Fools - Quotes

A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. - Douglas Adams

A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him. - Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

A fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from experience. - Robert A. Heinlein

A fool is someone whose pencil wears out before its eraser does. - Marilyn vos Savant

A fool must now and then be right, by chance. - William Cowper

A fool will be exposed to all as soon as he opens his mouth, but when he learns to guard his tongue, he will be considered wise. - Unknown

A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one.  - Moliere

A man who tells you he's no fool has his suspicions. - Ken Alstad

An erudite fool is a greater fool than an ignorant fool. - Jean Baptiste Moliere

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain – and most fools do. - Dale Carnegie

As a fish out of his native element, so is the fool in the society of the wise. - William Scott Downey

Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed. - Edward Young

Better to listen to the wind ... than to waste time with the words of a fool. - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

Even a fool learns something once it hits him. - Homer

Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool. - Aesop

Fools and scissors require good handling. - Japanese Proverb

Fools are like other folks as long as they are silent. - Danish Proverb

Fools are very often found united in the strictest intimacy, as the lighter kinds of wood can be the most closely glued together. - Eliza Cook

Fool’s haste is no speed. - Unknown

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. - Alexander Pope

Give a fool enough rope and he will hang himself. - Unknown

He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach. - Plutarch

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. - Jim Elliott

He must be a thorough fool who can learn nothing from his own folly. - Eliza Cook

He who asks a question may be a fool for five minutes, but he who never asks a question remains a fool forever. - Tom J. Connelly

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool. - Carl Gustav Jung

If you follow a fool, you are a fool yourself. - Jamaican Proverb

It is a fool’s prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak. - William Shakespeare

It is a foolish sheep that makes the wolf its confessor. - Italian Proverb

It is a fool's privilege to laugh at an intelligent man. - Jean de la Bruyere

It is a fool's sheep that breaks loose twice. - West African Proverb

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. - Mark Twain

It’s better to be thought of as a fool and to surprise people once in a while than to be thought of as a brain and to let people down when they need you the most. - Julie Melanson

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. - Voltaire

Learned fools are the greatest of all fools. - German Proverb

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage. - Pulilius Syrus

Like gold in the hands of a savage are the sayings of wisdom in the mouth of a fool. - Edward Counsel

Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

No fools are so troublesome as those who have some wit. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Only a fool hates that which he knows nothing about. - Unknown

Only a fool tests the depth of water with both feet. - Unknown

Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools – guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus – THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible! - Richard Feynman

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools. - Alice Walker

Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom. - Elizabeth Gaskell

Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one with discretion. - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripedes

The best way to convince a fool he is wrong is to let him have his way. - Josh Billings

The fool is thirsty in the midst of water. - Ethiopian Proverb

The fool who is aware of his foolishness is wise at least to that extent, but the fool who thinks himself wise is a fool indeed. - Unknown

The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live. - Epicurus

The learned Fool writes his Nonsense in better Language than the unlearned; but still 'tis Nonsense. - Benjamin Franklin

The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population – the intelligent ones or the fools? - Henrik Ibsen

The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools. - Dough Larson

There are more fools than wise men, and even in the wise man himself there is more folly than wisdom. - Chamfort

There are two indiscretions that generally distinguish fools: a readiness to report whatever they hear, and a practice of communicating with secrecy what is commonly understood. - Normand MacDonald

There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools. - Nicolas Chamfort

There is one way for a fool to appear wise, that is, to be silent. - Norman MacDonald

There is, they say, no fool like an old fool. - William Golding

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

Those who realize their folly are not true fools. - Chuang Tzu

To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish. - Euripedes

We must often consider, not what the wise will think, but what the foolish will be sure to say. - Arthur Helps

What makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice. - William Faulkner

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

While intelligent people can often simplify the complex, a fool is more likely to complicate the simple. - Gerald W. Grummet

You are not a fool just because you have done something foolish – only if the folly of it escapes you. - Jim Fiebig

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. - Abraham Lincoln

You can’t separate a fool from their foolishness. You got to separate yourself from that fool. - Unknown

Young men think old men are fools – old men know young men to be so. - George Chapman