"We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse. They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave. They have known it. We know it. But do the great enlightened mass of the British people know it? No. It is our task, Ella, yours and mine, to tell them. Because the great men are too great to be bothered. They are already discovering how to colonise Venus and to irrigate the moon. That is what is important for our time. You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we’ll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind."

"He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others."

"Everything happens for a reason, and sometimes the reason is you’re stupid and made a bad decision."

"Fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil."

"Why, Sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature."

"I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

"Be dauntless, valiant, tragic, whatever you like; but don’t be stupid."

"A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious, a bashful one cannot learn, a short-tempered person cannot teach, nor does anyone who does much business grow wise."

"The fool of nature stood with stupid eyes And gaping mouth, that testified surprise."

"Only two things are infinite; the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

"People who are stupid, unscrupulous, or hypocritical, think that others are just the same. And — this is the real pity — they treat them as if they were."

"Aristotle taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons."

"When the world begets too many fools, nature provides a Foolkiller."

"Wizard's First Rule: people are stupid." Richard and Kahlan frowned even more. "People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool."

"It’s too bad that stupidity isn't painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable."

"We are growing serious, and, let me tell you, that's the very next step to being dull."

"The world’s prize stupid oaf is the man who thinks he already has all the answers."

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are stupider than that."

"I never heard tell of any clever man that came of entirely stupid people."

"With various readings stored his empty skull, Learn'd without sense, and venerably dull."

"All humans are stupid, but the smarter ones at least have a handle on their own ignorance."

"I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull."

"For take thy ballaunce if thou be so wise, And weigh the winde that under heaven doth blow; Or weigh the light that in the east doth rise; Or weigh the thought that from man's mind doth flow."

"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection."

"The learn'd reflect on what before they knew."

"Let the Tribune put all this in its pipe and smoke it."

"The action of freedom, through which the form turns into the form of the form as its content and returns into itself, is called "reflection.""

"The solitary side of our nature demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on which the dash and whirl of daily business, so long as its clouds rise thick about us, forbid the intellect to fasten itself."

"Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and reflection must finish him."

"Grace causes the Christian to act, reason the philosopher. Other men are carried away by their passions, their actions not being preceded by reflection: these are the men who walk in darkness. On the other hand, the philosopher, even in his passions, acts only after reflection; he walks in the dark, but by a torch."

"When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick. He overreaches himself, the work denies itself to him, the incarnation of the spirit no longer takes place, and to avoid the threat of senselessness he snatches after empty power. This sickness casts the genius on to the same level as those hysterical figures who, being by nature without power, slave for power, in order that they may enjoy the illusion that they are inwardly powerful, and who in this striving for power cannot let a pause intervene, since a pause would bring with it the possibility of self-reflection and self-reflection would bring collapse."

"Music is reflection of self, we just explain it, and then we get our checks in the mail."

"The next time you go out to a smoking party, young feller, fill your pipe with that 'ere reflection."

"REFLECTION, n. An action of the mind whereby we obtain a clearer view of our relation to the things of yesterday and are able to avoid the perils that we shall not again encounter."

"A soul without reflection, like a pile Without inhabitant, to ruin runs."

"The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity…. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope."

"Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of Democracy, and while guided and controlled by virtue, the noblest attribute of man. It is the only dictator that freemen acknowledge, and the only security which freemen desire."

"If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity."

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

"A man of hope and forward-looking mind."

"In years that bring the philosophic mind."

"If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work on brass, time will efface it. If we rear temples, they will crumble to dust. But if we work on men's immortal minds, if we impress on them high principles, the just fear of God, and love for their fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity."

"Minds that have nothing to confer Find little to perceive."

"Nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futuræ, Et servare modum, rebus sublata secundis."

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made."