Folly Quotes - Page 14

• Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite; more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility.

  George Santayana

  Passion, Thinking, Fancy

  George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.129, Indiana University Press

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• 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

  War, Kuwait, Devastation

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• A civilization can easily drown in what it knows as in what doesn't know. Consider,' he continued, Gotho's Folly. Gotho's curse was in being too aware - of everything. Every permutation, every potential. Enough to poison every scan he cast on the world. It availed him naught, and worse, he was aware of even that.

  Steven Erikson

  Civilization, Poison, World

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• When thou findest thyself scorning another, look then at thy own heart and laugh at thy folly.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Heart, Laughing, Looks

  Aurobindo Ghose, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo Ashram (1994). “Essays divine and human with thoughts and aphorisms”, Lotus Press (WI)

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• The rock is a field of battle between our weakness and our strength. We wouldn't touch rock if we were perfectly self-controlled. And he who would climb and live must continuously wage this battle and never let folly win. It's an outrageously demanding proposition. But I never said it was easy.

  Royal Robbins

  Winning, Rocks, Self

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• The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Mistake, Writing

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• Experiment is folly when experience shows the way.

  Roger Babson

  Trying, Way, Shows

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• Mike Stanton is our preeminent aficionado and raconteur of Rhode Island’s flamboyantly criminal political follies, and The Prince of Providence is the chronicle of a great American rogue, Mayor Buddy Cianci—a paragon of charisma and corruption.

  Philip Gourevitch

  Rhode Island, Islands, Political

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• What are books but folly, and what is an education but an arrant hypocrisy, and what is art but a curse when they touch not the heart and impel it not to action?

  Louis Sullivan

  Art, Book, Hypocrisy

  "Kindergarten Chats: (revised 1918) and Other Writings". Book by Louis Sullivan, Ch. 36: Another City, 1947.

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• One could safely say that David Lifton took folly to an unprecedented level. And considering the monumental foolishness of his colleagues in the conspiracy community, that's saying something.

  Vincent Bugliosi

  Community, Levels, Conspiracy

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• Every woman whether rich or poor, married or single, has a circle of influence within which, according to her character, she is exerting a certain amount of power for good or harm. Every woman, by her virtue or her vice, by her folly or her wisdom, by her levity or her dignity, is adding something to our national elevation or degradation. A community is not likely to be overthrown where woman fulfills her mission, for by the power of her noble heart over the hearts of others, she will raise that community from its ruins and restore it again to prosperity and joy.

  John Angell James

  Heart, Character, Rich Or Poor

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• Democracy is the worst form of government. It is the most inefficient, the most clumsy, the most unpractical.... It reduces wisdom to impotence and secures the triumph of folly, ignorance, clap-trap, and demagogy.... Yet democracy is the only form of social order that is admissible, because it is the only one consistent with justice.

  Robert Briffault

  Ignorance, Government, Order

  Rational Evolution (The Making of Humanity) ch. 15 (1930) SeeWinston Churchill 34

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• Knowing the future is the flower of the Way, and the beginning of folly.

  Laozi

  Flower, Knowing, Taoism

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• A people [America] that does not prepare to fight should then be morally prepared to surrender. To fail to prepare soldiers and citizens for limited, bloody ground action, and then to engage in it, is folly verging on the criminal.

  T. R. Fehrenbach

  Fighting, America, People

  T. R. Fehrenbach (2014). “This Kind of War: The Classic Military History of the Korean War”, p.480, Open Road Media

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• No one attacks loose-thinking and folly with half the precision and zest of Thomas Szasz.

  John Leo

  Thinking, Zest, Half

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• A basic principle of data processing teaches the folly of trying to maintain independent files in synchonism.

  Fred Brooks

  Independent, Data, Trying

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• One’s relationship with money is lifelong, it colors one’s sense of identity, it shapes one’s attitude to other people, it connects and splits generations; money is the arena in which greed and generosity are played out, in which wisdom is exercised and folly committed. Freedom, desire, power, status, work, possession: these huge ideas that rule life are enacted, almost always, in and around money.

  John Armstrong

  Attitude, Ideas, Color

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• 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

  Intelligent, Opportunity, Order

  Liang Zhuge, Ji Liu (2005). “Mastering the Art of War”, p.69, Shambhala Publications

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• Life is not a competition with others. In its truest sense it is a rivalry with ourselves. We should each day seek to break the record of our yesterday. We should seek each day to live stronger, better, truer lives; each day to master some weakness of yesterday; each day to repair past follies; each day to surpass...ourselves. And this is but progress.

  William George Jordan

  Life, Past, Yesterday

  William George Jordan (1913). “The Power of Truth”

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• We are limited by our agreements on possibility. Agreement is a common exclusion of alternate possibilities. Agreement is the cement of social structure. Two or three gathered together, agreeing on what they are after, may create a subset in which their goals can be achieved, even though folly in the eyes of the world. The world in this case means a set of expectancies agreed upon, a set excluding other possibilities.

  Joseph Chilton Pearce

  Mean, Eye, Agreement

  "The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: New Constructs of Mind and Reality". Book by Joseph Chilton Pearce, 1971.

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• God ultimately raises up leaders for one primary reason: His glory. He shows His power in our weakness. He demonstrates His wisdom in our folly. We are all like a turtle on a fence post. If you walk by a fence post and see a turtle on top of it, then you know someone came by and put it there. In the same way, God gives leadership according to His good pleasure.

  Matt Chandler

  Turtles, Fence Post, Giving

  Matt Chandler, Eric Geiger, Josh Patterson (2012). “Creature of the Word”, p.176, B&H Publishing Group

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• I think schools, as they are now regulated, the hot-beds of vice and folly, and the knowledge of human nature supposedly attained there, merely cunning selfishness.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Education, School, Thinking

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2008). “A Vindication of the Rights of Women & a Vindication of the Rights of Men”, p.170, Cosimo, Inc.

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• It is a great folly to be willing to violate the friendship of God, rather than the law of human friendship.

  Teresa of Avila

  Law, Saint, Willing

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• If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.

  William Penn

  Men, Libertarian, Fool

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• Every man's occupation should be beneficial to his fellow-man as well as profitable to himself. All else is vanity and folly.

  P. T. Barnum

  Men, Vanity, Fellow Man

  P.T. BARNUM (1866). “THE HUMBUGS OF THE WORLD”, p.220

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