Quotes against power and stupidity. An E-book written and published by Carl William Brown in 2015 and now available, with some other texts, free of charge.
For all those who want to improve our planet but don’t know how and where to start with, let’s begin struggling against stupidity; it’s easy, be confident and remember first of all that we are what we do, so if we don’t struggle, we are evidently supporters of the incredible queen of the universe. So don’t worry, don’t be afraid, think it over and join us, if you can, and if you want.
Carl William Brown
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Unfortunately our planet is more and more full of increasingly empty men, to paraphrase Eliot, shapeless figures, colorless shadows, not souls, lost and violent, but only, empty men, stuffed men, created by the taxidermists of stupidity.
Carl William Brown
The history of great world leaders is often the history of human folly.
Voltaire
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What people commonly call fate is mostly their own stupidity.
Arthur Shopenhauer
Force governs the world (unfortunately!) and not knowing: therefore whoever rules it can and usually is ignorant.
Vittorio Alfieri
The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.
Mahatma Gandhi
A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted.
Niccolo Machiavelli
A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.
Nicholas Boileau
Why look for conspiracy when stupidity can explain so much.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Appeal to all scholars of stupidity in the world. Come to Italy, this country has the highest rate of morons of the universe, especially among political, bureaucratic, judicial, religious, intellectual, artistic, and mass media members, so it is the best place to develop your own field research.
Carl William Brown
Being a scholar of stupidity, how could avoid to thank a lot of people for their existence.
Carl William Brown
When you are dead, you don’t know that you are dead. It is difficult only for the others. It is the same when you are stupid!
Carl William Brown
As far as humanity is concerned the origin of stupidity is itself.
Carl William Brown
The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life.
Giordano Bruno
Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them… I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon’s teeth and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. John Milton If originality was killed a long time ago, stupidity on the contrary is still very much alive!
Carl William Brown
Struggle against stupidity, if you want and if you can, and always remember that without struggle, there is no progress, since strength and growth come only through suffering.
Carl William Brown
I believe it was Magellan who said, “The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.”
Carl William Brown
On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.
Robert Green Ingersoll
It was a high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics), that the good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired. Bona rerum secundarum optabilia; adversarum mirabilia.
Francis Bacon
It is absolutely useless and illogic to ask what is the origin or the goal of our universe; it is better to find out why the human race is so stupid!
Carl William Brown
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde
Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell
Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. George Orwell
Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.
George Orwell
The reward of sin is death? That’s hard. Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in nobis veritas. If we say that we have no sin, We deceive ourselves, and there’s no truth in us.
Christopher Marlowe
The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept and that, had it only been so rigidly enforced from the beginning, no such disorders would have ensued as prevail at present in Vienna.
William Shakespeare
The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny, and I’m happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way.
David Lloyd
What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. Oscar Wilde
If we compare the faults of a people with those of princes, as well as their respective good qualities, we shall find the people vastly superior in all that is good and glorious.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something. Plato A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
Bruce Lee
Hegel used to say that the familiar, precisely because it is familiar, remains unknown. That’s why we don’t know so much about stupidity.
Carl William Brown
Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.
George Lois
Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.
Sholom Aleichem
Publicity is the soul of stupidity, but we must not forget that we live in a stupid universe, so publicity is the engine of our world.
Carl William Brown
Aforismi contro il potere e la stupidità. (My Ko-fi shop)
If you like this blog you can visit my page on Ko-fi and support me, since I created an account there in order to test and demonstrate human philanthropy and its sense of humor. In any case, don’t worry, take it easy and be happy, since I am a scholar of stupidity, thanks for existing just the same.
On the same topic you can also read: