Sermon quotes on foolishness
Augustine of Hippo
We were ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent; we are set free by the foolishness of God.
Quoted in J. F. Shaw. On Christian Doctrine”, Courier Corporation, 2009, p.10.
Alistair Begg
The foolishness of the cross is the wisdom of God and the wisdom of God is powerful in its impact.
Warren Buffett
A fool and his money are soon invited everywhere.
George W. Bush
There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.
Christina, Queen of Sweden
God has neither form nor shape under which we can know Him; when he speaks of Himself in metaphors and similes, He is adapting Himself to our foolishness, our limited capacity.
Clement of Alexandria
Therefore let us repent and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from licentiousness to self-control, from injustice to righteousness, from godlessness to God.
Michel de Montaigne
O human creature,you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce.
Albert Einstein
Only two things are infinite — the universe and human stupidity and I’m not sure about the former.
Thomas Fuller
He that has no fools, knaves nor beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning.
Anatole France
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Quoted in Ralph G. Nichols and Thomas R. Lewis, Listening and Speaking:A Guide to Effective Oral Communication 1954.
Louie Giglio
It is because of our foolishness that we forget who God is.
Louie Giglio
We get into captivity because of our foolishness and we are more foolish that we want to admit.
George Herbert
None is a fool always, everyone sometimes.
Ben Jonson
He who is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
Søren Kierkegaard
It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven.
Abraham Lincoln
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln: Wisdom & Wit, Peter Pauper Press, 1982.
Martin Luther
He who believes his doctrine to be perfectly right and true has only to lift his hands and touch his ears and discover they are the long furry ears of a donkey.
Wilson Mizner
A fellow who is always declaring that he’s no fool, usually has his suspicions.
Alexander Pope
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
An Essay on Criticism 1711, l.625
Will Rogers
A fool and his money are soon elected.
Sophocles
And if my present deeds are foolish in thy sight, it may be that a foolish judge arraigns my folly.
The Tragedies
Source Unknown
Better to be thought a fool—than to open your mouth and prove it.
R.C. Sproul
As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of foolishness.
Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2011 p.5.
Charles Spurgeon
Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.
Jeremy Taylor
What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!
Henry David Thoreau
Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is nothing else but this.
Paul David Tripp
Foolishness is more than being stupid, that deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance.
Mark Twain
April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
Pudd’hhead Wilson
Mark Twain
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Following the Equator, 1897.
Mark Twain
Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Oscar Wilde
Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
The Happy Prince and Other Tales, 2015.
Albert Barnes
There is nothing more foolish than an act of wickedness; there is no wisdom equal to that of obeying God.
Francis de Sales
Nothing is more like a wise man than a fool who holds his tongue.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
Desiderius Erasmus
Fools are without number.
Thomas Fuller
He that has no fools, knaves nor beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning.
Martin Luther King Jr.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther
Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they to God’s Word, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health; or to the gifts of the mind, such as understanding, skill, wisdom! Yet men toil for them day and night, and take no rest. Therefore God commonly gives riches to foolish people to whom he gives nothing else.
Woodrow Kroll
Only a fool thinks he can fool God.
Anne Wilson Schaef
When we insist on doing too much, we are not only inflicting the damage of this choice on ourselves, we are sharing this damage with those we love the most.
John Tillotson
He who provides for this life but takes not care for eternity is wise for a moment but a fool forever.
Voltaire
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
Mark Twain
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Following the Equator (1897)
Augustine of Hippo
Yet even of [the souls as have the catholic faith and seem to have good works in the church of God], it is said, ‘Five are wise, and five are foolish.’
—Augustine, qtd. in The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture