Quotes & Sayings About Unintelligent

First and foremost, he never imputes a base motive to anyone else. If someone is rude to him, he assumes that the rudeness is unintentional. If he knows that it is intentional, he acts as if it were not. He never insulted anyone himself except by intention. He never met anger with anger. He never patronized anyone because he never assumed that he knew more than anyone else or that uneducated people are unintelligent. He never corrected (or smiled at) other people's slips. "Always," my mother would say, "allow other people the luxury of being mistaken. They will find out for themselves soon enough. If they don't, they are the kind of people in whom it does — Whittaker Chambers

An intelligent home differs from an unintelligent one chiefly in that the habits of life and intercourse which prevail are chosen, or at least colored, by the thought of their bearing upon the development of children. — John Dewey

... and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes ...
... "Are you serious?" I asked. "You think that's cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing."
"Which whole thing?" he asked, turning to me ...
... "The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER ... — John Green

Unintelligent people always look for a scapegoat. — Ernest Bevin

You're an idiot,' said Mum, when I relayed to her the entire situation on Wednesday. 'Not an unintelligent idiot, but a sort of naive idiot who manages to fall into a difficult situation and then can't get out out of it because she's too awkward. — Alice Oseman

It is easy to prescribe improvement for others; it is easy to organize something, to institutionalize this or that, to pass laws, multiply bureaucratic agencies, form pressure groups, start revolutions, change forms of government, tinker at political theory. The fact that these expedients have been tried unsuccessfully in every conceivable combination for 6,000 years has not noticeably impaired a credulous unintelligent willingness to keep on trying them again and again. — Albert J. Nock

The intelligent altruists, though less altruistic than unintelligent altruists, will be fitter than both unintelligent altruists and selfish individuals. — Herbert Simon

The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were:
Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.'
My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said.
My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent. — W. Somerset Maugham

Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life. It is simply a history of the process of life. With the secret cause of life evolution has nothing to do. A man, therefore, may be a materialistic evolutionist or a theistic evolutionist; that is, he may believe that the cause is some single unintelligent impersonal force, or he may believe that the cause is a wise and beneficent God. — Lyman Abbott

The actuality of these spiritual qualities is thus imprisoned, though their potentiality be not quite destroyed; and thus a crass, extended, impenetrable, passive, divisible, unintelligent substance is generated, which we call matter.Cheyn.Phil. Prin. — Samuel Johnson

So many people imagine housekeeping to be boring, frustrating, repetitive, unintelligent drudgery. I cannot agree. In fact, having kept house, practiced law, taught, and done many other sorts of work, low and high-paid, I can assure you that it is actually lawyers who are most familiar with the experience of unintelligent drudgery. — Cheryl Mendelson

The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda. — H.L. Mencken

I once spoke to a human geneticist who declared that the notion of intelligence was quite meaningless, so I tried calling him unintelligent. He was annoyed, and it did not appease him when I went on to ask how he came to attach such a clear meaning to the notion of lack of intelligence. We never spoke again. — Peter Medawar

Early in his life Mr. [Ezra] Pound met with strong, continued, and unintelligent opposition. If people keep opposing you when you are right, you think them fools; and after a time, right or wrong, you think them fools simply because they oppose you. Similarly, you write true things or good things, and end by thinking things true or good simply because you write them — Randall Jarrell

Indiscriminate use among unintelligent leads to chaos. — Robert Ludlum

It is interesting how often unintelligent, even stupid, women manage their emotional lives more satisfactorily than do their cleverer sisters. — P.D. James

Rules only have meaning as long as you're abiding by them. As soon as you start ignoring them, it turns out that you don't owe anyone anything, you're not obligated to make up all kinds of silly stories about things you actually know nothing about. Then it turns out that you can get by just fine without all those made-up stories, and there aren't any rules - what they're showing you doesn't exist anymore, so there's nothing to say. It's all a sham, they're just trying to use you... and it's all perfectly legal, of course. It's like school all over again. The thing is that we all grew up a long time ago, but we're still being treated like kids, like unintelligent, deceitful, irrational bastards who need to be coerced and corrected and have the right answers beaten out of them. — Serhiy Zhadan

It's a curious thing with George. With his glasses off, his eyes looked small and weak - blinky and a bit baffled, like an unintelligent sheep that's taken a wrong turn. But when he put them on again, they went all sharp and steely, more like the eyes of an eagle that eats dumb sheep for breakfast. — Jonathan Stroud

you are poor, rude, immoral, unintelligent, impoverished, bitter, stubborn, and a blight upon your village and my kingdom. — Victoria Aveyard

It is intelligent to ask two questions: (1) Is it possible? (2) Can I do it?. But it is unintelligent to ask these questions: (1) Is it real? (2) Has my neighbor done it? — Soren Kierkegaard

Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Man is occupied and has been persistently occupied since his separate evolution, with three kinds of struggle: first with the massive, unintelligent forces of nature, heat and cold, winds, rivers, matter and energy; secondly, with the things closer to him, animals and plants, his own body, its health and disease; and lastly, with his desires and fears, his imaginations and stupidities. — J. D. Bernal

Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought so dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst into passionate tears. Then, perhaps - for there was no foreseeing how it might affect her - Pearl would frown, and clench her little fist, and harden her small features into a stern, unsympathising look of discontent. Not seldom she would laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. Or - but this more rarely happened - she would be convulsed with rage of grief and sob out her love for her mother in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart by breaking it. Yet — Nathaniel Hawthorne

IQ tests are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular and minority groups and poor people generally. The tests are based on white middle-class standards, and when we score low on them, the results are used to justify the prejudice that we are inferior and unintelligent. Since we are taught to believe that the tests are infallible, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy that cuts off our initiative and brainwashes us. — Huey Newton

A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. And I maintain that if a person can put a few common sense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humor, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read. — Joe Hill

But they were as different as fire and ice. Robert Kennedy thought Eugene McCarthy was pompous, petty, and venal. McCarthy thought Kennedy was a spoiled, unintelligent demagogue. — Jack Newfield

Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment. — Lao-Tzu

Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves. — Honore De Balzac

Jesus was a penniless teacher who wandered about the dusty sun-bit country of Judea, living upon casual gifts of food; yet he is always represented clean, combed, and sleek, in spotless raiment, erect, and with something motionless about him as though he was gliding through the air. This alone has made him unreal and incredible to many people who cannot distinguish the core of the story from the ornamental and unwise additions of the unintelligently devout. — H.G.Wells

If they gave him an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox. — Anonymous

I tend to be really spacey, but I don't think it's because I'm unintelligent - it's just my imagination and a little bit of ADD. — Jenny Slate

I believe I was impatient with unintelligent people from the moment I was born: a tragedy - for I am myself three-parts a fool ... — Mrs. Patrick Campbell

I'm working class, and want people to know I'm not unintelligent and all the other cliches that come with it. — Timothy Spall

I shared my office on 57th Street with Dr Jacob Ecstein, young (thirty-three), dynamic (two books published), intelligent (he and I usually agreed), personable (everyone liked him), unattractive (no one loved him), anal (he plays the stock market compulsively), oral (he smokes heavily), non-genital (doesn't seem to notice women), and Jewish (he knows two Yiddish slang words). Our mutual secretary was a Miss Reingold. Mary Jane Reingold, old (thirty-six), undynamic (she worked for us), unintelligent (she prefers Ecstein to me), personable (everyone felt sorry for her), unattractive (tall, skinny, glasses, no one loved her), anal (obsessively neat), oral (always eating), genital (trying hard), and non-Jewish (finds use of two Yiddish slang words very intellectual). Miss Reingold greeted me efficiently. — Luke Rhinehart

The brilliant British mathematician, eccentric, and computer pioneer Alan Turing came up with the following test: A computer can be said to be intelligent if it can (on average) fool a human into mistaking it for another human. The converse should be true. A human can be said to be unintelligent if we can replicate his speech by a computer, which we know is unintelligent, and fool a human into believing that it was written by a human. Can one produce a piece of work that can be largely mistaken for Derrida entirely randomly? — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Foolish people inflict pain upon them self which is worse than what an enemy can bring upon. — Thiruvalluvar

Outright speculation is neither illegal, immoral, nor (for most people) fattening to the pocketbook. More than that, some speculation is necessary and unavoidable, for in many common-stock situations there are substantial possibilities of both profit and loss, and the risks therein must be assumed by someone.* There is intelligent speculation as there is intelligent investing. But there are many ways in which speculation may be unintelligent. Of these the foremost are: (1) speculating when you think you are investing; (2) speculating seriously instead of as a pastime, when you lack proper knowledge and skill for it; and (3) risking more money in speculation than you can afford to lose. — Benjamin Graham

They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks. — H.L. Mencken

Christianity is absurd and impossible. Now, you know, it cannot be that! It may be untrue
I am not speaking of that now, even though I am perfectly certain that it is absolutely true
but it cannot be absurd so long as educated and virtuous people continue to hold it. To say that it is absurd is simple pride; it is to dismiss all who believe in it as not merely mistaken, but unintelligent as well
— Robert Hugh Benson

Forget the Bush family, they are the most negligible family in the country. They are unintelligent, they are reasonably decorative, they are obedient to the great economic powers. Nixon said something interesting to Murray Kempton about Bush senior when he became President. Murray and Nixon used to have lunch, and when Murray said, "Well, what is this Bush like?" Nixon said, "Oh, nothing, nothing there, just a lightweight. He's the sort of person you appoint to things, like the U.N., the CIA. But that Barbara Bush, she's really something; she's really vindictive!" - which was the highest complement that Nixon could deliver. — Gore Vidal

That suggested two possibilities. It was either too unintelligent to understand him - or it was very intelligent indeed, with its own powers of choice and volition. In that case, he must treat it as an equal. Even then he might underestimate it - but it would bear him no resentment, for conceit was not a vice from which robots often suffered. — Arthur C. Clarke

Untalented people, unintelligent people go into politics. Those who are talented become artists, painters, poets, philosophers, mystics, dancers. They have a thousand and one other beautiful things to do, not politics. Only the third rate, the most unintelligent part of a country, moves into politics. — Osho

Luna has told me all about you, young lady,' said Xenophilius, 'you are, I gather, not unintelligent, but painfully limited. Narrow. Close-minded.' 'Perhaps you ought to try on the hat, Hermione,' said Ron, nodding towards the ludicrous headdress. His voice shook with the strain of not laughing. — J.K. Rowling

I'd better light the charcoal," Gennie said after a moment.
"I didn't ask before," Grant began as they started down the pier. "But do you know how to cook on one of those things?"
"My dear Mr. Campbell," Gennie said in a fluid drawl, "you appear to have several misconceptions about southern women.I can cook on a hot rock."
"And wash shirts in a fast stream."
"Every bit as well as you could," Gennie tossed back. "You might have some advantage on me in mechanical areas, but I'd say we're about even otherwise."
"A strike for the women's movement."
Gennie narrowed her eyes. "Are you about to say something snide and unintelligent? — Nora Roberts

They had from an early hour made up their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent, and the margin allowed them by this had fairly become one of their commonplaces. — Henry James

It needs some intelligence to be truly selfish. The unintelligent can only be self-righteous. — Eric Hoffer

Beneath all the unintelligent commentary about pop culture and what everyone had for dinner, the Twitterverse was a turbulent sea of vicious accusation, unsubstantiated rumor, and outright lies. The false facelessness of it gave people the freedom to strike out in ways they might never have dared in person. Even the meek became assassins on Twitter, drunk on the counterfeit confidence of imagined anonymity. — Tami Hoag

When I was fourteen years old, I was amazed at how unintelligent my father was. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was astounded how much he had learned in the last seven years. — Mark Twain

It is obviously the purest anthropomorphism to assume that the absence of a human quality in bird, cloud, or star is the presence of a total blank, or to assume that what is not conscious is merely unconscious. Nature is not necessarily arranged in accordance with the system of mutually exclusive alternatives which characterize our language and logic. Furthermore, may it not be that when we speak of nature as blind, and of matter-energy as unintelligent, we are simply projecting upon them the blankness which we feel when we try to know our own consciousness as an object, when we try to see our own eyes or taste our own tongues? — Alan W. Watts

We think we're doing it all. But the animals are doing the real work of holding it all together, and keeping us on our path. As are the plants. It's as if we think the stars and sun and moon and the earth itself aren't doing any work. It's as if we think that all of nature is unintelligent except for us. — Jane Caputi

I'm not unintelligent, mind you. But wisdom means more than being intelligent, because it encompasses understanding, empathy, experience, inner peace, and intuition, and in retrospect, I obviously lack many of those traits. Here's — Nicholas Sparks

The most essential prediction of Darwinism is that, given an astronomical number of chances, unintelligent processes can make seemingly-designed systems, ones of the complexity of those found in the cell. ID specifically denies this, predicting that in the absence of intelligent input no such systems would develop. So Darwinism and ID make clear, opposite predictions of what we should find when we examine genetic results from a stupendous number of organisms that are under relentless pressure from natural selection. The recent genetic results are a stringent test. The results: 1) Darwinism's prediction is falsified; 2) Design's prediction is confirmed. — Michael J. Behe

Labour, because it chose to remain unintelligent, either became subservient, or insolently believed in damaging the capitalists' goods and machinery or even in killing the capitalists. — Mahatma Gandhi

Usually this desire [for family limitation] has been laid to economic pressure It has asserted itself among the rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent. It
has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child abandonment and abortion. — Margaret Sanger

People are imitative and imitation is bound to be unintelligent. They want to do exactly the things which others are doing. That destroys their freshness. Do things in your own style; live your life according to your own light. And even if the same situation arises, be alert to find a new response. It is only a question of a little alertness, and once you have started enjoying ... and it is really a great joy to respond to old situations always in a new way, because that newness keeps you young, keeps you conscious, keeps you non-mechanical, keeps you alive. — Rajneesh

Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside," is a safe rule for those who would always retain the good opinion of that all-powerful, but somewhat unintelligent, incubus, "the average person," but the pioneer, the guide, is necessary. That is, if the world is to move forward. — Jerome K. Jerome

Then it occurred to her (Elizabeth Keckley) that if Tad (Lincoln's son) had been a colored boy rather than the son of a president, and a teacher had found him so difficult to instruct, he would have been ridiculed as a dunce and held up as evidence of the inferiority of the entire race. Tad was bright; Elizabeth knew that well, and she was sure that with proper instruction and hard work, a glimmer of his father's genius would show in him too. But Elizabeth knew many black boys Tad's age who could read and write beautifully, and yet the myth of inferiority persisted. The unfairness of the assumptions stung. If a white child appeared dull, the entire race was deemed unintelligent. It seemed to Elizabeth that if one race should not judged by a single example, then neither should any other. — Jennifer Chiaverini

He's a man [George W. Bush] who is lucky to be governor of Texas. He is a man who is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things. — Christopher Hitchens

People whose minds are not strengthened for endurance are by no means always unintelligent. They simply have never stopped to think that the use of the mind for the purpose of growth is a necessary part of a God-pleasing lifestyle. — Gordon MacDonald

Camels are snobbish
and sheep, unintelligent; water buffaloes, neurasthenic
even murderous.
Reindeer seem over-serious. — Marianne Moore

If you really want to succeed, you'll have to go for it every day like I do. The big time isn't for slackers. Keep up your mental stamina and remain curious. I think that bored people are unintelligent people. — Donald Trump

Money is not a problem, but unintelligent attachment to it is. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Because music, like color, or a cloud, is neither intelligent nor unintelligent - it just is. The chord, the simplest building block for even the tritest, silliest chart song, is a beautiful, perfect, mysterious thing, and when an ill-read, uneducated, uncultured, emotionally illiterate boor puts a couple of them together, he has every chance of creating something wonderful and powerful. All I ask of music is that is sounds good. — Nick Hornby

Our 'responses' determine our results...How about an 'intelligent' response to 'unintelligent' behavior or treatment. It is powerful if we can do that ! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

Sometimes coincidentally an unintelligent person can accomplish a task but that does not mean that he is a knower of means and device or is experienced. A ruler should be careful enough to designate other tasks to such persons. — Chanakya

The only thing that makes me somewhat sceptical regarding human procreation is the unintelligent selection of parents. Some of the most unattractive individuals in the world feel they must multiply at all costs. They are apparently under the illusion that the burden of ugliness becomes lighter if it is shared with descendants. — Milan Kundera

War is a foolish, childish, animalistic, unthinking, unintelligent way of trying to accomplish a purpose. — Jayne Mansfield

I saw all this around me constantly, there were girls everywhere, the supply was infinite, a well, no, I was drifting in an ocean of women, I saw several hundred of them every day, all with their own individual ways of moving, standing, turning, walking, holding and twisting their heads, blinking, looking - take for example a feature such as their eyes, which expressed their utter uniqueness, everything that lived and breathed was here in this one person, was revealed, regardless of whether the gaze was meant for me or not. Oh, those sparkling eyes! Oh, those dark eyes! Oh, that glint of happiness! The alluring darkness! Or, for that matter, the unintelligent, the stupid eyes! For in them too there was an appeal, and no small appeal either: the stupid vacant eyes, the open mouth in that perfect beautiful body.
All this was never far from my mind, and all of them were thirty seconds away from the only thing I wanted - but on the other side of a chasm. — Karl Ove Knausgard

I was raised to think cursing makes you look unintelligent. — Chloe Grace Moretz

To the best account; it is an unintelligent waste of strength. — Will Durant

They have to leave their mark. They can't just watch. They can't just appreciate. They can't just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist's job, and now we have whole societies that try to be scientific ... We've had four hundred years of modern science, and we ought to know by now what it's good for, and what it's not good for. It's time for a change. — Michael Crichton

Just as trees need roots in the earth, man is also a tree and needs roots in existence or else he will live a very unintelligent life. — Osho

He was regarded merely as an eccentric employee of indifferent merit, and his post of deputy chief clerk was the highest he would ever reach. Well aware of this, he made it a rule never to show any zeal, except in special circumstances. It is true that in these cases his zeal was clothed with a spirit of vengeance directed against the whole human race - this being his second favourite occupation. Petitbidois would have liked to hold the reins of power. This being beyond his sphere, he utilized the small driblets of authority which came his way for the purpose of casting ridicule upon established law and order, by making it act as a sort of unintelligent and, if possible, malicious Providence. 'The world is an idiot place anyway,' he would say, 'so why worry? Life is just a lottery. Let us leave the decision to chance. — Gabriel Chevallier

We need to reevaluate and reconsider what is appropriate human behavior. Human beings have been so successful at surviving because of our intelligence and cooperation. When we are unintelligent and uncooperative it is no wonder that our survival is threatened. We need to be educated about our health and the health of our planet, and work together to achieve goals that are impossible to achieve individually. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Some people that are in charge are usually less intelligent than the people who work under them. The reason why those people are in charge and you aren't is because you have a conscience. — Heather Chapple

Moving heavy objects allowed me to feel manly in the eyes of other men. With the women it didn't matter, but I enjoyed subtly intimidating the guys with bad backs who thought they were helping out by telling us how to pack the truck. The thinking was that because we were furniture movers, we obviously weren't too bright. In addition to being strong and stupid, we were also thought of as dangerous. It might have been an old story to Patrick and the others, but I got a kick out of being mistaken as volatile. All I had to do was throw down my dolly with a little extra force, and a bossy customer would say, Let's just all calm down and try to work this out. — David Sedaris

What is proposed is nothing but the replacement of the old unintelligent, inevitable, almost unconscious fertility by an intelligently controlled, conscious fertility, and the elimination of the mere voluptuary from the evolutionary process. — George Bernard Shaw

In our universal experience unintelligent material processes do not create life — Philip Johnson

To a blind man, pawn shop and porn shop are one. To an unintelligent man, oversleeping and sleeping over are opposites. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally. — John Green

Inevitably, people tell me that poor folks are lazy or unintelligent, that they are somehow deserving of their poverty. However, if you begin to look at the sociological literature on poverty, a more complex picture emerges. Poverty and unemployment are part and parcel of our economic order. Without them, capitalism would cease to function effectively, and in order to continue to function, the system itself must produce poverty and an army of underemployed or unemployed people. — Bob Torres

There's nothing more boring than unintelligent actors, because all they have to talk about is themselves and acting. There have to be other things. — Tim Robbins

I'm not too unintelligent. — Tom Felton

One has often wondered whether upon the whole earth there is anything so unintelligent, so unapt to perceive how the world is really going, as an ordinary young Englishman of our upper class. — Matthew Arnold

What is not intelligible to me is not necessarily unintelligent — Friedrich Nietzsche

That young girl," he added unexpectedly, "is one of the least benightedly unintelligent life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting. — Anonymous

Most writers in the course of their careers become thick-skinned and learn to accept vituperation, which in any other profession would be unimaginably offensive, as a healthy counterpoise to unintelligent praise. — Evelyn Waugh

People tend to look on the beliefs of the past as being primitive and unintelligent, yet we are seeing more truth in the past every day. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

The point of Buddhist meditation is not to stop thinking, for ... cultivation of insight clearly requires intelligent use of thought and discrimination. What needs to be stopped is conceptualisation that is compulsive, mechanical and unintelligent, that is, activity that is always fatiguing, usually pointless, and at times seriously harmful. — B. Alan Wallace

While having one's assertions challenged might be bad for an unintelligent man's ego; it sure is good for his intellect. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Zombies were an accident - much like champagne and penicillin, but much less welcome. Necromancers weren't working on a way to turn people into shambling pieces of unintelligent rot- - Kenspeckle — Derek Landy

Task performed by an unintelligent person should not be rated high. — Chanakya

An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur. — Leo Tolstoy

The better looking you are the harder your life, under one condition: You're of above average intelligence. It's those unintelligent attractive people who have it best. — Gregor Collins

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent. — H.L. Mencken