c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
When every single piece of media you consume is time-shifted, does that mean it's actually you that's time-shifted?
— Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.
— Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
But into the first decades of the twentieth century, even at the New York Times, it was uncommon for journalists to see a sharp divide between facts and values. Yet the belief in objectivity is just this: the belief that one can and should separate facts from values. Facts, in this view, are assertions about the world open to independent validation. They stand beyond the distorting influences of any individual's personal preferences. Values, in this view, are an individual's conscious or unconscious preferences for what the world should be; they are seen as ultimately subjective and so without legitimate claim on other people. The belief in objectivity is a faith in "facts," a distrust of "values," and a commitment to their segregation.
— Michael Schudson, Discovering The News: A Social History Of American Newspapers
Journalism is not a precise science, it's a crude art
— Dan Rather
All thought usually reached the public after thirty years in some such form: The man on the street heard the conclusions of some dead genius through someone else's clever paradoxes and didactic epigrams.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
If there is a media in a country which deceives its own people, that country needs no other enemy!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Some readers were aware that the novels they loved amounted to a propaganda campaign, that the love stories had a particular agenda that might or might not have anything at all to do with reality. But then as now, being a canny and independent-minded consumer of popular media did not bar one from also enjoying being manipulated by it.
— Hanne Blank, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History Of Heterosexuality
They sit beside each other on one of the sofas, Warwick leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, Joanne resting back with her arms behind her head. Never known as advocates of establishmentarianism, they have been applauded, ridiculed, and misunderstood by the media, and, in particular, criticized for their avarice. They have agreed to do this interview without "cabbage" (payment), but generally charge ten to twenty thousand dollars for the privilege. Even so, why should they be castigated for exploiting a medium that has exploited them? They see the situation simply enough: quid pro quo, and hold the mustard.
— Antonella Gambotto-Burke
It should be apparent that the belief in objectivity in journalism, as in other professions, is not just a claim about what kind of knowledge is reliable. It is also a moral philosophy, a declaration of what kind of thinking one should engage in, in making moral decisions. It is, moreover, a political commitment, for it provides a guide to what groups one should acknowledge as relevant audiences for judging one's own thoughts and acts.
— Michael Schudson, Discovering The News: A Social History Of American Newspapers
When did fact checking and journalism go their separate ways?
— Jon Stewart
In their eyes, Eve saw the wolf gleam. The story was the prey, ratings the trophy.
— J.D. Robb, Glory in Death
People are tired of this mainstream shit; television and radio is ghastly and the public can smell the corporate meeting. When you watch a show with Simon Cowell, you know no human touch has been near it, that they've carefully engineered the outcome and picked those they're going to humiliate. We live in an age of information glut, but so many people don't question what they're spoon-fed or bother to search for themselves.
— Greg Proops
The news media are, for the most part, the bringers of bad news… and it’s not entirely the media’s fault, bad news gets higher ratings and sells more papers than good news.
— Peter McWilliams
Most info-Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from peoples heads
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Look at the language. If a scientist delivers the simple, unconditional, absolutely certain statements that politicians and journalists want, he is talking as an activist, not a scientist.
— Daniel Gardner, The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't--and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger
All our media are given over to things that are better left unsaid.
— Ralph Caplan
Beside him Mr. Harris folded his morning newspaper and held it out to Claude."Seen this yet?""No.""Don't read it," Mr. Harris said, folding the paper once more and sliding it under his rear. "It will only upset you, son.""It's a wicked paper... " Claude agreed, but Mr. Harris was overspeaking him."It's the big black words that do it. The little grey ones don't matter very much, they're just fill-ins they take everyday from the wires. They concentrate their poison in the big black words, where it will radiate.Of course if you read the little stories too you've got sure proof that every word they wrote above, themselves, was a fat black lie, but by then you've absorbed a thousand greyer ones, and where and how to check on those? This way the mind deteriorates. The best way you can save yourself is not to read it, son.""No, I... ""That's right, if you're not careful," Mr. Harris went on, blue-eyed, red-faced, "you find yourself pretty soon hating everyone but God, the Babe, and a few dead senators. That's no fun. Men aren't so bad as that.""No.""That's right, you begin to worry about anyone who opens his mouth except to say ho it looks like rain, let's bowl. Otherwise you wonder what the hell he's trying to prove, or undermine. If he asks what time it is, you wonder what terrible thing is scheduled to happen, where it will happen, when. You can't even stand to be asked how you feel today - he's probably looking at the bumps on you, they may have grown more noticeable overnight. Soon you feel you should apologize for standing there where he can watch you dying in front of him, he'd rather for you to carry your head around in a little plaid bag, like your bowling ball. There's no joy in that. Men aren't so very bad."Mr. Harris paused to remove his Panama hat. Water seeped from his knobby forehead, which he mopped with a damp handkerchief. "I've offended you, son," he said."Not at all, I entirely agree with you."Mr. Harris replaced his hat, folded his handkerchief."I shouldn't shoot off this way," he said. "I read too much.""No, no. You're right... 
— Douglas Woolf, Wall to Wall
Objectivity is a peculiar demand to make of institutions which, as business corporations, are dedicated first of all to economic survival. It is a peculiar demand to make of institutions which often, by tradition or explicit credo, are political organs. It is a peculiar demand to make of editors and reporters who have none of the professional apparatus which, for doctors or lawyers or scientists, is supposed to guarantee objectivity.
— Michael Schudson, Discovering The News: A Social History Of American Newspapers
I'm an unabashed elitist. Everyone needs a good editor, and there is peril in worshiping amateurism and the unedited in science, art, and journalism.
— K. Lee Lerner
Sometimes I wonder if the semi-conscious agenda of the media is to get between people and their souls. It is the the soul with its myriad tiny nerve endings that notices the neglected pathos, poignancy and practicality that lies at the heart of life. It’s as if the media are somehow irritated and envious that anonymous people should have the quiet brilliance of their rich and sustainable inner lives...
— Michael Leunig
Honestly, if you were any slower, you’d be going backward.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Stupidity isn't punishable by death. If it was, there would be a hell of a population drop.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, The Laughing Corpse
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.
— Robert A. Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth
Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
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
There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.
— Frank Zappa
Far be it from me to ever let my common sense get in the way of my stupidity. I say we press on.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Infinity
If it is stupid but it works, it isn't stupid. (a Shin'a'in saying)
— Mercedes Lackey, Owlknight
Longbottom, if brains were gold, you'd be poorer than Weasley, and that's saying something.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
I doubt you can understand the magnitude of the stupidity in your statement
— Robert Jordan, The Gathering Storm
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.
— Joseph Joubert
I'm allergic to stupidity.
— Chris Colfer, Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal
Nowadays what isn't worth saying is
— Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Le Barbier de Séville
Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
— Robert A. Heinlein
In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.
— Gustave Flaubert
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, Love Is Blind
If your brains were dynamite there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Timequake
If you're gonna be stupid you gotta be tough.
— John Grisham, The Testament
Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.
— Frank Zappa
He was stupid. If I killed everyone who was stupid, I wouldn't have time to sleep.
— Tamora Pierce, In the Hand of the Goddess
I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.
— George Bernard Shaw
And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow
Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties.
— John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women
You might well ask just what the hell he was thinking. The answer is, probably nothing at all.He'd probably say he was exercising his God-given right to stupidity.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
How stupid lovers can be! But if they were not, there would be no story.
— Jean Plaidy, The Courts of Love
You cannot argue stupidity, you just have to accept it patiently as one of those things.
— Nevil Shute, Round the Bend
If stupidity got us in this mess, how come it can't get us out.
— Will Rogers
For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols
— Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays 1, 1920-25
I'm not stupid!" In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow
I'm fairly certain that YOLO is just Carpe Diem for stupid people.
— Jack  Black
Come on, gentleman; let us drink to our stupidity.
— Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday
For someone who's smarter than a supercomputer, sometimes you're a real idiot.
— Gordon Korman, One False Note
Careful, Mr. Spiro, guns are dangerous. Especially the end with the hole.
— Eoin Colfer, The Eternity Code
You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public
— Scott Adams
I said you lie, knave!” shouted Beaumains, drawing his sword. “And for telling such craven falsehoods, you must die!”The knight looked plaintively at Roger. “What’s wrong with this fellow?”“He was dropped on his head when he was a baby,” answered Roger.
— Gerald Morris, The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf
You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid.
— Bill Watterson
Why can’t I do it?” [Isabel] asked….“Do what?”“Just forget about everything. Just go somewhere and get smashed and pretend like there are no problems or consequences. I know why. Because there are still problems and consequences. And going and--and--partying doesn’t make them go away. I feel like I’m the only sane person in the world. I don’t get why this whole world runs on stupidity.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Sinner
Please tell me you're not that stupid.Rachel to Melkin
— C.J. Redwine, Defiance
I’m different,” said the Kid. “My gran always said I was half clever, half stupid, and half crazy.
— Charlie Higson, The Enemy
The earth is a great piece of stupidity.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
When you're surrounded by stupidity, self-preservation isn't a sin.
— Meljean Brook, Riveted
This cures everything except stupidity, which is an epidemic on the rise.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game
Obviously this person's a hazard. Stupid people are dangerous.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
A fool tries to shut others' mouth instead of listens to his own heart.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
She doesn't understand the concept of Roman numerals. She thought we just fought in world war eleven.
— Joan Rivers
You looked a little bit smarter when your stupidity lessened a lot.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
A fool who cursed the sun was surprised to see it still shining.
— Marty Rubin
It never ceases to amaze me that in times of amazing human suffering somebody says something that can be so utterly stupid.
— Robert Gibbs
[Francesca] 'You really are a few biscuits short of breakfast.'His eyebrows furrowed in confusion.'You're a few colors shy of a rainbow?' she offered. 'Not pulling a full wagon? Knitting with only one needle? All foam and no beer? Your cheese slid off the cracker? You couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel?'[Nicodemus] 'All right. I get it.
— Blake Charlton, Spellbound
We have known for a long time that Prince Charles' empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant. He fell for the fake anthropologist Laurens van der Post. He was bowled over by the charms of homeopathic medicine. He has been believably reported as saying that plants do better if you talk to them in a soothing and encouraging way.
— Christopher Hitchens
Hiram!' Shelton ran to Hi's side. 'Aren't you you bleeding? I thought she shot you!''Red wine. When I saw it running everywhere, I played dead.' He winced as Shelton poked his belly. 'But I'm not leaping off any more shelves. That was pretty stupid.
— Kathy Reichs
It's the wrong way. She's farther away from the door now. It occurs to me that some people only have book smarts.
— Kendare Blake, Anna Dressed in Blood
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, Ender's Shadow
If you think that you're so smart and holy, that means you haven't yet realized that a part of what we experience today...is a result of our stupidity and wickedness in the past.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Am I too late?" Caleb asked as he joined them. "Did he do something stupid?""Yeah. On both counts." Tristan stalked past Nick.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Inferno
All the inane, meaningless noises people make that pass for intelligent conversation. They might as well be pigs grunting in the pen. (92)
— Norma Fox Mazer
I thought Candy Mountain was a real place
— Sarah Martin
Actually it was the mark of the stupid, which is what you get for sitting under a tree during a thunderstorm.
— Carl Hiaasen, Chomp
Something reduces the speed of the world and that something is stupidity! Stupidity is a boring friction!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
(Quoting her friend Tom Black on an amateur hunter's injury:)"Lion, rifles -- and stupidity.
— Beryl Markham, West with the Night
None of the characters in (the story) were distinguished ones -- not even the lion.He was an old lion, prepared from birth to lose his life rather than to leave it. But he had the dignity of all free creatures, and so he was allowed his moment. It was hardly a glorious moment.The two men who shot him were indifferent as men go, or perhaps they were less than that. At least they shot him without killing him, and then turned the unsconscionable eye of a camera upon his agony. It was a small, a stupid, but a callous crime.
— Beryl Markham, West with the Night
A God Given Gift Most Do Not Use---COMMON SENSE--- Try It
—  The Holy Spirit Only Speaks Through It!
A stupid mule is still smarter than a good horse or a bad man.
— Ursula Vernon, The Tomato Thief
People are intelligent
—  it is their ideas that are stupid.
Unfinishedness avoids the stupidity of conclusions
— Pierre Senges
You are Innocent, you can't be otherwise, there is no other way, even in your lust, greed, hatred, cunningness, you're INNOCENT, because you wanted to overpower others, nature with your stupidity. Stop this absurd ACT, Be Aware, Trust Existence!
— Ramana Pemmaraju
Before the telescope and the microscope were invented the mankind was wearing blinkers.
— M.Z.Riffi
He knows so little and knows it so fluently.
— Ellen Glasgow
Stupidity alone can sometimes be tolerable, but when you add arrogance to the mix, you then become a stupid bitch.
— D.S. Mixell
We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly less stupid than we are to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have always known, they have known for ten thousand years, that to lock a human being into solitary confinement can make a madman of him or an animal. They have always known that a poor man frightened of the police and his landlord is a slave. They have always known that frightened people are cruel. They have always known that violence breeds violence. And we know it. But do the great masses of the world know it? No. It is our job to tell them. Because the great men can't be bothered. Their imaginations are already occupied with how to colonise Venus; they are already creating in their minds visions of a society full of free and noble human beings. Meanwhile, human beings are ten thousand years behind them, imprisoned in fear. The great men can't be bothered. And they are right. Because they know we are here, the boulder-pushers. They know we will go on pushing the boulder up the lower slopes of an immensely high mountain, while they stand on the top of the mountain, already free. All our lives, you and I, we will use all our energies, all our talents, into pushng that boulder another inch up the mountain. And they rely on us and they are right; and that is why we are not useless after all.
— Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
You and I, Ella, we are the failures. We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse. They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave. They have known it. We know it. But do the great enlightened mass of the British people know it? No. It is our task, Ella, yours and mine, to tell them. Because the great men are too great to be bothered. They are already discovering how to colonise Venus and to irrigate the moon. That is what is important for our time. You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we'll put all our energies, all our talents, into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind. We push the boulder.
— Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Noi siam venuti al loco ov'i' t'ho dettoche tu vedrai le genti dolorosec'hanno perduto il ben de l'intelletto.We to the place have come, where I have told theeThou shalt behold the people dolorousWho have foregone the good of intellect.
— Dante Alighieri, La Divina Comedia
He took the Captain as he was, and was fond of him, with his cheery heartlessness, his incapacity to think beyond a couple of thoughts, for which his skull was far too roomy, his insignificant love affairs and childish infatuations, and the pointless and unconnected remarks that came out of his mouth, seemingly at random. He was a mediocre officer, who didn't care about his comrades, his men, his career.
— Joseph Roth, The Tale of the 1002nd Night
The greatest stupidity in man is not his arrogance or ignorance, it he failing to realize who he is.
— R. A. Delmonico
Stupidity is not my forté however, there is immense entertainment value in playing the dumb blonde...
— Virginia Alison
Why is it that crisis pushes me to my own devices when those devices are frequently the very things that produced my crisis in the first place?
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Why is being a nerd so bad? saying " I noticed you're a nerd is like saying hey, I noticed you'd rather be intelligent that stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan
— John Green
That God should allow good people to be as bestially stupid as that--rose against me like a towering blasphemy.
— G.K. Chesterton, Manalive
I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities.Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.
— Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist
The only defense against stupid is distance.
— R.A.Delmonico
I’m not too sure what the name of the song was that he was playing when I came in, but whatever it was, he was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass. You should’ve heard the crowd, though, when he was ﬁnished. You would’ve puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn’t funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes though I was terriﬁc, I’d hate it. I wouldn’t even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I’d play it in the goddam closet. Anyway, when he was ﬁnished, and everybody was clapping their heads off, old Ernie turned around on his stool and gave this very phony, humble bow. Like as if he was a helluva humble guy, besides being a terriﬁc piano player. It was very phony—I mean him being such a big snob and all. In a funny way, though, I felt sort of sorry for him when he was ﬁnished. I don’t even think he knows any more when he’s playing right or not. It isn’t all his fault. I partly blame all those dopes that clap their heads off—they’d foul up anybody, if you gave them a chance.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Observing stupidity in others is a sure sign of stupidity in the observer.
— Clifford Cohen
Remember, when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others.The same applies when you are stupid.
— Ricky Gervais
Well,” I said, “you obviously have some power. You chased off those hooligans with rotten fruit. Perhaps you have banana-kinesis? Or you can control garbage? I once knew a Roman goddess, Cloacina, who presided over the city’s sewer system. Perhaps you’re related…?”Meg pouted. I got the impression I might have said something wrong, though I couldn’t imagine what.
— Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle
Is that gallantry I smell, or just stupidity? The two scents are much alike, as I recall.
— George R.R. Martin, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
And I am revealed for exactly what I am - a particularly stupid fish, moving from hook to hook, never learning my lesson.
— Victoria Aveyard
Sometimes sexy women like to act stupid because it helps them get exactly what they want. Theresa Boudreaux was one of those types: a bodacious waffle-house waitress with a devilish streak. Unfortunately for a certain high-ranking elected leader, she had the wits to go to RadioShack and buy herself a nine-dollar phone-recording device. She then used it to tape her dirty phone calls with US Congressman Huey Hartley, a powerful, sanctimonious, married-for-thirty-years politician from the solidly red state of Mississippi.
— Holly Peterson
The problem is, that no matter where you work there's going to be people that are so dumb you wonder how the hell they remember to breathe every morning.
— Lillian Strange
She'll come, if not today, then tomorrow, but she'll find me. That's the cursed romanticism of all these pure hearts! Oh the vileness, oh the stupidity, oh the narrowness, of these rotten, sentimental souls
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If stupidity got us into this, why can't stupidity get us out?
— Will Rogers
Nietzsche lampooned the romantics of his day (a half century later), noting that "they muddy the waters to make them look deep.
— Robert Solomon
Nothing vexes me so much in stupidity as the fact that it is better pleased with itself than any reason can reasonably be. It is unfortunate that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and trust yourself, and always sends you away discontented and diffident, whereas opinionativeness and heedlessness fill their hosts with rejoicing and assurance.
— John Jeremiah Sullivan, The Best American Essays 2014
You might have said that his look was thoughtful until you realized that he was not a thoughtful man. It was the earnest and contained look of those who are a little hard of hearing or a little stupid.
— John Cheever, Vintage Cheever
Ethnic conflict is a line between religion and stupidity.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
Bureaucracies, I've suggested, are not themselves forms of stupidity so much as they are ways of organizing stupidity--of managing relationships that are already characterized by extremely unequal structures of imagination, which exist because of the existence of structural violence.
— David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
Voter: someone smart enough to choose how to be fooled.
— Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
If they think they can stop me, I defy them to bring the best they have and I shall roast them over a pit of their own arrogant stupidity."--Maxis
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dragonbane
Anyone who doesn't read must be horribly stupid.
— Bella
I am the Thomas Edison of conversational stupidity.
— Jesse Andrews, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Most people are idiots
— Christopher G. Nuttall, The Trafalgar Gambit
Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke fat, lazy or stupid. Those things are just what happens to you when you dont have a plan.
— Marlan Rico Lee
What I call stupidity is not only lack of knowledge, although much of humanity could be elevated from poverty, dogma, illusions and war through traditional education. A thriving education system is the foundation for progress. But stupidity is not merely ignorance; it can also be a way of acting. If you act contrary to your own goals in life – you’re stupid.
— Gudjon Bergmann, The Seven Human Needs: A Practical Guide to Finding Harmony and Balance in Everyday Life
Stupidity, once it overcomes its initial state of inertia, is sustained by its own momentum.
— Nana Awere Damoah
Innocence is the most intelligent admission of stupidity.
— Raheel Farooq
Hegel used to say that the familiar, precisely because it is familiar, remains unknown. That’s why we don't know so much about stupidity.
— Carl William Brown, Aforismi contro il potere e la stupidità
When stupidity of today joins with the stupidity of yesterday it becomes a myth
—  my myth a stupidity glorifies itself.
So I am perfectly free to buy any goods that are legally sold throughout Europe, provided that they can be delivered, even though they are not legal in Italy, even because in Italy only stupidity is legal.
— Carl William Brown, L'Italia in breve.
...It was borne in upon her audience that the outside of Jane's charming head was distinctly superior to the inside.
— Agatha Christie
A heavy gas generated by the fermentation of equally dense ideas, stupidity is the most common renewable source of energy, the easiest to extract, and the least costly, except when coupled with nuclear energy.
— Stephane Mot
If they gave him an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox.
— Anonymous
The sad thing about true stupidity is that you can do absolutely nothing about it.
— John Cleese
An original thought would crack your feeble skull like a thunderbolt, you craven vulture.
— Christopher Moore, Fool
Stupidity has a knack of getting its way
—  as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
First, you wounded a lion, and then you invite him to feast.
— Waheed Ibne Musa, Johnny Fracture
...pretention is very close to stupidity and that simplicity has a less visible but still gratifying aspect.
— Marcel Proust, Time Regained
Everyone seems to be playing well within the boundaries of his usual rule set. I have yet to hear anyone say something that seemed likely to mitigate the idiocy of this age.
— John Perry Barlow
The problem with the world is that everyone does not have a brain, but everyone does have a tongue.
— Raheel Farooq
And secretly I fell prey to the one of the besetting sins of western intellectuals, which normally I abhor: I began to experience envy of suffering, that profoundly dishonest emotion which derives from the foolish notion that only the oppressed can achieve righteousness or - more importantly - write anything profound.
— Theodore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World
you must be stupid , if you think that i'm stupid enough, to believe your stupidness stupidity .
— Mahdi Khmi
I was stupid, mad and dead, but the Lord Jesus saved me from my stupidity.
— Oppong Amankwaa
NOT everybody is stupid the same way. Stupidity varies
—  meaning there are divisions and specialization of stupidity as it is in the production process. Everyone specializes according to his or her capabilities and location.
Cruelty is the surest sign of stupidity.
— Marty Rubin
Stupidity is choice we make ourselves not hereditary though it could sometimes be environmentally deterministic. Repress your sinful DESIRES and see, if your stupidity will NOT reduce drastically
— Oppong Amankwaa
I am stupid but I always trying as much as possible to seek wisdom to overcome my stupidity. Because, I know the mighty power of stupidity and how it ruined my life. I ask you, are you wise or stupid?
— Oppong Amankwaa
Some People are Tired of Being Stupid But they Cant Stop Being Stupid Because They are Already Stupid.
— Amicable Soda
Being stupid is second step in curing your stupidity.
— Oppong Amankwaa
Falderson," he said quietly to Bahzell in passable Navahkan, "is as stupid as the day is long." He craned his neck to gaze up at the hradani and shook his head. "In fact, he's even stupider than I thought. You, sir, are the biggest damned hradani-no offense-I think I've ever seen.
— David Weber, Oath of Swords
Malcolm Gladwell can’t help being a pinhead. He was probably born that way.
— Gregory Cochran
...there was an almost terrifying lack of intelligence in his eyes.
— David Weber, Worlds of Weber: Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington and Other Stories
Action speaks louder than word but if someone judged you by your tattoos that means they are STUPID not to understand art and missed the meaning of "for art sakes
— Jayson Zabate
action speaks louder than word but if someone judged you by your picture that means they are STUPID not to understand art and missed the meaning of "for art sakes
— Jayson Zabate
If this is a smart world then I want to be stupid.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
But courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility.
— Erwin Rommel, The Rommel Papers
I'd say the depths of his stupidity have yet to be plumbed, and yours is comin' up fast on the inside turn.
— Craig Johnson, The Cold Dish
Why are free spirits always so fucking dumb?
— Don DeLillo, Great Jones Street
I don't get involved in anything that's stupid.
— James Ponti, Blue Moon
We really need to find a cure for stupidity, and fast! I've heard it's contagious...No wonder why there's so many of them.
— Analiza Micheal
Angelo was a grown man, and here was one thing he was quite free to decide for himself, and yet he was ready to let others make up his mind for him...that could only be stupidity.
— Anne Holm, I Am David
Diversity of opinions is not what is stopping people from living together in harmony. Stupidity isز
— Sameh Elsayed
Wisdom simplifies the things
—  stupidity makes the things complicated!
Let us tear down the romantic trappings that have adorned passion. Let us cease believing that the measure of a man’s love lies in how stupid he has become or is willing to be.
— José Ortega y Gasset
I ain't grouchy,” Teft snapped. “I just have a low threshold for stupidity.
— Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice.
— Albert Einstein
In other words, the more stupid one is, the more he thinks he knows.
— L. Frank Baum, The Road to Oz: Children's Classics
A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.
— Nicolas Boileau
It’s an old Camorri tradition for when a bunch of people are planning something stupid,” said Locke. “Actually, we have a lot of traditions for that. You’ll find out
— Scott Lynch, The Republic of Thieves
Stupidity is actually in a way the mark of intelligence - if you're not doing stupid things that defy logic you're probably not taking enough risks.
— Gregor Collins, The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved, and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann
Was he, after all, really a bad man doing a brilliant impersonation of an idiot? It was hard to tell. The connections between stupidity and malice were so tangled and so dense.
— Edward St. Aubyn, Mother's Milk
Illiteracy and stupidity are not quite different statuses
—  they are both the outcome of our lethargy and indolence.
Cleverness have no meanings until you find the stupidity that teach you.
— Lena Hussain
The only thing I hate worse than a hero is a stupid hero.
— Raymond L. Atkins, The Front Porch Prophet
This is laid down with a groove funkier and blacker than anything Prince of Michael Jackson--or any other black artist of the recent years for that matter--has come up with.
— Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
Against stupidity
—  be always prepared.
...the Uncommon Stupidity charge agents me be dropped."My shock at the "Honorably Ass-kisser" comment was pushed away by the thought of a law agents uncommon stupidity and wondered how we could get one.
— Kim Harrison, The Outlaw Demon Wails
It's not that there is more stupidity. It just has more intrusive ways of presenting itself. It used to be, you could be near an idiot and you wouldn't know it. With today's advances, that's less likely.
— Tom Levine, Paradise Interrupted
One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read.
— John Kenneth Galbraith
Life is too short not to start something stupid.
— Richie Norton, The Power of Starting Something Stupid: How to Crush Fear, Make Dreams Happen, and Live without Regret
Of course he was required to wear a seat belt, just as he was required to give directions to a torture camp, because stupidity was the single abiding law of the universe.
— Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
So this is what men are like. Well, that's it, then - I am going to be a lesbian.
— Louise Rennison
Do not feel sorry for the bad luck of people, because behind everyone’s misery is their own stupidity and laziness.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Stupidity of proving yourself when not required is itself a proof of stupidity.
— Vikrmn, 10 Alone
It's not easy to kill a mountain goat. He thinks with his spine.
— John Gardner, Grendel
No evidence is powerful enough to force acceptance of a conclusion that is emotionally distasteful.
— Theodosius Dobzhansky
When stupidity knocks at the door, it is stupidity that opens it.
— Ljupka Cvetanova
Silly,' he said with mock serenity, 'isn't a word you should ever apply to people. They may be totally stupid, in fact, but if you call them silly you've lost their vote.
— Dick Francis, 10 lb Penalty
Genuinity is mother of stupidity.
— Vikrmn, 10 Alone
Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots.
— Slavoj Žižek
There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.
— Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
Actually, I was prone to random acts of stupidity. I considered it to be one of my talents.
— Jennifer L. Armentrout, Daimon
The fourth approved approach for the problem of frontally attacking a guarded wormhole was to shoot the officer who suggested it.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game
Fear is a communicable disease
—  it comes out in the sweat and passes from host to host. Fear is an incendiary agent
Listen, last time I talked to you three, you were all two oars short of having any oars, so I don't want to hear it.
— James  Riley, Twice Upon a Time
Stupidity is doomed,therefore, to cringeat every syllableof wisdom.
— Heraclitus, Fragments
I didn’t say you weren’t smart. I said you were stupid.”“I guess I’m too dumb to see the difference.
— Cath Crowley, A Little Wanting Song
Most of your heritage comes from your culture, stupidity is one of them.
— M.F. Moonzajer
I consider myself a synthetic thinker in a virtual domain therefore if I’m way off there is no solid foundation or reference for authentic stupidity.
— Carl Henegan, Darkness Left Undone
I belong to a stupid nation that kill and murder their own people for language and religion, then they call it foreigners interference.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Be a hero or enjoy fucking life, don’t try to be bunch of stupid flesh acting as normal humans.
— M.F. Moonzajer
I was that stupid, I realized. I was also stupid enough not to realize that sometimes even the most beautiful souls need to be shown love once in a while.
— Chamera Sampson, In My Face
For every criminal mastermind, there were ten cretins: the cruel algebra of intelligence applied across the masses.
— John Nardizzi, Telegraph Hill
The problem with educating stupid people was that they didn’t know they were stupid. The same went for curing crazy people.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Phoenix
You can't fix stupid
— R. Alan Woods
Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she: 'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? - or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?''Very likely they do,' said I; 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; - and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight.
— Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
CUSTOMER (to their friend): God, the Famous Five titles realy were crap, weren’t they? Five Go Camping. Five Go Off in a Caravan.... If it was Five Go Down To a Crack House it might be a bit more exciting.
— Jen Campbell, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops
You'd have thought we planned it," says Peeta, giving me just the hint of a smile."Didn't you?" asks Portia. Her fingers press her eyelids closed as if she's warding off a very bright light."No," I say looking at Peeta with a new sense of apreciation. "Neither of us even knew what we were going to do before we went in.""And Haymitch?" says Peeta. "We decided we don't want any other allies in the arena.""Good. Then I won't be responsible for you killing off any of my friends with your stupidity," he says.
— Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire
Inhumanity is the keynote of stupidity in power.
— Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist
You can not argue with stupid but you can certainly play with it.
— Donna Lynn Hope
Hive Queen: They never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo- knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts.Pequenino: While collectively...Hive Queen: Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.>Pequenino: So you're saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and groups are even stupider than individuals-- and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with.Hive Queen: Exactly.
— Orson Scott Card, Xenocide
Most people have some appreciation of mathematics, just as most people can enjoy a pleasant tune; and there are probably more people really interested in mathematics than in music. Appearances suggest the contrary, but there are easy explanations. Music can be used to stimulate mass emotion, while mathematics cannot; and musical incapacity is recognized (no doubt rightly) as mildly discreditable, whereas most people are so frightened of the name of mathematics that they are ready, quite unaffectedly, to exaggerate their own mathematical stupidity
— G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology
Fast and stupid is still stupid. It just gets you to stupid a lot quicker than humans could on their own. Which, I admit, is an accomplishment," she added, "because we're pretty damn good at stupid.
— Jack Campbell, Invincible
A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
— Carlo M. Cipolla
Stupidity is not a behavior
—  it's a religion. One can die for it!
The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying.It was:'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?
— Idries Shah, Reflections
Men are pigs, darling. I really have every sympathy for women that they actually have to choose one of these arrogant, stupid morons to settle down with and marry.
— Michael Winner
He is about as well-put-together and focused as a zombie at a tractor pull.
— Alexander Fontana
No matter how high are one's estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one's activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.
— Carlo M. Cipolla
This is probably the advantage of being stupid. Stupid people just do. We tend to overthink. If we could eliminate the “over” and just think, then we could do, too. Only we’d be smarter doers because we’d be thinkers.
— Sarah Strohmeyer, Smart Girls Get What They Want
It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
No matter how smart you might appear to be later with your set of diplomas on their fine white parchment, the mistakes you made before the real lessons sunk in never fade. No matter how high you hang those official documents with their official seals and signatures, how shinning and polished the frame, your reflection in the glass will never let you forget how stupid you felt when you didn't know any better.
— Tupelo Hassman, Girlchild
All three combined is...a different kind of stupid formerly unheard of by humankind.
— Veronica Roth, Divergent
Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it.
— Stephen Vizinczey
You're going to keep making these mistakes as long as you keep carrying your brain in the same scabbard with your sword, Lelldorin.
— David Eddings, Queen of Sorcery
you're Shane, right?'He inched away from her and managed a quick nod as he twisted the rag he held in his fingers. 'Heidi sad you were willing to teach me how to ride.' Her expression shifted from entertained to confused, as if she was wondering why no one had mentioned he was a can or two shy of a six-pack. 'A horse,' he clarified, then wanted to kick himself. What else but a horse? Did he think she was here to learn to ride his mother's elephant? One corner of Annabelle's perfect, full mouth twitched. 'A horse would be good. You seem to have several.'He wanted to remind himself that he was usually fine around women. Smooth even. He was intelligent, funny and could, on occasion, be charming. Just not now, with his blood pumping and his brain doing nothing more than shouting "it's her, it's her" over and over again. Chemistry, he thought grimly. It could turn the smartest man into a drooling idiot. Here he was, proving the theory true.
— Susan Mallery, Summer Nights
Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.
— Catherynne M. Valente, In the Night Garden