Quote of the Day (Desiderius Erasmus, on ‘Conniving at Your Friends' Vices’)

“Conniving at your friends' vices, passing them over, being blind to them and deceived by them, even loving and admiring your friends' egregious faults as if they were virtues—does not this seem pretty close to folly?”— Dutch monk and Renaissance scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536), In Praise of Folly (1509)

It also seems pretty close to complicity in an emerging American autocracy.

Quote of the Day (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, on Politics, Fear and Folly)

“In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.”—English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge (1836)

 

In the U.S., what began as one man’s fear—that warning citizens to take elementary precautions against a pandemic might damage the stock market and, hence, his electoral prospects this November—led not only to folly, but also tragedy: an economy that, despite his wishes, crashed anyway—and now, more than 110,000 deaths from COVID-19.

Quote of the Day (Miguel de Cervantes, Comparing Discretion and Folly)

"Folly is wont to have more followers and comrades than discretion." —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605)