Quotes & Sayings About Fools

The events we have passed through form a coherent pattern and the political actors who have shaped the world are rational
if not necessarily moral or decent
actors. Americans tend to think of its leaders as fools and knaves and of its enemies as psychotic. This seems to comfort us. While America's leaders might be knaves, they are not fools, and while our enemies might have utterly different moral values that are repugnant to us, they are far from insane. — George Friedman

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

Loneliness often fools us into believing everyone is bad. — R.K. Ryals

Shit, man, democracy failed before it started.

Who thought it was a good idea to let the masses of fucktards decide anything?

[Guess I've got more faith in people.]

People? The election of 2044 -- Curls Bellberry, a boy band presidency on the platform that the Earth is flat and that he'd nuke New York to save Social Security. There's a good reason he was the last president.

Problem with letting people pick a leader is they gravitate towards confident sociopaths no matter how stupid they are.

It's the perception of qualification that fools people.

At least by having corporate executives rule us we get folks who are good at business.

Life hurts, the world is fucked, and that's not going to change. . . — Rick Remender

Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. — Tecumseh

Without economic concerns the fool dies from boredom. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

In marriage we have a duty to God, our spuses, the world, and future generations. But we are sinners. A husband and wife need to acknowledge that when the Bible speaks of fools, it is not just speaking about other people, but about them as well. Even the wisest among us has moments of folly. So God gives us spouses to serve as wise friends by praying with and for us, attending church with us, speaking truth, and providing Scripture along with good books and online classes, lectures, and sermons to nourish fruitfulness in our lives. — Mark Driscoll

Impatience makes fools of clever men... — R.A. Scotti

Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.s if possible. — R.D. Laing

In history, as elsewhere, fools rush in, and the angels may perhaps be forgiven if rather than tread in those treacherous paths they tread upon the fools instead. — G.R. Elton

He spent the next two days in careful, decisive preparation efficiently conducted around his day job. The three imperatives of his mission were embedded in every action he performed: (1) keep it simple; (2) provide for every contingency; and (3) never panic no matter how much your plan goes awry, which it occasionally did. However, if there were a fourth rule, it would have to be: exploit the fact that most people are fools when it comes to things that actually matter, like their own survival. He had never suffered from that shortcoming. — David Baldacci

I call them April babies cuz they fools — Lil' Wayne

If the fools do not control the world, it isn't because they are not in the majority. — E.W. Howe

A wise man told me don't argue with fools. Cause people from a distance can't tell who is who. — Jay-Z

The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts and questions, while fools are so certain about things. — Shannon L. Alder

Wisdom is the greatest speaker in history;
nature, second.
Folly is the worst speaker in history;
fools, second. — Matshona Dhliwayo

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

7 Stay away from fools, for you won't find knowledge on their lips. 8 The prudent understand where they are going, but fools deceive themselves. — Anonymous

We must always remember that God is Love. "A fool indeed is he who, living on the banks of the Ganga, seeks to dig a little well for water. A fool indeed is the man who, living near a mine of diamonds, spends his life in searching for beads of glass." God is that mine of diamonds. We are fools indeed to give up God for legends of ghosts or flying hobgoblins. It is a disease, a morbid desire. — Swami Vivekananda

One way in which fools succeed where wise men fail is that through ignorance of the danger they sometimes go coolly about a hazardous business. — Richard Whately

Some take pains to be biblical, but many [Christian financial teachers, writers, investment counselors, and seminar leaders] simply parrot their secular colleagues. Other than beginning and ending with prayer, mentioning Christ, and sprinkling in some Bible verses, there's no fundamental difference. They reinforce people's materialist attitudes and lifestyles. They suggest a variety of profitable plans in which people can spend or stockpile the bulk of their resources. In short, to borrow a term from Jesus, some Christian financial experts are helping people to be the most successful 'rich fools' they can be. — Randy Alcorn

When we don't speak, said Edgar, we become unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of ourselves. — Herta Muller

MY FULL NAME is Cadence Sinclair Eastman. I suffer migraines. I do not suffer fools. I like a twist of meaning. I endure. — E. Lockhart

[W]omen are born with the obligation to obey their husbands even if they're fools. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools. — Plato

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

Ukippers are the kinds of fools who haven't noticed they're sleep-walking towards fascism. Many UKIP candidates are of the age when their parents fought in the Second World War. — Robert Webb

Is love meant to make us feel like fools? — Melissa Jensen

It is in the half fools and the half wise that the greatest danger lies. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It is never cruel to want to save yourself from being swamped by fools. — Bryant McGill

The list of the bigots and the list of the fools are always perfectly the same list! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Experience," says the proverb, "is a hard school to attend, but fools will learn in no — J.C. Ryle

Let not thy sword skip one:
Pity not honour'd age for his white beard;
He is an usurer: strike me the counterfeit matron;
It is her habit only that is honest,
Herself's a bawd: let not the virgin's cheek
Make soft thy trenchant sword; for those milk-paps,
That through the window-bars bore at men's eyes,
Are not within the leaf of pity writ,
But set them down horrible traitors: spare not the babe,
Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy;
Think it a bastard, whom the oracle
Hath doubtfully pronounced thy throat shall cut,
And mince it sans remorse: swear against objects;
Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes;
Whose proof, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,
Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding,
Shall pierce a jot. There's gold to pay soldiers:
Make large confusion; and, thy fury spent,
Confounded be thyself! Speak not, be gone. — William Shakespeare

There's three things ye can do in any situation, girl," her father had told her once. "Ye can decide to do a thing, ye can decide not to do a thing ... or ye can decide not to decide." That last, her da had never quite come out and said (he hadn't needed to) was the choice of weaklings and fools. — Stephen King

A limbo large and broad, since call'd The Paradise of Fools to few unknown. — John Milton

I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry. — John Donne

fools continue to send fools and crooks to Washington to make stupid self-serving laws to make themselves rich, with no idea whatsoever what the word 'work' truly means, this had to happen. No, it wasn't quick but it seems so to those who had no ability to see and understand what was being done to our nation, our people and our way of life because so many could only live paycheck to paycheck. — T.J. Reeder

Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other. — Charles Caleb Colton

Fools are more hard to conquer than persuade. — John Dryden

Only fools argue whether to eat meat or not. They don't understand truth, nor do they meditate on it. Who can define what is meat and what is plant? Who knows where the sin lies, being a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian? — Guru Nanak

We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes — Charles Bukowski

All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe. — Thomas Paine

People who create art would be fools to assume they know exactly what people are going to think of it. — Victoria Legrand

This is a sleaze bag murdering dog and he [O.J. Simpson] has played us for fools. And the worst thing he did was exacerbate the racial divide in this country. He divided black and white America. — Geraldo Rivera

Memories never did anyone any good, and weepy sentiment was for fools too weak to suck it up and do what needed to be done. — Jennifer Estep

I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners; without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world. — Jonathan Swift

Only fools imply compliments. The wise man comes right out with it, point-blank. Imply criticism
unless the criticized isn't within earshot. — William Faulkner

The fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. They don't believe that the wisdom of their own mind is the sage ... the sutras say, "Mind is the teaching." But people of no understanding don't believe in their own mind or that by understanding this teaching they can become a sage. They prefer to look for distant knowledge and long for things in space, buddha-images, light, incense, and colors. They fall prey to falsehood and lose their minds to insanity. — Bodhidharma

Because you can't argue with all the fools in the world. It's easier to let them have their way, then trick them when they're not paying attention. — Christopher Paolini

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools. — Ambrose Bierce

Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. — Ayn Rand

And if it be true that the loveliest tune imaginable becomes vulgar and insupportable as soon as the public begins to hum it and the hurdy-gurdies make it their own, the work of art which does not remain indifferent to the spurious artists, which is not contested by fools, and which is not satisfied with awakening the enthusiasm of the few, by this very fact becomes profaned, trite, almost repulsive to the initiate.
This promiscuity in admiration, furthermore, was one of the greatest sources of regret in his life. Incomprehensible successes had forever spoiled for him many pictures and books once cherished and dear. Approved by the mob, they began to reveal imperceptible defects to him, and he rejected them, wondering meanwhile if his perceptions were not growing blunted. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

Was part of owning the world never to think ... Did they laugh at the fools they robbed, who were fool enough to admire them and vote them into office so they could arrange things more conveniently for their enterprises? — Marge Piercy

Errors were not only meant to be committed by fools. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Love can be found anyone. Love's timing sucks nor does it care about situations. It's in us all. It makes fools out of us all. — Kristal McKerrington

Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving. — Dale Carnegie

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

The world is filled with fools like S'kot, and worse, with the fools who let them act as wardens over them. They deserve each other. I don't care what they think of me and neither should you. — R. Lee Smith

Since photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the mad fools !), then photography and art are the same thing. — Charles Baudelaire

Travelers never did lie, though fools at home condemn them. — William Shakespeare

Velius
so who is she? no wait, let me guess. skin of the finest porcelain. hair of the softest silk. a voice like birdsong, a smile like sunshine, and a mouth that would sate your brightest and darkest wishes
Rumbold
You've m-met her?
Velius
oh yes, my friend. we all know her. we've all pursued her. some of us have even been lucky enough to have her. we've been drunk on her sin, become fools of her favor. she might have borne a different face each time, but her name was always the same. Trouble — Alethea Kontis

An eye for an eye is smart, see, but love is dumb, lovers are fools. — David James Duncan

Who cares whether they laugh at us or insult us, treating us as fools or criminals?" Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. "The point is that they talk about us and constantly think about us. — Volker Ullrich

When I have a difficult subject before me - when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools - I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude; I prefer to extricate that intelligent man from his embarrassment and show him the cause of his perplexity, so that he may attain perfection and be at peace. — Maimonides

Look at 'em,' he said. 'Goddam fools.' 'Who?' said Ginnie. 'I don't know. Anybody. — J.D. Salinger

Foolproof systems don't take into account the ingenuity of fools — Gene Brown

Whether he likes it or not, [he] cannot remain incognito forever. He has outraged too many wise men and pleased too many fools to hide behind his too-appropriate order to assume leadership of the forces of stupidity he has marshalled, or his enemies will unmask him in order to better understand the disease that has produced such a warped and twisted mind. — Orson Scott Card

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.
But you have to choose: live or tell. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The are two kinds of people in this modern society. First and the majority are those fools who think they are wise, and second are the few wise individuals who know that they are fools. — Abhijit Naskar

Is not all the stupid chatter of most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, christianity and so forth, and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space? — Max Stirner

Let me tell you about weakness! Killing the strong to prove your strength is foolish weakness. Killing fools is easy weakness. Killing the weak is evil weakness. Accomplishing your ends without killing, mastering your mind when you want to kill
that is strength! — Victoria Hanley

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

For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.
The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. — Ayn Rand

I look forward to a future of boredom and suffering, since I'm too cowardly to put an end to my days. I'll just go on: clubbing, snorting, drinking and persecuting the fools of the world. — Lolita Pille

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

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

Second, as Luther stated, because God's love isn't caused by its object, it can love those who are not lovable, "sinners, evil persons, fools, and weaklings in order to make them righteous, good, wise, and strong". Luther concluded, "rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good". — Miroslav Volf

Nearly all of our disasters come from a few fools having the courage of their convictions. — Coventry Patmore

But then the stage showed other things. Bad things. Murderous things. Things I would never really do. And things I would forget about in the morning, because I'd wake up feeling a whole lot better. I knew right from wrong, Ori and I both did. We were not terrible people. We were not fools. — Nova Ren Suma

There are many fools who go to school,
and many more who don't. — Matshona Dhliwayo

The foolhardy are not necessarily stupid, for fools simply follow their imagination whereas the stupid have none. — Maurice Carter

Don't talk, Snicket," Theodora said. "Fools talk while wise people listen, so listen up and I'll tell you how we will solve this case sensibly and properly. — Lemony Snicket

Only the oppressed, the weak, and the fools get offended. — Den Sjo

I'd learned from my mother that when someone gives you a subjective compliment - meaning one that can't be disproven and is based on opinion - but that you find to be completely false, rather than argue, it's much better to just say thank you, or I appreciate that and strive to be that compliment. Fools fight compliments, she'd said, and sometimes other people see you better than you can see yourself. — Penny Reid

Only fools seek power, and the greatest fools seek it through force. — Laozi

God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!
Ah, but fools Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more. Wisdom and goodness they are God!
what schools Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore. This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules: 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore. — Matthew Arnold

Your neighbors are not all sheep. Your political opponents are not all evil or fools. Try talking to those you despise. They are your fellow citizens. And together, we are not lesser than any "greatest generation.". — David Brin

As a society we've progressed to a point where it is unacceptable behavior to knock someone down who is acting a fool. I teach my children to use their words when faced with a conflict. That's what civilized people do. All that is fine and good except for one small thing; we've enabled the fools ...
... What if people could expect a measure of instant justice when they were out of order? The acts of thoughtlessness would decline exponentially. If you give people license to be fools then you are left to deal with fools. However, if you put fools on notice then they'll be forced to snap to attention and act right or suffer the consequences. Think of it as an adult spanking. — Aaron Blaylock

We see very few people who are satisfied. They say that the only ones who are really happy are the enlightened or the fools. — Frederick Lenz

Broken hearts made faults and fools of us all. — Natalia Jaster

What relationship could exist between the lives of the fools and healthy rabble who were well, who slept well, who performed the sexual act well, who had never felt the wings of death on their face every moment-what relationship could exist between them and one like me who has arrived at the end of his rope and who knows that he will pass away gradually and tragically? — Sadegh Hedayat

How tragic that the very thing that could set us free-playing the fool-is the thing we will not do. When we're afraid to be fools, we end up being afraid to be anything. — Mike Mason

Fools believe silence is a void needing to be filled; the wise understand there's no such thing as silence. — Michael J. Sullivan

They'll go to where the governments have gathered and make sure the world ends, even though that's not their intent. They'll carry on about finding an antidote and taking down the makeshift government. But all they'll really do is spread the virus once and for all. Make sure they finish what the sun flares started. Fools, every last one of them. Anton collapsed back into a heap on the cot, and a few seconds later the sounds of his snores filled the room. — James Dashner

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

You can read a lot of books
It don't make you smart
Kiss a lot of fools
Don't mean you've got a heart — Lynn Miles

A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark. — H.L. Mencken