Quotes About Stupidity

If we have a simple existence, we shall feel how happy and how fortunate we are. There are some people who are of the opinion that simplicity is almost tantamount to stupidity. But simplicity and stupidity are like the North Pole and the South Pole. One can be as simple as a child and, at the same time, one can have boundless knowledge, light and wisdom.

For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols

Idleness is the stupidity of the body, and stupidity is the idleness of the mind.

The question now is: Can we understand our stupidity? This is a test of intellect, not of character.

I was blinded by stupidity for a brief moment in our life, for a flicker in the eternity in which you and I live, and I stumbled.

The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities from effective control. Since it is impossible to count on enough moral goodwill among those who possess irresponsible power to sacrifice it for the good of the whole, it must be destroyed by coercive methods and these will always run the peril of introducing new forms of injustice in place of those abolished.

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

Examples of human stupidity. Blasphemy in Pakistan can now include spelling errors by children or throwing away a card bearing the name "Muhammad".

The most abundant element in the Universe is stupidity

For ages the world has been living by the stupidity of an old Roman adage that says if you want peace, prepare for war. As if anything said in ancient times must be wise, people have used this phrase to justify some of the most unjustifiable arms build-ups, which, far from creating peace, has only become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I would be shocked by the lack of security if we were not at Amity headquarters. They often straddle the line between trust and stupidity.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

There is a limit to human intelligence, but there is no limit to human stupidity

The earth is a great piece of stupidity.

Try stuff. I also used to believe that it's better to be smart than lucky because if you're smart you can out-think the competition. I don't believe that anymore-this is not to say that you should strive for a high level of stupidity. My point is that luck is a big part of many successes, so (a) don't get too bummed out when you see a bozo succeed; and (b) luck favors the people who try stuff, not simply think and analyze. As the Chinese say, "One must wait for a long time with your mouth open before a Peking duck flies in your mouth."

There is, in short, no great idea that stupidity could not put to its own uses [....] The truth by comparison, has only one appearance and only one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

The most important fact is that gays have been here since day one. To say otherwise is a gross denial and stupidity. We played an enormous part in the history of America.

Never confuse honor with stupidity!

Life is a flux, nothing abides. Still we are such fools, we go on clinging. If change is the nature of life, then clinging is stupidity, because your clinging is not going to change the law of life. Your clinging is only going to make you miserable. Things are bound to change; whether you cling or not does not matter. If you cling you become miserable: you cling and they change, you feel frustrated. If you don`t cling they still change, but then there is no frustration because you were perfectly aware that they are bound to change. This is how things are, this is the suchness of life.

I 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.

There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed.

You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.

Artificial intelligence will never be a match for natural stupidity.

One should commit no stupidity twice, the variety of choice is, in the end, large enough.

In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.

Profits are not made by differential cleverness, but by differential stupidity.

Very often in everyday life one sees that by losing one's temper with someone who has already lost his, one does not gain anything but only sets out upon the path of stupidity. He who has enough self-control to stand firm at the moment when the other person is in a temper, wins in the end. It is not he who has spoken a hundred words aloud who has won; it is he who has perhaps spoken only one word.

There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one's own industry or by the stupidity of others.

Paltry affectation, strained allusions, and disgusting finery are easily attained by those who choose to wear them; they are but too frequently the badges of ignorance or of stupidity, whenever it would endeavor to please.

Captain Crawford didn't like the idea of any kind of murder, but he went at it patiently and honestly and with none of the stupidity and bombast and rubber-hose techniques that Los Angeles crime fiction writers had led me to expect. I'd gotten the impression that unless a gifted amateur in love with the lady got himself almost beaten to a pulp and practically inside the lethal gas chamber before he unmasked the venal and brutalized constabulary, any innocent bystander they could get their hands on was a gone duck.

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

An intelligent man, a man who has a little meditative consciousness, can make his life a beautiful piece of art, can make it so full of love and full of music and full of poetry and full of dance that there are no limitations for it. Life is not hard. It is man's stupidity that makes it hard.

Stupidity has made enormous progress. It's a sun so shining that we can no longer look at it directly. Thanks to communication media, it's no longer the same, it's nourished by other myths, it sells extremely well, it has ridiculed good sense and it's spreading its terrifying power.

Man thinks his mind's love for world power and his heart's love for world peace can live together. Indeed, this is the height of man's stupidity.

Whether he likes it or not, [he] cannot remain incognito forever. He has outraged too many wise men and pleased too many fools to hide behind his too-appropriate order to assume leadership of the forces of stupidity he has marshalled, or his enemies will unmask him in order to better understand the disease that has produced such a warped and twisted mind.

Nothing disturbs me more than the glorification of stupidity.

We like to think of industrialization as being despicable. I don't really know what to make of it. There’s something terribly brittle about it. I suppose I would still prefer to sit under a tree with a picnic basket rather than under a gas pump, but signs and comic strips are interesting as subject matter. There are certain things that are usable, forceful, and vital about commercial art. We're using those things – but we're not really advocating stupidity, international teenagerism, and terrorism.

Stupidity is no excuse of not thinking.

The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.

Truly, there's no alternative to stupidity. Cretinism is the mother of fascism. I have no defence against it, really....

Sometimes when someone says something stupid, my friends and I just read the reviews out loud and collapse with laughter at the stupidity of it all.

There is among doctors, in acute hospitals at least, a presumption of stupidity in their patients.

Many a young lady does not realize just how strong her love for a young man is until he fails to pass the approval test with her parents. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear. Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal. There are only two truly infinite things, the universe and stupidity. And I am unsure about the universe.

What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.

There's no sin but stupidity.

The best humor is offered up to you by the stupidity of your opponents.

Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?

Ender stepped under the water and rinsed himself, took the sweat of combat and let it run down the drain. All gone, except they recycled it and we'll be drinking Bonzo's blood water in the morning. All the life gone out of it, but his blood just the same, his blood and my sweat, washed down in their stupidity or cruelty or whatever it was that made them let it happen.