The Power of Stupidity

by Giancarlo Livraghi – stupidity.it – gandalf.it

Quotations

These are some of the quotations included in chapter 27,
in other parts of The Power of Stupidity and in related articles

(To avoid any “hierarchy” they are in alphabetical order)

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
Henry Adams

Scientists will eventually stop flailing around with solar power and focus their efforts on harnessing the only truly unlimited source of energy on the planet: stupidity.
Scott Adams

The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them.
Theodor Adorno

The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind. The fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.
Akhenaton

I happen to feel that the degree of a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.
Lisa Alther

If we cannot define stupidity, at least we can trace most human misfortunes and weaknesses to it. Its manifestations are legion, its symptoms are endless.
Richard Armour

When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
Isaac Asimov

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubt, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.
Ethel Barrymore

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
Aneurin Bevan

The world turns and the candle burns and the blind lead the blind.
A Bim song

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
Niels Bohr

However big the fool, there is always a bigger fool to admire him.
Nicolas Boileau

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new program comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was.
Art Buchwald

Freedom of the press is perhaps the one that has suffered the most from the decline of the idea of liberty.
Albert Camus

A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

There is no opinion so stupid that it can’t be expressed by some philosopher.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
Carlo Cipolla

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
Confucius

It is not enough to have a good mind, the main thing is to use it well.
René Descartes

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
Walt Disney

Man is stupid, phenomenally stupid.
Fyodor Dostoievsky

The number of fools is infinite.
The Ecclesiastes

Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. I’m not sure about the universe.
Albert Einstein

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
Attributed to George Eliot, Samuel Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain and several others

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Thomas Eliot

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Stupidity has made enormous progress. It’s a sun so shining that we can no longer look at it directly. Thanks to communication media, it’s no longer the same, it’s nourished by other myths, it sells extremely well, it has ridiculed good sense and it’s spreading its terrifying power.
Ennio Flaiano

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert

Put your trust in simple sentences and simple arithmetic. Mistrust four syllable words and continuous reports of tranquillity.
Paul Foley

The dumbest people I know are those who know it all.
Malcolm Forbes

If a million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Anatole France

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
Robert Frost

Doubt is the father of invention.
Galileo Galilei

The greatest intelligence is the one that suffers most from its own limitations.
André Gide

Maybe violent wickedness can be decapitated, but stupidity has too many heads.
André Glucksmann

There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.
Johann Goethe

Stupid is as stupid does.
Forrest Gump (by Winston Groom)

What experience and history teach is this – that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles.
Friedrich Hegel

There are more fools in the world than there are people.
Heinrich Heine

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Robert Heinlein

Rush, that most exciting perversion of life, the necessity of accomplishing something in less time than should be truly allowed for its doing.
Ernest Hemingway

We believe only what we see. So, with television, we believe everything.
Dieter Hildebrandt

Television has done much for psychiatry, by spreading information about it as well as contributing to the need for it.
Alfred Hitchcock

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Elbert Hubbard

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.
David Hume

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
Aldous Huxley

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intelligence.
Samuel Johnson

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King

Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.
Erwin Knoll

Stupidity comes from having an answer to everything. Wisdom comes from having a question for everything.
Milan Kundera

All the brains in the world are powerless against the sort of stupidity that is in fashion.
Jean de La Fontaine

Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.
Edwin Land

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leonardo da Vinci

It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.
Sam Levenson

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
Lazarus Long (a character in novels by Robert Heinlein)

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
Niccolò Machiavelli

Nobody is exempt from saying stupid things, the harm is to do it presumptuously.
Michel de Montaigne

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

We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.
John Naisbitt

The love of power is the demon of mankind.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.
William Ockham (“Occam’s Razor”)

Simplicity, very rare in our age.
Publius Ovidius Naso (“Ovid”)

I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.
Blaise Pascal

Stupidity can easily be proved the supreme social evil.
Walter Pitkin

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of intelligence.
Edgar Allan Poe

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.
Terry Pratchett

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.
Marcel Proust

If you want to avoid seeing an idiot, break the mirror.
François Rabelais

Neither a pathology nor an index as such of moral default, stupidity is nonetheless linked to the most dangerous failures of human endeavor.
Avital Ronell

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Bertrand Russell

The fool doth think himself wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
George Bernard Shaw

A sort of melancholy, and regret, seizes us every time we meet a sophisticated, adulterated idiot. Oh the nice fools of yestertime! Genuine, natural. Like homemade bread.
Leonardo Sciascia

The more I know, the more I know that I don’t know.
Socrates

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

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity.
Leo Tolstoy

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
Mark Twain

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.
Voltaire

Stupidity is an incongruity inherent in life. Humans have developed, expanded and promoted it.
James Welles

There is no sin except stupidity.
Oscar Wilde

A philosopher always finds more grass to feed upon in the valleys of stupidity than on the arid heights of intelligence.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.
Frank Zappa

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