Against Stupidity

Sunday, May 10, 2020 – Against Stupidity

It is a wise man who knows where courage ends and stupidity begins. ~ Jerome Cady

In politics stupidity is not a handicap. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way. ~ Albert Camus

Stupidity combined with arrogance and a huge ego will get you a long way. ~ Chris Lowe

Stupidity talks, vanity acts. ~ Victor Hugo

I am a student of stupidity. I am a political reporter. ~ P. J. O’Rourke

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it. ~ Laurence J. Peter

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Sometimes a man wants to be stupid, if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids. ~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphood was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so – but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence, the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Stupidity trumps Machiavelli almost every time when you are looking for an explanation. ~ Robert Foster Bennett

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. ~ Oscar Wilde

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. ~ Margaret Atwood, Surfacing

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, from human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols. ~ Aldous Huxley

To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Stupidity is a talent for misconception. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Seriousness is stupidity sent to college. ~ P. J. O’Rourke

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity. ~ Frank Leahy

If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out? ~ Will Rogers

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

So much of existence is so boring. To have little moments of stupidity is always welcome. ~ Kurt Braunohler

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health, are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost. ~ Gustave Flaubert

In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that He did not also limit his stupidity. ~ Konrad Adenauer

Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain. ~ Friedrich Schiller

I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise. ~ Blaise Pascal

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn’t misuse it. ~ Pope John Paul II

But if we reason it out simply and not try to be one bit fancy, then what sort of pride can you possibly take, or what’s the sense of ever having it, if man is poorly put together as a physiological type and if the enormous majority of the human race is brutal, stupid, and profoundly unhappy? ~ Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Irony is wasted on the stupid. ~ Oscar Wilde

There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst. ~ Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how. ~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance. ~ Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it. ~ Edith Sitwell

Stupidity is infinitely more fascinating that intelligence. Intelligence has its limits while stupidity has none. ~ Claude Chabrol

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. ~ Albert Einstein

In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. ~ George Carlin

No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it. ~ Fernando Pessoa

People get a kick out of my stupidity. ~ Dolly Parton

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe. ~ Frank Zappa

Scientists will eventually stop flailing around with solar power and focus their efforts on harnessing the only truly unlimited source of energy on the planet: stupidity. I predict that in the future, scientists will learn how to convert stupidity into clean fuel. ~ Scott Adams

Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity. ~ Edwin Land

No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity. ~ Jacques Yves Cousteau

Everything depends on whether we have for opponents those French tricksters or those daring rascals, the English. I prefer the English. Frequently their daring can only be described as stupidity. In their eyes it may be pluck and daring. ~ Manfred von Richthofen

We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves. ~ Paul Gauguin

I can have incredible self-discipline. But see, I think it’s obviously a form of stupidity. ~ John Malkovich

There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it. ` Stephen Vizinczey

A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand. ~ Bertrand Russell

When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. ~ Jonathan Swift

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

Alcohol gives you infinite patience for stupidity. ~ Sammy Davis, Jr.

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. ~ Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism. ~ Oscar Wilde

Idleness is the stupidity of the body, and stupidity is the idleness of the mind. ~ Johann G. Seume

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity. ~ Remy de Gourmont