“If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?”
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Scott Adams 86
cartoonist, writer 1957Related quotes

“I know you're not a stupid person, so why would you ask such a stunningly stupid question?”
Source: Novels, Squeeze Me (2020), Chapter 28

“Question is, are you bozos smart enough to feel stupid?”
"Berzerk"
2010s, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013)
“Asking what the question is, and why the question is asked, is always asking a pertinent question.”
Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 17.
“In other cases they do this because they do not know how to ask certain kinds of questions.”
Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: We can justify the list we will submit on several grounds. First, many of these questions have literally been asked by children and adolescents when they are permitted to respond freely to the challenge of "What's Worth Knowing?" Second, some of these questions are based on careful listening to students, even though they were not at the time asking questions. Very often children make declarative statements about things when they really mean only to elicit an informative response. In some cases, they do this because they have learned from adults that it is "better" to pretend that you know than to admit that you don't. (An old aphorism describing this process goes: Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.) In other cases they do this because they do not know how to ask certain kinds of questions. In any event, a simple translation of their declarative utterances will sometimes produce a great variety of deeply felt questions.

“Smart people sometimes get stupid, but stupid people never get smart.”