The Psychology of Stupidity Quotes

“The ignorant man affirms, the scientist doubts, the wise man reflects. —ARISTOTLE”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“Fighting stupidity tends to reinforce it.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“Everyone sees bullshit, listens to it, and reads it, every single day. At the same time, each of us is guilty of generating it, thinking it, pondering it, and speaking it aloud. We are all morons from time to time, spouting nonsense as we go about our lives, without any real consequences.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“Unconditional self-acceptance is based on the worth a person feels for his being, not letting his actions define his identity. Under these conditions, doing something stupid doesn’t mean you’re a fool. It relates to lived experience, not to identity. Even if we accept the idea that our actions don’t define us as a person, the experience of doing something stupid feels uncomfortable. Yet the memory of the most innocuous of our stupid actions fades quickly; at worst, we feel a slight embarrassment after a certain amount of time has elapsed. At best, we can look back and laugh about it.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“The excessive range of possibilities reinforces indecision and even provokes a certain feeling of dissatisfaction: the feeling that you haven’t found the ideal [THE PARADOXES OF ABUNDANCE]”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“It’s crazy how much people like to judge. They judge everywhere, all the time. No doubt it’s one of the simplest tasks humanity has been given. [1980, Michel Foucault]”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“To define intelligences of a very high order, it’s useful to consider the stunning capacity some people have exhibited to leave behind the broken paths and dominant models of their own eras, and to innovate, rather than to content themselves with the prevailing assumptions of their times.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“There are 3 important elements of self compassion. The first is mindfulness, [...] this is the capacity to be conscious of one’s experience in the moment, without judging. [...] It permits us to acknowledge our suffering while understanding that it is temporary. The second component invites us to recognize our common humanity by reminding us of our connection with many other people who have gone through what we’re enduring. This prompts us to show kindness to ourselves, as we would to a friend or relative who was going through a rough patch. [Kristin Neff]”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“How can we accept who we are, given our imperfections, our limitations, and obviously, our stupidity? [...] All humans have qualities and flaws (which are sometimes difficult to differentiate), and the actions and traits of an individual can’t give a satisfactory account of his “being.” A human being is neither “good” nor “bad”; he simply is.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“Stupidity is inevitable, because we are human. Our stupid actions are of our own creation—as are our reactions to them. Synonyms for the word “stupidity” abound: folly, silliness, idiocy, clumsiness, obtuseness.. However, they have a common denominator: the inherent element of mistake. Even the most absurd inanity (a farce, for example), when imposed on others, and not received happily by them, is recognized as a mistake. If the expected humorous effect doesn’t come off, it’s a shame; the action ends up just looking dumb. But it’s rare that stupid actions are knowingly committed.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“credo quia absurdum, “I believe because it’s absurd”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“As we’ve seen, dreams are strongly linked to our waking experience. That implies: 1) that it’s decidedly difficult to escape the stupidity that surrounds us, and 2) that an idiot by day will tend to be an idiot at night. But who knows? Thanks to the creative power of dreams, perhaps even a fool might be visited by flashes of genius?”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“Beyond the “virtual reality” dimension, as a preparation for action dreams can permit us to digest our feelings, removing the emotional cloak of our memories and retaining only the important information (the memory in itself, liberated from its attendant emotions). [...] dreams permit a reduction of the negative aspect of anxiety-producing or traumatizing experiences by reactivating them in conjunction with neutral elements in the oneiric setting.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“[...] dreams may act as simulations of threats or situations that worry us, which prepare us better to handle them in real life, rather like a vaccine triggers the production of antibodies adapted to protect us from future viruses we may be exposed to.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“The dreamer broods in the dark, constantly thrust into unpleasant, even dangerous, situations. Clearly, he’s not an example of social success!”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“[...] It would seem that the habits and abilities we’ve acquired in our waking years invade our oneiric scenarios. It’s hard to escape daily life, even when we are sleeping!”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“[...] 84 percent of our accounts of dreams contain autobiographical elements. The majority contain elements of our recent experiences, often jumbled with older incidents. Our waking life feeds our oneiric life. Therefore it follows that if you’re stupid by day, there’s little chance this will change at night.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“The collective imagination that pictures the oneiric world as extraordinary has no basis in fact. Our memory is selective: for the most part, we only remember the dreams that are the most intense, emotionally gripping, and strange. The others, less remarkable, drown in oblivion.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“[...] could it be that dreams allow us to escape from the stupidity of daily life?”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“If you think about the Buddhist tradition, for instance, they argue that as an adult, often you’re sort of stuck in your own mind with its goals and immediate desires and rumination, and you can’t get out and get in tune with the outside world. I think that’s very much a difference between adults and children, that kind of narrow focus on “Here are my needs and wants, and what can I do to get them fulfilled?” Traditionally, people had argued that children were egocentric in that way, but I think the evidence is that it’s grown-ups who are like that. And assholes in particular. One definition of assholes is that they’re people who are so narrowly focused on their own goals and the things that they want, they can’t be tuned in to anything that’s going on in the world outside them.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“[...] when you give children a pattern of data that supports an unlikely hypothesis, the children are actually better than the adults at figuring out that unlikely hypothesis. The children are actually more likely to update their belief when they get new data. Adults are more likely to just rely on the things that they already heard, or the things that people have told them. It’s stupid in some ways, but, of course, in other ways it’s very practical, because if every time you have to make a decision you had to go back from scratch and think, “Do I believe it’s really true? Is it really accurate?” it would be hard to act.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“An emotion like fear is a good counselor: it pushes us to confront a danger. But emotions push us to give in to the stimuli that we’re presented with. [...] That’s why we often make immediate decisions that go against what we’d like to do in the long term. Procrastinators, who always put off until later what they should do at once, know this problem very well.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“sadism of the spectator,” whose roots Lucretius anticipated in De Rerum Natura: “It is sweet, when winds roil the waters of the vast sea, to observe from land the distress of others, not because it is a pleasure that others should suffer, but because it is sweet to see what evils we have escaped.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“Q. So, even for a high-quality text, you need vulgar packaging.

A. Exactly. People who write for the web wake up every morning without giving any thought to considerations of morality or quality, all they think about is the number of clicks.

Interview by Jean-François Marmion.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“When I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“The brain is a social organism: to call someone an idiot is to point a finger and put a label on them. It demonstrates your own ability to detect this defect, which isn’t always easy to spot at first sight, as we have shown, and which you yourself do not possess. To call someone else stupid is to call attention to your own perceptiveness, which is always flattering to the ego, placing yourself above the designated victim. As a rule, few people will contradict you, which allows you to confirm your ascendance on the lofty ladder occupied by those who share your point of view. They spare themselves mental effort by mirroring you. They will mock the sacrificial victim along with you, laughing heartily. You will be confirmed as the leader of a superior assemblage that knows how to draw a clear line between idiots and everyone else. Your expertise will spread quickly intoother domains. You will be listened to, and your advice will be followed; better still, you will be obeyed! The poor idiots you’ve singled out will have no choice but to flee, or to just stand by and take it. They will be forced to submit, to accept ridicule to fulfill their role as scapegoats. A king who turns megalomaniac will try to hold on to his crown, expand his powers, and reign without giving power to those who placed him on the throne. He exploits them legitimately because they were stupid enough to prop him up. And still—so says Brassens—there’s hardly any chance he’ll be dethroned.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“[...] how can you be sure what kind of person you are, yourself? “Whether or not you’re a fool, there’s always someone who takes you for one [Pierre Perret] [...] You’re reassured whatever you do / That there’s always a greater fool than you.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“Carlo Maria Cipolla ["The Basic Laws of
Human Stupidity"]: every contact you have with an idiot speeds you both to a shared doom! An interaction between two intelligent people is productive for both parties. A thief may rob you, but he’s less dangerous than a fool, because a fool takes you down with him in his downward spiral; he chops off the branch where you’re sitting beside him. [..] It’s essential to recognize idiots in time to avoid disaster.”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“So, should we give up on being rational, make peace with our folly, and hail our weaknesses as good fortune?”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity

“Convenience bias: I was born, it's Voltaire's fault!”
― Jean-François Marmion, The Psychology of Stupidity