quotations about fools
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Harper's magazine, Aug. 1990
Fools may our scorn, not envy raise,
For envy is a kind of praise.
JOHN GAY
Fables
Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook F", Aphorisms
Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
O! I am Fortune's fool.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Bobok
Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool.
AESOP
Aesop's Fables
If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
W.C. FIELDS
There may be no fool like an old fool, but our observation has been that the young fool runs him a pretty close second.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Voyage to Vinland"
The learned Fool writes his Nonsense in better Language than the unlearned; but still 'tis Nonsense.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1754
The angels must tremble when a fool is in the right.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
When a fool dies there is much shedding of tears in the land whither he is bound.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Too many men are afraid of being fools.
HENRY FORD
"In Bondage to a Reputation," Ford Ideals
He must be a thorough fool who can learn nothing from his own folly.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Because other people are fools, must you be so too?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
We must often consider, not what the wise will think, but what the foolish will be sure to say.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Fashion! -- a word which knaves and fools may use,
Their knavery and folly to excuse.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
The Rosciad
The difference between a wise and foolish man is this--the former sees much, thinks much, and speaks little; but the latter speaks more than he either sees or thinks.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Fools always lead a mob.
PAUL H. YARBROUGH
"A Congress of Fools", Communities Digital News, May 6, 2019