J. D. Salinger Quotes

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.

I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.

To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.

We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

I can always tell how stupid someone is by how certain they are about what they're saying.

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.

He was ignorant, but a lot of people mistook ignorance for stupidity, and knowingness for intelligence.

The stupidity of a stupid man is mercifully intimate and reticient, while the stupidity of an intellectual is cried from the rooftops.

In other words, the more stupid one is, the more he thinks he knows.

You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.

An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.

The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?’

The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

Man, you're no smarter than me. You're just a fancier kind of stupid.

People do not read stupidities with impunity.

Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter.

Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don’t know, know that you don’t know — the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.

There's the bullshit you know that you know; the bullshit you don't know and know you don't know; and the bullshit you just think you know but really don't.

Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.

There is a stupid humility that is quite common and when a person is afflicted with it, he is once and for all disqualified for being a disciple of knowledge.

Literature, it seems to me, is wisdom.

I have a great affection for people who are intellectually engaged with the world, and who don't treat everything superficially. And I think, when people talk about nerdiness, what they're really talking about is smart people who who are trying to think hard about the world. And I don't think that's an insult, I think that's a great thing.

Even great spirits have only their five-fingers' breadth of experience - just beyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space and stupidity begins.

Fear and realisation of ignorance, strong medicines against stupid pride.

Perhaps a normal man is supposed to be stupid-how do we know? Perhaps it's even very beautiful.