Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 16: Ideas Which Have Become Obsolete, p. 158
Source: 1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)
2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)
“A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid.”
Book III, Ch. 9
Essais (1595), Book III
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Doin' It Again, Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics (1990)
Context: I know that. Some people don't want you to mention certain things. Some people don't want you to say this, some people don't want you to say that. Some people think if you mention some things they might happen. Some people are really fucking stupid. Did you ever notice that, how many stupid people you run into during the day? Goddamn there's a lot of stupid bastards walking around. Carry a pad and pencil with you, you'll wind up with thirty or forty names by the end of the day. Think about this; think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that.
Paul Tanner, in "Free Women: 1"<!-- p. 173 -->
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse. They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave. They have known it. We know it. But do the great enlightened mass of the British people know it? No. It is our task, Ella, yours and mine, to tell them. Because the great men are too great to be bothered. They are already discovering how to colonise Venus and to irrigate the moon. That is what is important for our time. You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we’ll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.
“Anger is stupid, and stupidity will kill you more surely than your opponent's blade.”
Source: Dragon Bones
“There is nothing more horrifying than stupidity in action.”
“For what is there more hideous than avarice, more brutal than lust, more contemptible than cowardice, more base than stupidity and folly?”
Quid enim foedius auaritia, quid immanius libidine, quid contemptius timiditate, quid abiectius tarditate et stultitia dici potest?
Book I, section 51; (Translation by C.D. Yonge) http://books.google.com/books?id=AdAIAAAAQAAJ&q=%22For+what+is+there+more+hideous+than+avarice+more+brutal+than+lust+more+contemptible+than+cowardice+more+base+than+stupidity+and%22&pg=PA420#v=onepage
De Legibus (On the Laws)
329
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Context: My old suggestion that public offices be filled by drawing lots, as a jury box is filled, was probably more intelligent than I suspected. It has been criticized on the ground that selecting a man at random would probably produce some extremely bad State governors. [... ] But I incline to believe that it would be best to choose members of the Legislature quite at random. No matter how stupid they were, they could not be more stupid than the average legislator under the present system. Certainly, they'd be measurably more honest, taking one with another. Finally, there would be the great advantage that all of them had got their jobs unwillingly, and were eager, not to spin out their sessions endlessly, but to get home as soon as possible.
