Human Folly Quotes

• There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.

  Carl Sagan

  Space, Earth Day, Tiny

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.29, Ballantine Books

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• I can measure the motion of bodies but I cannot measure human folly.

  Isaac Newton

  Assessment, Personality, Body

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• Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Race, Skills

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Impact of Science on Society”, p.88, Routledge

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• There are three things in life which are real: God, human folly and laughter. Since the first two are beyond our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third.

  John F. Kennedy

  Success, Laughter, Real

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• History, in fact, is no more than a list of the crimes of humanity, human follies and accidents

  Edward Gibbon

  Historical, Humanity, Lists

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• Prayer girds human weakness with divine strength, turns human folly into heavenly wisdom, and gives to troubled mortals the peace of God. We know not what prayer can do.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Prayer, Giving, Weakness

  C. H. Spurgeon (2006). “Morning by Morning”, p.285, Hendrickson Publishers

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• History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive. It knows the names of the king's bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly.

  Jean-Henri Fabre

  Kings, Food, Names

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• What you mean by 'peace' is nothing more than the endless repetition of human folly.

  Hayao Miyazaki

  Peace, Mean, Endless

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• The Crusades - the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.

  David Hume

  Age, Signals, Crusades

  David Hume (2016). “The History of England, vol. 1~6, Completed: Revision of Great Book”, p.234, VM eBooks

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• Is there in all the history of human folly a greater fool than a clergymen in politics?

  Pat Robertson

  Politics, Fool, Clergymen

  "Timeless wisdom of Mr. Dooley" by Mark Shields, www.cnn.com. March 1, 2004.

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• It begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.

  Steven Pinker

  Men, Illusion, Skepticism

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.209, Penguin

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• [Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth. The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue's game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying, like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions!

  Adam Sedgwick

  Horse, Science, Games

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• Human folly does not impede the turning of the stars.

  Tom Robbins

  Stars, Doe, Folly

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.243, Bantam

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