quotations about fools
The angels must tremble when a fool is in the right.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
O! I am Fortune's fool.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool.
AESOP
Aesop's Fables
The learned Fool writes his Nonsense in better Language than the unlearned; but still 'tis Nonsense.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1754
Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook F", Aphorisms
Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
Wives and Daughters
When a fool dies there is much shedding of tears in the land whither he is bound.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Fashion! -- a word which knaves and fools may use,
Their knavery and folly to excuse.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
The Rosciad
Children and fools speak true.
JOHN LYLY
Endymion
Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Voyage to Vinland"
Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists
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
Ten gods cannot change the opinion of one fool, especially if another fool agrees with him.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
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
He must be a thorough fool who can learn nothing from his own folly.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Too many men are afraid of being fools.
HENRY FORD
"In Bondage to a Reputation," Ford Ideals
Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear or a fool from any direction.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
As a fish out of his native element, so is the fool in the society of the wise.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Because other people are fools, must you be so too?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations