Popular quotes about Stupidity! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Well they are very frightening for me because their stupidity is so flat. You look into the eyes of a chicken and you lose yourself in a completely flat, frightening stupidity. They are like a great metaphor for me... I kind of love chicken, but they frighten me more than any other animal.
Werner HerzogThere is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I suppose.
Oscar WildeThere is no limit to stupidity. - Space itself is said to be bounded by its own curvature, but stupidity continues beyond infinity.
Gene WolfeI like silly things. I think that "silly-stupid" or "stupid-smart" might be my philosophy, which is to combine a veneer of intelligence with an undercurrent of crass stupidity. Sometimes that stupidity is in the form of the actual joke that's being told, or it could be in the way the joke is told. Like, repetition is really stupid, but it's really funny. Or it could be that the punchline itself is stupid.
Michael ShowalterI wish I could do whatever I liked behind the curtain of โmadnessโ. Then: Iโd arrange flowers, all day long, Iโd paint; pain, love and tenderness, I would laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say: โPoor thing, sheโs crazy!โ (Above all I would laugh at my own stupidity.) I would build my world which while I lived, would be in agreement with all the worlds. The day, or the hour, or the minute that I lived would be mine and everyone elseโs - my madness would not be an escape from โrealityโ.
Frida KahloThat's our mirror. Every dip, every crash, every bubble that's burst, a testament to our brilliant stupidity. This one gave us the railroads. This one the Internet. This one the slave trade. And if we hope to do anything about saving the environment, or getting to other worlds, we'll need a bubble for that too. Everything I've ever done in my life worth anything has been done in a bubble: in a state of extreme hope and trust and stupidity.
Lucy PrebbleIf God were to exist for the entire humanity, he would be profoundly vile, as he allows the existence of unfathomable sin, stupidity, madness, and misery for no reason than his own despicable enjoyment. God exists though, not for all humanity, but for a one chosen man - a philosopher - who is bound to answer the greatest philosophical question, the question about the nature of the questioner's existence, which progressively quenches the divine vanity.
Kedar JoshiMost people are so frightened of the name of mathematics that they are ready, quite unaffectedly, to exaggerate their own mathematical stupidity.
G. H. HardyFirmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.
H. L. MenckenI have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.
Hermann HesseAny real New Yorker is a you-name-it-we-have-it-snob whose heart brims with sympathy for the millions of unfortunates who through misfortune, misguidedness or pure stupidity live anywhere else in the world.
Russell LynesTo say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.
Michel de MontaigneWhoever looks at America will see: the ship is powered by stupidity, corruption, or prejudice.
Johann MostI am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity [Wellesley] stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word. How marvelous it would have been to go to a women's college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.
Nora EphronIf all people learned to think in the non Aristotelian manner of quantum mechanics, the world would change so radically that most of what we call "stupidity" and even a great deal of what we consider "insanity" might disappear, and the "intractable" problems of war, poverty and injustice would suddenly seem a great deal closer to solution.
Alfred KorzybskiI am not a perfect being. . . . I have more faults than I know what to do with. I have a naughty temper. I am stubborn, impatient of hindrances and of stupidity. I have not in the truest sense a Christian spirit. I am naturally a fighter. I am lazy. I put off till tomorrow what I might better do today. I do not feel that I have been compensated for the two senses I lack. I have worked hard for all the senses I have got, and always I beg for more.
Helen KellerAll happiness is a work of art: the smallest error falsifies it, the slightest hesitation alters it, the least heaviness spoils it, the slightest stupidity brutalizes it.
Marguerite YourcenarDoubt is my boon companion, the faithful St. Bernard ever at my side. Whether writing essays or just going about daily life, I am constantly second-guessing myself. My mind is filled with 'yes, buts,' 'so whats?' and other skeptical rejoinders. I am forever monitoring myself for traces of folly, insensitivity, arrogance, false humility, cruelty, stupidity, immaturity and, guess what, I keep finding examples. Age has not made me wiser, except maybe in retrospect.
Phillip LopateThere are some forms of stupidity that one must be highly intelligent and educated to achieve.
J. BudziszewskiStupidity is like bumping into a wall all the time. After a while you get tired of it and try to look the situation over and see if thereโs a doorway somewhere. I think most people eventually do look for the doorway and stop bumping into the wall
Robert Anton WilsonAnybody who is stupid enough often stumbles on an effect that could never be thought up by the most brilliant. I suspect that there is a thing which you might call the genius of stupidity.
Elizabeth Burgoyne CorbettI have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who've made a commercialized fetish of the culture's stupidity.
Ben LernerWe define boredom as the pain a person feels when he's doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something he wants to do but won't, can't, or doesn't dare. Boredom is acute when he knows the other thing and inhibits his action, e.g., out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if he has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A large part of stupidity is just the chronic boredom, for a person can't learn, or be intelligent about, what he's not interested in, when his repressed thoughts are elsewhere.
Paul GoodmanI think the fear of being seen as childish or crazy severely limits our enjoyment of the world around us, thus inducing a state of boredom that in turn gives rise to much of the stupidity and meanness that oftem seem to epitomize the human condtion. In fact, these ills merely signify that the dues we pay for adult respectability are far too high, and bring some 'benefits' of questionable value.
D. Patrick MillerThere's an element of paradox there - that at least you know where you stand with the fundamentalists. I mean, they're absolutely clear in their error and their stupidity, and so you can really go after them.
Richard DawkinsStupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
Gustave FlaubertJust as the results of inebriety are most painful to the habitually sober, and just as the greatest saints have often been the greatest sinners, so, when the first class brain does something stupid, the stupidity of that occasion is colossal.
Stanley BaldwinMen's clothing hasn't changed in 200 years, maybe a lapel gets a little wider or a tie gets narrower from time to time. But it's usually always the same. There is stupidity in men's fashion. But women know who they are. They can change. Clothing is seductive for women. They get different personas by buying new clothes. But men don't.
Massimo VignelliWhatever the country, capitalist or socialist, man was everywhere crushed by technology, made a stranger to his own work, imprisoned, forced into stupidity. The evil all arose from the fact that he had increased his needs rather than limited them; . . . As long as fresh needs continued to be created, so new frustrations would come into being. When had the decline begun? The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty. . . . Only a moral revolution - not a social or political revolution - only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth.
Simone de BeauvoirThe world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.
Lois McMaster BujoldConsider me the entity within the industry without a history of spitting the epitome of stupidity.
Talib KweliTo be too dissatisfied with ourselves is a weakness. To be too satisfied with ourselves is a stupidity.
Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de SableThe media and their journalists are merely megaphones for stupidity, the verb par excellence.
William C. BrownMore computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity.
William WulfAlready, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending deluge of human stupidity.
Joris-Karl HuysmansI giggled out loud at his stupidity. If anyone knew how to make a bed, it was a faggot.
David SedarisI am exclusively occupied with the problem of gravitation and hope with the help of a local mathematician friend [Marcel Grossman] to overcome all the difficulties. One thing is certain, however, that never in life have I been quite so tormented. A great respect for mathematics has been instilled within me, the subtler aspects of which, in my stupidity, I regarded until now as pure luxury.
Albert Einstein