Wit & Attitude Quote by Holbrook Jackson

Aphorisms like this don’t flatter the reader; they booby-trap them. “Suffer fools gladly” starts as a pious-sounding injunction, echoing the old biblical phrasing about enduring stupidity with patience. Then Jackson twists the blade: “they may be right.” The line works because it weaponizes humility against the very people most confident they don’t need it. It’s not an argument for celebrating ignorance; it’s a warning about the ego’s talent for mislabeling disagreement as foolishness.

The intent is double. On the surface, it’s etiquette for intellectual life: practice tolerance, keep your temper, don’t turn every conversation into a tribunal. Underneath, it’s a critique of the modern cult of expertise and the reflex to confuse social polish with truth. Jackson suggests that “fool” is often a category error - a name we give to anyone who can’t speak in our dialect of status, education, or taste. The “gladly” is key: not merely endure them, but meet them without the defensive sneer that makes you miss the point.

Context matters. Jackson, an English writer and critic active in the early 20th century, lived through periods when mass politics, new media, and public argument made “the crowd” an object of elite suspicion. His jab lands in that atmosphere: it’s a reminder that insight can arrive poorly packaged, and that certainty is frequently the real fool. The punchline doesn’t redeem stupidity; it indicts arrogance.