 
|
Hanlon's Razor:
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
-Anon.
|
|
|
|
There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.
-Lord (John Emerich Edward Dalberg) Acton
|
|
|
|
In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that he did not also limit his stupidity.
-Konrad Adenauer
|
|
|
|
It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don’t think it will come back.
-Maya Angelou
|
|
|
|
Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?
-Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, introduction, 1987
|
|
|
|
It is not always easy to diagnose. The simplest form of stupidity - the mumbling, nose-picking, stolid incomprehension - can be detected by anyone. But the stupidity which disguises itself as thought, and which talks so glibly and eloquently, indeed never stops talking, in every walk of life is not so easy to identify, because it marches under a formidable name, which few dare attack. It is called Popular Opinion...
-Robertson Davies, "Can a Doctor Be a Humanist?"
|
|
|
|
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
-Albert Einstein
|
|
|
|
To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.
-Gustave Flaubert
|
|
|
|
"I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art."
-Kahlil Gibran, "A Handful of Sand on the Shore"
|
|
|
|
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action."
-Johann von Goethe
|
|
|
|
There are more fools in the world than there are people.
-Heinrich Heine
|
|
|
|
"Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them."
-Walter Kerr
|
|
|
|
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
|
|
|
|
Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.
-Horace Mann
|
|
|
|
The voice of intelligence ... is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is biased by hate and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance.
-Karl Menninger
|
|
|
|
The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
-William Osler
|
|
|
|
"Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education."
-Bertrand Russell
|
|
|
|
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
-Bertrand Russell
|
|
|
|
We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
-Carl Sagan
|
|
|
|
Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain.
-Friedrich von Schiller, The Maid of Orleans
|
|
|
|
The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
-C. H. (Charles Haddon) Spurgeon
|
|
|
|
A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.
-Henry David Thoreau, Excursions, 1863
|
|
|
|
The stupidity of a stupid man is mercifully intimate and reticient, while the stupidity of an intellectual is cried from the rooftops.
-Peter Ustinov, "Dear Me"
|
|
Books about Ignorance & Stupidity
