Folly

I didn’t invent the rainy day, man. I just own the best umbrella.

A speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware and an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business , and turns into a racquet.

A sucker is born every minute.

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.

There is such a gap between how one lives and how one ought to live that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation: For a man who wishes to profess goodness at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not good.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

They celebrate diversity with ruthless single-mindedness.

The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

The more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.

He is foolish to blame the sea who is shipwrecked twice

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

“Why the hell would I say anything?” Ove points at him with exasperation. “You! You want to buy a French car. Don’t worry so much about others, you have enough problems of your own.”

‘Despair, or folly?’ said Gandalf. ‘It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy!

But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived –for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child’s model or a slave’s flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength.

A fool, but an honest fool, you remain, Peregrin Took. Wiser ones might have done worse in such a pass.

but for the most part they fell into evils and follies. Many became enamoured of the Darkness and the black arts; some were given over wholly to idleness and ease, and some fought among themselves, until they were conquered in their weakness by the wild men.

Only a fool is not afraid.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.