Source: Letter to his wife during the 1923 Imperial Conference (8 November 1923), quoted in Terry Reardon, Winston Churchill and Mackenzie King: So Similar, So Different (2012), pp. 52-53
“Obstinate, tiresome and stupid.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician
Curzon's opinion of Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, quoted in Nicholas Mansergh, The Commonwealth Experience (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p. 224.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Quoted in Library of Living Philosophers: The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (1944)
1940s
“To the stupidity of men, " Dakota said, raising a glass. "And my brother, who is their king.”
Susan Mallery (1950) American author
Source: Almost Perfect
Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director
The Other Half: A Self Portrait http://books.google.com/books?id=4gg0AAAAMAAJ&q=%22In+time+of+war+all+countries+behave+equally+badly+because+the+power+of+action+is+handed+over+to+stupid+and+obstinate+men%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage (1977)
David Edwards (1962) british journalist, born 1962
Source: Burning All Illusions (1996), p. 1
“Idleness ere now has ruined both kings and wealthy cities.”
Otium et reges prius et beatas
perdidit urbes.
Gaio Valerio Catullo list of poems by Catullus
LI, last lines
Carmina
R. Scott Bakker book The Judging Eye
TRIAMIS I, JOURNALS AND DIALOGUES
Source: The Judging Eye (2009)
“Fashion as king is sometimes a very stupid ruler.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) mathematician and science fiction author born in Scotland who lived in the United States for most of his li…
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 146
Context: Fashion as king is sometimes a very stupid ruler. As was observed a little way back, the kernel of Plücker's theory of geometric dimensionality is that the dimensionality of a given space is not an absolute constant, but depends upon the elements, accepted as irreducible, in terms of which the space is described.
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
Context: No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more; and its advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge, as much as in the improvement of laws.<!--p.2
“All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.”
Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass
Source: The Amber Spyglass
