Quotes About Stupidity

Stupidity really gets me going, when it's just plain stupid, obvious stupidity. And I think that's the reason my act has become more political. I've become somewhat more of a political comic because the level of stupidity I've watched is staggering.

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

Stupidity well packaged can sound like wisdom.

Stupidity is a personal achievement which transcends national boundaries.

The book is second only to the wheel as the best piece of technology human beings have ever invented. A book symbolises the whole intellectual history of mankind; it's the greatest weapon ever devised in the war against stupidity.

Will Ferrell is probably the funniest comic actor, certainly of my generation. I am a huge, huge Will Ferrell fan. I'm not a huge comedy buff, truthfully. What I find funny is either something unbelievably stupid, like Dumb And Dumber or Airplane!, where the jokes are just so stupid and pointless, or something like The Office or The Comeback, where the humor is in the excruciating awkwardness of a situation. Stella kind of explores both of those, stupidity and awkwardness.

When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.

Among the many things that profoundly impress me about the Dalai Lama, quite high up on the list is his ability to say "I don't know". I've often wished that other people in prominent positions wouldn't feel the compulsion to have an answer for everything and would feel equally free to say "I don't know." It's a sign of wisdom to know that you don't know and a sign of stupidity to think that you know everything. I admire it enormously in him, and wonder why so few people in leading positions reach that stage.

To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, and Community)

Personally, I have a great admiration for stupidity.

Stupidity is nature's favorite resource for preserving consistency of opinion.

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

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.

It's amazing how much actual chicken sounds lend themselves to stupidity.

You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.

All 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.

I can't decide if this movie is so spectacularly, breathtakingly dumb as to induce stupidity in anyone who watches, or so brutally brilliant that it disarms all reason. What's the difference?

O people who take pleasure in a life that will vanish, falling in love with a fading shadow is sheer stupidity

What the Republican National Committee did to Ron Paul was the height of rudeness and stupidity for this reason: Why would you alienate an individual who has the ability to attract a new generation of voters, who are already skeptical of your institution but are willing to at least listen through the vehicle of this individual and the words that he is saying? Why would you alienate them, get on the floor and not let them speak? Not have his name go up on the board and see the number of electoral votes that he receives? This is crazy!

Literature can be divided into two large families: the religious and the secular one. The first reveals the origin of stupidity, the second follows its evolution.

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.

Anybody 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.

There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny. It is all-permeating, all-thwarting; it blasts every budding novelty and sprig of genius with its omnipresent and fierce stupidity. Such a headless people has the mind of a worm and the claws of a dragon.

Well . . . he lets it ruin his life. He gets so obsessed with going after the one thing that hurt him that he loses sight of everything else. He becomes isolated from everyone and everything. Paranoid. He feels like he can't trust anyone around him ever. In the end, he loses everything, even his life. And for what? Total stupidity, if you ask me.

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.

Looking at where the planet is now, we could screw things up massively or we could wise-up on a species level and actually make things better. If I had to put my money where my mouth is, I think we'll wise up globally but there will still be outbreaks of local stupidity.

What I'd really like to write is a romantic comedy. This is my favorite kind of movie. I feel almost embarrassed revealing this, because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years that saying you like romantic comedies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity.

No matter how high are one's estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one's activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.

Where danger shews it self, apprehension cannot, without stupidity, be wanting; where danger is, sense of danger should be; and so much fear as should keep us awake, and excite our attention, industry, and vigour; but not to disturb the calm use of our reason, nor hinder the execution of what that dictates.

Palestinians want a state of their own. They want to live in freedom. They want to get rid of the terrible misery in which they are living. They are ready after fifty years to accept a state of their own in 22 percent of what used to be the country of Palestine. I think it is the height of stupidity on our part if we don't grasp this opportunity.

The true axis of evil in America is the brilliance of our marketing combined with the stupidity of our people.

All humour is critical, you know? You make stupid jokes. I mean, stupidity is an infirmity, isn't it?

It's a shame stupidity isn't painful.

I have sought you out to cure me.' 'To cure you of what?' 'Of this cursed affliction.' 'I cannot cure stupidity.' Scapegrace frowned.

Consider me the entity within the industry without a history of spitting the epitome of stupidity.

Already, 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.

The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents; divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.

The politicized sponsors of this pseudoscientific nonsense should be ashamed to live, let alone die. If you want to take part in the “war” against cancer, and other terrible maladies, too, then join the battle against their lethal stupidity.

I wish, my dear Kepler, that we could have a good laugh together at the extraordinary stupidity of the mob. What do you think of the foremost philosophers of this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations, they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at the planets or the Moon or my glass [telescope].

If you can only remain pure in your stupidity, someday you may get a phone call from hell.

Insanity is just what we call stupidity when it doesn't make sense.

Individuals achieve optimal stupidity when they're given substantial powers while being insulated from the results of their actions.

Stupidity trumps Machiavelli almost every time when you are looking for an explanation.

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

In summary, Intelligence Intensification is desirable, because there is not a single problem confronting humanity that is not either caused or considerably worsened by the prevailing stupidity (insensitivity) of the species: badly wired robots bumping into and maiming and killing each other.

There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.

Religions, of course, have their own demanding intellectual traditions, as Jesuits and Talmudic scholars might attest.... But, in its less rigorous, popular forms, religion is about as intellectually challenging as the average self-help book. (Like personal development literature, mass market books about spirituality and religion celebrate emotionalism and denigrate reason. They elevate the "truths" of myths and parables over empiricism.) In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.

Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.