John Desmond Bernal Quotes

We will have to give up taking things for granted, even the apparently simple things.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

One of the big questions in the climate change debate: Are humans any smarter than frogs in a pot? If you put a frog in a pot and slowly turn up the heat, it won't jump out. Instead, it will enjoy the nice warm bath until it is cooked to death. We humans seem to be doing pretty much the same thing.

We've no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don't forget it.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

It is not good to settle into a set of opinions. It is a mistake to put forth effort and obtain some understanding and then stop at that…. Do not rely on following the degree of understanding that you have discovered, but simply think, "This is not enough.

The only saving grace of the present is that it's too damned stupid to question the past very closely.

Too many people are too lazy to think. Instead of learning something new, they think the same thought day in day out.

Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things. Noam Chomsky

It is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!

If you attack Stupidity you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life.

When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.

Once you have people around you who don't question you, you're in a dangerous place.

Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods; the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas.

The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.

I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun.

To ask the hard question is simple.

Teach the student to see the land, understand what he sees, and enjoy what he understands.

A high standard of living is usually accompanied by a low standard of thinking.

Crafty men condemn studies; Simple men admire them; And wise men use them: For they teach not their own use: but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.

BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.

The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.

When you give success to stupid people, it makes them more stupid sometimes and not more intelligent.

I stop paying attention because as much as I love beauty, I hate stupidity, and seeing the two combined pisses me off.