Tucker Max Quotes

I was no scholar in college, and was arrogant about what I thought.

Let's face it, most of us are not half as smart as we may sometimes think we are-- and for intellectuals, not one-tenth as smart.

You might have one thing in your head, but the things you're doing don't really lead down the right road, necessarily. When you're young, you don't want to hear that. You think you can do everything, be all things.

You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?

His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few.

One's belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one's conviction that one is right. We all feel we are right; but we felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren't always right.

There was a survey done a few years ago that affected me greatly. it was discovered that intelligent people either estimate their intelligence accurately or slightly underestimate themselves, but stupid people overestimate their intelligence and by huge margins. (And these were things like straight up math tests, not controversial IQ tests.)

There are times in your life when you feel like the dumbest man on the planet and you’re insecure about something, and then there are times where you feel like, “Hey, I’m a pretty smart guy and I’m pulling it together …”

I went to a school where everyone was smarter than me. And I'm not blowin' smoke, I, my, I was surrounded by genius, genius kids. What's interesting about growing up in a culture like that is you go, "All right, I gotta figure out what my thing is. Because I'm not smarter than these kids. I'm not funnier than half of them, so I better figure out what it is I wanna do and work really hard at that because intellectually I'm treading water to, to be here."

I did things I should not have done. But people make mistakes, especially at my age, when you feel you are so smart, but in fact you are an asshole.

Self-awareness is probably overrated. A complex, self-regulating system doesn't need it in order to be successful, or even smart.

I know who I am. Bloody hell, I'm getting enough bills for Karl Pilkington so I hope I am him, 'cos if I'm not, I have no idea who I'm paying for

If you would improve, submit to be considered wihout sense and foolish with respect to externals. Wish to be considered to know nothing; and if you shall seem to someone to be a person of importance, distrust yourself.

Remember, in the end, it isn't what you are that holds you back, it's what you think you are not.

A lot of the turning points happen in high school and in college, and it defines a lot of how you see the world and how you decide to defend yourself from the world. Some people - their defense mechanism is, I'm really smart or I'm sexy or I'm the leader. And other people - they hide or they make jokes.

I wonder how I seem to them. They must see someone I don't see. Someone capable and strong. Someone I can't be; someone I can be.

You only know who you think you are. You sort of feel like you could change at any minute.

I'm the type of person who is always going to be somewhat dissatisfied with myself. I'm never going to be smart enough. I'm never going to be a good enough father and husband. I'm never going to be a good enough actor for myself. I just never will be, and I have to get comfortable with waking up every day and trying to move some little increment closer to the person I have always dreamed of being. This is the journey.

We all have a lifelong habit of inferiority to our full self..."

Being nice doesn’t make you stupid. It makes you feel good because you know you are gracious enough to forgive and smart enough to realize how distasteful some people can be.

I'm a strange person. Sometimes I hardly know what I'm going to do or say next. Sometimes I seem a stranger to myself. Sometimes what I do surprises me and I can't understand why I do it.

I’m not a romantic, I’m a half-wit. Only stupid people would think I’m smart. I’m not something anyone should know. I’m a lunatic wandering around for scraps, I’m like every single miserable moron I’ve scorned and pretended I didn’t recognize. I’m all of them, every last ugly thing in a bad last-minute costume. I’m not different, not at all, not different from any other speck of a thing. I’m a blemished blemish, a ruined ruin, a stained wreck so failed I can’t see what I used to be.

Don't believe what anyone tells you about yourself.

They think I'm crazy and maybe I am. But maybe I'm a genius.

For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than th eincreasing discovery of my own ignorance