- Alan Perlis
(Related: Complexity, Fools)
"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."
- Plato
(Related: Men, Fools)
"I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it."
- Edgar Allan Poe
(Related: Faith, Fools, Friends, Self)
"Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Time, Men, Example, Fact, Fools, Old, Praise, Youth)
"For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Government, Fools)
"For fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Fear, Angels, Fools)
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Fear, Angels, Fools)
"Fools admire, but men of sense approve."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Men, Fools, Sense)
"Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Fools, Pride, Vice)
"Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish."
- Marcus Fabius Quintilian
(Related: Fools)
"If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Company, Fools, Loss, Man, Witty)
"Only fools live in the past or carry envy to the present."
- Chi Chi Rodriguez
(Related: Envy, Fools, Past, Present)
"A minority group has "arrived" only when it has the right to produce some fools and scoundrels without the entire group paying for it."
- Carl T. Rowan
(Related: Fools, Minority, Right)
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: People, Fanatics, Fools, World)
"In Greece wise men speak and fools decide."
- George Santayana
(Related: Men, Fools, Greece)
"I had the conviction that lovemaking fools you. The overpowering emotions it induces make you think you're sharing the same feelings as the other person and that they're imagining the same as you."
- Greta Scacchi
(Related: Feelings, Conviction, Emotions, Fools, Sharing)
"The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
(Related: Fools, Majority)
"How hard it is to make your thoughts look anything but imbecile fools when you paint them with ink on paper."
- Olive Schreiner
(Related: Thoughts, Fools)
"When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools."
- William Shakespeare
(Related: Fools)
"Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Power, Men, Fools)
"I'm dealing with fools and trolls and soft targets. It's just strafing runs in my underwear before my first cup of coffee. I don't have time for these clowns."
- Charlie Sheen
(Related: Time, Clowns, Coffee, First, Fools)
"I'm different. I have a different constitution, I have a different brain, I have a different heart. I got tiger blood, man. Dying's for fools, dying's for amateurs."
- Charlie Sheen
(Related: Heart, Blood, Constitution, Dying, Fools, Man)
"My grandmother had a Miss Margaret's School of Dance to teach tap and ballet to kids, but I never studied it. I was raised a Mormon and they're dancing fools. It's the only vice they have - dancing."
- Michelle Shocked
(Related: Dance, Ballet, Dancing, Fools, Kids, Mormon, School, Vice)
"Black women as a group have never been fools. We couldn't afford to be."
- Barbara Smith
(Related: Women, Fools)
"It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies."
- Maggie Smith
(Related: Elderly, Fools, Ladies)
"People have the power to redeem the work of fools."
- Patti Smith
(Related: Power, Work, People, Fools)
"Start with God - the first step in learning is bowing down to God; only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning."
- King Solomon
(Related: Wisdom, God, First, Fools, Learning, Noses)
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools."
- Herbert Spencer
(Related: Men, Folly, Fools, Result, World)
"Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom."
- Charles Spurgeon
(Related: Men, Wisdom, Knowledge, Fool, Fools, Right)
"In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable."
- Philip Stanhope
(Related: Fear, Fools, Majority, Mankind)
"Baseball must be a great game to survive the fools who run it."
- Bill Terry
(Related: Baseball, Fools)
"Rush Limbaugh is good for the party. Drive it all the way down, take it down as low as it can go, make complete fools of themselves, because it's always darkest before the dawn, and then maybe a moderate can come in and rescue them."
- Evan Thomas
(Related: Dawn, Fools, Party)
"Zeal is fit for wise men, but flourishes chiefly among fools."
- John Tillotson
(Related: Men, Fools, Zeal)
"The older I get, the less I suffer fools gladly."
- Kathleen Turner
(Related: Fools)
"The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right."
- Mark Twain
(Related: Fools, Right, Trouble)
"Prejudices are what fools use for reason."
- Voltaire
(Related: Fools, Reason)
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere."
- Voltaire
(Related: Fools)
"It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere."
- Voltaire
(Related: Fools)
"People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools."
- Alice Walker
(Related: People, Appearance, Foolishness, Fools)
"Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses."
- Simone Weil
(Related: Ideas, Fools, Force, Nothing)
"Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination."
- Alfred North Whitehead
(Related: Imagination, Knowledge, Act, Fools)
"Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed."
- Walt Whitman
(Related: Fools, Old)
"Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all."
- John Greenleaf Whittier
(Related: Power, Fools, Fortune, Gold, Plants)
"Ninety-nine per cent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: People, Danger, Fools, Rest, World)
"But there comes a moment in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among the human beings or not - a fool among fools or a fool alone."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Life, Fool, Fools)
"Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform."
- Edward Young
(Related: Work, Day, Fools, Reform, Tomorrow)
"Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die."
- Edward Young
(Related: Men, Fools, May)
"Those who realize their folly are not true fools."
- Zhuangzi
(Related: Folly, Fools)