Fool Yourself Quotes & Sayings

Don't be a fool, Katniss. Think for yourself. — Suzanne Collins

Don't fool yourself that you're blogging when you're really just putting stuff up online. — Andrew Sullivan

7. But what kind of love is it, really? Don't fool yourself and call it sublimity. Admit that you have stood in front of a little pile of powdered ultramarine pigment in a glass cup at a museum and felt a stinging desire. But to do what? Liberate it? Purchase it? Ingest it? ... You might want to reach out and disturb the pile of pigment, for example, first staining your fingers with it, then staining the world. You might want to dilute it and swim in it, you might want to rouge your nipples with it, you might want to paint a virgin's robe with it. But still you wouldn't be accessing the blue of it. Not exactly. — Maggie Nelson

You can fool a lot of the people some of the time, and a few of the people most of the time, but the only person you can fool all of the time is yourself. — Bruce T. Clark

I try not to kid myself. You know, I don't mind romancing someone else, but to fool yourself is pretty devastating and dangerous. — Bill Veeck

You lie even to yourself. Now that is the mark of a fool. — Alison Goodman

After he and this girl split up in Paris, Roger was on the town; really on the town. He joked about it and made fun of himself; but he was very angry inside for having made such a profound fool of himself and he took his talent for being faithful to people, which was the best one he had, next to the ones for painting and writing and his various good human and animal traits, and beat and belaboured that talent miserably. He was no good to anyone when he was on the town, especially to himself, and he knew it and hated it and he took pleasure in pulling down the pillars of the temple. It was a very good and strongly built temple and when it is constructed inside yourself it is not so easy to pull down. But he did as good a job as he could. — Ernest Hemingway,

For me, I believe comedy's about taking risks, taking chances, working in a safe environment where you're comfortable making a fool of yourself. It's so critical, especially in comedy, to just have all those right pieces in place. — Michael Spiller

You see and hear that they lie," said Ivan Ivanovitch, turning over on the other side, "and they call you a fool for putting up with their lying. You endure insult and humiliation, and dare not openly say that you are on the side of the honest and the free, and you lie and smile yourself; and all that for the sake of a crust of bread, for the sake of a warm corner, for the sake of a wretched little worthless rank in the service. No, one can't go on living like this. — Anton Chekhov

Life is only as meaningful as you fool yourself into thinking it is, — Lily Collins

What you learn in any acting class is how to make a fool of yourself and enjoy things and get out of your head. — Aya Cash

There's a fleeting moment that exists for every individual just before they do something truly life-altering. Its that flash of insight and sanity that stalls your heartbeat and bloo flow - a quick warning - just before you explode and make a fool of yourself. Or that incredible brief instant of clarity you have before you floor the gas pedal and run the red light. It's a split second of self admonishment in which you realise that what you're about to do is wrong, but just as quickly choose to ignore that realisation and do it anyway. It's too fast to catch, too bright to see, utterly gone even before you've blinked and therefore, it does a person absolutely no good at all. And yet, there it is. — Heather Killough-Walden

Writing is very hard mostly because until you try to write something down, it's easy to fool yourself into believing you understand things. Writing is terrible for vanity and self-delusion. — Mark Vonnegut

It is easy to fool yourself. It is possible to fool the people you work for. It is more difficult to fool the people you work with. But it is almost impossible to fool the people who work under you. — Harry Bates Thayer

Do you see why I avoid humans, ma cherie? They are silly, exasperating creatures.
You like him.You can't hide it from me, even if you try to hide it from yourself. Invite him home.
Not for all the trees on this earth.
I want to meet him.
Savannah. She was up to no good, he was certain of it. Gregori's hand went to the back of his neck, massaging deeply. What I should do is scare the holy hell out of him so he will get over this nonsense.
"So,are you?" Gary asked.
"Am I what?" Gregori was distracted. Why had he ever talked to this fool in the first place? Because Savannah was making him crazy. Savannah had made him do something dumb. He had read Gary's mind and found him to be an interesting, likeable person.
Don't blame me. She sounded innocent. — Christine Feehan

You go from these high hopes when you're writing to just a desperate want of not making a complete fool of yourself by the end of it. — Rian Johnson

In a drama, you don't make a fool of yourself. — Peter Scolari

There are times when it's easier to fool yourself than swallow some jagged piece of reality. — John Searles

You can fool people in public, but you will never fool truth even in private. You can fool yourself a thousand times, but you cannot fool God even once. — Matshona Dhliwayo

So how did you end up making a fool of yourself in front of twenty thousand people?
I had a bigger hole to fill.
What do you mean?
A rock star is someone with a hole in his heart almost the size of his ego. — Michka Assayas

The point is that if you think you can pinpoint the cause, then you can fool yourself into thinking you can avert the cause. It's deeply egotistical. It's life played as a grand insurance policy. Our myth-making around cancer stems from the same impulse. Because we don't know exactly why most of it happens, we weave a makeshift wisdom around it, a false prophet, which seeps into the common story and feeds our hunger to understand why. The guilt is a byproduct, a way to assign blame and seek absolution. It's a lesser evil than the forces of randomness. And it gives us the illusion of control. — Alanna Mitchell

The first thing you have to get used to in any kind of acting is the ability to make a fool of yourself. If you haven't learnt how to make a fool of yourself, you shouldn't be on the boards. That's absolutely what it's all about. — John Hurt

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes? — Friedrich Nietzsche

Do you think someone someone who'd sacrifice himself so easily, is worth as the same as the life someone so precious?
In other words, you consider her an absolute fool who would try to protect a worthless trash as yourself. — CLAMP

Giving one another the rather embarrassed grins of people who know that they've just been part of a synchronized making-a-fool-of-yourself team. — Terry Pratchett

Laurie picks up a briefcase and places it on the table. He opens the lid and his head disappears under the top. Oh god. Is he about to introduce me to a cat of nine tails, or some bizarre tickling stick? Brace yourself Liz. Cate told you to always carry your pepper spray, you fool. — LeeAnn Whitaker

And then there are always clever people about to promise you that everything will be all right if only you put yourself out a bit... And you get carried away, you suffer so much from the things that exist that you ask for what can't ever exist. Now look at me, I was well away dreaming like a fool and seeing visions of a nice friendly life on good terms with everybody, and off I went, up into the clouds. And when you fall back into the mud it hurts a lot. No! None of it was true, none of those things we thought we could see existed at all. All that was really there was still more misery-- oh yes! as much of that as you like-- and bullets into the bargain! — Emile Zola

I want to reach people and express myself. You have to put up with the risk of being misunderstood if you are going to try to communicate. You have to put up with people projecting their own ideas, attitudes, misunderstanding you. But it's worth being a public fool if that's all you can be in order to communicate yourself. — Edie Sedgwick

You can lie to yourself and fool yourself and rationalize that the choice you're making is what is right and what is true and what leads to liberation, when it's actually only the fulfillment of desire. — Frederick Lenz

You may have bought my body, you may even have the papers to prove it, but don't fool yourself into thinking for a moment that my heart and mind were included in the purchase. — Nenia Campbell

You can fool people. You can fool anybody anytime of the day, but you can't fool yourself. At night, when you go home, you've got to be straight up with you. — Whitney Houston

You have people out here trying to tell you to accept imperfections and that nobody is perfect (except for a dead/make-believe entity?) but if you are telling yourself that you are not perfect, aren't you downgrading your own character? Why would you keep telling yourself you are less than what you are? Why destroy your pride? People, raise your heads and gain some vanity. If you are the best in the world at what you do, and the best in the world in who you are, you are certainly perfect. The only way you are not perfect, is if you let everyone fool you into believing you are not perfect; that you are the same as everyone else - less than what you are and could be. — Lionel Suggs

If you make a fool of yourself in front of a cat, he will sneer at you, if you are sober; he will leave the room if you are drunk. If you make a fool of yourself in front a dog, he will make a fool of himself, too. — Chuck Jones

Whenever I go to work I wear a jacket and a tie, because I'm inherently quite lazy, and my books take so long to do, and my publishers don't bug me, so it's so easy to fool yourself into thinking you're working harder than you really are. — Robert Caro

rejoice and make a fool of yourself for God the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love." - Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words — Richard J. Foster

No matter how great your wisdom, you can still make a fool of yourself. — James Cook

We're all too young to have to deal with this shit." Kenji is breathing hard. "Don't fool yourself, bro. No one should have to see what we've seen. No one should have to wake up in the morning and find dead bodies in their living room, but shit happens. We deal with it, and we find a way to survive. You're not the only one with problems. — Tahereh Mafi

If you make a fool of yourself, you can do it with dignity, without taking your pants down. And if you do take your pants down, you can still do it with dignity. — William Shatner

I do not diminish his love for me,' Imogen said. 'I would never do that. I know precisely how much he loved me: as much as he was capable of loving any woman, probably. He loved me somewhat ... after his stables, perhaps more than his mother.'
'Oh, Imogen,' Annabel said. 'Why dwell on such a-'
'Grief is like that!' Imogen snapped. 'You can only fool yourself so far. — Eloisa James

If you want to be a yogi, you must be free, and place yourself in circumstances where you are alone and free from all anxiety. One who desires a comfortable and nice life and at the same time wants to realize the Self is like the fool who, wanting to cross the river, caught hold of a crocodile, mistaking it for a log of wood. — Swami Vivekananda

To write something you have to risk making a fool of yourself. — Anne Rice

Never be afraid to make a fool of yourself. The furthest out you can go is the best place to be. — Tom Robbins

Home was a place you lived, love was a thing you didn't fool yourself about, joy was a word that applied to a good Charleston, happiness was a term of hypocrisy used to bluff other people, a father was an individual who enjoyed his own existence, a husband was a man you lived with and kept going in spirits. — D.H. Lawrence

But life is too short not to make a fool out of yourself from time to time. And sometimes you need to make an ass out of yourself, just to see what you are capable of doing next. Life isn't just about pushing your limits and seeing what you're made of in the face of adversity. Sometimes it's about getting embarrassed and feeling humiliated and seeing where you can go from there. — Abby Rosmarin

Inviting people to laugh with you while you are laughing at yourself is a good thing to do. You may be a fool but you're the fool in charge. — Carl Reiner

I regret that [my grandfather] never saw the book. i had finished the third draft of what turned out to be five, but I had decided to wait until the novel was perfect before I gave it to him to read. What a fool I am. If you will forgive the one piece of advice a writer is qualified to give: never be afraid of showing someone you love a working draft of yourself. — Chris Cleave

When I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually want my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick. — Christopher Hitchens

Come out of the fog, young man. And remember you don't have to be a complete fool in order to succeed. Play the game, but don't believe in it--that much you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a strait jacket or a padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way--part of the time at least. Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates, learn how you operate--I wish I had time to tell you only a fragment. — Ralph Ellison

Who was I fooling, telling my heart to quiet its beautiful song so I could march in the parade of conformity? My biggest fool was me. — Vironika Tugaleva

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery. — Octavia E. Butler

When you've just made the most complete fool of yourself, you feel the need of a specially high horse to ride. — Patricia Wentworth

It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are ...
... We must always take risks. That is our destiny ... — T. S. Eliot

Youth makes you brave, I suppose. When you're young, you make a fool of yourself all the time. Because of all the rejections and the criticism you get all the time, there has to be a drive there. — Shirley Henderson

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap. — Cynthia Heimel

Easy means hard. Don't fool yourself. When everything looks great, something is wrong. — Kambiz Shabankareh

Don't fool yourself. Talking about writing is not the same as actually doing it. — Christy Hall

There are quite a few things I've done that even I thought might have been one step too far. But if you are willing to make a fool of yourself and make people smile, as long as you do it with a sense of fun, you can get away with it. — Richard Branson

Think of yourself as an insensitive, nitpicking, irritable fool to use the product. — Ma Huateng

If you're going to publish a book, you probably are going to make a fool of yourself. — Annie Dillard

Most people don't know what they're talking about. They move their mouth and say things because they don't want to admit they don't know. Or they think they know, but it's just confabulation and biases. So ignore them unless what they say resonates with some real wisdom inside of you. Assume they're a fool and find out the truth for yourself. — Derek Sivers

You should remind yourself that what you love is mortal, that what you love is not your own. It is granted to you the present while, and not irrevocably, nor for ever, but like a fig or a bunch of grapes in the appointed season and if you long for it in the winter, you are a fool. — Louise Doughty

Starling lowered her voice, but it carried anyway. "He is FitzChivalry, son of Chivalry the Abdicated. And you are the Fool."
"Once, perhaps, I was the Fool. It is common knowledge here in Jhaampe. But now I am the Toymaker. As I no longer use the other title, you may take it for yourself if you wish. As for Tom, I believe he takes the title Bed Bolster these days."
"I will be seeing the Queen about this."
"A wise decision. If you wish to become her Fool, she is certainly the one you must see. But for now, let me show you something else. No, step back, please, so you can see it all. Here it comes." I heard the slam and the latch. "The outside of my door," the Fool announced gladly. "I painted it myself. Do you like it? — Robin Hobb

To be full of yourself is to make a fool of yourself. — Ashly Lorenzana

Look, at the same time that I don't want to be a celebrity, I understand that when you make movies you put yourself out in the public eye. I'd be a baby and a fool to be like, 'Why are there cameras taking pictures of me?' when I'm on a billboard for a movie. I think that's a very absurd concept. — Jonah Hill

That's the master bedchamber, remember? You've been there collecting my underwear."
"That's right. You're the swine who sent me on a fool's errand when you could have gone yourself." She observed his expression. "You did go yourself!"
"I saw you there," he admitted.
"Did I call you a swine?"
Remembering the drama with which she sneaked into Summerwind Abbey, she didn't know whether to laugh or shout. "Louse, rather!"
"Yes, but you must forgive me. Being a louse is my nature. — Christina Dodd

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) said, "The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too." 7 — Adele Von Rust McCormick

Well, I can understand how you feel. You worked hard, studying for the spelling bee, and I suppose you feel you let everyone down, and you made a fool of yourself and everything. But did you notice something, Charlie Brown?"
"What's that?"
"The world didn't come to an end. — Charles M. Schulz

Look down at me and you see a fool,
Look up at me and you see a god,
Look straight at me and you see yourself. — Charles Manson

Genius or fool, you don't live in the world alone. You can hide underground or you can build a wall around yourself, but somebody's going to come along and screw up the works. — Haruki Murakami

It's no good pacing up and down. It won't make the plane arrive any faster. Just sit down and accept that we're delayed. You're just making a fool of yourself. — Noel Coward

To say nothing of what you lose, lose, lose, are losing, man. You fool, you stupid fool ... You've even been insulated from the responsibility of genuine suffering ... Even the suffering you do endure is largely unnecessary. Actually spurious. It lacks the very basis you require of it for its tragic nature. You deceive yourself. — Malcolm Lowry

(Hadley and Mary in the Garden at Blanchard House)
He laughed, a harsh sound, all sign of humor leaving his eyes. "Don't let any of it fool you, my dear, for even the most tarnished silver can acquire a fine and gleaming polish. And believe me, there is far more tarnish here than an innocent and unschooled eye such as yours can discern."
"Why would you speak so of yourself?" Mary protested.
He reached for a red-gold curl that had escaped her lace cap and coiled it around his !nger. "I would forewarn you, Miss Edwardes that I am a man, and men in general are not to be trusted ... " He held her gaze as he slowly released the ringlet, allowing his fingers to skim her cheek. " ... especially not by pretty young virgins. — Victoria Vane

The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor. — Stephen King

The world is a jungle and each of us is alone. Each of us is the hunter and every one is the hunted. Kill or be killed. In this jungle, only the smartest will survive. Your brother is smart, you are not. You are a fool, filled with stupid notions of duty. Unless you cure yourself of this disease, you are doomed. — Anand Neelakantan

Fool! The Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see! — Thomas Carlyle

I was foolish because I believed in you. You are a fool because you believe in yourself! — J. California Cooper

Remember when we met? Before you left, you said you were going to make a fool of yourself over me. That's still what you're worried about. That you'll find yourself doing things you never dreamed of doing, things you laughed at in others, and you'll make a fool of yourself. — Kelley Armstrong

Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable. — Ayn Rand

You see, baby, you have to protect yourself. If you don't protect yourself, you look like a fool asking somebody else to protect you. I thought about that for a second. She was right. A woman needs to support herself before she asks anyone else to support her. — Maya Angelou

Do you want your name to live forever? You fool! Forget your name, try to save yourself! What use there is for you, if your name lives and you die? You fool! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

With age, you see people fail more. You see yourself fail more. How do you keep that fearlessness of a kid? You keep going. Luckily, I'm not afraid to make a fool of myself. — Hugh Jackman

So whatever you want to do, just do it ... Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential. — Gloria Steinem

Work! Look at the secrets to success, look at your family, your community, your culture, take a look at what they have done to be successful and don't fool yourself. Don't think that you are going to get success on discount. — Eric Thomas

Don't let religious-sounding reluctance fool you. When you plead "unworthy" and refuse to be served by God, you place your judgment about yourself above God's. You say you would prefer to go it alone, and you imply that your unworthiness goes beyond the scope of God's mercy and grace. You must think that God cleanses you only from ordinary sins, not from the spectacular ones. — Edward T. Welch

If we are still suffering, how can we teach other to be free? Ajahn Chah replied, 'First of all, be very honest. Don't pretend that you are wise in ways you are not. Tell people how you are yourself. And then take the measure of things. In weightlifting, if you're strong, you know that through practice you can lift a really big weight. Maybe you've seen someone lift a weight bigger than you can. You can tell your students, 'If you practice, you can lift that big weight, but don't try it yet. I can't even do it, but I've seen people do it.' Be willing to express what is possible without trying to fool someone that you've done it. — Jack Kornfield

The first thing every mage should learn is that magic makes fools of us. Now you may call yourself a mage. You have learned the most important lesson. — Tamora Pierce

And you can fool yourself if you're raised in New York. Think that somehow your birthplace alone makes you cosmopolitan. But it isn't true. We're rubes too. — Victor LaValle

When you push someone's head under water for 5 minutes, they will drown. It doesn't matter if the person is a sinner or a saint. It's just a natural process. If their head is under water, the lack of oxygen will make them drown. That rule applies to everyone, good or bad, equally. It doesn't matter if the drowning person has strong moral fiber.
And it doesn't matter if you're a good or a bad person, once you become addicted to drugs. What happens next is inevitable. It's a natural process that happens in everyone's brain, once the drugs take over. So don't ever fool yourself into thinking that only weak or bad people get addicted. — Oliver Markus

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself — Charlie Chaplin

A fool thinks that he can cheat others, but a prudent man knows that he can only cheat himself. — Debasish Mridha

But let me say this, and I'll say it only once: don't fool yourself into thinking you're just on a detour as you sail home for Ithaca. A little pit stop, if you like, with the Lotus-Eaters or Calypso. There's no Athena interceding on your behalf. No guarantee you'll eventually arrive. If there's something you really want in life - especially if it's something that scares you, or you think you don't deserve - you have to go after it and do it now. Or in the very long you'll be right: you won't deserve it. — Alena Graedon

You can't fool yourself anymore that your art is your art. When you're not getting paid for that song that's being traded back and forth among millions of people on the Internet, you have to think like a businessperson. — Ann Powers

Thinking fool to someone is making fool to yourself. — Me

Half the art of ballooning is to make your crashes so gentle that you can fool yourself into calling them landings. — Richard Branson

Strive from the outset to express yourself with such clarity that a bright twelve-year-old would understand you. Any fool can make it complicated: it takes focus to make it simple. — Keith Evans

Love and pride will never dwell together, never ! Do not fool yourself, God and the devil will never share the same space. Therefore, drop your pride and experience love. — Khuliso Mamathoni

You can learn technological things, you can learn about specific things, but the real problems that people deal with in any subject, existential subjects or romantic subjects, you never learn anything. So you make a fool of yourself when you're 20, you make a fool of yourself at 40, at 60 at 80. The ancient Greeks were dealing with these problems. They screwed up all the time. People do now. — Woody Allen

The journey towards the top of the mountain is always longer than you think. Don't fool yourself: the moment will come where what seemed to be close to you is in fact still very far away. — Paulo Coelho

You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid. — John Waters

It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause by yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others - playing people against one another, making them pursue you. — Robert Greene