“If all the people of this world were intelligent, the world would be ruined.”
[Baqir Shareef al-Qurashi, Abdullah al-Shahin, The Life of Imam Hasan al-'Askari, Wonderful short maxims, 2005]
[Mizan al-Hikmat, Mohammadi Rey Shahri, Mohammad, 5]</ref>
Knowledge
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Hasan al-Askari 17
Eleventh of the Twelve Imams 846–874Related quotes
The Marshall Plan Speech (1947)
Context: I need not tell you that the world situation is very serious. That must be apparent to all intelligent people. I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. Furthermore, the people of this country are distant from the troubled areas of the earth and it is hard for them to comprehend the plight and consequent reactions of the long-suffering peoples, and the effect of those reactions on their governments in connection with our efforts to promote peace in the world.
“Poverty was scorned,
Fruitful of warriors; and from all the world
Came that which ruins nations.”
Fecunda virorum
paupertas fugitur totoque accersitur orbe
quo gens quaeque perit.
Book I, line 165 (tr. Edward Ridley).
Pharsalia
Source: The Art of Money Getting; Or, Golden Rules for Making Money
From interview with Robert Block, 1995
Interviews (1993 – 1995)
Variant: The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
“The two oldest professions in the world — ruined by amateurs.”
On actors and prostitutes, from his column, as republished in Shouts and Murmurs: Echoes of a Thousand and One First Nights (1922), p. 57.