100 Folly Quotes

Following is our list of folly quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about man's folly.

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Famous Folly Quotes

Foolishness is indeed the sister of wickedness. — Sophocles

Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere. — William Shakespeare

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far away. — Bible Proverbs

Better foolish by all than wise by yourself. — German proverbs

Anger begins in folly, and ends in repentance. — Pythagoras

The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly — Desiderius Erasmus

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise. — Samuel Johnson

Travel is a fools paradise. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The utter folly of our time is lamentable, that men should think to assist God with human help and to protect the Church of Christ by worldly ambition. — Hilary of Poitiers

To Believe without evidence and demonstration is an act of ignorance and folly — Socrates

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit. — William Shakespeare

There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man. — Aristotle

It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak. — Neil Gaiman

In fact, to gull a fool seems to me an exploit worthy of a witty man. — Giacomo Casanova

Short Folly Quotes

  • Our countrymen have all the folly of the ass and all the passiveness of the sheep. — Alexander Hamilton
  • And so, being young and dipt in folly, I fell in love with melancholy. — Edgar Allan Poe
  • All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. — Benjamin Franklin
  • Genius creates, and taste preserves. — Alexander Pope
  • He who is aware of his folly is wise. — Yiddish Proverbs
  • Where there is emulation, there will be vanity; where there is vanity, there will be folly. — Samuel Johnson
  • There is as much trickery required to grow rich by a stupid book as there is folly in buying it. — Jean De La Bruyere
  • The budget should be balanced not by more taxes, but by reduction of follies. — Herbert Hoover
  • In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly. — Samuel Johnson

Human Folly Quotes

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature. — Voltaire

My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition. — Yann Martel

There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. — Carl Sagan

These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Crusades - the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation. — David Hume

History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive. It knows the names of the king's bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. — Jean-Henri Fabre

Clever people are never credited with their follies: what a deprivation of human rights! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition. — Isaac Asimov

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

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

Man's Folly Quotes

Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny. — Marguerite Duras

Meddling with another man's folly is always thankless work. — Rudyard Kipling

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. — Mark Twain

To speak less of oneself than what one really is, is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is under a man's value, is pusillanimity and cowardice. — Michel de Montaigne

One man's folly is another man's wife. — Helen Rowland

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom anpther's folly. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed. — Leo Rosten

For take thy ballaunce if thou be so wise, And weigh the winds that under heaven doth blow; Or weigh the light that in the east doth rise; Or weigh the thought that from man's mind doth flow. — Edmund Spenser

Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man. — Alexander Pope

FOLLY, n. That "gift and faculty divine" whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns his life. — Ambrose Bierce

Foolishness Quotes

How foolish is man! He ruins the present while worrying about the future, but weeps in the future by recalling his past! — Ali ibn Abi Talib

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer. — Bruce Lee

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Fear of the devil is nonsense. Fear of demons is foolish. The Spirit of God anointing the Christian heart makes the soul impregnable to the powers of darkness. — John G. Lake

Whatever your determination or will power, it is foolish to try to change the nature of things. Things work the way they do because that is the way of things — Miyamoto Musashi

Stay hungry, stay foolish. You've got to find what you love! - Steve Jobs

Stay hungry, stay foolish. You've got to find what you love!Steve Jobs

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. — William Golding

There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy. — Blaise Pascal

The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart. — Chinua Achebe

Our religion seems foolish to you, but so does yours to me. The Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and the Catholics all have a different God. Why cannot we have one of our own? — Sitting Bull

People Writing About Folly

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Read quotes by Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson
quotes on writing, life and love

1736 7561
Read quotes by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare
quotes on success, death and love

4052 36000
Read quotes by Sophocles

Sophocles
quotes on life, love and fate

439 2549
Read quotes by Bible Proverbs

Bible Proverbs
quotes on Wisdom, knowledge and morality

55 478
Read quotes by German proverbs

German proverbs
quotes on society, change and work

47 4
Read quotes by Pythagoras

Pythagoras
quotes on music, love and education

158 4423

More Folly Quotes

The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly. — Jim Rohn

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. — Leo Tolstoy

To overcome the intelligent by folly is contrary to the natural order of things; to overcome the foolish by intelligence is in accord with the natural order. To overcome the intelligent by intelligence, however, is a matter of opportunity. — Zhuge Liang

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights'. It is a subject which makes the Queen so furious that she cannot contain herself. — Queen Victoria

Keep alive within you and bring under wise control that courage which makes you long to undertake great works, which others might consider it folly to attempt. — Mary Euphrasia Pelletier

We cannot rely on ourselves, for we have learned by bitter experience the folly of self-confidence. We are compelled to look to the Lord alone. Blessed is the wind that drives the ship into the harbor. Blessed is the distress that forces us to rest in our God. — Charles Spurgeon

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

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. — George Bernard Shaw

How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism. — Edward George BulwerLytton

How many of us have been first attracted to reason, first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism from Rochefoucauld or La Bruyere. — Bill Vaughan

How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. — James Madison

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. — George Orwell

The wisest among my race understand that agitations of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. — Booker T. Washington

Come, let us give a little time to folly... and even in a melancholy day let us find time for an hour of pleasure. — Bonaventure

There are three kinds of fools in this world, fools proper, educated fools and rich fools. The world persists because of the folly of these fools. — Narayanananda Swami.

Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium - and tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others' lives. — Adam Hochschild

Remember that the Tarot is a great and sacred arcanum - its abuse is an obscenity in the inner and a folly in the outer. It is intended for quite other purposes than to determine when the tall dark man will meet the fair rich widow. — Jack Parsons

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

It would be folly to argue that the people cannot make political mistakes. They can and do make grave mistakes. They know it, they pay the penalty, but compared with the mistakes which have been made by every kind of autocracy they are unimportant. — Calvin Coolidge

Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. — Marguerite Duras

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. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig. — Robert A. Heinlein

War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men. Though you follow the trade of the warrior, you do so in the spirit of Washington - not of Genghis Khan. For Americans, only threat to our way of life justifies resort to conflict. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

You can commit no greater folly than to sit by the road side until someone comes along and invites you to ride with him to wealth or influence. — John Bartholomew Gough

Bipartisanship on behalf of an imprudent policy can be folly, just as partisanship on behalf of a just cause can be wise. What is clear is that politics will not stop at the water's edge simply because presidents plead for it. American foreign policy will return to the tradition of Truman and Vandenberg only when the American public demands it. — James M. Lindsay

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. — Edmund Burke

The Iraqis had paid a terrible price for Saddam's folly (in the Gulf War). But looking at the devastation they left behind (in Kuwait), my sympathy was limited. — Margaret Thatcher

We that are true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly. — William Shakespeare

It is not proof that I sought. I, of all men, know that proof is but a fallacy invented by man to justify to himself and his fellows his own crass lust and folly. — William Faulkner

I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy. — Harry Leslie Smith

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