Franz Grillparzer Quotes

Luck is merely an illusion, trusted by the ignorant and chased by the foolish.

I don't believe in storks. I know they don't deliver babies; they deliver pickles.

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

I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.

The great enemy of reason, virtue and religion, the Multitude, that numerous piece of monstrosity.

When I left NSA, it was with an understanding that you can never underestimate the power of large numbers of stupid people.

Horseshoes are lucky. Horses have four bits of lucky nailed to their feet. They should be the luckiest animals in the world. They should rule the country. They should win all their horse races, at least. 'In the fifth race today, every single horse was first equal...one horse threw a shoe came in third...the duck was ninth...and five ran.'

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

It is a fool's privilege to laugh at an intelligent man.

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.

Of all the animals which fly in the air, walk on the land, or swim in the sea, from Paris to Peru, from Japan to Rome, the most foolish animal in my opinion is man.

There are idiots in every crowd.

Some people have a gift for stupidity, an almost mystic ability to withstand any form of logic.

I was told once by some country people that a magician should never tell his dreams because the telling will make them come true. But I say that is great nonsense.

A collection of a hundred great brains makes one big fathead.

As they say in my country, the only thing that separates us from the animals is mindless superstition and pointless ritual.

Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.

Even when the facts are available, most people seem to prefer the legend, and refuse to believe the truth when it in any way dislodges the myth.

The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?’

I come from the Town of Stupidity; it lieth about four degrees beyond the City of Destruction.

It's extremely unlucky to be superstitious, for no other reason than it is always unlucky to be colossally stupid.

Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.

As long as you have markets, you'll have excesses. People went crazy with tulip bulbs. They went crazy with the South Sea Bubble, they went crazy internet stocks, they went crazy with the uranium stocks back when I was first getting started. I mean, you know, you're not going to change the human animal. And the human animal really doesn't get a lot smarter.

Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm indignation, together with ignorance, are the true sources of enthusiasm.

Astrology is a sickness, not a science ... It is a tree under the shade of which all sorts of superstitions thrive.