#clever

Can you be sure that others have not come before you and destroyed the pristine state of the native myth? Can you be sure that the natives are not humoring you or pulling your leg? Bronislaw Malinowski thought he had discovered a people in the Trobriant Islands who had not worked out the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth. When asked how children were conceived, they supplied him with an elaborate mythic structure prominently featuring celestial intervention. Amazed, Malinowski objected that was not how it was done at all, and supplied them instead with the version so popular in the West today – including a nine-month gestation period. “Impossible,” replied the Melanesians. “Do you not see that woman over there with her six-month-old child? Her husband has been on an extended voyage to another island for two years.” Is it more likely that the Melanesians were ignorant of the begetting of children or that they were gently chiding Malinowski? If some peculiar-looking stranger came into my town and asked ME where babies came from, I’d certainly be tempted to tell him about storks and cabbages. Prescientific people are people. Individually they are as clever as we are. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#cleverness #myths #people #primitive #humor

Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road. ↗

— Isak Dinesen

#foresight #africa

When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you. ↗

— Irving Layton

#clever #convince #inferiors #one thing #only

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence. ↗

— Raymond Chandler

#any #cleverness #decadence #except #incapable

I once used henna to dye my hair brown for an audition, thinking I was being clever as it's all natural. ↗

— Sienna Miller

#being #brown #clever #dye #hair

Take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes. ↗

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

#clever #hated #his #man #more

Bush is very clever. When the debate should have been about the deterioration of our cities and the lack of action by government, he sent in his idiot to make an outrageous statement about Murphy Brown. ↗

— Tim Robbins

#action #been #brown #bush #cities

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#people #death

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#fools #nuisance #death

There Are Two Typos Of People In This World: Those Who Can Edit And Those Who Can’t ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#editing #funny #people #typo #world