Knaves And Fools Quotes & Sayings

Hanifs (Muslims) are stumbling, Christians all astray
Jews wildered, Magians far on error's way.
We mortals are composed of two great schools
Enlightened knaves or else religious fools. — Al-Ma'arri

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

By fools, knaves fatten; by bigots, priests are well clothed; every knave finds a gull. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

Though we may not desire to detect fraud, we must not, on that account, endeavor to be insensible of it, for, as cunning is a crime, so is duplicity a fault, and if men dread knaves, they also despise fools. — Norm MacDonald

In your love, I dive,
to find the beauty of life. — Debasish Mridha

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

If a man can hear the truth he's spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools ... — Rudyard Kipling

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune,
often the surfeit
of our own behavior,
we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star. — William Shakespeare

Knaves starve not in the land of fools. — Charles Churchill

Money does all things,
for it gives and it takes away; it makes honest men and knaves, fools and philosophers; and so forward, mutatis mutandis, to the end of the chapter. — Roger L'Estrange

Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools? — Thomas Love Peacock

Alas! how has the social spirit of Christianity been perverted by fools at one time, and by knaves and bigots at another; by the self-tormentors of the cell, and the all-tormentors of the conclave! — Charles Caleb Colton

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. — Lord Chesterfield

Fashion
a word which knaves and fools may use, Their knavery and folly to excuse. — Charles Churchill

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

You can't worry if it's cold; you can't worry if it's hot; you only worry if you get sick. Because then if you don't get well, you die. — Joaquin Andujar

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools ... — Rudyard Kipling

I hold it to be one of the distinguishing excellences of elective over hereditary successions that the talents which nature has provided in sufficient proportion, should be selected by the society for the govenment of their affairs, rather than that this should be be transmitted through the loins of knaves and fools passing from the debauches of the table to those of the bed. — Thomas Jefferson

It's not like we were forced to do something we didn't want to do. I mean, when you see that scene you'll realize that we're really lucky that the weather came at us because now it has a lot more meaning that wasn't automatically there. There's some sort of undertones that wouldn't have existed had we shot it outside. So we got lucky on that and what we try to do is take whatever obstacles come our way and make them work in our favor. — Todd Farmer

No flattery, boy! an honest man cannot live by it; it is a little, sneaking art, which knaves use to cajole and soften fools withal. — Thomas Otway

Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. — Herman Melville

Ultimately, people do want to buy merch and tickets to support their favorite bands, but they don't want to feel like it's the only thing going on. — Pete Wentz

There will be nothing you may not aspire to; you will go everywhere, and you will find out what the world is - an assemblage of fools and knaves. — Honore De Balzac

As for antichrist occupying the papal chair, it is evident that a pope living contrary to Christ, like any other perverted person, is called, by common consent, antichrist. — Jan Hus

Imagine spending seven years at MIT and research laboratories, only to find out that you're a performance artist. — Golan Levin

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it. — Samuel Johnson

When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon. — Thomas Paine

Conspiracies, since they cannot be engaged in without the fellowship of others, are for that reason most perilous; for as most men are either fools or knaves, we run excessive risk in making such folk our companions. — Francesco Guicciardini

After three failed marriages, I know what it's like to be replaced. So that's kind of how Joey Harrington must feel today ... A former No. 1 choice looks to me like he's going to be a bust in Detroit. — Terry Bradshaw

My heart swelled until I felt as if it might take over my entire being. I had landed in heaven. This was heaven. — Julianne Donaldson

Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death by them. — William Hazlitt

The roads that lead young men to war are not political roads, or national and international roads, but individual roads. What propels young men to combat is not the draft. Those who are not destined for armed combat usually will not be drafted for armed combat. The pool of human resources is vast, and the number of riflemen is small. The person who wants to avoid the draft will avoid it. And, in Vietnam, as the war went on, the numbers who successfully avoided the draft increased. So who fights? The fools, the uneducated, the knaves? I was none of these - or so I maintain. But I fought. — James R. McDonough

Do we not see all humans unaware Of what they want, and always searching everywhere, And changing place, as if to drop the load they bear? — Lucretius

It means that you two, precious father and son, would be a pair of knaves if you had sense enough; but, failing in that, you are only a pair of fools! — E.D.E.N. Southworth

Power, when invested in the hands of knaves or fools, generally is the source of tyranny ... — Charlotte Charke

Negro equality, Fudge!! How long in the Government of a God great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this? — Abraham Lincoln

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

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