Folly Quotes

At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.
Mason Cooley

Great, Wisdom, Deal

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.
Lord Byron

Fame, Loves, Martyrdom

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.
James Madison

War, Reason, Progress

Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -it's human.
Desiderius Erasmus

Live, Ignorance, Human

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.
Joseph Addison

Age, Through, Weakness

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.
Lord Chesterfield

Laughter, Manners, Ill

Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.
Desiderius Erasmus

Success, Fun, Woman

Folly always knows the answer.
Mason Cooley

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Jonathan Swift

Humor, Men, Happy

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
Jonathan Swift

Voice, Mistake, London

At times it is folly to hasten at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time.
Ovid

Time, Wise, Everything

To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!
Denis Diderot

Love, End, Nothing

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.
Akhenaton

Wisdom, Wise, Fool

For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people.
Thomas More

Rain, Daily, Cannot

Those who realize their folly are not true fools.
Zhuangzi

True, Realize, Fools

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
Paul Valery

Spring, Oneself, Paradox

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
Herbert Spencer

Men, Result, Fools

To become Christ-like is the only thing in the whole world worth caring for, the thing before which every ambition of man is folly and all lower achievement vain.
Henry Drummond

Before, Become, Caring

But I think I can sincerely declare that I cheerfully submit myself to every odious name for conscience' sake; and from my soul I despise all those whose guilt, malice, or folly has made them my foes.
James Otis

Made, Soul, Conscience

To me, it's the folly of man to make God human.
Billy Corgan

It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door.
Publilius Syrus

Live, Fire, Door

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.
Democritus

Good, Men, Give

Is there in all the history of human folly a greater fool than a clergymen in politics?
Pat Robertson

Politics, History, Fool

Each is under the most sacred obligation not to squander the material committed to him, not to sap his strength in folly and vice, and to see at the least that he delivers a product worthy the labor and cost which have been expended on him.
Anna Julia Cooper

Strength, Him, Labor

There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.
Miguel de Cervantes

Despair, Greater

Human folly does not impede the turning of the stars.
Tom Robbins

Human, Stars, Turning

When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?
Oliver Goldsmith

Men, Art, Woman

When knowledge is limited - it leads to folly... When knowledge exceeds a certain limit, it leads to exploitation.
Abu Bakr

Knowledge, Limit, Limited

We have become a society that can't self-correct, that can't address its obvious problems, that can't pull out of its nosedive. And so to our list of disasters let us add this fourth entry: we have entered an age of folly that - for all our Facebooking and the twittling tweedle-dee-tweets of the twitterati - we can't wake up from.
Thomas Frank

Age, Society, Become

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.
James A. Garfield

Wisdom, Free, Combined

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