stupidity quotes

If photography is allowed to stand in forart in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thankstothenatural support it will find inthestupidityof themultitude.It must return toits real task, which isto be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.

- Charles Baudelaire
  'Salon of1859', section 2, in Curiosite  s Esthe  tiques (1868).

Tourism is the march of stupidity.

- Don DeLillo
  James  Axton. The Names, ch.3.

Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.

-John Dryden
  Richard Flecknoe selects Shadwell as heir to the kingdom of dullness. MacFlecknoe (published1682), l.17^18.

O bom era ter uma intelige"  ncia e na‹  o entender. Era uma be"  n c° a‹  o estranha como a de ter loucura sem ser doida. Era um desinteresse manso em rela c° a‹  o a'  s coisas ditas do intelecto, uma do c° ura de estupidez. What was good was to have intelligence and yet not understand. It was a strange blessing like experiencing madness without being mad. It was a gentle lack of interest with respect to the so-called things of the intellect, a sweet stupidity.

- Clarice Lispector
  Uma  Aprendizagem ou O Livro dos Prazeres, 'Luminesce"  ncia' (translated as  An  Apprenticeship or TheBook of Delights,1986).

I believe that the BBC, in spite of the stupidity of its foreign propaganda and the unbearable voices of its announcers, is very truthful. It isgenerally regarded here as more reliable than the press.

- George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
  In the Partisan Review,15  Apr. Reprinted in Collected Essays,  Journalism and Letters, vol.2.

   Mitt der Dummheit k a« mpfen G o« tter selbst vergebens. Even the gods themselves struggle in vain against stupidity.

- Elsa Schiaparelli
DieJungfrau von Orle  ans, act 3, sc.6.

I recalled when I worked in the woods and the bars of Madras,Oregon. That short-haired joy and roughness Americayour stupidity. I could almost love you again.

- Gary Sherman Snyder
  Turtle Island,'I Went IntoThe Maverick Bar'.

Unfortunately, computers are†stupid.Unlike human beings, computers possess the truly profound stupidity of the inanimate.

- Bruce Sterling
  The Hacker Crackdown: law and disorder on the electronic frontier.