A Quote by Francesco Guicciardini

Conspiracies, since they cannot be engaged in without the fellowship of others, are for that reason most perilous; for as most men are either fools or knaves, we run excessive risk in making such folk our companions.

Francesco Guicciardini

Quote Topics

Cannot Companions Either Engaged Excessive Fellowship Folk Fools Knaves Making Men Most Others Our Perilous Reason Risk Run Since Without

Quote Author

Francesco Guicciardini
Italian - Historian
March 6, 1483 - May 22, 1540

Our civilization represses not only "the instincts", not only sexuality, but any form of transcendence. Among one-dimensional men, it is not surprising that someone with an insistent experience of other dimensions, that he cannot entirely deny or forget, will run the risk either of being destroyed by the others, or of betraying what he knows.

R. D. Laing

The world is made up, for the most part, of fools and knaves, both irreconcileable foes to truth.

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

Samuel Butler

Excessive distrust is not less hurtfJul than its opposite. Most men become useless to him who is unwilling to risk being deceived.

Luc de Clapiers

We find that at present the human race is divided politically into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become politicians; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly out-numbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off behind the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare.

T. H. White

Most Men are Cowards, all Men should be Knaves. The Difference lies, as far as I can see, Not in the thing it self, but the Degree.

John Wilmot

You cannot let a fear of failure or a fear of comparison or a fear of judgment stop you from doing what’s going to make you great. You cannot succeed without this risk of failure. You cannot have a voice without the risk of criticism and you cannot love without the risk of loss.

Charlie Day

Physicians are in general the most amiable companions and the best friends, as well as the most learned men I know.

Alexander Pope

Most of us who become experimental physicists do so for two reasons; we love the tools of physics because to us they have intrinsic beauty, and we dream of finding new secrets of nature as important and as exciting as those uncovered by our scientific heroes. But we walk a narrow path with pitfalls on either side. If we spend all our time developing equipment, we risk the appellation of "plumber," and if we merely use the tools developed by others, we risk the censure of our peers for being parasitic.

Luis Walter Alvarez

Love works in miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and stretching the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favouring the passions, destroying reason, and in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy.

Margaret of Valois

It may be remarked in general, that the laugh of men of wit is for the most part but a feint, constrained kind of half-laugh, as such persons are never without some diffidence about them; but that of fools is the most honest, natural, open laugh in the world.

Richard Steele

Our excessive tolerance with regard to suicide is due to the fact that, since the state of mind from which it springs is a general one, we cannot condemn it without condemning ourselves; we are too saturated with it not partly to excuse it.

Emile Durkheim

... most of all the actor will love the boys and girls, the men and women, who sit in the cheapest seats, in the very last row of the top gallery. They have given more than they can afford to come. In the most self-effacing spirit of fellowship they are listening to catch every word, watching to miss no slightest gesture or expression. To save his life the actor cannot help feeling these nearest and dearest. He cannot help wishing to do his best for them. He cannot help loving them best of all.

Minnie Maddern Fiske

The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently: they are most helplessly in its power. The men who are not interested in philosophy absorb its principles from the cultural atmosphere around them-from schools, colleges, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television, etc. Who sets the tone of a culture? A small handful of men: the philosophers. Others follow their lead, either by conviction or by default.

Ayn Rand

The most positive men are the most credulous, since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their falsest flatterer and worst enemy--their own self-love.

Alexander Pope

Because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the addition of other men's praises is most perilous.