“I doubt you can understand the magnitude of the stupidity in your statement”

—  Robert Jordan, The Wheel of Time

Source: The Gathering Storm

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I doubt you can understand the magnitude of the stupidity in your statement" by Robert Jordan?
Robert Jordan photo
Robert Jordan305
American writer 1948–2007

Related quotes

Lesslie Newbigin photo

“There is a need for what [Michael] Polanyi calls the critique of doubt. When we undertake to doubt any statement, we do so on the basis of beliefs which--in the act of doubting--we do not doubt. I can only doubt the truth of a statement on the ground of other things--usually a great many things--which I believe to be true. It is impossible at the same time to doubt both the statement, and the beliefs on the basis of which the statement is doubted.”

Lesslie Newbigin (1909–1998) Christian missionary

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Eerdmans, 1989 (reprinted 2002),19.

Bernard Malamud photo

“I think I said "All men are Jews except they don't know it." I doubt I expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it's an understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history, sooner or later, treats all men.”

Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) American author

"An Interview with Bernard Malamud", in Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field (eds.) Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Prentice-Hall, 1975) p. 11

“But with a phone call I can understand your mood, your emotions. With an email I can’t. When speaking I can understand if you have a problem in an instant. I understand your fear. But I can begin to cultivate a hope with you.”

Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist

Source: The new world of Brunello Cucinelli https://www.morningfuture.com/en/article/2018/05/02/beauty-hope-brunello-cucinelli-work-future-digital/276/ Morning Future, 2 May 2018

Mark Twain photo

“It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Cited as an example of "What Mark Twain Didn't Say" in Mark Twain by Geoffrey C. Ward, et al.
Misattributed
Variant: It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Bertrand Russell photo

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 1: Current Perplexities, pp. 4–5
1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)
Context: Consider MacArthur and his Republican supporters. So limited is his intelligence and his imagination that he is never puzzled for one moment. All we have to do is to go back to the days of the Opium War. After we have killed a sufficient number of millions of Chinese, the survivors among them will perceive our moral superiority and hail MacArthur as a saviour. But let us not be one-sided. Stalin, I should say, is equally simple- minded and equally out of date. He, too, believes that if his armies could occupy Britain and reduce us all to the economic level of Soviet peasants and the political level of convicts, we should hail him as a great deliverer and bless the day when we were freed from the shackles of democracy. One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Vince Flynn photo

“Have you ever heard the phrase, it is better to keep your mouth closed and have people wonder if you are stupid than open it and remove all doubt? (Hakim al Harbi)”

Vince Flynn book Pursuit of Honor

Source: Pursuit of Honor

“Prediction is not the same thing as understanding, but in the absence of prediction, we can certainly doubt understanding.”

Robyn Dawes (1936–2010) American psychologist

Source: Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (2001), Chapter 6, “Three Specific Irrationalities of Probabilistic Judgment” (p. 97)

William Styron photo

“Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz.”

William Styron book Sophie's Choice

Source: Sophie's Choice (1979), Ch. 16

“The real test of love is when a person—including you—can know your weaknesses, your stupidities and your smallnesses, and still love you.”

Dossie Easton (1944) American author and family therapist

Source: The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities

Jackson Browne photo

“Make it on your own if you think you can.
If you see somewhere to go, I understand.”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

For Everyman, from For Everyman (1973)

Related topics