Top 90 Folly Quotes

At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.

There is perhaps no surer mark of folly, than to attempt to correct natural infirmities of those we love.

All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.

When knowledge is limited – it leads to folly… When knowledge exceeds a certain limit, it leads to exploitation.

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.

We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer for his folly, selfishness and tyranny; but to assert that he deserved to suffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language but to any healthy moral sense.

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental.

I only did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler.

We should never rush into folly just because other nations are practicing it.

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend’s folly.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

Those who realize their folly are not true fools.

To be bowed by grief is folly; Naught is gained by melancholy; Better than the pain of thinking, Is to steep the sense in drinking.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

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.

The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

Courts of law, and all the paraphernalia and folly of law cannot be found in a rational state of society.

Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.

Always the cat remains a little beyond the limits we try to set for him in our blind folly.

To me, it’s the folly of man to make God human.

Fear nothing but what thy industry may prevent; be confident of nothing but what fortune cannot defeat; it is no less folly to fear what is impossible to be avoided than to be secure when there is a possibility to be deprived.

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.

His foe was folly and his weapon wit.

Of all the passions of mankind, the love of novelty most rules the mind. In search of this, from realm to realm we roam. Our fleets come loaded with every folly home.

The Steps to Folly as well as Sin are gradual, and almost imperceptible, and when we are once on the Decline, we go down without taking notice on’t.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.

The Bay of Pigs became a metaphor for feckless folly and failure.

The right of property holds good in all society; but in the West, ethics invade the personal life in a manner unknown to the East, so much so that the Oriental stands agape at our folly, knowing well that every man brings different instincts and ideas into the world with him.

‘Monkeys’ is made up of nine short stories that tell an overall story. ‘Folly’ is a series of vignettes all put together to tell a larger story. In ‘Lust and Other Stories,’ there are nine stories – three, three, three; the beginnings of love, the middles, and the afters.

I don’t blame anyone but myself for the kind of parts I got. To blame external circumstances is absolute folly.

We would like the rest of the world to look up to American democracy. So when there is this kind of folly taking place, it makes it difficult for other rational nations to look up to American democracy.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

It may be assumed as an axiom that Providence has never gifted any political party with all of political wisdom or blinded it with all of political folly.

According to the Stoics, all vice was resolvable into folly: according to the Christian principle, it is all the effect of weakness.

A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.

Let the politicians debate equal pay and pursue the folly of a war on women in America.

How arrogant – how very far from humility – would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess? Hope for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly – that’s not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible.

Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.

All the best novels are about one thing: how we go on. The characters must survive the fallout of their own cowardice, folly, denial or misguided passion. They squander what matters most, and still they pick up the pieces.

Music is made one of Satan’s most attractive agencies to ensnare souls; but, when turned to a good account, it is a blessing. When abused, it leads the unconsecrated to pride, vanity, and folly.

This Old Testament – containing error, folly, absurdity and immorality – is by English statute law declared to be of divine authority, a blasphemy – if there were anyone to be blasphemed – blacker and more insolent than any word ever written or penned by the most hotheaded Freethinker.

It behooves every American to encourage home manufactures, that our oppressors may feel through their pockets the effects of their blind folly.

Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of.

The Lord had been very gracious, and spoke peace to me in the time of my distress, and I now most ungratefully turned again to folly; at times I felt sharp reproof, but I did not get low enough to cry for help.

Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.

To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!

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.

It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

Away with that folly that her rights would be detrimental to her character – that if she were recognized as the equal to a man she would cease to be a woman!

I’ve lived in Washington now for 44 years, and that’s a lot of folly to witness up close. Whatever confidence and optimism I felt towards the central government when I got here on January 1, 1970 has pretty much dissipated at the hands of the government.

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.

Although it has been said by men of more wit than wisdom, and perhaps more malice than either, that women are naturally incapable of acting prudently, or that they are necessarily determined to folly, I must by no means grant it.

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.

At times it is folly to hasten at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time.

But I think I can sincerely declare that I cheerfully submit myself to every odious name for conscience’ sake; and from my soul I despise all those whose guilt, malice, or folly has made them my foes.

When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?

It is always right to detect a fraud, and to perceive a folly; but it is very often wrong to expose either. A man of business should always have his eyes open, but must often seem to have them shut.

I too once thought of producing a musical play on Tyagaraja. People fell at my feet, saying please don’t commit such a folly.

Fanatics, as a class, have far more zeal than intellect and are fanatics only because they have. There can be no fanaticism but where there is more passion than reason; and hence, in the nature of things, movements originating in it run down in a short time by their folly and extravagance.

The vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashion, and placing value on ourselves by them is one of the most childish pieces of folly.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

By isolating the issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, climate change, environment, governance, economics, catastrophe and whatever other problems the present embodies or the future may bring, science fiction can do what Dickens and Sinclair did: make real the consequences of social injustice or human folly.

Early in my business career I learned the folly of worrying about anything. I have always worked as hard as I could, but when a thing went wrong and could not be righted, I dismissed it from my mind.

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.

Picking winners among the many young companies seeking money is a tough business, even for the most sophisticated investors. Indeed, most professionally run venture funds lose money. For individuals, it’s pure folly. Buy a lottery ticket instead. Your chance of winning is likely to be higher.

For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people.

Speculative markets have always been vulnerable to illusion. But seeing the folly in markets provides no clear advantage in forecasting outcomes, because changes in the force of the illusion are difficult to predict.

It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door.

I started out in pre-law. I was going to go to law school. And I saw a production of ‘Tally’s Folly’ that spring term. I took a theater class that term and auditioned for ‘Harvey’ at the end of the summer, and I was in a play every semester after that.

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors.

And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.

Each is under the most sacred obligation not to squander the material committed to him, not to sap his strength in folly and vice, and to see at the least that he delivers a product worthy the labor and cost which have been expended on him.

For the subtlest folly proceeds from the subtlest wisdom.

Something in the human psyche confuses beauty with the right to be loved. The briefest glance at human folly reveals that good looks and worthiness operate independently. Yet countless socializing forces, from Aunt Clara to the latest perfume ad, reinforce beliefs like ‘If I were pretty enough, I would be loved.’

The preserve of ambition and folly in pursuit of illusion, or delusion.

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.

I think it’s a lovely idea, but it will not pass the Congress. I live in a world of realities. The policy of our country is that we can drill our way to independence. I think that’s a march to folly.

But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to do. It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more self-reliant than we have been.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.

What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal.