Quotes About Stupidity

Something reduces the speed of the world and that something is stupidity! Stupidity is a boring friction

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

There is no limit to stupidity. - Space itself is said to be bounded by its own curvature, but stupidity continues beyond infinity.

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.

To most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable - else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?

Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.

Stupidity would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence.

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.

You can make fun with Saddam Hussein jokes ... but you can't make fun of, say, the concentration camps. I think my target was not so much evil, but benign stupidity people doing stupid things without realising or, instead, thinking they were doing good.

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.

I am a scholar of stupidity, so thanks for existing.

If that isn't typical male stupidity! If something doesn't work, kick it or swear at it!

In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.

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.

Appeal to all scholars of stupidity in the world. Come to Italy, this country has the highest rate of morons of the universe, especially among political, bureaucratic, judicial, religious, intellectual, artistic, and mass media members, so it is the best place to develop your own field research.

But courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility.

You even called me stupid in your verse, and I'm almost agreeing, for where stupidity is involved, you are quite an expert, friend.

what are you looking for? There is no Truth. There's only action, action obeying a million different impulses, ephemeral action, action subjected to every possible and imaginable contingency and contradiction, Life. Life is crime, theft, jealousy, hunger, lies, disgust,stupidity, sickness, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, piles of corpses. what can you do about it, my poor friend?

In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. Yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it.

Courage is perhaps our most admirable trait. The man, or woman, who possesses it is able to plunge ahead, despite dangers, despite warnings, despite hazards of all kinds, to attack the task at hand. Often, it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

If a man didn't make sense, the Scotch felt it was misplaced politeness to try to keep him from knowing it. Better that he be aware of his reputation, for this would encourage reticence which goes well with stupidity.

You cannot argue stupidity, you just have to accept it patiently as one of those things.

I read at least one periodical every month by a political group I dislike - to keep some sense of balance. The overwhelming stupidity of political movements is caused by the fact that political types never read anything but their own gang's agit-prop.

Whatever the country, capitalist or socialist, man was everywhere crushed by technology, made a stranger to his own work, imprisoned, forced into stupidity.

The line between confidence and arrogance is very fine, Josh,” Flamel said quietly. “And the line between arrogance and stupidity even finer. Sophie,” he added, without looking at her.

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.

Someone said: "I have been prejudiced against myself from my earliest childhood: hence I find some truth in all blame and some stupidity in all praise. I generally estimate praise too poorly and blame too highly.

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.

Unless we maintain correctional institutions of such character that they create respect for law and government instead of breeding resentment and a desire for revenge, we are meeting lawlessness with stupidity and making a travesty of justice.

You bet I write disaster fiction. We have compiled a disastrous record on this planet, a record of stupidity and absurdity and self-abuse and self-aggrandizement and self-deception and pompousness and self-righteousness and cruelty and indifference beyond what any other species has demonstrated the capacity for, which is the capacity for all the above.

I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world!

It [defending Salmon Rushdie] was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the multitude which is its natural ally.

Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence - by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the heartless strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed - only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.

I ought to file charges of uncommon stupidity against you for letting her try this alone." ~ Newt, Black Magic Sanction, Kim Harrison

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

One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's alright not to know anything. That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet.

The sad thing about true stupidity is that you can do absolutely nothing about it.

Cultural stupidity accounts for virtually every aspect of Sarah Palin, both as a person and a political icon. Which, come to think of it, may be a pretty good reason not to misunderstimate her.

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].

We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.

Modern stupidity means not ignorance but the nonthought of received ideas

Only ignorance excuses stupidity

..people (in Minnesota) avoid stupidity when possible, not wanting to be a $10 haircut on a 50 cent head.

Anger is stupid, and stupidity will kill you more surely than your opponent's blade.

Most of the time I've worked in labs if I didn't encounter something in a week entirely unexpected and surprising I'd consider it a lost week. Lots of that is due to mistakes and stupidity, but it could open a new line of inquiry. Something really good turns up once in a hundred times, but it makes the whole day worthwhile.

We live, understandably enough, with the sense of urgency; our clock, like Baudelaire's, has had the hands removed and bears the legend, "It is later than you think." But with us it is always a little too late for mind, yet never too late for honest stupidity; always a little too late for understanding, never too late for righteous, bewildered wrath; always too late for thought, never too late for naïve moralizing. We seem to like to condemn our finest but not our worst qualities by pitting them against the exigency of time.