Foolish Quotes - Page 22

• If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith today.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Use, Recipes, Today

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2865, Delphi Classics

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• The essence of the contemporary monetary system is creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks’ often foolish lending.

  Martin Wolf

  Essence, Creation, Lending

  "The Fed is right to turn on the tap". www.ft.com. November 9, 2010.

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• Now that Mandela has been released from prison we can all admit what has been apparent, that he is not a Tembu tribesman, in fact he is not an African at all. He is quite obviously Chinese. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it makes those who persist in seeing him as a great African statesman look rather foolish.

  Auberon Waugh

  Chinese, Looks, Facts

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• Marriage means handing over yourself, your body, your future, your keeping to the one whom you dearly love, although this person may, in many ways, remain a stranger. This tremendous act of faith is something that can unlock in each lover powers of compassion, generosity, joy, passion, fidelity and hope that no one guessed was even there. That is why the confidence of young lovers is not foolish or arrogant, but an expression of a basic fact in human experience that the greatest of human gifts are set to work only when people are prepared to risk everything and first you risk it before God.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Mean, Passion, Expression

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• In religious belief as elsewhere, we must take our chances, recognizing that we could be wrong, dreadfully wrong. There are no guarantees; the religious life is a venture; foolish and debilitating error is a permanent possibility. (If we can be wrong, however, we can also be right.)

  Alvin Plantinga

  Religious, Errors, Guarantees

  Alvin Plantinga (2000). “Warranted Christian Belief”, p.81, Oxford University Press

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• Men are foolish to expect us to revere them, when, in the end, they amount to almost nothing.

  Anne Desclos

  Men, Ends, Amount

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• It's a foolish culture that entrusts its food supply to simpletons.

  Joel Salatin

  Culture, Simpletons, Food Supply

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• I have been accused of being a ‘black magician.’ No more foolish statement was ever made about me. I despise the thing to such an extent that I can hardly believe in the existence of people so debased and idiotic as to practice it.

  Aleister Crowley

  Believe, Practice, People

  "The Worst Man in the World". The Sunday Dispatch, July 02, 1933.

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• Think about death. You do not know how much time remains to you. And remember that if you do not become different, everything will be repeated again, all foolish blunders, all silly mistakes, all loss of time and opportunity - everything will be repeated with the exception of the chance you had this time, because chance never comes in the same form.You will have to look for your chance next time. And in order to do this, you will have to remember many things, and how will you remember then if you do not remember anything now?

  P.D. Ouspensky

  Mistake, Silly, Loss

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• Foolish writers and readers are created for each other.

  Horace Walpole

  Reader

  Horace Walpole, Peter Cunningham (1857). “The letters of Horace Walpole, earl of Orford”, p.494

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• I do find life difficult at times … and I behave childishly too, do foolish things, unworthy … I don't think one can have great imagination and great wisdom. Can one?

  Alison Uttley

  Thinking, Imagination, Difficult

  "Diaries reveal dark side to Little Grey Rabbit's creator" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. June 17, 2009.

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• Let me ask you outright, gentle reader, if there have not been hours, indeed whole days and weeks of your life, during which all your usual activities were painfully repugnant, and everything you believed in and valued seemed foolish and worthless?

  E. T. A. Hoffmann

  Usual, Week, Hours

  E. T. A. Hoffmann (2000). “The Golden Pot and Other Tales”, p.20, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Friendship is usually treated...as a tough...thing which will survive all manner of bad treatment. But this is an exceedingly great and foolish error; it may die in an hour of a single unwise word.

  Ouida

  Friendship, Errors, May

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• When in doubt, make a fool of yourself.

  Cynthia Heimel

  Fools Day, Doubt, April Fools

  Cynthia Heimel (1988). “But Enough about You”, Fireside

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• A doctor who doesn't say too many foolish things is a patient half-cured.

  Marcel Proust

  Science, Doctors, Fool

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.1111, Wordsworth Editions

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• To a worldly man, a God-intoxicated person will appear mad and he will laugh at him, But to the God-intoxicated man, the worldly appear insane, foolish, misled, blind.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Lying, Men, Mad

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• It became very clear to the director that it would be foolish not to use our friendship. I had tried to talk to him about it because all the relationships in the film are so, not negative, but antagonistic. There's not a lot of love going around.

  Jennifer Beals

  Lost Friendship, Use, Directors

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• Every Christian leader should have this engraved in his subconscious. No matter what you do, never take yourself too seriously God always chooses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. He shows his might only on the behalf of those who trust in Him. Humility is the place where all christian service begins.

  K.P. Yohannan

  Christian, Wise, Humility

  K. P. Yohannan (2004). “Revolution in World Missions”, Gfa Books

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• Hundreds of stupid flies gather
  On a piece of rotten meat,
  Enjoying, they think, a delicious feast.
  This image fits with the song
  Of the myriads of foolish living beings
  Who seek happiness in superficial pleasures;
  In countless ways they try,
  Yet I have never seen them satisfied.

  7th Dalai Lama

  Song, Stupid, Thinking

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• The good news, to relieve all this gloom, is that a democracy is inherently self-correcting. Here, the people are sovereign. Inept political leaders can be replaced. Foolish policies can be changed. Disastrous mistakes can be reversed.

  Theodore C. Sorensen

  Mistake, Self, People

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• How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearance of trees and automobiles, and people with a reality itself, and believed that a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will never be able to photograph it and can only fail. I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.

  Duane Michals

  Confused, Believe, Reflection

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• All things and all people in life have to sink or swim on their own merits, not their reputation; that just as a wise man can say a foolish thing, a fool can say something wise.

  Vincent Bugliosi

  Wise, Men, People

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• The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.

  Carroll Quigley

  Party, Years, Ideas

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• A fool and his money are soon married.

  Carolyn Wells

  Money, Italian, Fool

  Carolyn Wells (1912). “The Lover's Baedeker and Guide to Arcady”

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• The Unconscious Civilisation There is a certain terrifying dignity to the big ideologies. With the stroke of an intellectual argument the planet is put in its place. Only the bravest or the most foolish of individuals would not become passive before such awe inspiring destinies.

  John Ralston Saul

  Destiny, Political, Intellectual

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