Stupidity Quotes - Page 21

• Indolence and stupidity are first cousins.

  Antoine Rivarol

  Cousin, Firsts, Indolence

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• Among many reasons for being stupid it may be urged, it is being like other people, and living like one's neighbours, and indeed without it, it may be difficult to love some neighbours as oneself: now seeing the necessity of being dull, you won't, I hope, take it amiss that you find me so.

  Elizabeth Montagu

  Stupid, People, Dull

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• Children are great idealists, until the stupidity of their elders puts out the fires of the aspirations.

  Nellie L. McClung

  Children, Fire, Aspiration

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• When I die my death will be caused by indignation at the stupidity of human nature.

  Marie Bashkirtseff

  Human Nature, Humans, Indignation

  Marie Bashkirtseff (1919). “Marie Bashkirtseff: the journal of a young artist, 1860-1884”

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• 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.

  Helen Foster Snow

  War, Artist, Government

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• There was no such thing as luck.  Luck was a word idiots used to explain the consequences of their own rashness, and selfishness, and stupidity.  More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.

  Joe Abercrombie

  Luck, Selfishness, Idiot

  Joe Abercrombie (2009). “Before They Are Hanged: The First Law: Book Two”, p.361, Hachette UK

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• Ignorance is temporary. Stupidity, unfortunately, is permanent.

  Patricia King

  Ignorance, Permanent, Temporary

  Patricia King (1992). “Never work for a jerk!”

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• Anybody who feels at ease in the world today is a fool.

  Robert M. Hutchins

  Society, Ease, World

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• There is nothing in the world so dangerous, or so overwhelming as stupidity; perhaps there is no more of it now than there has been at any time, but I do not think the witless of past generations had so much power. The powers of darkness are the powers of misdirected knowledge.

  Gwethalyn Graham

  Past, Thinking, Darkness

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• 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.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Political, Balance, Months

  Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

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• If the oncoming mutation to interstellar immortality is screwed up by the politicians, it will be because those of us who see the opportunities in modern science are not adroit enough to outmaneuver the forces of inertia, stupidity and greed. Well, if we're not intelligent enough to overcome such obstacles, then we don't deserve to carry off the mutation at this stage of evolution.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Intelligent, Opportunity, Greed

  Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

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• I have this insane optimistic streak that the American people prevail over the stupidity that the leadership exhibits time and time again, and I think that's the truth.

  Lewis Black

  Optimistic, Thinking, People

  Interview with Tom Lewis, www.scpr.org. September 7, 2012.

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• 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

  Religion, Rewards, Causes

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• 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

  Thinking, Desire, Democracy

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• If he who has little wit needs a master to inform his stupidity, he who has much frequently needs ten to keep in check his worldly wisdom, which might otherwise, like a high-mettled charger, toss him to the ground.

  Christian Scriver

  Needs, Littles, Might

  Christian Scriver (1857). “Gotthold's Emblems: or Invisible things understood by things that are made. Tr. by R. Menzies”, p.147

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

  John Cleese

  Absolutely Nothing, Can Do, Sad Things

  Twitter post from Apr 4, 2017

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• 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.

  Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett

  Stupid, Genius, Might

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• Culture, which by definition serves no purpose, has now found a role as the consort of business. Right off the bat we have a beached whale, since there is nothing that disdains culture as much as business does. ... In fact, 'corporate culture' is nothing more than the crystallization of the stupidity of a group of people at a given moment.

  Corinne Maier

  Business, Whales, People

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• Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Legislation

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.230, Penguin

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• In the long run, the greatest weapon of mass destruction is stupidity.

  Thomas Sowell

  Running, Mass Destruction, Long

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.272, Hoover Press

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• 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.

  Will Durant

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Civilization

  Will Durant (2011). “Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization”, p.44, Simon and Schuster

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• 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?

  George Eliot

  Social, Unendurable, Acceptable

  George Eliot (2007). “Middlemarch”, p.579, Collector's Library

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• Two things are universal: Hydrogen and stupidity

  Frank Zappa

  Two, Hydrogen, Universal

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• Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may be that we are all actually freezing hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent.

  H. L. Mencken

  Intelligent, Men, May

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.213, Knopf

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• 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.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Art, Errors, Hesitation

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