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)
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.
As an embittered cynic, I should be programmed to vomit all over the screen at the mere sight of this, but instead, I find it strangely moving. You see, as I stare into their happy smiling faces filled with naive joie de vivre, I know they're just blissfully unaware of the crushing despair that awaits them as they venture into adulthood. The myriad disappointments, the yawning chasms of pain, the slow gnawing descent into physical decay, the sheer unrelenting horror of it all.
charlie brooker— Screenwipe S3E4
— Discussing the High School Musical series
His skill in acting a part, his cunning, his imagination, the ease with which he affected naive stupidity and then emerged into the most subtle reasoning disarmed the security agents who interrogated him.
wilhelm canaris— Fabian von Schlabrendorff
As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king’s firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict.
j. m. coetzee— p. 14 (Diary of a Bad Year (2007))
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
I had the naive, simplistic idea that producers and writers and artists of the time helped in a minuscule way to change the mind-set of America.
m. ward— On his album Post-War and the postwar music of the late 1940s and 50s, as quoted in Vanity Fair (August 2006)
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
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)
After Mitt Romney said it would be naive to go into Pakistan to pursue the terrorists, it took President Obama, against the advice of many, to give that order and finally rid this earth of Osama bin Laden. Ask Osama bin Laden if he is better off now than he was four years ago!
john kerry— September 6, 2012 John Kerry’s speech to the Democratic National Convention, 2012
She was not so naive as to think there was any necessary relation between religion and morality, or that if there was a relation it was likely to be a benevolent one.
ursula k. le guin— Ch. 4, §3 (p. 109)
Four years ago a large part of the civilised world laboured under certain biological fallacies which may, in a sense, be held responsible for the extent and duration of the present conflict. These fallacies, which were the foundation of pacifism and other pernicious forms of social and political radicalism, dealt with the capacity of man to evolve mentally beyond his former state of subservience to primate instinct and pugnacity, and to conduct his affairs and international or interracial relations on a basis of reason and good-will. That belief in such capability is unscientific and childishly naive, is beside the question.
h. p. lovecraft— At the Root (1918)
“‘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.
With me, what you see is what you get. Yes, call me naive, but I love life. I am happy for that, I make no apologies. I do like to see the best in people, and when someone is nice to my face, I tend to believe them.
Joyce giraud— Interview with Joyce Giraud featured on Bravo TV's website, regarding The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
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
The idea that the euro has "failed" is dangerously naive. The euro is doing exactly what its progenitor – and the wealthy 1%-ers who adopted it – predicted and planned for it to do.
— Greg Palast, "Robert Mundell, evil genius of the euro", The Guardian, 26 June 2012
— "The Euro is a Big Success - No Kidding", gregpalast.com
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.
