Quotes about stupidity

My favorite definition of evil is that it is militant ignorance.

“Wealth tends to generate wealth,” he began.

I gave a qualified assent. “If it does not instead give birth to folly.”

You, somehow, have the greatest potential of all my hosts, and are one of the dumbest, at the same time.

“Gee, thanks for the confidence booster.”

On the contrary, it is brave stupid people who change the world. The smart ones are usually too smart to even try.

The level of dumb you humans can achieve is quite mind-boggling.

I would even say that too much education can be a form of foolishness."

“If he’s only a boy, what was he doing in a war?”

“He comes from a warrior culture. They start earlier than civilized people do. It was his first war, and it was supposed to be a quiet one. The half-wit who sits on the throne in Kanthon got carried away, though, so he ordered the soldiers he’d hired from Eliar’s Clan Chief to invade your father’s territory. It was a stupid thing to do, and it wasn’t supposed to happen. It was his fault that your father got killed, not Eliar’s. Eliar was only following orders. The whole business was the result of a series of stupid mistakes, but that’s what most wars are all about, I guess. Nobody ever really wins a war, when you get right down to it.”

“Why must they always set fires?” Bheid asked Althalus as the two of them stood on the portico of the temple waiting and watching the columns of smoke rising from various quarters of the city.

“I’m not really sure, Bheid,” Althalus confessed. “It might just be accidental. Looters are usually fairly excited, and sometimes they get careless. My best guess, though, is that the fires are being set deliberately to punish the noblemen for their bad habits.”

“That’s pure stupidity, Althalus,” Bheid objected.

“Of course it is. It’s the nature of mobs to be stupid. A mob’s only as clever as its stupidest member.”

Battle elephants! Teppic groaned. Tsort went in for battle elephants, too. Battle elephants were the fashion lately. They weren't much good for anything except trampling on their own when they inevitably panicked, so the military minds on both sides had responded by breeding bigger elephants. Elephants were impressive. (p. 256)

Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid. (p. 135)

It's one thing to think someone's stupid. And fair enough if you need them to be. But you can't go banking on it. That's a mug's game.

It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. I don’t believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood, and this is a thing that even God—who knows all that can be known—seems powerless to change.

It’s one of those weird truths you learn early on as police that quite a high percentage of the public have all the survival instinct of a moth in a candle factory. They run the wrong way, they refuse to move, some will run toward the danger, and others will instantly whip out their phones and take footage.