Quotes About Stupidity

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

I stop paying attention because as much as I love beauty, I hate stupidity, and seeing the two combined pisses me off.

If 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.

The most abundant element in the Universe is stupidity

Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [...] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

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

Mingled vanity and pride appear in this, that when miserable men do seek after God, instead of ascending higher than themselves as they ought to do, they measure him by their own carnal stupidity, and neglecting solid inquiry, fly off to indulge their curiosity in vain speculation.

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

The earth is a great piece of stupidity.

Only worry about your own happiness, which doesn’t have to be limited by anyone else’s stupidity unless you allow it to be.

You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.

To accuse another of having weak kidneys, lungs, or heart, is not a crime; on the contrary, saying he has a weak brain is a crime. To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn't.

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?

Some people have a gift for stupidity, an almost mystic ability to withstand any form of logic.

Seas of blood have been shed for the sake of patriotism. One would expect the harm and irrationality of patriotism to be self-evident to everyone. But the surprising fact is that cultured and learned people not only do not notice the harm and stupidity of patriotism, they resist every unveiling of it with the greatest obstinacy and passion (with no rational grounds), and continue to praise it as beneficent and elevating.

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.

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

Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces.

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

kar.a.bek.i.an (n.); (from Rabo Karabekian, U.S. 20th Cent. painter). Fiasco in which a person causes total destruction of own work and reputation through stupidity, carelessness or both.

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.

People get a kick out of my stupidity.

Archimedes once said that 'Give me where to stand, and I will move the earth.' There is a much more difficult task than this: To try to lift an ignorant up from where he stands, because he is heavily chained to the stupidity!

What I wanted was to die among strangers, untroubled, beneath a cloudless sky. And yet my desire differed from the sentiments of that ancient Greek who wanted to die under the brilliant sun. What I wanted was some natural, spontaneous suicide. I wanted a death like that of a fox, not yet well versed in cunning, that walks carelessly along a mountain path and is shot by a hunter because of its own stupidity.

Why would you help us? (Delphine) I hear stupidity is a fatal disease. Doing my own experimentation to see if that’s true or not. If I survive, we’ll know it’s not. If I die…well, it’ll suck. Bad. And I won’t be happy. (Asmodeus)

There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.

Understanding what is going on in the world today inspires me in a negative sense because there's so much about it that I don't like - political stupidity, environmental degradation, etc. And that makes me want to change it, to make a difference in the world.

True popularity comes from acts of kindness rather than acts of stupidity.

It is an obvious and blatant stupidity beyond my ability to articulate how dumb it is for us not to teach our children how to run the government.

Albrecht's Law - Intelligent people, when assembled into an organization, will tend toward collective stupidity.

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.

If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.

Darling, my darling, don't think that I don't love you or that I didn't love you, but it's precisely because I love you that I couldn't have become what I am today if you were still here. It's impossible to have a child and despise the world as it is, because that's the world we've put the child into. The child makes us care about the world, think about it's future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoils, take its incurable stupidity seriously.

I'm an optimist by choice not by stupidity.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.

One of the most stupid things to do is to pretend you are smart. When you pretend to be smart, you are at the height of stupidity.

When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen.

It recognizes no morality but a sham morality meant for deceit, no honor even among thieves and of a thievish sort, no force but physical force, no intellectual power but cunning, no disgrace but failure, no crime but stupidity.

Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.

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].

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.

Stupidity is falling pray to your own illusions.

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

Brain damage and stupidity are very different things, but can have similar effects on the wearer.

Stupidity is a blockage in the ability to receive, integrate and transmit new signals.

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

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.