"stupidity"タグの名言

What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.

We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.

When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…

The sad thing is that so many people, in the belief that the universe is organized to suit and influence them, are willing to sacrifice even the slight cranial capacity with which evolution has equipped us.

The belief that the world was created yesterday seems to hold great appeal to those born at that time.

In the aftermath of the recent wave action in the Indian Ocean, even the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williamson [sic], proved himself a latter-day Voltairean by whimpering that he could see how this might shake belief in a friendly creator. Williamson is of course a notorious fool, who does an almost perfect imitation of a bleating and frightened sheep, but even so, one is forced to rub one's eyes in astonishment. Is it possible that a grown man could live so long and still have his personal composure, not to mention his lifetime job description, upset by a large ripple of seawater?

If there were a master of stupidity in this world, I would really love to listen to his success story.

Without exaggerating the point, the difference between ‘what I should do’ verses ‘what I want to do’ is quite frankly the difference between success and failure.

Will it take the death of me to finally learn that the things that I describe as success may very well be the death of me?

Why are girls determined to have emotionally heated conversations when they're drunk? In my observation, too much alcohol makes guys one-dimensional hornballs and girls unpredictable basket cases, and under these dangerous circumstances they attempt to walk into the nearest house party and look for love. And people wonder why their relationships are so messed up.

The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

When you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It's only painful & difficult for others. The same applies when you are stupid.

There is no stupid question. Stupid people don't ask questions.

You can know a lot and still be stupid.

I was well-read but perhaps that only made me stupid.

Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere.

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.

The kind of lies that someone tells us gives us an idea of how stupid, knowledgeable, intelligent, or ignorant they are … or they think we are.

Some social ills are preserved by the common misbelief that things such as ignorance, greed, and stupidity do not have the stamina required to reach old age.

There is a fine line between stubbornness and stupidity as well as intensity and insanity.