Folly Quotes - Page 24

• Here was a strange but true fact: The closer you were to the market, the harder it was to perceive its folly.

  Michael Lewis

  Facts, Strange, True Fact

  Michael Lewis (2015). “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (movie tie-in)”, p.105, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Opponents of globalisation may see it as a new folly, but it is neither particularly new, nor, in general, a folly.

  Amartya Sen

  May, Opponents, Globalisation

  "Freedom's market" by Amartya Sen, www.theguardian.com. June 25, 2000.

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• God is found in this Life ... to wait for another is folly.

  Dan Simmons

  Life, Waiting, Found

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• The day will come, sooner or later, when people will wonder at the necessity of taking all this trouble to expose the folly of a system, so childish and absurd, and yet so often enforced at the point of a bayonet.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  People, Bayonets, Wonder

  Jean Baptiste Say, Clement Cornell Biddle (1851). “A treatise on political economy”, p.159

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• Most history is a record of the triumphs, disasters, and follies of top people. The black hole in it is the way of life of mute, inglorious men and women who make no nuisance of themselves in the world.

  Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel

  Men, People, History

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• Maybe you just can't protect people from certain specialized types of folly with any sane amount of regulation, and the correct response is to give up on the high social costs of inadequately protecting people from themselves under certain circumstances.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Giving Up, People, Regulation

  Hacker News comment, news.ycombinator.com. Apr 12, 2012.

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• The burden of Karma is heavy. All alike have heavy debts to pay. Yet none, so the Wisdom teaches, is ever faced with more than he can bear. Whether or not we can grin, we must bear it, and it is folly to attempt to run away.

  Christmas Humphreys

  Karma, Running, Debt

  Christmas Humphreys (1983). “Karma and rebirth”, Routledge

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• Nobody would say the cowshed was heaven and nobody would say the inhuman torture of so many victims be called a revolution of the proletariat. ... A museum should be established to remind China of the follies and disasters that had fallen from 1966 to 1976. We cannot forget what had happened and history should not repeat itself.

  Ba Jin

  Museums, Heaven, Revolution

  "Pioneers of Modern China: Understanding the Inscrutable Chinese". Book by Khoon Choy Lee, 2005.

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• The drive to be useful is encoded in our genes. But when we gather in very large numbers, as in the modern nation-state, we seem capable of levels of folly and self-destruction to be found nowhere else in all of nature. But if we keep at it and keep alive, we are in for one surprise after another. We can build structures for human society never seen before, thoughts never heard before, music never heard before.

  Lewis Thomas

  Persistence, Self, Numbers

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• There is no folly like the folly of the wise.

  Jacqueline Carey

  Wise, Wisdom

  Jacqueline Carey (2016). “Kushiel’s Legacy: (Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen, Kushiel's Avatar)”, p.259, Macmillan

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• Press on! If Fortune play thee false To-day, tomorrow she'll be true; Whom now she sinks she now exalts, Taking old gifts and granting new, The wisdom of the present hour Makes up the follies past and gone; To weakness, strength succeeds, and power From frailty springs! Press on, press on!

  Benjamin

  Spring, Past, Play

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• Certainly inside my heart I know degrees of difference. But I can't blame any of these men who share a common fate with me. The big folly of this trial is that it lacks the two men who are to blame for anything which is criminal, namely Hitler and Himmler.

  Karl Donitz

  Heart, Fate, Men

  Said to Leon Goldensohn, July 14, 1946. "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, 2004.

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• Jefferson never entertained the folly that he was of immigrant stock. He considered the English settlers of America courageous conquerors, much like his Saxon forebears, to whom he compared them. To Jefferson, early Americans were the contemporary carriers of the Anglo-Saxon project.

  Ilana Mercer

  America, Courageous, Projects

  "The Declaration No Longer Expresses 'The American Mind'". www.americanthinker.com. July 4, 2017.

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• Folly is as great as the sea, it will compass anything.

  Bolesław Prus

  Sea, Compass

  "Pharaoh". Book by Bolesław Prus, 1897.

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• Human progress is not an uninterrupted march forward. It is a slow and devious movement with haltings and twistings. The pathway of man ascends and descends, wanders off into mazes. At times the trail seems to lose itself in the wilderness of human passion and folly. But inch by inch it goes forward with halting steps.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Passion, Men, Progress

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• There are in life real evils enough, and it is folly to afflict ourselves with imaginary ones; it is time enough when the real ones arrive.

  Benjamin

  Real, Evil, Enough

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• It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly.

  Henry George

  Religious, Men, Libertarian Party

  Henry George, A. C. Auchmuty (1908). “Gems from Henry George: being memorable passages from the writings and addresses of the author of "Progress and poverty"”

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• There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering up its powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs. They pay for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, People, Giving

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.204, Knopf

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• Leave each one his touch of folly; it helps to lighten life's burden which, if he could see himself as he is, might be too heavy to carry.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Might, Helping, Burden

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• Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, Know theyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, know what thou canst work at.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Life, Success, Work

  Thomas Carlyle, Rodger L. Tarr, Mark Engel (2000). “Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books”, p.123, Univ of California Press

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• Among the many inconsistencies which folly produces or infirmity suffers in the human mind, there has often been observed a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an author and his writings... Those whom the appearance of virtue or the evidence of genius has tempted to a nearer knowledge of the writer, in whose performances they may be found, have indeed had frequent reason to repent their curiosity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Curiosity, Mind

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.163, Univ of California Press

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• It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believes that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Country, Stars, Children

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892). “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, p.250

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• 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

  Ambition, Men, Thinking

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• Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly.

  Immanuel Kant

  Religious, Men, Thinking

  "German Thought, From The Seven Years' War To Goethe's Death : Six Lectures" by Karl Hillebrand, (p. 208), 1880.

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• I am sensible that he who means to do mankind a real service must set down with the determination of putting up, and bearing with all their faults, follies, prejudices and mistakes until he can convince them that he is right.

  Thomas Paine

  Determination, Real, Mistake

  Thomas Paine, John P. Kaminski (2002). “Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion”, p.189, Rowman & Littlefield

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