quotations about fools
Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
Wives and Daughters
The greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook F", Aphorisms
O! I am Fortune's fool.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
The learned Fool writes his Nonsense in better Language than the unlearned; but still 'tis Nonsense.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1754
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
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Bobok
Because other people are fools, must you be so too?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
W.C. FIELDS
Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool.
AESOP
Aesop's Fables
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
Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Voyage to Vinland"
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
Ten gods cannot change the opinion of one fool, especially if another fool agrees with him.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
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
When dunces call us fools, without proving us to be so, our best retort is to prove them to be fools, without condescending to call them so.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon