Fool Quotes & Sayings

Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
fool no where but in's own house. — William Shakespeare

Open to them your hand to the shore, watch them walk into the sea.
Press upon them all they need, see them yearn for all they want.
Gift to them the calm pool of words, watch them draw the sword.
Bless upon them the satiation of peace, see them starve for war.
Grant them darkness and they will lust for light.
Deliver to them death and hear them beg for life.
Beget life and they will murder your kin.
Be as they are and they will see you different.
Show wisdom and you are a fool.
The shore gives way to the sea.
And the sea, my friends,
Does not dream of you. — Steven Erikson

There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise. — Francis Bacon

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! — Robert Louis Stevenson

There is a hollow, holey cylinder running from hilt to point in my machete. When I blow across the mouthpiece in the handle, I make music with my blade. When all the holes are covered, the sound is sad, as rough as rough can be and be called smooth. When all the holes are open, the sound pipes about, bringing to the eye flakes of sun on water, crushed metal. There are twenty holes. And since I've been playing music, I've been called all different kinds of fool - more times than Lobey, which is my name. — Samuel R. Delany

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria. — Rick Riordan

The strong demand, contend, prevail; the beggar is a fool. — Georgia Douglas Johnson

Wonderful?" wrote J.O. Young in his diary. "To stand cheering, crying, waving your hat and acting like a damn fool in general. No one who has spent all but 16 days of the this war as a Nip prisoner can really know what it means to see 'Old Sammy' buzzing around over camp. — Laura Hillenbrand

Sarcasm will make your tits fall off. — Christopher Moore

God asks us to help each other & be a cheerful giver from your heart to others in need but not to be a fool. Don't ever be a fool — Timothy Pina

I have memories - but only a fool stores his past in the future — David Gerrold

Many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse
and without examining evidence which their "common sense" told them was impossible. — Robert A. Heinlein

The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything. — Thomas Merton

In India and other places, there are people who fool themsleves. They walk around all day saying, "Who am I? Who am I?" — Frederick Lenz

If the majority doesn't laugh at you, beware that you must be saying something wrong. When the majority thinks you are a fool, only then is there some possibility of you being a wise man. — Laozi

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

With the persistent loud voice,
fool asks us to respect serenity. — Toba Beta

You know what comes next, of course. You know I'm writing this at my desk, on a Thursday, and day after tomorrow I'll put on bib overalls, the neighbors thinking what an affectation, and pull weeds for the composter, and dig a place for a late row of greens, most of them going to seed instead of in the pot, and tell myself what the hell, I just want to dig the dirt and watch the stuff grow, an educated fool at last. — James Autry

Soon a whole guild of low-priced shrine keepers around Europe named their own pope - Boldface the Relatively Shameless, Discount Pope of Prague. The price war was on [ ... ] The Retail Pope would offer cheesy bacon toppings on the Host with communion and the Discount Pope would counter with topless nun night for midnight mass. — Christopher Moore

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness. — Blaise Pascal

Fools do not acknowledge God,
the proud reject Him,
the wise embrace Him,
and the righteous worship Him. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Felicia nodded. "Sometimes I have that problem. I know nearly everything you can learn in a book and very little that you learn in life. Like my fear of spiders. It's silly, really. I've studied arachnids in an effort to get over my ridiculous overreaction, but still, every time I see one ... " She shuddered. "It's not pretty. I simply can't control myself. A flaw - one of many." "If you're not perfect, then you came to the right place," Charlie told her. "Fool's Gold is a lively town with plenty of characters. You'll get a crash course in how the little people live." "I hope I can fit in." Patience saw the concern in Felicia's eyes and touched her arm. "You're going to do just fine. — Susan Mallery

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

A clever fool and a foolish wise man. — George R R Martin

I really did not expect any Grace to answer, for the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it was high noon, and that no circumstances of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachination; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid. However, the event showed me I was a fool for entertaining a sense even of surprise. — Charlotte Bronte

Yet by such worthless beings is a great nation to be governed and even made to deify their old king because he is only a fool and a maniac, and to forgive and forget his having lost to them a great and flourishing empire. — Thomas Jefferson

You see, that is why it is so easy to fool people with our illusions, Yue. In this world, illusions are usually much kinder than the truth. — Zoe Marriott

The Doobie Brothers' 'What a Fool Believes' makes me want to move. And I still haven't gotten over the Macarena. Who has? — Blake Shelton

The fool will pay anything to live a few more years on earth, but the fool rejects the free gift of everlasting life. Salvation is a wise choice. — Felix Wantang

Every fool knows you can't touch the stars, but it doesn't stop a wise man from trying. — Harry Anderson

Her mother was my wife," the Count roared, loudest of all. "You pathetic excuse for am money-grubbing fool, you disgrace to the face of the world." And with a shriek of disgust he turned and was gone.
Guilietta was beside Inigo then, so excited. "Daddy likes you," she said. — William Goldman

Now and then, there's a fool such as I. — Hank Snow

I would not have Drool reading Cicero or crafting clever riddles, but under my tutelage he had become more than fair at tumbling and juggling, could belch a song, and was, at court, at least as entertaining as a trained bear, with slightly less proclivity for eating the guests. With guidance, he would make a proper fool. — Christopher Moore

I was a fool. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. But I
have to say, it's been incredibly rewarding and I learn so much every
day. — Gwyneth Paltrow

But for now he was alone and hurt and broken on the ground, the man, gravely wounded. Worse, he knew himself a fool, knew himself a loser, knew himself too late, and defeated, ruined by his own hand, near to death.
It was the end and then this happened. The wound in his chest, red and burning, open like an eye, an ear, a mouth, began to glow.
It glowed and warmed until it embered him. Flowers closest to where he lay started to wilt in the heat of it. But inside the man, the heat changed into something else. The first thing he felt it become was courage and the next thing was desire.
They went through him, but with a roughness he'd never known. Then instead of in pain he was thirsty, but with a thirst he'd never known. The heat and the glow and the thirst combined and melted the man into someone he'd never been.
He heard a noise. It was the roar of water.
Up he got off the ground to go and sort himself out. — Ali Smith

If you don't go to Broadway, you're a fool. On Broadway, off Broadway, above Broadway, below Broadway, go! Don't tell me there isn't something wonderful playing. If I'm home in New York at night, I'm either at a Broadway or an Off Broadway show. We're in the theater capital of the world, and if you don't get it, you're an idiot. — Joan Rivers

Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it. — Blaise Pascal

Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgement. Now contemplate epistemic humility. Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say "I don't know." He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion.
This does not necessarily mean he lacks confidence, only that he holds his own knowledge to be suspect. I will call such a person an epistemocrat; the province where the laws are structured with this kind of human fallibility in mind I will can an epistemocracy. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I found my spirit wanted to choose between only two things - suicide, or the dreams I'd had in my youth. I am an old fool who borrowed the dreams of a young fool. — Kurt Vonnegut

Talking to that fool is like trying to put socks on an octopus! — James Agee

I have given my heart. Her face is - " "Usual complement of bits?" asked the little creature. "Eyes? Nose? Teeth? All the usual?" "Of course." "Well then, you can skip that stuff," said the little hairy man. "We'll take it all as said. So what damn-fool silly thing has this young lady got you a-doin' of? — Neil Gaiman

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

Life goes on- and a fool and his self respect are soon parted ... — Kurt Vonnegut

You can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country. — Will Durant

What a foreigner may see in a fool, a bigot, an idiot or others of their kinds? Really I cannot say. As normalcy goes beyond natural light and extremism is sometimes loosely defined. But every fool must be a foreigner to his potential in the positive light, a degenerate in the negative light. In between potentials is where normalcy may hide. — Dew Platt

The world was to Shakespeare a great stage of fools on which he was utterly bewildered. His pregnant observations of life are not coordinated into any philosophy. — George Bernard Shaw

We will never have the elite smart people on our side. — Rick Santorum

I told them I wasn't crying. I told them my eyes were watering from all the marker fumes. And they seem to believe me. Too bad the only person I didn't seem able to fool anymore was myself. — Meg Cabot

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

I must think of something foolproof for a fool. — Aristophanes

People underestimate me, maybe because of my look, maybe because of my speech, and I love that. I love to give the impression that I'm an easy victim. I ain't nobody's fool, believe that. — Edgerrin James

You are a low-class streetwalker past her prime." Azriel spoke dispassionately, as if he were observing her as a scientist might. And he wasn't done. "Your soul is black, your prospects non-existent because you've killed them all, and your life expectancy continues to decrease with every john you manage to con to make free use of your body. I am also willing to bet you carry more than one nasty surprise for any fool dumb enough to suck you. You repulse me. — Shara Azod

A man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool. — Zhuangzi

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. — Baltasar Gracian

If it be true that men of strong imaginations are usually dogmatists
and I am inclined to think it is so
it ought to follow that men of weak imaginations are the reverse; in which case we should have some compensation for stupidity. But it unfortunately happens that no dogmatist is more obstinate or less open to conviction than a fool. — Charles Caleb Colton

Count your blessings and be grateful not a great fool. — Habeeb Akande

Pinn's Accoutrements - what's that?" "If anyone else asked that question, O He Who is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of that disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue. Pinn's Accoutrements is the most prestigious supplier of magical artifacts in London. It is situated on Piccadilly. Sholto Pinn is the proprietor. — Anonymous

I necessarily fear change except that it's so seldom for the better. It's just that I can live with any number of things going straight to hell as long as these streams continue to hold up. If this amounts to living in a fool's paradise, don't waste your time trying to explain that to the fool. — John Gierach

Better to meet a grizzly robbed of her cubs than a fool hellbent on folly. — Eugene H. Peterson

Now it stands to reason, mister, any damn fool stares into the sun long enough, he'll end up seeing exactly what some other damn fool tells him he's going to see. — John D. MacDonald

SCRAP-BOOK, n. A book that is commonly edited by a fool. Many persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to collect. — Ambrose Bierce

Clown: Good Madonna, why mournest thou?
Olivia: Good Fool, for my brother's death.
Clown:I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.
Olivia:I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.
Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven. — William Shakespeare

A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools — Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn't deceive anybody. It's the deceivers who make you feel bad. — Charles Bukowski

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues. — Maya Angelou

Leadership isn't just about giving orders. A fool can give orders. A leader listens. He changes his mind. He acknowledges mistakes. — Brian Staveley

A foolish son has no advantage over an orphan. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Any fool can spend money. But to earn it and save it and defer gratification - then you learn to value it differently. — Malcolm Gladwell

Cassia and I sit as near to each other as we can. She leans into me and I keep my arms around her. I don't fool myself that I hold her together- she does that on her own- but holding her keeps me from flying apart. — Ally Condie

I can't take this kind of suspense. Decide now." He untied the ropes around her wrists. "Walk out the door. In a year you'll be free of any entanglements with me. Or stay and be my wife. My real wife. Make your choice."
She looked down at the loosened ropes still wrapped around her, then up at him.
He wore an expression of fierce indifference, but she knew better. This proud man, this noble marquees, had made up his mind he wished to marry her without knowing who she was or what she'd done. She would guess the decision was his first impetuous gesture since the day his mother had disappeared.
Amy couldn't fool herself. For him to go so contrary to his own nature, he must feel an overwhelming emotion for her. — Christina Dodd

The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense. — Benjamin Franklin

He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave. — William Drummond

In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The house of a childless person is a void, all directions are void to one who has no relatives, the heart of a fool is also void, but to a poverty stricken man all is void. — Chanakya

If people are always comfortable with you, you're probably not telling them the whole truth. — Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel

His sisters
my aunts
did not go to school at all, just like millions of girls in my country. Education had been a great gift for him. He believed that lack of education was the root of all of Pakistan's problems. Ignorance allowed politicians to fool people and bad administrators to be re-elected. He believed schooling should be available for all, rich and poor, boys and girls. The school that my father dreamed of would have desks and a library, computers, bright posters on the walls and, most important, washrooms. — Malala Yousafzai

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody. — Adlai E. Stevenson

A wise person learns from the mistakes of others, a normal person learns from their own, and a fool learns nothing, ever. — Robert J. Crane

Any fool can waste, any fool can muddle, but it takes something of a man to save, and the more he saves the more of a man does it make of him. — Rudyard Kipling

When i heard on the radio that the New York Panthers had been busted, i was furious. The so-called conspiracy charges were so stupid that even a fool could see through them. The police actually had the audacity to charge them with plotting to blow up the flowers in the Botanical Garden. — Assata Shakur

Killy arched an eyebrow in disbelief. Don't be thinkin' you can deceive this old man. I've been makin' a fool of myself over women since before you were born. — Pamela Clare

What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives. — Henry David Thoreau

Fools exploit the world; the wise transfigure it. — Neville Goddard

If I can fool a bug ... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs. — E.B. White

The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe
because no one else could be such a fool. — Thomas Sowell

I'm a fool, the new day rises on the world and on my foolish life: I'm a fool, I loved the blue dawns over racetracks and made a bet Ioway was sweet like its name, my heart went out to lonely sounds in the misty springtime night of wild sweet America in her powers, the wetness on the wire fence bugled me to belief, I stood on sandpiles with an open soul, I not only accept loss forever, I am made of loss - I am made of Cody, too - — Jack Kerouac

No doubt you think me a complete fool.'
Finally he was making some sense. Felicity smiled. 'Not a fool, Rafe. Simply overwhelmed by unexpected circumstances. — Suzanne Enoch

What a fool cannot learn he laughs at, thinking that by his laughter he shows superiority instead of latent idiocy. — Marie Corelli

Nothing shows the kind of fool you are as quick as your tongue. — Kate Langley Bosher

The dull always seek to be clever at the fool's expense, to somehow repay him for his cutting wit, but never are they clever, and often they are cruel. — Christopher Moore

The prime fact is that all humans are puffed up by their extreme self-satisfaction with their own brute power. Unless some creatures more powerful than humans arrive on earth to bully them, there's just no knowing to what dire lengths their fool presumptuousness will eventually carry them. — Soseki Natsume

The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity - a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Fool that I was, upon my eagle's wings I bore this wren, till I was tired with soaring, and now he mounts above me. — John Dryden

To A Young Beauty
Dear fellow-artist, why so free
With every sort of company,
With every Jack and Jill?
Choose your companions from the best;
Who draws a bucket with the rest
Soon topples down the hill.
You may, that mirror for a school,
Be passionate, not bountiful
As common beauties may,
Who were not born to keep in trim
With old Ezekiel's cherubim
But those of Beauvarlet.
I know what wages beauty gives,
How hard a life her servant lives,
Yet praise the winters gone:
There is not a fool can call me friend,
And I may dine at journey's end
With Landor and with Donne. — W.B.Yeats

only a fool would argue with a fool! — Eric Jerome Dickey

Consider a lighthouse. It stands on the shore with its beckoning light, guiding ships safely into the harbor. The lighthouse can't uproot itself, wade out into the water, grab the ship by the stern and say, "Listen, you fool! If you stay on this path you may break up on the rocks!" No. The ship has some responsibility for its own destiny. It can choose to be guided by the lighthouse. Or, it can go its own way. The lighthouse is not responsible for the ship's decisions. All it can do is be the best lighthouse it knows how to be. — Randi Kreger

It is when we think we can act like God, that all respect is lost, and I think this is the downfall of peace. We lie if we say we do not see color and culture and difference. We fool ourselves and cheat ourselves when we say that all of us are the same. We should not want to be the same as others and we should not want others to be the same as us. Rather, we ought to glory and shine in all of our differences, flaunting them fabulously for all to see! It is never a conformity that we need! We need not to conform! What we need is to burst out into all these beautiful colors! — C. JoyBell C.

Every relationship has problems, because every person has problems, and the place that our problems appear most glaringly is in our close relationships. The key is whether or not we can hear from others where we are wrong, and accept their feedback without getting defensive. Time and again, the Bible says that someone who listens to feedback from others is wise, but someone who does not is a fool. — Henry Cloud

I think I've gotten technically better over the years but you'd have to be a fool not to. I've made so many movies that by sheer quantity you get better at the technique. — Woody Allen