Victor Hugo quote: “The earth is a great piece of stupidity.”

“Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others…
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

From the Preface to the 1855 edition of <i>Leaves of Grass</i>
Context: This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . .
Context: This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.... The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured.... others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches.... and shall master all attachment.

“A great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or agree with it. A great piece of literature simply is.
It is a vehicle of truth, but it is not a blueprint, and we tend to confuse the two.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 4.5 
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

“One more piece for the Great Jigsaw puzzle.”

David Brin (1950) novelist, short story writer

Commenting on the discovery of Homo floresiensis, in a posting at McMedia.com (27 October 2004) http://www.mail-archive.com/brin-l@mccmedia.com/msg38195.html; an unsourced paraphrase replaces "go to perdition" with "go to hell".
Context: One more piece for the Great Jigsaw puzzle.
I find it truly stunning how many people can shrug off stuff like this, preferring instead a tiny, cramped cosmos just 6,000 years old, scheduled to end any-time-now in a scripted stage show of unfathomable violence and cruelty.
An ancient and immense and ongoing cosmos is so vastly more dramatic and worthy of a majestic Creator. Our brains, capable of exploring His universe, picking up His tools and doing His work, seem destined for much greater tasks than cowering in a small groups of the elect, praying that some of our neighbors will go to perdition...

“O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

“Not everybody is absolutely stupid. Why on earth would I be racist, what would I be trying to achieve?”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From the TV documentary The Importance of Being Morrissey (2003)
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

“Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“It’s magnificent, it’s really great. It is quite simple and quite a pure piece.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Israeli sky in Anish’s steel- India-born artist sculpts landmark symbol for museum

“The chequered flag is really just a stupid wooden stick and a piece of cloth. It's a small thing, but it means so much when you cross the line at moments like that. It was unbelievable.”

Sebastian Vettel (1987) German racing driver in Formula 1

http://www.sebastian-vettel.org/quotes.htm
After his 4th position in China 2007.
Sourced quotes

“Kids are not stupid. They are among the sharpest, cleverest, most eagle-eyed creatures on God's Earth, and very little escapes their notice.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/willy-wonka-and-the-chocolate-factory-1971 of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1 January 1971)
Reviews, Four star reviews
Context: Kids are not stupid. They are among the sharpest, cleverest, most eagle-eyed creatures on God's Earth, and very little escapes their notice. You may not have observed that your neighbor is still using his snow tires in mid-July, but every four-year-old on the block has, and kids pay the same attention to detail when they go to the movies. They don't miss a thing, and they have an instinctive contempt for shoddy and shabby work. I make this observation because nine out of ten children's movies are stupid, witless, and display contempt for their audiences, and that's why kids hate them. Is that all parents want from kids' movies? That they not have anything bad in them? Shouldn't they have something good in them — some life, imagination, fantasy, inventiveness, something to tickle the imagination? If a movie isn't going to do your kids any good, why let them watch it? Just to kill a Saturday afternoon? That shows a subtle kind of contempt for a child's mind, I think. All of this is preface to a simple statement: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is probably the best film of its sort since "The Wizard of Oz." It is everything that family movies usually claim to be, but aren't: Delightful, funny, scary, exciting, and, most of all, a genuine work of imagination. Willy Wonka is such a surely and wonderfully spun fantasy that it works on all kinds of minds, and it is fascinating because, like all classic fantasy, it is fascinated with itself.

“It's natural to feel fear. All great warriors are afraid. Only the stupid and the delusional are not…”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

“The earth is a great piece of stupidity.”

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Victor Hugo 308

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