We Still Need Fools

Festus said with a loud voice, Paul thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad. -- Acts 26:24

Festus thought Paul was a mad man-a fool. But if Paul was a fool, the more such fools we have the better for the world.

"For God's sake," cried Robert Louis Stevenson, "give me a man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!"

Not a fool for lack of brains, but a man who is a fool because he has brains and makes more than common use of them.

The man the world needs today is the man who is fool enough to think new thoughts, to dare new ventures, to attempt what others say can't be done.

"It can't be done," they said, when Cyrus W. Field proposed laying a cable across the Atlantic. People said of his project, "It's only a fools dream." But how much richer the world is today because of that fool's dream!

There is not now any undiscovered continent on the globe such as Columbus discovered when he sailed past the Pillars of Hercules, beyond which no one ever before had been fool enough to venture. But there are yet many undiscovered continents of thought and achievement. We have not yet reached the limit of possibilities in any realm of human activity. We live in a world of inexhaustible resources and possibilities.

Amazing as have been the achievements of the past, we are only at the beginning of things. We still need men bold enough to dare the impossible, to go beyond the Pillars of Hercules that have been set up by the conservative and fearful. The world still needs fools.