Stupidity Quotes - Page 32

• Economists who adhere to rational-expectations models of the world will never admit it, but a lot of what happens in markets is driven by pure stupidity - or, rather, inattention, misinformation about fundamentals, and an exaggerated focus on currently circulating stories.

  Robert J. Shiller

  Expectations, Focus, Admitting

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• Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several--from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Spring, Ignorance, Vanity

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• My philosophy is that I am a friend of the children. I don't think anyone should see them as pitiable subjects or charity. That is old people's rhetoric. People often relate childish behaviour to stupidity or foolishness. This mindset needs to change. I want to level the playing field where I can learn from the children. Something I can learn from children is transparency. They are innocent, straightforward, and have no biases. I relate children to simplicity and I think that my friendship with children has a much deeper meaning than others.

  Kailash Satyarthi

  Children, Philosophy, Thinking

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• This is what i find most encouraging about the writing trades: they allow mediocre people who are patient and industrious to revise their stupidity, to edit themselves into something like intelligence. They also allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, People, Patient

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• I cannot abide stupidity, in myself or in others.

  Ginger Rogers

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• Rationalism belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average person, they follow not reason, but faith. This naïve faith, requires necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on course.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Average, Politics, Ordinary

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• Stupidity is what we all have in common as human beings, but some people insist that improving it is their entitlement.

  Pete Edochie

  People, Common, Entitlement

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• The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.

  Bertrand Russell

  Intelligent, Men, Emotional

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.441, Psychology Press

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• Religions, of course, have their own demanding intellectual traditions, as Jesuits and Talmudic scholars might attest.... But, in its less rigorous, popular forms, religion is about as intellectually challenging as the average self-help book. (Like personal development literature, mass market books about spirituality and religion celebrate emotionalism and denigrate reason. They elevate the "truths" of myths and parables over empiricism.) 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

  Book, Self, Average

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• I believe that the BBC, in spite of the stupidity of its foreign propaganda and the unbearable voices of its announcers, is very truthful. It is generally regarded here as more reliable than the press.

  George Orwell

  Believe, Voice, Unbearable

  1941 In the Partisan Review,15 Apr. Reprinted in Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, vol.2.

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• I am often surprised by the cleverness, and now and again by the stupidity, of my dog; and I have similar experiences with mankind.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Dog, Mankind, Cleverness

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Art of Literature: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.72, 谷月社

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• I am exclusively occupied with the problem of gravitation and hope with the help of a local mathematician friend [Marcel Grossman] to overcome all the difficulties. One thing is certain, however, that never in life have I been quite so tormented. A great respect for mathematics has been instilled within me, the subtler aspects of which, in my stupidity, I regarded until now as pure luxury.

  Albert Einstein

  Learning, Science, Discovery

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• Captain Crawford didn't like the idea of any kind of murder, but he went at it patiently and honestly and with none of the stupidity and bombast and rubber-hose techniques that Los Angeles crime fiction writers had led me to expect. I'd gotten the impression that unless a gifted amateur in love with the lady got himself almost beaten to a pulp and practically inside the lethal gas chamber before he unmasked the venal and brutalized constabulary, any innocent bystander they could get their hands on was a gone duck.

  Leslie Ford

  Bystanders, Hands, Ideas

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• The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Tired, Vanity

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.1043, GENERAL PRESS

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• Americans have a healthy stupidity. That lack of sophistication is a secret superpower.

  Paul Budnitz

  Healthy, Secret, Sophistication

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• There are few places outside his own play where a child can contribute to the world in which he finds himself. His world: dominated by adults who tell him what to do and when to do it -benevolent tyrants who dispense gifts to their good subjects and punishment to their bad ones, who are amused at the cleverness of children and annoyed by their stupidities.

  Viola Spolin

  Children, Punishment, Play

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• 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

  Art, School, Age

  Walter Pater (2011). “The Works of Walter Pater”, p.261, Cambridge University Press

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• We like to think of industrialization as being despicable. I don't really know what to make of it. There’s something terribly brittle about it. I suppose I would still prefer to sit under a tree with a picnic basket rather than under a gas pump, but signs and comic strips are interesting as subject matter. There are certain things that are usable, forceful, and vital about commercial art. We're using those things – but we're not really advocating stupidity, international teenagerism, and terrorism.

  Roy Lichtenstein

  Art, Thinking, Interesting

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• Doubt is my boon companion, the faithful St. Bernard ever at my side. Whether writing essays or just going about daily life, I am constantly second-guessing myself. My mind is filled with 'yes, buts,' 'so whats?' and other skeptical rejoinders. I am forever monitoring myself for traces of folly, insensitivity, arrogance, false humility, cruelty, stupidity, immaturity and, guess what, I keep finding examples. Age has not made me wiser, except maybe in retrospect.

  Phillip Lopate

  Humility, Writing, Forever

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• There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal.

  George Santayana

  Meanness, Ideals, Greater

  George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.59, 谷月社

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• You can't legislate stupidity.

  Jesse Ventura

  Jesse Ventura (2015). “American Conspiracies”, p.165, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Action without intelligence is a form of insanity, but intelligence without action is the greatest form of stupidity in the world.

  Charles Kettering

  Insanity, World, Action

  Charles Franklin Kettering (1961). “Prophet of progress: selections from the speeches of Charles F. Kettering”

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• The human race had always disgusted me. essentially, what made them disgusting was the family-relationship illness, which included marriage, exchange of power and aid, which neighborhood, your district, your city, your county, your state, your nation-everybody grabbing each other's assholes in the Honeycomb of survival out of a fear-animalistic stupidity.

  Charles Bukowski

  Cities, Race, Survival

  Charles Bukowski (2013). “Tales of Ordinary Madness”, p.50, City Lights Books

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• This isn't a man who is leaving with his head between his legs.

  Dan Quayle

  Funny, Men, Leaving

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• Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield!
  Against stupidity the very gods
  Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason,
  Resplendent daughter of the head divine,
  Wise foundress of the system of the world,
  Guide of the stars, who are thou then, if thou,
  Bound to the tail of folly's uncurb'd steed,
  Must, vainly shrieking, with the drunken crowd,
  Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Death, Wise, Daughter

  Friedrich Schiller (1861). “Schiller's Complete Works”, p.435

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