On this day in 1536, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam died at Basel. He was 69 years old. This year is the 500th anniversary of the printing of The Praise of Folly, the famous essay addressed to ...

No one understood this better than Desiderius Erasmus, who in 1509 penned the brilliant essay The Praise of Folly.

Maybe if he had read Erasmus’ “In Praise of Folly” he would realize that throwing around authors’ names does not, in fact, make you enlightened. Newman has offered us false profundity masquerading as ...

To Erasmus, these were the tactics of Folly: the path to political ruin, social unrest, and cultural rot. There is truth in Machiavelli’s dictum that it is better to be feared than loved.

Following the advice of the very wise Erasmus (who used this article’s title before me in 1509), time devoted to so frivolous subject as folly should be limited.