“Naive you are
if you believe
life favours those
who aren't naive.”

—  Piet Hein

Naive —
Grooks

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 "Naive you are if you believe life favours those who aren't naive." by Piet Hein?
Piet Hein photo
Piet Hein 37
Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet 1905–1996

Related quotes

Jodi Picoult photo
Gore Vidal photo

“Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

1990s, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992)
Context: Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be. Any individual who is able to raise $25 million to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent oil, or aerospace, or banking, or whatever moneyed entities are paying for him. Certainly he will never represent the people of the country, and they know it. Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress.

Douglas Adams photo

“There is no consistent, integrated conception of the world which serves as the foundation on which our edifice of belief rests. And therefore… we are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: The world in which we live is very nearly incomprehensible to most of us. There is almost no fact... that will surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world which would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction.... in a world without spiritual or intellectual order, nothing is unbelievable; nothing is predictable, and therefore, nothing comes as a particular surprise.... The medieval world was... not without a sense of order. Ordinary men and women... had no doubt that there was such a design, and their priests were well able, by deduction from a handful of principles, to make it, if not rational, at least coherent.... The situation we are presently in is much different.... sadder and more confusing and certainly more mysterious.... There is no consistent, integrated conception of the world which serves as the foundation on which our edifice of belief rests. And therefore... we are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything.

Ken Thompson photo

“I do believe that in a race, it is naive to think Linux has a hope of making a dent against Microsoft starting from way behind with a fraction of the resources and amateur labor.”

Ken Thompson (1943) American computer scientist, creator of the Unix operating system

I feel the same about Unix.
"Ken Thompson clarifies matters", 1999

Edsger W. Dijkstra photo

“Probably I am very naive, but I also think I prefer to remain so, at least for the time being and perhaps for the rest of my life.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Refering to his conclusion to the Barber paradox or Russell's paradox.
Dijkstra (1985) Where is Russell's paradox? http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD923a.html (EWD 923A).
1980s

Richard Feynman photo
Witold Gombrowicz photo
Helmut Schmidt photo

“In the basic questions, one have to be naive. And I think that the problems of the world and of humanity cannot be solved without idealism. However, I also believe that one should be realistic and pragmatic at the same time.”

Helmut Schmidt (1918–2015) Chancellor of West Germany 1974-1982

Weggefährten - Erinnerungen und Reflexionen, Siedler-Verlag Berlin 1996, S. 54, ISBN 9783442755158, ISBN 978-3442755158

Related topics