“There are only two races on this planet — the intelligent and the stupid.”

—  John Fowles

As quoted in Daily Telegraph (15 August 1991)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There are only two races on this planet — the intelligent and the stupid." by John Fowles?
John Fowles photo
John Fowles 120
British writer 1926–2005

Related quotes

Jonathan Franzen photo

“Stupidity mistook itself for intelligence, whereas intelligence knew its own stupidity.”

Jonathan Franzen book Purity

Source: Purity

“We have several races of beings that speak on this one planet. We have many and varying types of intelligence on this one planet. Therefore, tendencies that encourage intelligence, language, and a continuing search for information may very well be in accordance with the purpose of the universe.
And contrariwise, all systems that discourage intelligence, language, and a continuing search for information are anti-existence, death-dealing, and evil.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Strange Horizons interview (2008)

Bill Cosby photo

“Fathers are the geniuses of the house because only a person as intelligent as we could fake such stupidity.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Himself (1983)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Aldous Huxley photo

“We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

Robert Anton Wilson photo

“On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

Source: Cosmic Trigger 2: Down to Earth

John Derbyshire photo

“The fact is that political stupidity is a special kind of stupidity, not well correlated with intelligence, or with other varieties of stupidity.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Source: Derb Quotes https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/derb-quotes-john-derbyshire/, National Review, November 20, 2003.

Isaac Newton photo

“This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”

Isaac Newton book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), Scholium Generale (1713; 1726)
Source: The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Context: This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. And if the fixed Stars are the centers of other like systems, these being form'd by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially, since the light of the fixed Stars is of the same nature with the light of the Sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems. And lest the systems of the fixed Stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those Systems at immense distances one from another.

Aldous Huxley photo

“which is better - to be born stupid into an intelligent society or intelligent into an insane one?”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

Related topics