Stupid Ideas Quotes & Sayings

Because we're not gay or straight, good or bad, single or married. We're human, and that means we're all sorts of things, and I know you don't want to hear one of my stupid ideas right now, but think about how often we're told to choose. Our whole lives we're asked to. Which team, which army, which political party? Even when that choice is hard, goes against what the majority considers acceptable, we still fail ourselves by letting it define us.
(Victor) — Jay Bell

That's what you promised him, Princess?" he shouted throwing up his hands. "That was your bargain? You would offer yourself to the Unseelie Court?" He turned and punched a tree, sending twigs and icicles to the ground. "Of all the stupid ideas! What is wrong with you?"
-PUCK — Julie Kagawa

Don't let anyone tell you your ideas are stupid or the thing you feel most passionate about 'won't work' - it's happened to me time and time again, and we find that if you push at what you think is interesting hard enough, you're probably right. — Dennis Crowley

Liberals are always proposing perfectly insane ideas, laws that will make everybody happy, laws that will make everything right, make us live forever, and all be rich. Conservatives are never that stupid. — P. J. O'Rourke

I believe that you have the absolute right to think things that I find offensive, stupid, preposterous or dangerous, and that you have the right to speak, write, or distribute these things, and that I do not have the right to kill you, maim you, hurt you, or take away your liberty or property because I find your ideas threatening or insulting or downright disgusting. You probably think some of my ideas are pretty vile too. I — Neil Gaiman

This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know
which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension! — Anton Chekhov

To sum up. A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him. I say this of the plongeur because it is his case I have been considering; it would apply equally to numberless other types of worker. These are only my own Ideas about the basic facts of a plongeur's life, made without reference to immediate economic questions, and no doubt largely platitudes. I present them as a sample of the thoughts that are put into one's head by working in a hotel. — George Orwell

When you come across with the ideas that you don't like and even hate, do these three things: Be tolerant, be tolerant and be tolerant! Let them speak! Let the stupid and even the fools speak! Protecting freedom of expression under every circumstance is an honour for a man! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

My good ideas are shy. But if they see that I treat the stupid ideas with respect, they come forward. — Gail Carson Levine

There are many really stupid ideas that wind up being brilliant, if you can implement them. — Gene Simmons

We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence. — Daniel M. Gilbert

The biggest things in life have been achieved by people who, at the start, we would have judged crazy. And yet if they had not had these crazy ideas the world would have been more stupid. — Arsene Wenger

It's insulting when outsiders come in and tell a traumatized people what it will take for them to heal ... People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, but they are not stupid. They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked. That includes women. Most especially women. — Leymah Gbowee

Psychologists usually offer three explanations for the failure of group brainstorming. The first is social loafing: in a group, some individuals tend to sit back and let others do the work. The second is production blocking: only one person can talk or produce an idea at once, while the other group members are forced to sit passively. And the third is evaluation apprehension, meaning the fear of looking stupid in front of one's peers. — Susan Cain

People do whatever the hell they want to do at any age they fancy. Last month you were thirty-five. That means you're five years from forty. Do you think that the day you reach forty you will be any different than you were at thirty-nine or forty-one for that matter? People create little ideas about ages so they can write silly self-help books, stick stupid comments in birthday cards, create names for internet chat rooms and look for excuses for crisis that are happening in their life. — Cecelia Ahern

The test of character posed by the gentleness of God's approach to us is especially dangerous for those formed by the ideas that dominate our modern world. We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. The fashion of the age has identified mental sharpness with a pose, not with genuine intellectual method and character. Only a very hardy individualist or social rebel
or one desperate for another life
therefore stands any chance of discovering the substantiality of the spiritual life today. Today it is the skeptics who are the social conformists, though because of powerful intellectual propaganda they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright. — Dallas Willard

It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas. — George Santayana

Do you think that the day you reach forty you will be any different than you were at thirty-nine or forty-one for that matter? People create little ideas about ages so they can write silly self-help books, stick stupid comments in birthday cards, create names for internet chat rooms and look for excuses for crises that are happening in their life. — Cecelia Ahern

Yeah, we don't consider many stupid things. I mean, we get rid of 'em fast ... Just getting rid of the nonsense
just figuring out that if people call you and say, 'I've got this great, wonderful idea', you don't spend 10 minutes once you know in the first sentence that it isn't a great, wonderful idea ... Don't be polite and go through the whole process. — Warren Buffett

It as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad. It's an intimate mixture of rubbish and good ideas, and it's very hard to disentangle the two, because these are smart people; they're not stupid. — Douglas Hofstadter

If someone thinks your ideas, the dreams bubbling up inside of you, are stupid, welcome to the Club. — Richie Norton

And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation. — Amy Tan

Automobiles are free of egotism, passion, prejudice and stupid ideas about where to have dinner. They are, literally, selfless. A world designed for automobiles instead of people would have wider streets, larger dining rooms, fewer stairs to climb and no smelly, dangerous subway stations. — P. J. O'Rourke

People come up with stupid ideas all the time. That's why your detergent tells you not to eat it. — Seanbaby

There are some ideas so stupid that only intellectuals can believe in them, particularly left-wing intellectuals. — Poul Anderson

If you do not read and listen to the opposite ideas, you can always remain a stupid person! Opposite ideas, however contrary they may sound, are your greater chances on the way to truth! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

A victim to certain obscure forms of gout, he was in character neither stupid, nor inhuman, but he suffered from the usual drawbacks of his class, - too much money, and too few ideas. — Mary Augusta Ward

I really thought twice about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when that came in. I always was of a mind that it's an inherently stupid idea to put something like that in a glass case. — Elvis Costello

Stupid religion makes stupid beliefs, stupid leaders make stupid rules, stupid environment makes stupid health, stupid companions makes stupid behaviour, stupid movies makes stupid acts, stupid food makes stupid skin, stupid bed makes stupid sleep, stupid ideas makes stupid decisions, stupid clothes makes stupid appearance. Lets get rid of stupidity from our stupid short lives. — Michael Bassey Johnson

The willingness to be a champion for stupid ideas is the key to greater creativity, innovation, fulfillment, inspiration, motivation and success. — Richie Norton

The eel's pause gave Kim far too long to weigh how incredibly stupid this impulse was
as if the tattoo covering his wrist weren't reminder enough of how irrevocable some rash ideas could be. — K.A. Mitchell

Null Spot the Destroyer still had an imagination full of bad ideas and a pocket full of stupid to spend. — Bobby Adair

I was very prejudiced when I started arts school. I, like all of those kids, was like, "I don't like this modern stuff." I came to arts school with a very stupid, conservative set of ideas about art. — Ragnar Kjartansson

When you're jealous, especially of someone else's art or creations you automatically put up these selfish walls that reinforce your stupid ideas. It's hard to pull those walls down and look at what you're hiding. Look at your own weakness and realize that the jealousy came from knowing that you're intimidated by someone else's work, and that when you compare it to your own, you fall short. — Joe Rogan

By now, we have learnt that game-changing ideas do not come from experts, they come from people who haven't got a clue and ask stupid questions. — Chris Boardman

When I was younger I knew I could do anything - I could be the president if I wanted to, but that was a stupid idea - I'd rather be a rock star. — Kurt Cobain

Cash-for-Clunkers program was a stupid idea. — Jim DeMint

Many ideas and habits we thought we had because we were good or bad, smart or dumb, crazy or sane - or because our parents were - are simply the result of subtle distinctions between brains. If my brain works differently from your brain, then some things that are easy for me may be hard for you and vice versa without either of us being stupid, lazy, or crazy. — Cindy Glovinsky

Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn't that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire? — Gustave Flaubert

Out of all of the trillions of years of the Earth's history, you might be alive for one 70 or 80 year period. That ain't so long. You should be out ready to burn this motherfucker to the groun' while you can. But they somehow get you all scared and hung up on these stupid ideas. — L.T. Vargus

The rock concert experience for people was really pretty stupid, you know, at the time. People would go to concerts not with the idea of listening at all. — Robbie Robertson

Modern man uses ideas and persuasion to achieve his goals; primitive man uses guns and brute force to achieve his goals! Moral and clever people choose the first method; immoral and stupid people choose the second method! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

She supposed faeries had never adopted the human ideas of giving each other space and having time to get over relationships.

And maybe they were stupid ideas. Maybe love was love and you should take it when you found it. — Cassandra Clare

From the port of ideas, not only the most clever ones put out to sea and conquer the world but also the most stupid ones do this! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The idea the actors are the most important people on a film set I think is very stupid. Actors are the most replaceable people there. There are literally millions of us. There's very few people that can operate a steady-cam. The numbers are a lot, lot fewer for that, you know? — Daniel Radcliffe

It occurred to me that might not be the best of ideas, but desperate times led to stupid measures. — Robyn Peterman

Don't disregard your so-called "stupid ideas." They may be inspired thoughts and high-potential opportunities. Whatcha gonna do? — Richie Norton

In a brutal country like ours, where human life is 'cheap', it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries. — Orhan Pamuk

Getting seasick?" the inspector asked him at one point.
"No. Just sick of myself."
"Why?"
"Because every now and then I realize what a stupid shit I am to go along with some of your brilliant ideas. — Andrea Camilleri

we don't have a god of bloody stupid ideas — Jennifer Fallon

We're free out here, really free for the first time. We're floating, literally. Gravity can't bow our backs or break our arches or tame our ideas. You know, it's only out here that stupid people like us can really think. The weightlessness gets our thoughts and we can sort them. Ideas grow out here like nowhere else - it's the right environment for them. Anyone can get into space, if he wants to hard enough. The ticket is a dream. — Fritz Leiber

I'm rarely in a situation where, if you have a good idea, it's not embraced. That's stupid. And I don't work with stupid people. — Richard Gere

I turned my eyes away from the young warrior, he pounced on me, exactly as I'd known he would. A second knife was in his hand and he swiped it up toward me. I dodged aside, kicked out his knee, and smashed his face into the wooden table before locking his elbow at the joint until he released the blade. "Are you satisfied now?" the chief asked the young man. "Your behavior was rash and stupid. A superior warrior handled you as if you were a baby. You will apologize, and then you will leave my sight until I summon you for whatever punishment I deem necessary." Chief Blacktail looked up at me. "You may release my son." Well, that was a shock, but I did as I was asked and moved away just enough to ensure that any further ideas of retribution would require him to step toward me. I really hoped he wasn't that foolish. Was I that stupid when I was young? Probably. — Steve McHugh

Was this the stupidest thing I had ever done? Maybe, maybe not. Top ten, at least. — Dennis Liggio

A nation orients itself by its own geniuses, and derives from them its ideas of its own ideals, but the guiding star serves also as a light to other nations. As speech has been created by a few great men, the most extraordinary wisdom lies concealed in it, a wisdom which reveals itself to a few ardent explorers but which is usually overlooked by the stupid professional philologists. — Otto Weininger

We don't need more stupid ideas. — John Zerzan

Men did stupid things when they got romantic ideas in their heads. — Ronie Kendig

Organizations like the UN do a lot of good, but there are certain basic realities they never seem to grasp ... Maybe the most important truth that eludes these organizations is that it's insulting when outsiders come in and tell a traumatized people what it will take for them to heal.
You cannot go to another country and make a plan for it. The cultural context is so different from what you know that you will not understand much of what you see. I would never come to the US and claim to understand what's going on, even in the African American culture. People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, but they are not stupid. They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked.
That includes women. Most especially women ...
To outsiders like the UN, these soldiers were a problem to be managed. But they were our children. — Leymah Gbowee

A leader whose speech is prepared by others is not a leader; he is just an empty and stupid bottle! Use your own ideas and your own brain; write your own speech, just like Gandhi, Churchill or Nehru! That is indeed a good ethics and a good honour! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they'll turn out to be right. — Reed Hastings

And the truth is that I'm not, Ed, is what I wanted to tell you. I'm not arty like everyone says who doesn't know me, I don't paint, I can't draw, I play no instrument, I can't sing. I'm not in plays, I wanted to say, I don't write poems. I can't dance except tipsy at dances. I'm not athletic, I'm not a goth or a cheerleader, I'm not treasurer or co-captain. I'm not gay and out and proud, I'm not that kid from Sri Lanka, not a triplet, a prep, a drunk, a genius, a hippie, a Christian, a slut, not even one of those super-Jewish girls with a yarmulke gang wishing everyone a happy Sukkoth. I'm not anything, this is what I realized ... I like movies, everyone knows I do
I love them
but I will never be in charge of one because my ideas are stupid and wrong in my head. There's nothing different about that, nothing fascinating, interesting, worth looking at. — Daniel Handler

Live to start your stupid ideas, and start to live a life without regret
a life filled with meaning, freedom, happiness, fun, authenticity, and influence. — Richie Norton

All chess masters have on occasion played a magnificent game and then lost it by a stupid mistake, perhaps in time pressure and it may perhaps seem unjust that all their beautiful ideas get no other recognition than a zero on the tournament table. — Bent Larsen

I'm on a lot of airplanes, so I just sip on red wine thinking of stupid ideas and, when I think of it, I wanna make it happen. — Bam Margera

Listen to me: Life is not about principles; it's about happiness.'
'But if you don't have any principles, and if you don't have faith, you can't be happy at all,' said Kadife.
'That's true. But in a brutal country like ours, where human life is cheap, it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.'
'Actually, it's the other way round. In a poor country, people's sole consolation comes from their beliefs. — Orhan Pamuk

People often say that aesthetics is a branch of psychology. The idea is that once we are more advanced-all the mysteries of art-will be understood by psychological experiments. Exceedingly stupid at this idea is, this is roughly it. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Dreamily the Princess stood up. "I'm not sure if I can walk," she said.
"Then I'll carry you."
"Is that what love is?"
"I no longer know what love is. A week ago I had a lot of ideas. What love is and how to make it stay. Now that I'm in love, I haven't a clue. Now that I'm in love, I'm completely stupid on the subject. — Tom Robbins

Their highest concept of right conduct, in his case, was to get a job. That was their first word and their last. It constituted their whole lexicon of ideas. Get a job! Go to work! Poor, stupid slaves, he thought, while his sister talked. Small wonder the world belonged to the strong. The slaves were obsessed by their own slavery. A job was to them a golden fetich before which they fell down and worshipped. — Jack London

I don't want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly, because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I'm a machine, and I can know much more.
- John Cavil, Cylon Model Number One, No Exit — Patrick Di Justo

You're joking." "No, actually I'm not," my boss said and slapped the folder into my hands. "You leave tomorrow morning and I don't want to see your hairy ass till this is solved." I looked wildly around her office for something to lob at her head. It occurred to me that might not be the best of ideas, but desperate times led to stupid measures. She could not do this to me. I'd worked too hard and I wasn't going back. Ever. "First of all, my ass is not hairy except on a full moon and you're smoking crack if you think I'm going back to Georgia." Angela crossed her arms over her ample chest and narrowed her eyes at me. "Am I your boss?" she asked. "Is this a trick question? — Robyn Peterman

But Hannah's friend didn't understand the volatile balancing act between art and sanity, that the act of creation was like walking a tightrope during an earthquake. She didn't understand Hannah's stupid need for validation, or that the size of the audience increased the stakes and multiplied the fear. She didn't understand that creativity was dangerous, that, yes, there were some people who could stand before a canvas, paint a sunset that would bring the world to its knees, and return to their loved ones as a complete person who didn't hurt, didn't cry, didn't spill blood to appease the host of fickle muses. But Hannah did. Hannah's best ideas - sometimes her only ideas - were buried beneath the skin. — Jake Vander Ark

There is no idea so stupid or hackneyed that a sufficiently-talented writer can't get a good story out of it. — Lawrence Watt-Evans

You see gentlemen, there are ideas ... that is, you see, when some ideas are said out loud, put into words, they come out terribly stupid. They come out so that you're ashamed of yourself. But why? For no reason at all. Because we're all good-for-nothings and can't bear the truth, or I don't know why else. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I have no choice but to fight them every step of the way. I can't tell you how many other stupid ideas have been proposed over the last two years. — Michael Arad

We base our ideas about the world on our personal experience, and that experience has ingrained the rate of growth of the recent past in our heads as "the way things happen." We're also limited by our imagination, which takes our experience and uses it to conjure future predictions - but often, what we know simply doesn't give us the tools to think accurately about the future. When we hear a prediction about the future that contradicts our experience-based notion of how things work, our instinct is that the prediction must be naive. If I tell you [...] that you may live to be 150, or 250, or not die at all, your instinct will be, "That's stupid - if there's one thing I know from history, it's that everybody dies." And yes, no one in the past has not died. But no one flew airplanes before airplanes were invented either. — Tim Urban

Academic credentials are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having your ideas taken seriously. If a famous professor repeatedly says stupid things, then tries to claim he never said them, there's no rule against calling him a mendacious idiot - and no special qualifications required to make that pronouncement other than doing your own homework.Conversely, if someone without formal credentials consistently makes trenchant, insightful observations, he or she has earned the right to be taken seriously, regardless of background. — Paul Krugman

Every great idea is on the verge of being stupid. — Michel Gondry

I have certainly noticed that groups of clever and intelligent people are capable of really stupid ideas. — Terry Pratchett

I do believe that a belief in God is crazy, but that doesn't mean that the people who believe in it are crazy. Those are two different things. Ideas can be stupid and crazy, and the people who hold those ideas are not necessarily stupid and crazy. — Penn Jillette

There is, indeed, nothing more vexing than to be, for example, rich, of good family, of decent appearance, fairly well educated, not stupid, rather good-hearted even, and at the same time to possess no talent, no special quality, no eccentricity even, not a single idea of one's own, to be precisely "like everyone else."
One is rich, but not so rich as Rothschild; of a good family, but one which has never distinguished itself in any way; of decent appearance, but an appearance expressive of very little; well educated, but without knowing what to do with that education; one is intelligent, but without one's own ideas; one is good-hearted, but without greatness of soul, and so on and so forth. There are a great number of such people in the world, far more than it appears. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You cannot change the world with ideas. People with few ideas are less likely to make mistakes; they follow what everyone else does and are no trouble to anyone; they're successful, make money, find good jobs, enter politics, receive honours; they become famous writers, academics, journalists. Can anyone who is so good at looking after their own interests really be stupid? I'm the stupid one, the one who wanted to go tilting at windmills. — Umberto Eco

Each book is a new book. I've never written it before and I have to teach myself how to write it as I go along. The fact that I've written books in the past seems to play no part in it. I always feel like a beginner and I'm continually running into the same difficulties, the same blocks, the same despairs. You make so many mistakes as a writer, cross out so many bad sentences and ideas, discard so many worthless pages, that finally what you learn is how stupid you are. It's a humbling occupation. — Paul Auster

Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them. — Anna Quindlen

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them. — George Orwell

Stupid patriarchal culture with stupid ideas of beauty - stupid me for going along with it. — Marni Bates

It was one of those ideas that doesn't sound stupid until someone says it out loud. — Jason Rekulak

He thought of half a dozen ideas before he went to sleep. Ender would be pleased-every one of them was stupid. — Orson Scott Card

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones. — Alain De Botton

What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea
into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've certainly learned something about it yourself. The teacher usually learns more than the pupil. Isn't that true? — Douglas Adams

Some movies, I think, present ideas of the world that just don't help people with their lives. They just present things that are fleeting or stupid. So that's what I'm careful about - making sure I'm part of something that is saying something that I think is valuable in the world of people, not necessarily in the world of art. — Alden Ehrenreich

I enjoy popularisation and I think I'm reasonably good at it. I also think it's a duty. It's just so pedagogically stupid to forget how difficult one found these ideas oneself to begin with. — Terry Eagleton

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.
The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.
Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, 'this might be all part of God's plan,' or 'there are no accidents in life,' or 'everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves' - these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this. — Sam Harris

You need to know a lot about what's going on, but when it comes to making the work, I take almost an anti-intellectual stance. You've got to be stupid enough, in some ways, to plunge into something that you have no idea what it's about. If you know what you're going to do before you do it, you just end up illustrating an idea ... — Tim Zuck

He is so stupid you can't trust him with an idea. — John Steinbeck

There was never an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

If a book did nothing else for you, other than to save you from the company of other people; if all it did was to deliver you from their gossip, and their dull affairs, and their appalling manners, and their rotten Arabic, and their stupid ideas, and their woefully misguided opinions, and above all, from the need to be polite to them; if a book did nothing more than that, it would still be the best friend you ever had. — Andrew Killeen

True ideas seem to suffer from repetition, while stupid ones tend to flourish. — James Rozoff

One of the most intriguing ideas in the developmental sciences over the past decades is the phenomenon of the "J-shaped curve."19 While observing children learning to master new skills in dozens of domains (math, writing, the arts), psychologists noticed a surprising pattern: as a learner struggles to master difficult new challenges, there is often an initial decline in skill. Errors are made on tasks that previously seemed easy, and the learner feels more "stupid" than ever before. This is the dip that forms the middle part of the "J." But it turns out that the "stupid mistakes," in retrospect, were nothing more than growth errors. Once the learner gets past the dip, performance rises rapidly to new heights. — William Damon