Naive Quotes
More Naive Quotes
"People will be truly critical if they live in the plenitude of the praxis, that is, if their action encompasses a critical reflection which increasingly organizes their thinking and thus leads them to move from a purely naive knowledge of reality to a higher level, one which enables them to perceive the causes of reality."
paulo freire— Chapter 4 (Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970))
The Lord made Adam, the Lord made Eve, he made ‘em both a little bit naive.
— Yip Harburg, “The Begat,” Finian’s Rainbow (1947)
Maybe I was naive, but I thought the whole point of being an MP was to scrutinise legislation and improve it.
sarah wollaston— Quoted in The Economist, 6th April 2013, p.36
There was a barber and his wife, / and she was beautiful. / A foolish barber and his wife. / She was his reason and his life, / and she was beautiful, / and she was virtuous. / And he was... / naive...
— Who: Sweeney Todd
— Source: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
— Note: Character sings this song, a reprise of one of the musical's very first songs, as he is holding the body of his wife, who he unknowingly killed because he did not know that she was still alive. He is killed by having his throat slashed with his own razor by Tobias Ragg shortly afterward.
When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before youa tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streakof yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact colour and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.
Claude Monet— Attributed, in reminiscences written in1927 by the young American artist Lilla Cabot Perry.
Probably I am very naive, but I also think I prefer to remain so, at least for the time being and perhaps for the rest of my life.
edsger w. dijkstra— (Refering to his conclusion to the Barber paradox or Russell's paradox.)
— Dijkstra (1985) Where is Russell's paradox? (EWD 923A)
Pathetic, naive, like small noisy tantrums.
Stephen Fry— On the e-book Poets Against the War.
— Interview with The Daily Telegraph promoting his book The Ode Most Travelled.[1]
People who been told that the Reform Party consists of well-meaning simpletons mouthing naive solutions to complex problems should study Harper's speeches on behalf of Reform.
preston manning— Chapter Eight, The Founding Assembly, p. 149
Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave, when they think that their children are naive.
ogden nash— "Baby, What Makes the Sky Blue?"
I was appalled that the San Francisco ethic didn't mushroom and envelope the whole world into this loving community of acid freaks. I was very naive.
grace slick— As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) edited by Robert Andrews
I do believe that in a race, it is naive to think Linux has a hope of making a dent against Microsoft starting from way behind with a fraction of the resources and amateur labor. (I feel the same about Unix.)
kenneth thompson— "Ken Thompson clarifies matters", Linux Today. May 7, 1999. [7]
You are very familiar with Western ways, but you are too young. You go everywhere to follow the big news, but the questions you ask are too simple -- sometimes naive.
jiang zemin— Leader of China Angrily Chastises Hong Kong Media
It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory or rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, "objectivity", "truth", it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes.
paul karl feyerabend— Pg. 27 & 28, italics are Feyerabend's
The Lord made Adam, the Lord made Eve, he made ‘em both a little bit naive.
yip harburg— “The Begat” in Finian’s Rainbow (1946)
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.
friedrich hayek— The Fatal Conceit : The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 76
naive you are if you believe life favours those who aren't naive.
piet hein— Naive — (Grooks)
Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder. Yet in essence, that is what you have asked our loved ones to do, through an ill-contrived and totally naive campaign against the Second Amendment.
Charlton Heston— Speech to the National Press Club (14 September 1997)
“‘naive’ is not a word I associate with the Southern Rule. Superstitious, perhaps, traditional, yes, maddeningly set in their way, certainly but not naive.” “I meant you are naive. They must have a hidden motive.” “This is why I have no politics,” said Darvin. “I can’t think in those terms.”
ken macleod— Chapter 14 “The Extraordinary and Remarkable Ship” (p. 237)
The nice men in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment were recklessly naive to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve to check one another.
ilana mercer— "Quacking Over Ducksters As Freedoms Go Poof", WorldNetDaily.com, January 3, 2014
My position on date rape is partly based on my study of The Faerie Queen, as detailed in a full chapter in Sexual Personae: in 1590, the poet Edmund Spencer already sees that passive, drippy, naive women constantly get themselves into rape scenarios, while talented, intelligent, alert women, his warrior heroines, spot trouble coming and boldly trounce their male assailants. My feminism stresses courage, independence, self-reliance, and pride.
camille paglia— Sex, Art and American Culture: New Essays (1992, pg. 304)
Feminists had an astoundingly naive view of the mutual exclusiveness of sex and aggression, which, Freud demonstrates, are fused in the amoral unconscious, as revealed to us through dreams. That rape is simply what used to be called “unbridled lust,” like gluttony a sin of insufficient self-restraint, seems to be beyond the feminist ken.
camille paglia— p. 41 ("No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality")
Science seems to be at war with itself.... naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.
bertrand russell— An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), Introduction, p. 15.
In academia, ...an art historian, on being stirred to tears by the tenderness and serenity he detects in a work by a fourteenth-century Florentine painter, may end up writing a monograph, as irreproachable as it is bloodless, on the history of paint manufacture in the age of Giotto. It seems easier to respond to our enthusiasms by trading in facts than by investigating the more naive question of how and why we have been moved.
Alain de Botton— The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009, pp. 27-29)
The Lord made Adam, the Lord made Eve, he made ‘em both a little bit naive.
— Yip Harburg, “The Begat,” Finian’s Rainbow (1947)
The nice men in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment were recklessly naive to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve to check one another.
— "Quacking Over Ducksters As Freedoms Go Poof", WorldNetDaily.com, January 3, 2014
The nation is burdened with the heavy curse on those who come afterwards. The generation before us was inspired by an activism and a naive enthusiasm, which we cannot rekindle, because we confront tasks of a different kind from those which our fathers faced.
— Max Weber, address to convention of the Verein für Socialpolitik, Germany, 1893; reported in Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber (1960), p. 53.
You can no longer afford to be so naive, Artanis. While you were securing the crystals, I discovered that your Matriarch has been harboring a dark secret! She has been manipulated by de-
— Who: Aldaris
— Source:StarCraft: Brood War
— Note: He is interrupted by the sudden appearance of Kerrigan before he was about reveal her manipulation of Raszagal.
naive fool. My death will make little difference in the long run. For now, the scourging of this land... begins.
— Who: Kel'thuzad
— Source: Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
— Note: Kel'thuzad did not remain dead, but was rather reincarnated later as a Lich, thus gaining immortality.
Über naive und Sentimentalische Dichtung.
Friedrich Schiller— Friedrich Schiller, Schiller's Poems? (1905), p. 200
