A fool is an automaton, a machine with springs which turn him about always in one manner, and preserve his equilibrium. He is ever the same, and never changes. If you have seen him once you have seen him at every moment and period of his life. He is at best but as the lowing ox or the whistling blackbird. He is fixed and obstinate, I may say, by nature. What appears least in him is his soul; that has neither activity nor energy; it reposes.
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FOOL, n. A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscience, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the platitude and the circle of the sciences. He created patriotism and taught the nations war — founded theology, philosophy, law, medicine and Chicago. He established monarchical and republican government. He is from everlasting to everlasting — such as creation's dawn beheld he fooleth now. In the morning of time he sang upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the procession of being. His grandmotherly hand was warmly tucked-in the set sun of civilization, and in the twilight he prepares Man's evening meal of milk-and-morality and turns down the covers of the universal grave. And after the rest of us shall have retired for the night of eternal oblivion he will sit up to write a history of human civilization.
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In the course of your life you will be continually encountering fools. There are simply too many to avoid.
We can classify people as fools by the following rubric: when it comes to practical life, what should matter is getting long term results, and getting the work done in as efficient and creative a manner as possible.
That should be the supreme value that guides people’s action. But fools carry with them a different scale of values.
They place more importance on short-term matters – grabbing immediate money, getting attention from the public or media, and looking good. They are ruled by their ego and insecurities.
They tend to enjoy drama and political intrigue for their own sake. When they criticize, they always emphasize matters that are irrelevant to the overall picture or argument.
They are more interested in their career and position than in the truth. You can distinguish them by how little they get done, or by how hard they make it for others to get results.
They lack a certain common sense, getting worked up about things that are not really important while ignoring problems that will spell doom in the long term.
The natural tendency with fools is to lower yourself to their level.
They annoy you, get under your skin, and draw you into a battle.
In the process, you feel petty and confused. You lose a sense of what is really important.
You can’t win an argument or get them to see your side or change their behavior, because rationality and results don’t matter to them.
You simply waste valuable time and emotional energy.
In dealing with fools you must adopt the following philosophy: they are simply a part of life, like rocks or furniture.
All of us have foolish sides, moments in which we lose our heads and think more of our ego or short-term goals.
It is human nature. Seeing this foolishness within you, you can then accept it in others.
This will allow you to smile at their antics, to tolerate their presence as you would a silly child, and to av
According to mainstream non-religious sources, a fool is one who too readily accepts improbable assertions from questionable sources on insufficient evidence. So it is no wonder that the Bible and the Qur’an both use the opposite definition, so that the wise are called foolish and only fools are wise. By definition, one would have to be a fool to be fooled by either book. As for “putting things right”, the only way to do that is to identify unsupported assertions and examine what the facts really indicate, and that always goes against faith.
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Progress is a possibility for the animal: it can be broken in, tamed and trained; but it is not a possibility for the fool, because the fool thinks he has nothing to learn. It is his place to dictate to others and put them right, and so it is impossible to reason with him. He will laugh you to scorn in saying that what he does not understand is not a meaningful proposition. 'Why don't I understand it, then?', he asks you, with marvellous impudence. To tell him it is because he is a fool would only be taken as an insult, so there is nothing you can say in reply. Everybody else sees it quite clearly, but he will never realize it.<p>Here then, at the outset, is a potent secret which is inaccessible to the majority of people; a secret which they will never guess and which it would be useless to tell them: the secret of their own stupidity.
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