53 Quotes About Folly

This collection of wise, wacky, and humorous quotes is the perfect source for lighthearted ramblings.

Had I been in love, I could not have been...
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Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Jane Austen
The person who writes for fools is always sure of...
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The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience. Arthur Schopenhauer
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It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness. Arundhati Roy
Is it folly to believe in something that is intangible?...
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Is it folly to believe in something that is intangible? After all, some of the greatest intangibles are Love, Hope, and Wonder.Another is Deity.The choice to be a fool is yours. Vera Nazarian
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There are two goddesses in your heard. The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, giver her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you. Joe Vigil
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His strength for your weakness! His wisdom for your folly! His drive for your drift! His grace for your greed! His love for your lust! His peace for your problems! His joy for your sorrow! His plenty for your poverty! Major Thomas
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Not for the first time I find our lives are a shadow, and I am not afraid to say that people who think they have everything figured out and are masters of logic - they are responsible for the greatest folly. No human being is happy. Strike it rich and you are luckier than your neighbor - but happy, never. Euripides
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A man may indeed be an honest man; but the folly of sacrifice, of virginity, of devotedness, of martyrdom, arises only from faith in the folly of the Cross. Emile Bougaud
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The path of life is strewn with many perils and the folly of knowledge is one of the greatest dangers. Wisdom is a treacherous weapon, little master, for it is sundered from compassion. All too often the end of the journey gains more import than it should and the wise become blind to the road and the method of their passing. Robin Jarvis
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The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance. Jane Austen
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in...
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Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that. Benjamin Franklin
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National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars. Carl Sagan
Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is...
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Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. [He is also a fool.] Robert A. Heinlein
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Do they see the lethal insanity of a race to the brink of oblivion, and then over the edge? Apparently not. If they did, surely they wouldn't be racing to begin with. Or is it a simple failure of imagination? One doesn't like to think such a rudimentary failing could bring about the end, yet... Stephen King
War is ever the folly of the ignorant. But I...
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War is ever the folly of the ignorant. But I have seen much to convince me some wars must be fought, to the bitterest end if need be. Anthony Ryan
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It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth. Alain De Botton
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There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed. Gautama Buddha
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The folly and wisdom of men starts when they stop thinking and start acting. David Benedict Zumbo
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Sometimes, on duty, if one trusts a stranger, one’s nerves are on edge. What if I am making a mistake! Anuradha Bhattacharyya
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I expect nothing of man, and disown the race. The only folly is expecting what is never attained; man is most contemptible when compared with his own pretensions. It is better to laugh at man from outside the universe, than to weep for him within. H.P. Lovecraft
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It is true. Indeed, that is why I dared not speak. I have yearned to be again at the side of my beloved Arianllyn, and my thoughts are with her now. But had I chosen to return, I would ever wonder whether my choice was made through wisdom or following the wishes of my own heart. I see this is as it must be, and the destiny laid upon me. I am content to die here. Lloyd Alexander
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4.10 ANGERAnger makes a dull man witty, But keeps him poor in eternity, A man shrinks when he is angry, And grows in tranquil serenity.[90] - 4When anger flow in the body, You lose your temper — your folly, When distempered — a tragedy, You lose reason — a calamity.[91] - 4 Munindra Misra
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Each dark conjecture came and for a moment settled like a vulture on Bond's shoulder and croaked into his ear that he had been a blind fool. Ian Fleming
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A rat in its stealing behavior may manage to steal gold jewelry and to make a nest with it but that does not in anyway qualify the rat to be a millionaire though it's gold pieces be worth that much. Newton Gatambia
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We are all very much alike in France in this respect; we still remain knights, knights of love and fortune, since God has been abolished whose bodyguard we really were. But nobody can ever get woman out of our hearts; there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her, and shall continue to love her, and go on committing all kinds of follies on her account as long as there is a France on the map of Europe; and even if France were to be wiped off the map, there would always be Frenchmen left. Guy De Maupassant
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As a matter of fact, when it comes to seeing, men display two tendencies: they see what they wish to see, what is useful to them, what is agreeable. The second is the tendency toward inhibition; they do not see what they do not wish to see, what is useless to them, or disagreeable. Unknown
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...and I wonder if there is any way to adequately describe the folly that causes us to undo all the great gifts of both Earth and Heaven. James Lee Burke
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It is certainly impossible to lose respect if you lose out of some stupid discussions. Michael Bassey Johnson
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Worrying about things you cannot control is folly. Focus only on those few things you have any control over, and your life becomes much simpler. Jeffrey Fry
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That, in my opinion, was the most diabolical aspect of those old-time big brains: They would tell their owners, in effect, 'Here is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but we would never do it, of course. It's just fun to think about.' And then, as though in trances, the people would really do it--have slaves fight each other to death in the Colosseum, or burn people alive in the public square for holding opinions which were locally unpopular, or build factories whose only purpose was to kill people in industrial quantities, or to blow up whole cities, and on and on. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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Progressive. n. One who is unable to distinguish between novelty and enlightenment. Ron Brackin
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Progressive thought is blind when it suggests that there can be no anti-white racism or an anti-semitism among the formerly oppressed or the young people in the projects because they themselves have suffered from this evil. They are the victims; they are exempt from the prejudices that affect the majority of the population. But the reverse is true: racism is multiplying at exponential rates among groups and communities, taboos are collapsing, and everything is explained in terms of physical characteristics, identity, purity, and difference. and this is a racism that is all the more certain that it is right because it is regarded as a legitimate reaction on the part of the persecuted. now we see the obsession with the pedigree and the old distinctions derived from slavery being revived, and prejudices accumulating in the name of racism. This is the end of the concept of humanity as union in diversity and the triumph of human species incompatible with each other. Pascal Bruckner
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One endured with humble dignity the consequences of youthful folly. Glen Cook
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The problems you have are there for me to help you solve, not to have with you. Unknown
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The world makes, and hates, bachelors. Unknown
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Everyone has known this condition of mind, though perhaps not all in the same degree; everyone will recognise it as the condition in which he has done brave things with apparent serenity; and everyone reading will say, Fortunate for Ben Hur if the folly which now catches him is but a friendly harlequin with whistle and pointed cap, and not some Violence with a pointed sword pitiless. Unknown
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Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame. Jane Austen
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How can one absolve intelligent men for engaging in arrogant and demented folly? C.R. Strahan
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The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly. Erasmus
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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly. Jonathan Swift
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The Bay of Pigs became a metaphor for feckless folly and failure. Pat Buchanan
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It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself. Epicurus
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When knowledge is limited - it leads to folly... When knowledge exceeds a certain limit, it leads to exploitation. Abu Bakr
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Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced. Ambrose Bierce
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Beauty and folly are old companions. Benjamin Franklin
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One man's folly is another man's wife. Helen Rowland
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To keep your secret is wisdom but to expect others to keep it is folly. Samuel Johnson
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In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause. George Eliot
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All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people. James A. Garfield
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Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance. Pythagoras
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Courts of law, and all the paraphernalia and folly of law cannot be found in a rational state of society. Robert Owen