Just Stupidity

Sunday, November 16, 2014 – Just Stupidity

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

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

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

Stupidity is a talent for misconception. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

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

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

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

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

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

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

In politics stupidity is not a handicap. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stupidity talks, vanity acts. ~ Victor Hugo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have met with some of them – very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools. ~ Giacomo Casanova

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, A History of Western Philosophy

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

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

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

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