Stupidity Quotes - Page 25

• We have not been scuffling in this waste - howling wilderness for the right to be stupid. All this waste.

  Toni Cade Bambara

  Stupid, Waste, Wildness

  "The Salt Eaters".

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• I'm before him on my knees, and he kisses me He assumes I lose my reason and I do. Men are stupid, men are vain, Love's disgusting, love's insane, A humiliating business-oh how true.

  Stephen Sondheim

  Love, Business, Stupid

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• I am so stupid that I cannot understand philosophy; the antithesis of this is that philosophy is so clever that it cannot comprehend my stupidity. These antitheses are mediated in a higher unity; in our common stupidity.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Clever, Philosophy, Stupid

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• If you attack Stupidity you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life.

  Robertson Davies

  Life, Government, Interest

  "The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks". Book by Robertson Davies, 1949.

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• It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity.

  P. D. James

  Stupid, Fighting, Together

  P. D. James (2011). “Devices and Desires”, p.126, Vintage

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• Whether he likes it or not, [he] cannot remain incognito forever. He has outraged too many wise men and pleased too many fools to hide behind his too-appropriate order to assume leadership of the forces of stupidity he has marshalled, or his enemies will unmask him in order to better understand the disease that has produced such a warped and twisted mind.

  Orson Scott Card

  Leadership, Wise, Men

  Orson Scott Card (2013). “Ender's Game Boxed Set II: Ender's Game, Ender in Exile, Speak for the Dead”, p.157, Tor Science Fiction

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• One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn from that. But the difficulty is to remove the prejudice which stands in the way of doing this. It is not a stupid prejudice.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Stupid, Learning, Prejudice

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2010). “Philosophical Investigations”, p.255, John Wiley & Sons

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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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• 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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• 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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• Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces.

  Sidney Hook

  Historical, Sometimes, Force

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• Ignorance can be cured, but stupidity is forever

  Aristophanes

  Ignorance, Forever

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• Whether religious or racial, anti-Semitism is always repugnant, one of the most destructive manifestations of human stupidity and evil. What is profoundly expressed in it is man's traditional mistrust of the man who is not part of his tribe, that 'other' who speaks a different language, whose skin is a different color, and who participates in mysterious rites and rituals.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Religious, Men, Color

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• Writing is taking a risk, and it is actually fighting invisible and invincible enemies. They are over-confidence, stupidity, expectation and narcissism.

  Andrea Hirata

  Writing, Fighting, Expectations

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• No matter how high are one's estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one's activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.

  Carlo M. Cipolla

  Stupid, Intelligent, People

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