Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.
There was a naive quality in 1982 around technology and the start of video games. And that's like the start of electronic music - there was this statement and, ideologically, these things to fight for.
Most of the suspicion of intellectuals in politics springs from the belief, not entirely false, that, owing to a strong desire to see life in some simple, symmetrical fashion, they put too much faith in the beneficent results of applying directly to life conclusions obtained by operations in some theoretical sphere.
The state of New Jersey is really two places - terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It's very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work.
I decided, "Well, I'll be a forest ranger!" Because I thought, "I'll get to go out in the woods, I'll be in the forest, and I can sit in a tower and watch for forest fires and play my guitar. That's what I want to do!" Well, I was an idiot, of course.
If I had known how hard it would be to do something new, particularly in the payments industry, I would never have started PayPal. That's why nobody with long experience in banking had done it. You needed to be naive enough to think that new things could be done.
When you start making music, you start making music at a young age, and for me, I just thought, like, 'Ahh, once you make it, all your problems will be solved, and everything will be fine.'
We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.
We find ourselves in that situation where we want to believe, we want to think we're the exception, we want to think we can change someone or tame a lion or make a bad guy good or something like that but 9 times out of 10 we end up looking back going, "Oh, shame on me, should've seen that one coming!"
In the beginning there was faith - which is childish; trust - which is vain; and illusion - which is dangerous.
I might be stupid to think love is love, but I do.
It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.
Anyone who thinks they can save the world is both wrong and dangerous
I slept peacefully that night, feeling exultant and determined. Little did I know that I was making the most common and the most painful mistake women have made all throughout the ages: to naively think that with their love they can change the man they love.
American views today are weak, confused, and divided. On one side, many progressive liberals still think that we humans are essentially good and getting better and better. On the other side, many postmoderns actually think it is worse to judge evil than to do evil. And in the middle, many ordinary folk plaster life with rainbows and smile buttons and wander through life on the basis of sentiment and clichés.
I try to believe like I believed when I was five...when your heart tells you everything you need to know.
People are just too hopeful, and sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us. People will believe anything.
A naive dream is extremely powerful.
I hate the pollyanna pest who says that all is for the best.
The world has been made by fools that wise men may live in it.
I love being down at Occupy Wall Street. The sincerity, the youth involvement, the desire for better, is palpable and moving. There is true caring, sharing, and refreshingly naive hope.
Wasn't it beautiful when you believed in everything?
One has to be foolish or irredeemably stupid to believe that anything good can come to Europe from the land of presumed opportunity.
I came to the industry with wide eyes and an open heart thinking I was going to make a few films that really meant something that I could pour myself into.
I'm quite jealous of my Scottish relations, in whose culture everyone, in a Jane Austen kind of way, got married very young, when you're too young to be cynical or jaded and just started having children.
