Laudator Temporis Acti

Simonides, fragment 37, lines 37-38, quoted by Plato, Protagoras 346c (tr. David A. Campbell):

For the generation of fools is numberless.

τῶν γὰρ ἠλιθίων / ἀπείρων γενέθλα.

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), Zibaldone, tr. Kathleen Baldwin et al. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), pp. 1730-1731 (Z 4058-4059):

If we take a good look at life, at the actions and decisions of men, we will see that for ten things done well, which are advantageous and useful to those who do them, there are thousands of things done badly, which are disadvantageous, completely useless, self-damaging, more or less, contrary to wisdom, to what a wise and perfectly prudent man would have decided or done, finding himself in that situation. We will see that most of the time men do not deliberate as mature adults when there is need of maturity, they do not recognize the importance of the things that they have to decide or do, do not have the least suspicion that it is useful or necessary that they consult other people on the matter, and do not enter into any consultation at all. I speak of great men and ordinary ones alike, [4059] of public and private matters, of things of relatively little or great importance. It is certain that the affairs of any men, which go badly, do not go that way (except rarely) without some fault or insufficiency on their own part. Now how then can looking for what is useful or advantageous to them be the rule for guessing at their actions and decisions? The number of absolutely stupid people, or of those inept for tasks or for matters that they have to manage, although they might be determined in other ways, or of those who are well suited to the task in hand, but not perfect, or of decisions and actions badly taken and badly done, useless and damaging to those who have done them or taken them, inappropriate to the matter in hand, or that in the end prove in the given circumstances not to have been the best; the number, I repeat, of such actions, decisions, and such men surpasses and has always surpassed by a long way that of the actions, decisions, and men who are their opposites, as appears from all ancient and modern stories of civil and military and private life, and from the observation of life as well as private and public events daily.

Thanks to Kevin Muse for drawing my attention to an Italian proverb:

La mamma dei cretini è sempre incinta.