A Quote by Michel de Montaigne

Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.

Michel de Montaigne

Quote Topics

Adapt Cannot Foolish People Wise Wise People

Quote Author

Michel de Montaigne
French - Philosopher
February 28, 1533 - September 13, 1592

Social opinion is like a sharp knife. There are foolish people who regard it only with terror, and dare not touch or meddle with it. There are more foolish people, who, in rashness or defiance, seize it by the blade, and get cut and mangled for their pains. And there are wise people, who grasp it discreetly and boldly by the handle, and use it to carve out their own purposes.

Anna Brownell Jameson

Philosophers of genius, children, and the people are equally wise - because they ask equally foolish questions. Foolish to a civilized man who has a well-furnished European apartment with an excellent toilet and a well-furnished dogma.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

The wise people are in New York because the foolish went there first, that's the way the wise men make a living.

Finley Peter Dunne

The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.

Edmund Burke

Only if you are afraid of looking foolish, and I would have looked far more foolish if I persisted with an erroneous belief.' Eragon said. Why, little one, you just said something wise!'Saphira teased.

Christopher Paolini

Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Impatience can cause wise people to do foolish things.

Janette Oke

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.

Oscar Wilde

Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.

Charles Caleb Colton

All things and all people in life have to sink or swim on their own merits, not their reputation; that just as a wise man can say a foolish thing, a fool can say something wise.

Vincent Bugliosi

Coffee renders many foolish people temporarily capable of wise actions

Baron de Montesquieu

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.

W. Somerset Maugham

We may admire people for being wise, but we like them best when they are foolish.

Mary Russell Mitford

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Anatole France

I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.