"A young man sees a terribly venomous snake in his small village. Nervous, he watches the snake carefully until it leaves.The young man follows the snake into the forest. He clears the branches out of its path and helps it over obstacles. He even works to keep it fed. Many nights pass and still the young man continues to follow the snake. He even follows it into the sands of the great desert. In the desert, the snake eventually grows hungry. It turns and bites the young man, its poison quickly working its way into his system. Finally curious, the snake looks at the boy as he lays dying and asks, "Why were you foolish enough to follow me all the way out into the desert?" The boy looks back and replies, "Did I follow you? I thought I was leading you away from everyone else..." And then he died."

"Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?"

"When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool."

"How does the fool build his paradise?—out of the crumbling bricks of illusion and the watery cement of hope."

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

"No Man is so much a Fool as not to have Wit enough sometimes to be a Knave ; nor any so cunning a Knave, as not to have the Weakness sometimes to play the Fool."

"Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool - and that I had been happy in being this or that kind of fool. I can see too that often I changed from being one kind of fool into another kind fo fool I was happy about it because I didn't know what had happened."

"Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results."

"He had what my brother Walt used to call his Eureka Look, and he wanted to tell me that he thought he finally knew why Christ said to call no man Fool. (It was a problem that had been baffling him all week, because it sounded to him like a piece of advice, I believe, more typical of Emily Post than of someone busily about his Father's Business.) Christ had said it, Seymour thought I'd want to know, because there are no fools. Dopes, yes—fools, no."

"Il n'y a point de sots si incommodes que ceux qui ont de l'esprit."

"Il y a des gens niais qui se connaissent, et qui emploient habilement leur niaiserie."

"Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue."

"A discerning man keeps wisdom in view, but a fool's eyes wander to the ends of the earth."

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction."

"No creature smarts so little as a fool."

"Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples."

"For, as blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense."

"I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it."

"There are three kinds of fools in this world, fools proper, educated fools and rich fools. The world persists because of the folly of these fools."

"The guy goes into the hospital, okay? His wife's just had a baby and he can't wait to see them both. So he meets the doctor and he says, 'Oh, Doc, I've been so worried. How are they?' And the doctor smiles and says, 'They're fine. Just fine. Your wife's delivered a healthy baby boy and they're both in tip-top form. You're one lucky guy.' So the guy rushes into the maternity ward with his flowers. But it's empty. His wife's bed is empty. 'Doc?' He says and turns around and the doctor and all the nurses wave their arms and scream in his face. 'April fools! Your wife's dead and the baby's a spastic!!'" (he executes an asylum orderly with a gunshot to the head) "Get it? Oh what a senseless waste of human life!"

"Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs."

"A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married."

"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away."

"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell."

"The greatest fools are ofttimes more clever than the men who laugh at them."

"All men are fools, if truth be told, but the ones in motley are more amusing than the ones with crowns."

"If people keep opposing you when you are right, you think them fools; and after a time, right or wrong, you think them fools simply because they oppose you."

"There can be little doubt that it is the fools, and not the wise, who govern the world. While the wise are considering, the fools act; while the wise investigate, the fools have made up their minds; by the time the wise have discovered, the fools have made arrangements, and the wise, for the sake of law and order, or, if not, for the sake of peace and quietness, are obliged to give way."

"The foolish have us far more in their power than the wise."

"There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better.""

"Hope maketh fol man ofte blenkes."

"The world is filled with fools, but none of them considers himself one, or tries not to be one."

"It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."

"Fools are always at the bottom of the food chain."

"We assemble parliaments and councils, to have the benefit of their collected wisdom; but we necessarily have, at the same time, the inconvenience of their collected passions, prejudices, and private interests. By the help of these, artful men overpower their wisdom, and dupe its possessors; and if we may judge by the acts, arrêts, and edicts, all the world over, for regulating commerce, an assembly of great men is the greatest fool upon earth."

"A wise man changes his mind sometimes, but a fool never. To change your mind is the best evidence you have one. The last redoubt holding out for me was the year-day principle (on which I had written a defense in 1972 for the Southern Publishing Association Daniel volume which was published in 1978). This collapsed when I handled hundreds of books of commentary on Revelation in the Library of Congress stacks and found that the respective authors had in many cases suggested dates that seemed appropriate for their own time but ridiculous later. It became clear that we, as Adventists, had done the same as our predecessors."

"Every man is made a fool through his own wisdom."

"A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair's breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool."

"For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool."

"I can tell you that only a fool destroys useful things merely because he doesn’t like them."

"'Tis hard if all is false that I advance, A fool must now and then be right by chance."

"Someone who believes in all the stories of the Baal Shem Tov and the other mystics and holy men is a fool; someone who looks at any single story and says “That one could not be true” is a heretic."

"Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools."