“Military intelligence was as nothing to military stupidity.”
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Diplomatic Immunity (2002), Chapter 2 (p. 32)
“The military mind remains unparalleled as a vehicle of creative stupidity.”
—
Isaac Asimov
,
book
In Memory Yet Green
In Memory Yet Green (1979), p. 461
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Isaac Asimov 303
American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni… 1920–1992Related quotes
“Military men are "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy.”
Henry Kissinger
(1923–2023) United States Secretary of State
Kissinger has denied saying it.
The only evidence that Kissinger ever said this was a claim in the book, The Final Days, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in chapter 14 (p.194 in the 1995 paperback edition). Woodward & Bernstein claimed that one of Kissinger's political foes, Alexander Haig, had told someone unnamed, that he (Haig) had heard Kissinger say it. That's triple hearsay, made even weaker by the fact that one of the parties is anonymous. Kissinger has denied ever saying it, and it was never substantiated by Haig, nor by anyone of known identity who claimed to have heard it. As Kirkus Reviews noted about the whole book, "none of it is substantiated in any assessable way."
In fact, the quote is not even very plausible, on its face. Kissinger served with distinction in the U.S. Army during WWII, and was awarded the Bronze Star. He has always been very respectful of other servicemen and their sacrifices. For him to have said such a thing would have been wildly out of character. In fact, the awkward phrasing doesn't even sound like Kissinger, whose English prose is consistently measured and careful, despite his heavy accent, even when he speaks extemporaneously.
Misattributed
“Stupidity is an attempt to iron out all differences, and not to use or value them creatively.”
Bill Mollison
(1928–2016) Australian permaculturist
Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 4.7
“Stupid fools look just as good as military geniuses until the fighting starts.”
Robert A. Heinlein
book
Friday
Source: Friday (1982), Chapter 4 (p. 37)
Erwin Rommel
(1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II
Ch XVI : The Great Retreat, p. 347.
The Rommel Papers (1953)
“Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower…”
Barack Obama
(1961) 44th President of the United States of America
Obama: America a Superpower 'Whether We Like It or Not' http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/15/obama-america-superpower-like.html, FoxNews.com (15 April 2010)
2010
“The creative mind plays with the object it loves.”
C.G. Jung
(1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
Georges Duhamel
(1884–1966) French writer
Source: Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters] (1937), p. vii