Quotes About Stupidity

In modern life the world belongs to the stupid, the insensitive and the disturbed. The right to live and triumph is today earned with the same qualifications one requires to be interned in a madhouse: amorality, hypomania and an incapacity for thought.

Ah, what a morning this is, awakening me to life's stupidity. [98 - Zenith trans.]

Na vida de hoje, o mundo só pertence aos estúpidos, aos insensíveis e aos agitados. O direito a viver e a triunfar conquista-se hoje quase pelos mesmos processos por que se conquista o internamento num manicómio: a incapacidade de pensar, a amoralidade e a hiperexcitação.

No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it. Collective thought is stupid because it's collective. Nothing passes into the realm of the collective without leaving at the border – like a toll – most of the intelligence it contained.

3. (…) En la vida de hoy, el mundo sólo pertenece a los estúpidos, a los insensibles y a los agitados. El derecho a vivir y a triunfar se conquista hoy con los mismos procedimientos con que se conquista el internamiento en un manicomio: la incapacidad de pensar, la amoralidad y la hiperexcitación. —Libro del Desasosiego, Fernando Pessoa—

No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it. Collective thought is stupid because it's collective.

I've always considered violence, of any type, a particularly cock-eyed example of human stupidity.

Only one thing surprises me more than the stupidity with which most men live their lives and that is the intellegence inherent in that stupidity. [...] The wise man makes his life monotonous, for then even the tiniest accident becomes imbued with great significance.

Only one thing astonishes me more than the stupidity with which most people live their lives, and that's the intelligence of this stupidity.

En la vida actual, el mundo sólo pertenece a los estúpidos, los insensibles y los agitados. El derecho a vivir y triunfar se conquista hoy casi a través de los mismos procedimientos con los que se conquista el internamiento en un manicomio: la incapacidad de pensar, la amoralidad y la hiperexcitación.

Una sola cosa mi meraviglia più della stupidità con cui la maggior parte degli uomini vive la sua vita: l'intelligenza che c'è in questa stupidità.

Today the world belongs only to the stupid, the insensitive and the agitated. Today the right to live and triumph is awarded on virtually the same basis as admission into an insane asylum: an inability to think, amorality, and nervous excitability. 176

que pesa duramente na alma: é a estupidez que sacrifica vidas e haveres a qualquer coisa inevitavelmente inútil.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

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

Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

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

We believe in cures; we're a quick-fix country, and we drive forward, and we eat up what we have extremely fast in terms of natural resources and also ideas and intellectual property. We're kind of wilfully stupid a lot of the time, anti-intellectual.

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.

Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.

You are ill? No. Just Stupid. Ah. Nothing new there. Well, you haven't died from that so far.

The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

Military intelligence was as nothing to military stupidity.