Quotes about stupidity
page 2

“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Life, Universe

“If more government is the answer, then it was a really stupid question.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Question

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

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

World, Fear

“Feelings are never stupid, they just make us feel stupid sometimes.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Danse Macabre

Source: Danse Macabre

Feeling

“There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain

“We're always disappointed when we find out someone else has human limits, the same as we do. It's stupid for us to feel that way, and we really ought to know better, but that doesn't seem to slow us down.”

Jim Butcher book Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

Disappointment, Way, Feeling

“I swear, talking to you is like talking to a really good-looking and mildly stupid brick wall.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

“Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.”

Jim Butcher book Vignette

World, Hell, Evil

“Sometimes love isn't about being smart. Sometimes it's about being stupid together.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Affliction

Source: Affliction

Love

“Great! I've written something stupid, but I haven't signed a contract with anyone to produce solely wise and perfect works. I gave vent to my stupidity… and here I am, reborn.”

Witold Gombrowicz book Ferdydurke

Source: Ferdydurke

Perfection

“Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax couldin a cutting way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People, Way

“Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Drawing, Deep

“Mort was already aware that love made you feel hot and cold and cruel and weak, but he hadn't realized that it could make you stupid.”

Terry Pratchett book Mort

Source: Mort

Love, Feeling

“Irony is wasted on the stupid”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

“He’d always felt he had a right to exist as a wizard in the same way that you couldn’t do proper maths without the number 0, which wasn’t a number at all but, if it went away, would leave a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid.”

Terry Pratchett book Interesting Times

Source: Interesting Times

Way

“I'm not stupid, stupid. Leave this whole thing in my extremely capable and well-manicured hands. I'll call you later with an update. Bye!”

P. C. Cast book Burned

Source: Burned

“You know, ogres only sound stupid. Most are pretty smart."

"And it's a shallow person who judges anyone by the way they sound. I'm so shallow I'm surprised I don't reflect myself.”

Tamora Pierce book First Test

Source: First Test

Way, Personality

“Laughter is good for you. Nine out of ten stand-up comedians recommend laughter in the face of intense stupidity.”

Jim Butcher Proven Guilty

Source: Proven Guilty

Laughter

“Anger is stupid, and stupidity will kill you more surely than your opponent's blade.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: Dragon Bones

Anger

“It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

World

“Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.”

Terry Pratchett book Pyramids

Source: Pyramids

Animals

“Colon thought Carrot was simple. Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was.
Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.”

Terry Pratchett book Men at Arms

Source: Men at Arms

People, Thinking

“Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.”

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

Question

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

Robertson Davies book World of Wonders

Source: World of Wonders

World, Evil

“Time does to the body what stupidity does to the soul”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book Marina

Source: Marina

Soul, Time

“Oh! I'm stupid as well as insane.”

Tamora Pierce In the Hand of the Goddess

Source: In the Hand of the Goddess

“Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“The enemy isn't men, or women, it's bloody stupid people and no one has the right to be stupid.”

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

Women, Men, People

“Cause when a guy does something stupid once, well that’s because he’s a guy. But if he does the same stupid thing twice, that’s usually to impress some girl.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Guy, Girl

“If that isn't typical male stupidity! If something doesn't work, kick it or swear at it!”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

“Most people are boring and stupid.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

People

“but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Variant: Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Life, Way

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

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

As Quote Investigator explains, allegories about animals doing impossible things have been incredibly popular in the past century. But no, this one isn't from Einstein. (Source: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/06/fish-climb/.) Misattributed Variant: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

Life, Fish, Tree

“Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude. Pharisees — that is to say, friars.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Falseness

“I wish to weep
but sorrow is
stupid.
I wish to believe
but belief is a
graveyard.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Education, Knowledge

“We're not stupid! We're just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

Source: Snow

“Take a note: it usually works better if you wait until I do something stupid before getting mad at me.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Waiting, Madness

“This cures everything except stupidity, which is an epidemic on the rise.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

“This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”

George V. Higgins book The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Source: The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Life, Funny

“Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Hurt

“In a brutal country like ours, where human life is 'cheap', it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

Source: Snow

Life, People, Idea, Country

“I sighed. I hated the maze of bureaucracy with a passion, but I've found the best way to deal with it is to smile and act stupid. That way, no one gets confused.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Dead Witch Walking

Hate, Smile, Way, Passion

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 1: Current Perplexities, pp. 4–5
1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)
Context: Consider MacArthur and his Republican supporters. So limited is his intelligence and his imagination that he is never puzzled for one moment. All we have to do is to go back to the days of the Opium War. After we have killed a sufficient number of millions of Chinese, the survivors among them will perceive our moral superiority and hail MacArthur as a saviour. But let us not be one-sided. Stalin, I should say, is equally simple- minded and equally out of date. He, too, believes that if his armies could occupy Britain and reduce us all to the economic level of Soviet peasants and the political level of convicts, we should hail him as a great deliverer and bless the day when we were freed from the shackles of democracy. One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Pain, Feeling, Imagination, Understanding

“Kayla Robinson, if you don't shut up I'll fly down there and suck every last bit of blood from your stupid cheating cow body!”

P. C. Cast book Marked

Source: Marked

Cheating, Flying

“You didn't kill him. He would have killed you, but you didn't kill him."
"So? He was stupid. If I killed everyone who was stupid, I wouldn't have time to sleep.”

Tamora Pierce In the Hand of the Goddess

Source: In the Hand of the Goddess

Sleep, Time

“But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.”

Barack Obama book Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Source: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Country

“A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones who need advice.”

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

Funny

“The two most common elements in the world are hydrogen and stupidity.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

World

“Stupidity and unconscious bias often work more damage than venality.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Sceptical Essays

“I found myself staring at her, which was stupid since I'd seen her a billion times. Still, she seemed so much more mature. It was kind of intimidating. I mean, sure, she'd always been cute, but she was starting to be seriously beautiful.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Beauty, Time

“She would have kissed him, if she kissed stupid men.”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

Source: Trickster's Queen

Men, Kiss

“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

“You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

“I know what you want. It is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess. - The sea witch.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Little Mermaid

Source: The Little Mermaid

Way, Princess, Sea

“MRS ALLONBY I adore them. The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
HESTER I think the stupid people talk a great deal.
MRS ALLONBY Ah, I never listen!”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

People, Thinking

“It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Idea

“I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

From a personal conversation, quoted from memory by Maxim Gorky in "V.I. Lenin" (1924) http://www.marxists.org/archive/gorky-maxim/1924/01/x01.htm  Attributions Context: I know of nothing better than the Appassionata and could listen to it every day. What astonishing, superhuman music! It always makes me proud, perhaps with a childish naiveté, to think that people can work such miracles! … But I can’t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to say sweet, silly things, and pat the little heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. These days, one can’t pat anyone on the head nowadays, they might bite your hand off. Hence, you have to beat people's little heads, beat mercilessly, although ideally we are against doing any violence to people. Hm — what a devillishly difficult job!

People, Beauty, Music, Hell

“… stupidity is one of the two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Chance

“Remorse.-- Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“Facts are stupid things.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Address to Republican National Convention http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/081588b.htm. (15 August 1988) 1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989) Variant: Facts are stupid things — stubborn things, I should say.

“For a long while I have lived with the notion that I was the most normal being that ever existed. This notion gave me the taste, even the passion for being unproductive: what was the use of being prized in a world inhabited by madmen, a world mired in mania and stupidity? For whom was one to bother, and to what end? It remains to be seen if I have quite freed myself from this certitude, salvation in the absolute, ruin in the immediate.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

World, Passion

“If […] the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 13.

Exercises, Intelligence, Thinking, Personality

“Could you love a woman you didn't respect? Could you worship someone without believeing in her? Could you be madly in love with a woman you didn't admire? Well, you could. Not only that, it might be better that way. Easier. It took Paul almost forty years to learn that carnal platitude. Nevertheless, he always took Sonia to dinners where, sooner or later, her stupidity would explode, with the result that brighter souls would inevitably pick up on it right away and cast a sympathetic, albeit ironical, look in his direction, which only excited him all the more.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

Love, Way, Soul, Learning

“I figured things would be better in Washington, that I'd find a lot of people I admired and belonged with. Washington is worse, Paul—Ilium to the tenth power. Stupid, arrogant, self-congratulatory, unimaginative, humorless men. And the women, Paul—the dull wives feeding on the power and glory of their husbands.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 9 (p. 88)

Women, Men, People

“p>Finally my Hiawatha
Tumbled all the tribe together,
('Grouped' is not the right expression),
And, as happy chance would have it
Did at last obtain a picture
Where the faces all succeeded:
Each came out a perfect likeness.Then they joined and all abused it,
Unrestrainedly abused it,
As the worst and ugliest picture
They could possibly have dreamed of.
'Giving one such strange expressions -
Sullen, stupid, pert expressions.
Really any one would take us
(Any one that did not know us)
For the most unpleasant people!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

(Hiawatha seemed to think so,
Seemed to think it not unlikely.)
Hiawatha's Photographing
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

Happiness, People, Dreams, Thinking

“It is a stupid observation, but the Labour Party are not an smart lot, are they? I mean, if all those people were born in the same town, you would blame bad parenting, wouldn't you all?”

Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian

The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, July 1997 (rebroadcast on BBC 7, 23 July 1999)
Variant: It seems a shallow observation, but… the Tory Conference are not an attractive lot, are they? I mean, if all those people were born in the same village, you'd blame pollution, wouldn't you?

People, Parent

“In general, "historical necessity" turns out to be merely a name for human stupidity.”

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913–1994) Colombian writer and philosopher

Sucesivos Escolios a un Texto Implícito (1992)

“Regulations are for the stupid.”

Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord (1878–1943) German general

Quoted in, The Silences of Hammerstein http://www.amazon.com/The-Silences-Hammerstein-Seagull-Books/dp/1906497222

“What would you say of that man who was made king by the error of the people, if he had so far forgotten his natural condition as to imagine that this kingdom was due to him, that he deserved it, and that it belonged to him of right? You would marvel at his stupidity and folly. But is there less in the people of rank who live in so strange a forgetfulness of their natural condition?”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

People, Error, Imagination, Nature

“The world attributes its misfortunes to the schemes and plottings of the very evil and powerful. I think stupidity is underestimated.”

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) Argentine novelist

"El mundo atribuye sus infortunios a las conspiraciones y maquinaciones de grandes malvados. Entiendo que se subestima la estupidez."
Breve diccionario del argentino exquisito, 1978.

World, Thinking, Evil

““I didn’t want to scare you. We don’t want to scare anyone.”
“No? Well, sometimes it’s a good thing to scare people. Sometimes fear is all that will keep them from doing stupid things.””

Octavia E. Butler book Adulthood Rites

Part II “Phoenix” chapter 15 (p. 381).
Adulthood Rites (1988)

People, Fear

“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)

Intelligence, Reality

“Stupid people, people who do not know how to laugh, are always pompous and self-conceited.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Sketches and Travels in London; Mr. Brown's Letters to His Nephew: "On Love, Marriage, Men and Women" (1856).

People

“so the moral of this week is: if u do something really, really stupid in front of someone ur just getting to know & they still think youre awesome, then you got yourself a friend.”

Alicia Witt (1975) American actress

Extended tweet at TwitLonger (14 August 2010)
Twitter tweets

Thinking

““A writer,” I said, when my social worker asked me what I planned to do when I got out of the hospital. “I’m going to be a writer.” “That’s a nice hobby, but how are you going to earn a living?” My social worker and I did not like each other. I didn’t like her because she didn’t understand that this was me, and I was going to be a writer; I was not going to type term bills or sell au gratin bowls or do any other stupid things.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

Understanding

“I like to work alone, because it irritates me if people say something stupid — I just can’t stand it… I have a Polish guy who comes in and cleans the studio, but pretty much no one else. [talking over a cappuccino, at the Museum of Modern Art New York, during her show there in 2013]”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

after 2010, No, It Isn't Supposed to Be Easy' (2013)

People, Art, Guy

“You know when you're [driving] drunk, you're like [Imitates car driving and going over the bumps on the edge of the road], behind you, you hear [Imitates big rig horn] [slurring] "Shut up, stupid!" You know, if you hear the magical sound [Imitates police siren], one of two things will pop in your head. Either one, [slurring] "I'm okay, I'm fine…I can beat this." Or two, [police siren] "I'm gonna go to jail. Ima gonna jail. Hey, gonna hafta let you go babe, Ima gonna jail. Tell the kids I love 'em, bye."”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

Hot & Fluffy (2007)

Love, Cars

“Everything I undertake is directed against Russia. If the West is too stupid and blind to grasp this, then I shall be compelled to come to an agreement with Russia, beat the West and then after their defeat turn against the Soviet Union with all my forces.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Discussion with Jacob Burckhardt, League of Nation commissioner. Quoted in Norman Rich, Hitler's War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi State, and the Course of Expansion pg. 126 https://books.google.com/books?id=1nPPbpXUZA0C&pg=PA126&dq=hitler+is+against+russia+the+west&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR3PP6n5bXAhVC6CYKHTKJB3EQ6AEISjAG#v=onepage&q=hitler%20is%20against%20russia%20the%20west&f=false 1930s

“In Art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them. They endure them as the inevitable, and, as they cannot mar them, they mouth about them…A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions - one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Beauty, Art, Appearance

“Nothing conveys the feeling of infinity as much as stupidity does.”

Ödön von Horváth (1901–1938) Austro-Hungarian writer

Motto of Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (Tales from the Vienna Wood) (1931).

Feeling

“We all share the guilt. We went along with everything, and we half-took the Nazis seriously instead of saying "to hell with you and your stupid nonsense". I misled my soldiers into believing this rubbish. I feel utterly ashamed of myself. Perhaps we bear even more guilt than these uneducated animals.”

Dietrich von Choltitz (1894–1966) German general

Quoted in History Channel 5-part series "The Wehrmacht" in the episode "The Crimes".

Feeling, Hell, Animals

“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Often known as Hanlon's razor, this was attributed to Napoleon without source in Message Passing Server Internals (2003) by Bill Blunden, p. 15, ISBN 0071416382
Misattributed

“When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Theory of Knowledge (1913)
1910s

People, Thinking

“It is true that impatience, the mother of stupidity, praises brevity, as if such persons had not life long enough to serve them to acquire a complete knowledge of one single subject, such as the human body; and then they want to comprehend the mind of God in which the universe is included, weighing it minutely and mincing it into infinite parts, as if they had to dissect it!”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Life, God, Knowledge, Universe

“An intelligent woman is a woman with whom one can be as stupid as one wants.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Mauvaises Pensées et Autres (1941)

Intelligence

“They're all weak, all women. They're stupid compared to men. They shouldn't play chess, you know. They're like beginners. They lose every single game against a man. There isn't a woman player in the world I can't give knight-odds to and still beat.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1960s, Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master (1961)

Women, Men, World, Game

“I hate that stupid old pickup truck
You never let me drive.
You're a redneck heartbreak
Who's really bad at lying.
So watch me strike a match
On all my wasted time.
As far as I'm concerned you're
Just another picture to burn.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Picture to Burn, written by Taylor Swift and Liz Rose.
Song lyrics, Taylor Swift (2006)

Hate, Lying, Time

“Soviet propaganda is remarkably effective and the Americans are even more remarkably stupid.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 508
Attributed

“My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 101
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Os meus sonhos são um refúgio estúpido, como um guarda-chuva contra um raio.

Dreams

“People in France have a phrase: "Spirit of the Stairway." In French: esprit d'Escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer but it's too late. So you're at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So, under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party… As you start down the stairway, then - magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should've said. The perfect crippling put down. That's the Spirit of the Stairway. The trouble is, even the French don't have a phrase for the stupid things you actually do say under pressure. Those stupid, desperate things you actually think or do.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted (2005), Chapter One, Guts

People, Thinking, Perfection

“To the Satanist, martyrdom and non-personalized heroism is to be associated not with integrity, but with stupidity. This, of course, does not apply to the situations which involve the safety of a loved one. But to give one's own life for something as impersonal as a political or religious issue is the ultimate in masochism.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Love, Life, Personality

“What is the use of education if we do not become creative, conscious and truly intelligent? Real education does not mean knowing how to read and write. Any stupid person, any fool can know how to read and write. We need to have intelligence and it only awakens within us when the consciousness awakens.”

Samael Aun Weor (1917–1977) Colombian writer

Fundamental Education

Education, Fools, Intelligence, Reading

“It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes. Behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle? And when these four are joined together they make a terrible force, and constitute the new authority.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891) Source: Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1912) The Soul of Man Under Socialism, London, Arthur L. Humphreys. Retrieved from University of California Libraries Archive.org https://archive.org 13 February 2018 https://archive.org/details/soulofmanunderso00wildiala

“Love's ship has foundered on the rocks of life.
We're quits: stupid to draw up a list
of mutual sorrows, hurts and pains.”

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor

Untitled last poem found after his death; translation from Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) vol. 4, p. 235

Love, Life, Pain, Hurt

“Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity. For Chance rarely conflicts with intelligence, and most things in life can be set in order by an intelligent sharpsightedness.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Freeman (1948), p. 155

Life, Men, Intelligence, Fashion

“The idea of an all-powerful divine Being is present everywhere, unconsciously if not consciously, because it is an archetype. There is in the psyche some superior power, and if it is not consciously a god, it is the "belly" at least, in St. Paul's words. I therefore consider it wiser to acknowledge the idea of God consciously, for, if we do not, something else is made God, usually something quite inappropiate and stupid such as only an "enlightened" intellect could hatch forth.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

C. G. Jung. 2014. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 7: Two Essays in Analytical Psychology. Princeton University Press. p. 71

God, Idea

“Maybe if I act like that, that guy will call me back.
What a Paparazzi girl, I don't wanna be a stupid girl.
Baby if I act like that, flipping my blond hair back,
Push up my bra like that. I don't wanna be a stupid girl.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

Stupid Girls, written by Pink, Billy Mann and Nikey Olovson & Robin Lynch
Song lyrics, I'm Not Dead (2006)

Guy, Girl, Baby

“What do people like to call stupid the most? Something sensible that they can’t understand.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Was nennen die Menschen am liebsten dumm? Das Gescheite, das sie nicht verstehen.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 37.

People, Understanding

Quotes about stupidity page 2

Quotes about stupidity
page 2