Quotes & Sayings About Stupidity And Ignorance

I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody's ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the 'n' word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren't pretty or they weren't rich or they weren't clever. — Maya Angelou

stupidity: a process, not a state. A human being takes in far more information than he or she can put out. "Stupidity" is a process or strategy by which a human, in response to social denigration of the information she or he puts out, commits him or herself to taking in no more information than she or he can put out. (Not to be confused with ignorance, or lack of data.) Since such a situation is impossible to achieve because of the nature of mind/perception itself in its relation to the functioning body, a continuing downward spiral of functionality and/or informative dissemination results,' and he understood why! 'The process, however, can be reversed,' the voice continued, 'at any time. — Samuel R. Delany

How many consuming fires can there be in the words: freedom, peace and democracy and how easy they can be extinguished by ignorance, stupidity and arrogance? — Sorin Cerin

Most ignorances are vincible, and in the greater number of cases stupidity is what the Buddha pronounced it to be, a sin. For, consciously, or subconsciously, it is with deliberation that we do not know or fail to understand-because incomprehension allows us, with a good conscience, to evade unpleasant obligations and responsibilities, because ignorance is the best excuse for going on doing what one likes, but ought not, to do. — Aldous Huxley

good is what we built when it leads to this? What good is knowledge when stupidity and ignorance will always trump it? Well, — David D. Hammons

I take from the poor and give to the rich. They just happen to be the same individuals. Poor and stupid before they learn from me and pay with their time and money, but rich and successful after they do. The truly miserable, however, don't know how poor they are, and I want nothing from them. — Robin Sacredfire

The events I've chosen to record are only the most spectacular manifestations of forces that - out of fear, ignorance, everyday stupidity - are deemed 'obscure'. But it's now an indisputable fact that the most innocent words, the most harmless gestures in certain places and at certain times acquire an unwonted importance and weight, and have repercussions that far exceed what was intended. — Jacques Yonnet

Its strange how some people ignore the logic just because they believe what they like to believe and ignore the truth. — Auliq Ice

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument. — William Gibbs McAdoo

Though we do not have many poets, we certainly have more than we deserve, for we deserve none at all. It is ourselves that we are hurting by our stupidity and ignorance of poetry ... — Elizabeth Janeway

When wisdom gives way to whimsy and ethics fall to excitement, it is highly likely that the ground beneath me will 'give way' and it is I who will 'fall. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Things that are truly great need nothing from me, and to somehow think that they do speaks to my utter lack of greatness. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Reviewers do not read books with much care ... their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary ignorance even than the profession of novelist. — Anthony Burgess

The pleasures of ignorance are as great, in their way, as the pleasures of knowledge. — Aldous Huxley

He was ignorant, but a lot of people mistook ignorance for stupidity, and knowingness for intelligence. — Michael Lewis

We lie to ourselves in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes. — Aldous Huxley

But his political sense kept up a persistent itch that said: A, Given ignorance in the mix, stupidity was at least as common in politics as astute maneuvering; B, Crisis always drew insects; and, C, Inevitably the party trying to resolve a matter had to contend with the party most willing to exploit it. — C.J. Cherryh

Notwithstanding his ignorance of the lore of Christianity, Thomas Wingfold was, in regard to some things, gifted with what I am tempted to call a divine stupidity. Many of the distinctions and privileges after which men follow, and of the annoyances and slights over which they fume, were to the curate inappreciable: he did not and could not see them. — George MacDonald

If the Church is 'in Christ,' she is involved in mission. Her whole existence then has a missionary character. Her conduct as well as her words will convince the unbelievers and put their ignorance and stupidity to silence. — David Bosch

Not everyone was laughing. Ascribing "incapacity, stupidity, imbecility, gross ignorance and habitual venality" to the stalemated Congress, the New York Herald angrily concluded that "no remedy whatever is to be looked for from their representatives." Sounding eerily like President Buchanan in his December annual message, it blamed not Southern extremism but "republican fanaticism" for the current "avalanche of destruction. — Harold Holzer

The ghosts of the people we could have been and weren't ... Isn't that what it is? The people we dreamed of being, until we were forced to wake from the dream." She was talking in a monotone, as if reciting from memory a lesson learned long ago. "The ghosts of those whom once we loved but never had, of those who loved us and whose hopes we destroyed out of malice, stupidity, or ignorance. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

You can't believe everything you read - or hear. Accepting things at face value without the need to question and dig deeper is ignorance at best, stupidity at worst. — Vivian Eve

Should we tolerate the blatant incorrectness of religion? Tolerating ignorance, superstition and stupidity will not provide for a healthy advancement of our society. Religion is cancer for modern thought, rationality, and even common sense. — Odin Zeus McGaffer

The world is going to change, whether we like it or not. We can participate in that change or we can be the victims of that change. In a way. Either we go in our stupidity ignorance, and arrogance, bring more destruction in a way, or we're forced to change. — Hamid Drake

The prince is blind to subtlety. He knows his own ignorance and stupidity so is ever suspicious of others, especially when they say things he does not understand. One cannot negotiate when dragged in the wake of emotions. — Steven Erikson

Coming at us like this--in waves, massed and unbreachable--knowledge becomes symbolic of our disempowerment--becomes bad knowledge--so we deny it, riding its crest until it subsides from consciousness... "Ignorance." In this root sense, ignorance is an act of will, a choice that one makes over and over again, especially when information overwhelms and knowledge has become synonymous with impotence... If we can't act on knowledge, then we can't survive without ignorance... Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement. — Ruth Ozeki

Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course. — Reinhold Niebuhr

My mum taught me how to read before I went to kindergarden, I always thought that being able to read provided lightness, help to dispel darkness, ignorance and stupidity. — Michael Moore

The thief who is in prison is not necessarily more dishonest than his fellows at large, but mostly one who, through ignorance or stupidity [or racism or poverty! - Draffan] steals in a way that is not customary. He snatches a loaf from the baker's counter and is promptly run into gaol. Another man snatches bread from the table of hundreds of widows and orphans and similar credulous souls who do not know the ways of company promoters; and, as likely as not, he is run into Parliament. — George Bernard Shaw

Don't name our stupidity, ignorance, stupid rules and lack of skills DESTINY! — Maliheh Sadat Razavi

It is the incompetent and the neglected artist who charges the public with ignorance, stupidity, and indifference. He raves loudly, but he is incomprehensible, even inarticulate, in his work. — Walter J. Phillips

Who can have compassion on the ignorant is a victim of regrets, a supporter of ignorance and a builder of stupidity. — Auliq Ice

Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity. — Thomas Sowell

I am not a snob, because I know opulence doesn't stamp out ignorance and unhappiness. — Sarina Bowen

Ignorance and stupidity are given the names of simplicity and innocence ... Idleness appears as desire for a quiet life. — Augustine Of Hippo

It is always possible that society you live in might go backwards, towards the land of ignorance and darkness! While this tragedy and stupidity happening, you must move forward! You must walk forward, towards the light and wisdom, to the land of reason! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The only response to stupidity and ignorance was silence — Soroosh Shahrivar

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power. — P. J. O'Rourke

The people who see the population explosion in the Malthusian way - as a geometric progression - forget that population growth is not a biological issue. People are not increasing in numbers out of stupidity and ignorance. Population growth is an ecological phenomenon linked very intimately to other issues, such as the usurpation of the resources which allow people to live. — Vandana Shiva

Do you not see - talking up this plea of Sattva, the country has been slowly and slowly drowned in the ocean of Tamas or dark ignorance? Where the most dull want to hide their stupidity by covering it with a false desire for the highest knowledge which is beyond all activities, either physical or mental; where one, born and bred in lifelong laziness, wants to throw the veil of renunciation over his own unfitness for work; where the most diabolical try to make their cruelty appear, under the cloak of austerity, as a part of religion; where no one has an eye upon his own incapacity, but everyone is ready to lay the whole blame on others; where knowledge consists only in getting some books by heart, genius consists in chewing the cud of others' thoughts, and the highest glory consists in taking the name of ancestors: do we require any other proof to show that that country is being day by day drowned in utter Tamas? — Swami Vivekananda

In her, ignorance and stupidity formed a perfect shield against the world: this, I suppose, is innocence. It — George MacDonald Fraser

People with low self-confidence and self-esteem often feel nervous about antagonizing others and tend to rate others' needs more highly than their own. — Auliq Ice

Capitalists too, as the novelist Charles Dickens noted, liked to think of their workers as 'hands' only, preferring to forget they had stomachs and brains.
But, said the more perceptive nineteenth-century critics, if this is how people live their lives at work, then how on earth can they think differently when they come home at night? How might it be possible to build a sense of moral community or of social solidarity, of collective and meaningful ways of belonging and living that are untainted by the brutality, ignorance and stupidity that envelops labourers at work? How, above all, are workers supposed to develop any sense of their mastery over their own fates and fortunes when they depend so deeply upon a multitude of distant, unknown and in many respects unknowable people who put breakfast on their table every day? — David Harvey

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion. — Gustave Flaubert

The common curse of mankind, folly, ignorance and stupidity. — William C. Brown

The world has made everything else and still it can't make peace. And the reason it can't make peace is because of the evil, ignorance and stupidity. I have songs that explain these facts. And that's the blues. — Willie Dixon

Man's predicament is that he intuits his hidden resources, but he does not dare use them. This is why warriors say that man's plight is the counterpoint between his stupidity and his ignorance. Man needs now, more than ever, to be taught new ideas that have to do exclusively with his inner world - shamans' ideas, not social ideas, ideas pertaining to man facing the unknown, facing his personal death. Now, more than anything else, he needs to be taught the secrets of the assemblage point. — Carlos Castaneda

Dramatic uprising of stupidity can start from nowhere and only be seen when it reaches it's climax. — Auliq Ice

Ignorance didn't feel like bliss. It felt like stupidity, and she hated it. "That — Beth Cato

There is no supernatural, there is only nature. Nature alone exists and contains all. All is. There is the part of nature that we perceive, and the part of nature that we do not perceive ... If you abandon these facts, beware; charlatans will light upon them, also the imbecile. There is no mean: science, or ignorance. If science does not want these facts, ignorance will take them up. You have refused to enlarge human intelligence, you augment human stupidity. When Laplace withdraws Cagliostro appears. — Victor Hugo

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The car housed a hysterical bumper sticker: Save the Planet, and I permitted a moment of contemplation to truly bask in this thought. Save the planet? What a joke. Save the planet from what? From ourselves? And save it for what? For ourselves? It was a kind of perpetual stupidity in a tug-of-war battle over trivial matters. Only imbeciles see things in black and white: liberal or conservative, yes or no, this or that. Those in power laugh at those people in their morally inverted shades of grey, basking in the labels they've created so the people are easier to control. — Bruce Crown

First, however, I must deal with the matter of Jesus, the so-called savior, who not long ago taught new doctrines and was thought to be a son of God. This savior, I shall attempt to show, deceived many and caused them to accept a form of belief harmful to the well-being of mankind. Taking its root in the lower classes, the religion continues to spread among the vulgar: nay, one can even say it spreads because of its vulgarity and the illiteracy of its adherents. And while there are a few moderate, reasonable, and intelligent people who interpret its beliefs allegorically, yet it thrives in its purer form among the ignorant. — Celsus

It's better to shut up and give the impression that you're stupid than to say something and erase all doubt. — Auliq Ice

The general trouble with ignorance is always that ignorant people have no idea that that's what they are. You can be ignorant and stupid and go through your whole life without ever encountering any evidence against the hypothesis that you're a genius. If you're stupid you can always blame miscalculation on bad luck. — Louis De Bernieres

Explanations involving conspiracy, greed, and even stupidity are easier to generate and accept than more complex explanations that may be closer to the truth.

A bit of wisdom called Hanlon's Razor advises us 'Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.' I would add a clumsier but more accurate corollary to this: 'Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system of interactions.' People behaving with no central coordination and acting in their own best interest can still create results that appear to some to be clear proof of conspiracy or a plague of ignorance. — Douglas W. Hubbard

Intelligent people know they are intelligent. They also know that one person cannot know all, hence a person is not stupid simply because he is ignorant of one thing or another. They know that, to another intelligent person, they will not appear stupid in asking for an explanation of what they do not know, and so their ignorance on any particular issue does not become an embarrassment. — Lynsay Sands

For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my 'race,' unless I was permitted to put 'human.' The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put 'white,' which is not even a color let alone a 'race,' and I sternly declined to put 'Caucasian,' which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King's campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you 'black. — Christopher Hitchens

Never feel dumb. Not knowing who or what is no sin. Ignorance is simply the measure of what you haven't got to yet. I find writers and works every day that I haven't got to, haven't even heard of. — Thomas C. Foster

You've got another problem. Like most white trash, you're disrespectful to your betters and proud of your stupidity and ignorance. — James Lee Burke

Paltry affectation, strained allusions, and disgusting finery are easily attained by those who choose to wear them; they are but too frequently the badges of ignorance or of stupidity, whenever it would endeavor to please. — Oliver Goldsmith

How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms, and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears? Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity: he has been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and by unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the mercy of priests, who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him, and of directing his actions. — Paul Henri Thiry D'Holbach

God invites. We decline. And because of that single foolhardy decision we spend the rest of our lives 'declining'. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple. — Neil Postman

Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Some folks are wise and some otherwise. — Josh Billings

It is not a conspiracy, don't call it a conspiracy. It is all out in the open and it stands on the ignorance, apathy and stupidity of the American people that is the foundation upon which the New World Order is built. — William Cooper

Fate had a cruel sense of humor. It had been all his fault, anyway, whatever Mick or Gillia told him. Careless preoccupation and utter stupidity. Boyhood ignorance and negligence. He was only getting what he deserved, over and over again, for the rest of his life. If only in his dreams. — V.S. Carnes

To forget is to render the pages of history as entirely blank, and the lessons of history as never taught. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I have a sense of humor; but over the years that sense has developed one blind spot. I can no longer laugh at ignorance or stupidity. Those are our chief enemies, and it is dangerous to make fun of them. — Charles Francis Richter

A cure by regression is homeopathic, like healing the damage done by ministers and ignorance with stupidity and Jesuits. — Franz Grillparzer

Shallow intellect is worse than ignorance. Ignorance can be treated with knowledge, but shallow intellect, that is illusion of knowledge, is untreatable and quite dangerous to the progress and wellbeing of humanity. — Abhijit Naskar

Stupidity - The top of the list for Satanic Sins. The Cardinal Sin of Satanism. It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable. Satanists must learn to see through the tricks and cannot afford to be stupid. — Anton Szandor LaVey

It is crucial that Jesus is led by the Spirit. There are two wildernesses, two darknesses in the spiritual journey. One you go into by your own stupidity, by your sin, blindness, ignorance and mistakes. We all do that. But there's another darkness. The holy darkness is the darkness that God leads us into, through and beyond. This is a necessary darkness for the journey. In a certain sense, God's darkness is a much better teacher than light. There comes a time when you have to either go deeper into faith or you will turn back, when you have to live without knowing or you lose faith altogether. So we have the Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness, to face the essential darkness. — Richard Rohr

But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgment --in short, for the true talent for catastrophe -- Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day.
Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganized enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again. — George MacDonald Fraser

Men are stupid and ignorant. That is why they suffer. Instead of thinking, they believe all that they are told, all that they are taught. They choose their lords and masters without judging them, with a fatal taste for slavery. — Gabriel Chevallier

Vigilance of the wisest kind is to incessantly remain open to the reality that what I 'see' is but a single thread and solitary shard of what 'is', for to assume otherwise is to surrender the wisdom of vigilance to the decay of ignorance. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

It is of first-rate importance to notice from the start that stupidity is not the same thing, or the same sort of thing, as ignorance. There is no incompatibility between being well-informed and being silly, and a person who has a good nose for arguments or jokes may have a bad head for facts. — Gilbert Ryle

The frantic stupidity of Wall Street's stock order routers and algorithms was simply an extension into the computer of the willful ignorance of its salespeople. — Michael Lewis

I leave the outdoors to you. It is too warm out there to read comfortable, and summer, like many uncomfortable things, is as welcome as a dim woman. It is tolerable to look at, but after being made to interact with it, nobody wants anything to do with it. — Michelle Franklin

Someone asked the other day, "Why do we go to school?" Pat, with vigor
unusual in her, said, "So when we grow up we won't be stupid." These
children equate stupidity with ignorance. Is this what they mean when they
call themselves stupid? Is this one of the reasons why they are so ashamed of
not knowing something? If so, have we, perhaps un-knowingly, taught them
to feel this way? We should clear up this distinction, show them that it is
possible to know very few facts, but make very good use of them.
Conversely, one can know many facts and still act stupidly. The learned fool
is by no means rare in this country. — John Holt

Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, they think it is better to keep their stupidest thoughts to themselves. You, however, understand the profound truth that you must reveal your stupidity openly. To hold your stupidity inside you is to embrace it, to cling to it, to protect it. But when you expose your stupidity, you give yourself the chance to have it caught, corrected, and replaced with wisdom. Be brave, all of you, like Nero Boulanger, and when you have a thought of such surpassing ignorance that you think it's actually smart, make sure to make some noise, to let your mental limitations squeak out some whimpering fart of a thought, so that you have a chance to learn. — Orson Scott Card

Learn to differentiate between ignorance and stupidity. — Oscar Wilde

To say that "the righteous (or just) shall live by faith" does not mean that they live by blind and irresponsible leaps in total absence, or even in defiance, of knowledge. It does not mean that the "just" live in a state of ignorance or stupidity.1 They do on occasion act in specific ways beyond what they know, but only within a framework of knowledge that makes such action reasonable. — Dallas Willard

The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. — Mark Twain