#stupidity

Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#ever #force #good #motive #motives

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#men #money #reason #sell #stupidity

Most of the time I've worked in labs if I didn't encounter something in a week entirely unexpected and surprising I'd consider it a lost week. Lots of that is due to mistakes and stupidity, but it could open a new line of inquiry. Something really good turns up once in a hundred times, but it makes the whole day worthwhile. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#could #day #due #encounter #entirely

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

#ignorance #stupidity #freedom

Kate was never going to understand the extent to which men were stupid. ↗

— Chris Pavone

#stupidity #men

When we see that almost everything men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort and encountering a thousand toils and dangers in the process, has, in the end, no further object than to raise themselves in the estimation of others; when we see that not only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even knowledge[1] and art, are striven for only to obtain, as the ultimate goal of all effort, greater respect from one's fellowmen,—is not this a lamentable proof of the extent to which human folly can go? ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#stupidity #art

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

#math #mathematics #music #stupidity #music

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#science #stupidity #nature

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#man #stupidity #nature

I'll take crazy over stupid any day. ↗

— Joss Whedon

#stupidity #crazy