Foolish Quotes

For April Fool's Day, I googled quotes with the word fool. (Quotes "by" fools may have been interesting,too. Maybe next year.) Here are some wise words about foolishness, and some not necessarily wise, just fun. Some are quite timely to the days in which we live.

Pierre Gallois: "If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no one dares criticize it." (This applies to the media, as well.)

Unknown: "Fools rush in where fools have been before." (deja vu)

Chinese Proverb: "He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever."

Solomon Short: "I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." (and the web)

Plato: "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."

Frank Dane: "Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything."

Joseph Roux: "A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool." (I love this one.)

Anatole France: "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

P. J. O'Rourke: "A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them."

Josh Billings: "The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way."

Horace: "Mix a little foolishness with your prudence: It's good to be silly at the right moment." ("A little nonsense now and then is relished by the best of men." ~Louis Untermeyer, I think)

Charles Haddon Spurgeon: "Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Whenever I hear people talking about "liberal ideas," I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions."

Cato the Elder: "Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."

Charles Simmons: "Ridicule is the first and last argument of fools."

Hunter S. Thompson: "No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master."