Quotes About Stupidity

It's usually easier to rouse stupidity to action than to arouse wisdom to effort, for wisdom sees alternatives while stupidity lacks the imagination to do this. All sinister interests in a country can depend ultimately upon the strength of stupidity.

There 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.

Humans fear reason, but they ought to fear stupidity- for reason can be hard, but stupidity can be fatal.

Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

You can't legislate stupidity.

The choking, sweltering, deadly, and killing rule of no rule; the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men. Slopshirts attainable three-halfpence cheaper by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

I can have incredible self-discipline. But see, I think it's obviously a form of stupidity.

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)

I 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.

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

I remember being very smart, which is a form of stupidity. I try not to remember it, but it occurs to me that I may have felt intellectual. I entertained views too noble or too bitter to be true. I must have done some soul-stretching of my mental neck.

A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: it offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole. Like philosophy, such a venture has no rational excuse, and is at best but a brave stupidity; but let us hope that, like philosophy, it will always lure some rash spirits into its fatal depths.

stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves

Whoever looks at America will see: the ship is powered by stupidity, corruption, or prejudice.

If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?

Nowadays, hoy en día, with our world full of war and violence and lack of love, a world full of greed, a world of domination, grasping power, venal stupidity, real evil, don’t get me started, it’s good to know that a conversation about tacos will always engender a sense of comfort and happiness. If only we could sit down at a big round world table and eat tacos in a spirit of love we might begin to work on world peace!

The shortest route is not the most direct one, but rather the one where the most favorable winds swell our sails:Mthat is the lesson that seafarers teach. Not to abide by this lesson is to be obstinate: here, firmness of character is tainted with stupidity.

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.

How can you fight stupidity effectively? The answer is simple: it's not easy.

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.

There is no more certain sign of a narrow mind, of stupidity, and of arrogance, than to stand aloof from those who think differently from us.

I wronged him, Katra. Greatly. I had the entire world in my hand at one time and I didn’t know it. I let stupidity blind me and I lost him because of that. (Artemis) Then tell him you’re sorry. (Kat) As your father would say, there are some things ‘sorry’ can’t repair. Some pains run too deep to ever be healed by something as simple as words, no matter how much you mean them. (Artemis)

There is nothing like the way people feel after they've seen 'The Intouchables.' They feel amazing. The word of mouth on this film is incredible. It's intelligent-feeling good. You're not insulted by the low-browness or stupidity of some of the humor. It's so smart and terrific.

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.

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.

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.

People get a kick out of my stupidity.

We 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.

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.

Could there be a better answer to the stupidity of Karl Marx than millions of workers individually sharing in the ownership of the means of production.

Just 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.

The war between the artist and writer and government or orthodoxy is one of the tragedies of humankind. One chief enemy is stupidity and failure to understand anything about the creative mind. For a bureaucratic politician to presume to tell any artist or writer how to get his mind functioning is the ultimate in asininity.

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.

Whatever 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.

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.

Stupidity is no excuse of not thinking.

I am the harvest of man's stupidity. I am the fruit of the holocaust. I prayed like you to survive, but look at me now. It is over for us who are dead, but you must struggle, and will carry the memories all your life. People back home will wonder why you can't forget.

To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information within. With our own eyes we see, and with our own skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself.

Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.

By an increase in anger, warfare arises. By an increase of greed, famine arises. By an increase of stupidity, pestilence arises. Because these three calamities occur, the people's earthly desires grow all the more intense, and their false views thrive and multiply.

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.

It saddens me to see the reality-television shows that are getting so much fanfare that are a celebration of stupidity and the degradation of women. And those women are consistently wearing too short, too tight dresses. I hope the trend of aging gracefully returns.

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].

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

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

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