A Quote by Isaac Barrow

Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt.

Isaac Barrow

Quote Topics

Bad Because Being Causes Credulity Exempt Extreme Folly Ignorance Incredulity Itself Kind Like Mistake Obstinacy Other Rudeness Sort Very Which Wisdom Worst

Quote Author

Isaac Barrow
English - Mathematician
1630 - May 4, 1677

Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism; which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly.

William Hazlitt

To tell your own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly.

Samuel Johnson

Grant folly's prayers that hinder folly's wish, And serve the ends of wisdom.

George Eliot

Given a choice between a folly and a sacrament, one should always choose the folly—because we know a sacrament will not bring us closer to god and there’s always the chance that a folly will.

Desiderius Erasmus

Politeness is not always a sign of wisdom; but the want of it always leaves room for a suspicion of folly, if folly and imprudence are the same.

Walter Savage Landor

When ignorance is bliss, there's folly in wisdom.

David Eddings

The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Where lives the man that has not tried How mirth can into folly glide, And folly into sin!

Walter Scott

You can have no wise laws nor free enforcement of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people -- and, alas, their folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive.

William Allen White

No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.

Winston Churchill

There are as many fools at a university as anywhere? But their folly,I admit, has a certain stampthe stamp of university training, if you like. It is trained folly.