Fritz Perls Quotes

Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen twice, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable.

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.

Aures habent et non audient' - 'They have ears but hear not

Men are so stupid and concerned with their present needs, they will always let themselves be deceived.

Most people sleep themselves stupid.

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.

And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.

Do you still believe it impossible we exist? You didn't actually think you were the only inhabited planet in the universe. How can any race be so stupid?

What's the use? The people are too stupid. They do not understand.

In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed-amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.

But what could I do? Be stupid for a while? I wasn't sure I knew how, even after so many years of careful observation.

People--stupid when they lived; potentially stupid when they died.

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.

You bet I write disaster fiction. We have compiled a disastrous record on this planet, a record of stupidity and absurdity and self-abuse and self-aggrandizement and self-deception and pompousness and self-righteousness and cruelty and indifference beyond what any other species has demonstrated the capacity for, which is the capacity for all the above.

Stupidity really gets me going, when it's just plain stupid, obvious stupidity. And I think that's the reason my act has become more political. I've become somewhat more of a political comic because the level of stupidity I've watched is staggering.

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

White folks are not going to come to see a bunch of guys with tattoos, with cornrows. I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks different, they're stupid.

It's extremely unlucky to be superstitious, for no other reason than it is always unlucky to be colossally stupid.

How chronic is the unconcern of men and women of the world!

Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.

Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties.

Learn all you can, don't be lazy. Nothing's worse than being stupid. Being broke is bad, but being stupid is what's really bad. And what's really really bad is being broke and stupid. Nothing's much worse than that. Unless you're sick. Sick, broke and stupid, that’s about as far as you can fall unless you're ugly. Surely that would be the ultimate; ugly, sick, broke and stupid.

...but then the general trouble with ignorance is always that the ignorant person has no idea that that's what they are. You can be ignorant and stupid and go through your whole life without ever encountering any evidence against the hypothesis that you're a genius.

In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy... anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.