Stupidity famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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Stupidity is active in every direction, and can dress up in all the clothes of truth. Truth, on the other hand, has for every occasion only one dress and one path, and is always at a disadvantage.
-- Robert Musil -
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.
-- Robert Musil -
... nothing is more human than substituting the quantity of words and actions for their character. But using imprecise words is very similar to using lots of words, for the more imprecise a word is, the greater the area it covers.
-- Robert Musil -
The world supports a multi-million dollar industry of intelligence and ability research, but it devotes virtually nothing to determine why this intelligence is squandered by engaging in amazing, breathtaking acts of stupidity.
-- Robert Sternberg -
You're dumber than you think I think you are.
-- Robert Towne -
There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.
-- Robertson Davies -
It is not always easy to diagnose. The simplest form of stupidity - the mumbling, nose-picking, stolid incomprehension - can be detected by anyone. But the stupidity which disguises itself as thought, and which talks so glibly and eloquently, indeed never stops talking, in every walk of life is not so easy to identify, because it marches under a formidable name, which few dare attack. It is called Popular Opinion...
-- Robertson Davies -
I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity.
-- Salman Rushdie -
On every commercial flight, the traveler is told, "Your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device". The question is, why doesn't the plane just become a boat?
-- Sam Ewing -
Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces.
-- Sidney Hook -
Football is not merely a small business, it's also a bad one. Anyone who spends any time inside football soon discovers that just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business.
-- Simon Kuper -
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.
-- Sophy Burnham -
Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity.
-- Stephen Fry -
We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.
-- Stephen Hawking -
I am guilty of stupidity, arrogance, and greed.
-- Steve Madden -
There is an urgent need to-day for the citizens of a democracy to think well. It is not enough to have freedom of the Press and parliamentary institutions. Our difficulties are due partly to our own stupidity, partly to the exploitation of that stupidity, and partly to our own prejudices and personal desires.
-- Susan Stebbing -
How quickly was every bad thing discovered to be the fault of the previous administration (an evil set of men who wedded general stupidity to wickedness of purpose).
-- Susanna Clarke -
You'd have thought we planned it," says Peeta, giving me just the hint of a smile. "Didn't you?" asks Portia. Her fingers press her eyelids closed as if she's warding off a very bright light. "No," I say looking at Peeta with a new sense of apreciation. "Neither of us even knew what we were going to do before we went in." "And Haymitch?" says Peeta. "We decided we don't want any other allies in the arena." "Good. Then I won't be responsible for you killing off any of my friends with your stupidity," he says.
-- Suzanne Collins -
Fine, than I will not have to blame you for killing my friends with your stupidity. -Haymitch
-- Suzanne Collins -
If there is one thing I can't stand, it is stupidity. I always say that stupidity is the Sin against the Holy Ghost.
-- T. H. White -
One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.
-- Takeru Kobayashi -
Consider me the entity within the industry without a history of spitting the epitome of stupidity.
-- Talib Kweli -
Too many of our countrymen rejoice in stupidity, look upon ignorance as a badge of honor. They condemn everything they don't understand.
-- Tallulah Bankhead -
You are the cutting edge of a thirteen billion year old process of defining novelty. Your acts matter. Your thoughts matter. Your purpose? To add to the complexity. Your enemy? Disorder, entropy, stupidity, and tastelessness.
-- Terence McKenna -
If you really want your films to say something that you hope is unique, then patience and stamina, thick skin and a kind of stupidity, a mule-like stupidity, is what you really need.
-- Terry Gilliam -
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett -
The thought that murders the wish that fathered it will be overtaken by the revenge of stupidity
-- Theodor Adorno -
Against a stupidity that is in fashion, no wisdom compensates.
-- Theodor Fontane -
It is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.
-- Thomas Beecham -
Never feel dumb. Not knowing who or what is no sin. Ignorance is simply the measure of what you haven't got to yet. I find writers and works every day that I haven't got to, haven't even heard of.
-- Thomas C Foster -
There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.
-- Thomas Mann -
No amount of intelligence can save you from stupidity.
-- Tibor Fischer -
I've been on the other side of the table many times, trying to get people to be sympathetic to projects, and I've been the victim of that kind of intense kindness masking extreme stupidity.
-- Tilda Swinton -
When I go to peoples' houses I like to sneak into their bedrooms and try on their underwear.
-- Tom Clancy -
We have not been scuffling in this waste-howling wildness for the right to be stupid.
-- Toni Cade Bambara -
My strengths and weaknesses are the same: I've got the willingness and stupidity to try anything. If I think it's even remotely possible, I'll do it.
-- Travis Pastrana -
I stop paying attention because as much as I love beauty, I hate stupidity, and seeing the two combined pisses me off.
-- Tucker Max -
The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence.
-- Upton Sinclair -
Libraries keep the records on behalf of all humanity. the unique and the absurd, the wise and the fragments of stupidity.
-- Vartan Gregorian -
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.
-- Veronica Roth -
Underestimating one's enemy was a classic tactical mistake --- one that was usually born out of stupidity or arrogance or both. (Harry Smith)
-- Vince Flynn -
Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.
-- Vinnie Jones -
Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.
-- W. Clement Stone -
In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.
-- Walter Bagehot -
It is the incompetent and the neglected artist who charges the public with ignorance, stupidity, and indifference. He raves loudly, but he is incomprehensible, even inarticulate, in his work.
-- Walter J. Phillips -
In truth, the legitimate contention is, not of one age or school of literary art against another, but of all successive schools alike, against the stupidity which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to form.
-- Walter Pater -
I couldn't catch a ball or any of that stuff. I could do only what required brute stupidity.
-- Warren G. Harding -
In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.
-- Wendy Kaminer -
Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.
-- Wendy Kaminer -
It is against stupidity in every shape and form that we have to wage our eternal battle. But how can we wonder at the want of sense on the part of those who have had no advantages, when we see such plentiful absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the advantages?
-- William Booth -
The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.
-- William Broad -
How can you fight stupidity effectively? The answer is simple: it's not easy.
-- William C. Brown -
I am a scholar of stupidity, so thanks for existing.
-- William C. Brown -
One of the main purpose of art has ever been that of making its indispensable contribution to the growth of entropy of the universal stupidity.
-- William C. Brown -
When you are a great scholar of stupidity, logics and marketing, you can do practically everthing, from business to trading, from spiritual research to artistic criticism.
-- William C. Brown -
As far as humanity is concerned the origin of stupidity is itself.
-- William C. Brown -
If you can't share wealth, prosperity and happiness, then you must at least share suffering, pain and death. To destroy in order to create!
-- William C. Brown -
In Italy, above all in view of the next general election, political parties, movements and new politicians continue to proliferate, naturally all inspired by the logic of the most severe, rigorous and atavistic stupidity.
-- William C. Brown -
The media and their journalists are merely megaphones for stupidity, the verb par excellence.
-- William C. Brown -
Invest in stupidity, its stocks never go down.
-- William C. Brown -
What's the advantage to have hundreds of words to define stupidity, when the essence is always the same.
-- William C. Brown -
Communism has failed; capitalism has failed; common sense has failed; now has to fail stupidity.
-- William C. Brown -
The common curse of mankind, folly, ignorance and stupidity.
-- William C. Brown -
I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull.
-- William Congreve -
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.
-- William E. Gladstone -
Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.
-- William Gaddis -
Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death by them.
-- William Hazlitt -
I believe that this country's policies should be heavily biased in favor of nondiscrimination.
-- William J. Clinton -
It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is.
-- William J. Clinton -
Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.
-- William of Ockham -
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
-- William Shakespeare -
The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.
-- William Shakespeare -
More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity.
-- William Wulf -
Stupidity is falling pray to your own illusions.
-- Wojciech Kurtyka -
My films are misinterpreted all the time. I don't mind that. Everybody's films are misinterpreted. But there's no malice or stupidity in the people that misinterpret them. You know what you do, but someone else sees it, and they want to talk about it or write about it, and so they misinterpret them.
-- Woody Allen -
I had an IQ test. The results came back negative.
-- Woody Allen -
If you take a frown and turn it upside down, the person you are holding by the ankles will soon pass out.
-- Woody Allen -
My background was art school, documentary director and surfer with a keen interest in thrilling acts of life threatening stupidity.
-- Yahoo Serious -
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…
-- Yukio Mishima -
Brain damage and stupidity are very different things, but can have similar effects on the wearer.
-- Dov Davidoff -
Bad sign when the thought of your x-girlfriend sends you reeling in a search for new adjectives to describe stupidity and thoughtlessness?
-- Dov Davidoff -
It's an artist's right to rebel against the world's stupidity.
-- E. A. Bucchianeri -
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.
-- Flannery O'Connor -
The world is going to change, whether we like it or not. We can participate in that change or we can be the victims of that change. In a way. Either we go in our stupidity ignorance, and arrogance, bring more destruction in a way, or we're forced to change.
-- Hamid Drake -
When I put the camera back to my eye, I noticed a particular guardsman pointing at me. I said, "I'll get a picture of this," and his rifle went off. And almost simultaneously, as his rifle went off, a halo of dust came off a sculpture next to me, and the bullet lodged in a tree. I dropped my camera in the realization that it was live ammunition. I don't know what gave me the combination of innocence and stupidity... but I never took cover.
-- John Filo -
That's our mirror. Every dip, every crash, every bubble that's burst, a testament to our brilliant stupidity. This one gave us the railroads. This one the Internet. This one the slave trade. And if we hope to do anything about saving the environment, or getting to other worlds, we'll need a bubble for that too. Everything I've ever done in my life worth anything has been done in a bubble: in a state of extreme hope and trust and stupidity.
-- Lucy Prebble -
Bravery and Stupidity can often be mistaken for the other.
-- Marc Marcel -
Then there's politics. Just imagine politics with its dumbbell element subtracted. There would be no Republican candidates. There would be no Democratic voters. The whole system would collapse.
-- P. J. O'Rourke -
The only really good vegetable is Tabasco sauce. Put Tabasco sauce in everything. Tabasco sauce is to bachelor cooking what forgiveness is to sin. The next best vegetable is the jalapeno pepper. It has the virtue of turning salads into practical jokes.
-- P. J. O'Rourke -
Although computer-generated artificial intelligence eludes us, artificial stupidity has been perfected.
-- P. J. O'Rourke -
The economy is changing everything. And men need to deal with that. Our response to it has been rage, stupidity and conscious avoidance of dealing with what the reality of being a man might be outside of empty concepts from ancient history.
-- Stephen Marche -
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
-- Unknown
