Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

That reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct.

Posterity! Why should people be less stupid tomorrow than they are today?

The ignorant are to be found as much among the educated as among the uneducated.

A goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.

The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective.

Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.

When our thoughts revolve we are so often deceived into supposing that their violent movement is an indication of their vigorous originality, the upheaval of prejudice and fixed ideas, when all the time it is more likely that the machine which contains them is only an elaborate cement-mixer, and when the thinking is finished, those whirling thoughts are smoothed into the unchanged conventional mould and seeing them set solid enough to dance, to build, to travel upon, we would never dream of their first deceit, of the hope once roused by their apparently violent reorganisation.

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.

Most men of education are more superstitious than they admit - nay, than they think.

People are stupid... They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they're afraid it might be true.

We like to think we're superior to the people who, centuries ago, burned 'witches' for no better reason than a neighbor's belief that his crop failure or impotence was caused by that woman's action. But reporters are still prone to the same mental errors that caused these killings: seeing patterns where there are none, finding causes where there is only coincidence, ignoring our sources' political agendas and turning scanty evidence into panic.

How prone we are to come to the consideration of every question with heads and hearts pre-occupied! How prone to shrink from any opinion, however reasonable, if it be opposed to any, however unreasonable, of our own! How disposed are we to judge, in anger, those who call upon us to think, and encourage us to enquire! To question our prejudices seems nothing less than sacrilege; to break the chains of our ignorance, nothing short of impiety!

Culture and education are the lethal weapons against all kinds of fundamentalism.

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

What we do not understand we have no right to judge

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.

A lot of people are lazy when it comes to making up their own mind about something, you know? If you're labelled one way then they think thats how you are. It takes too much time to really look into things.

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.

Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.

The enemy isn’t men, or women, it’s bloody stupid people and no-one has the right to be stupid.

If you think half of America votes badly because they are stupid or religious, you are trapped in a matrix ... Take the red pill, learn some moral psychology and step outside the moral matrix.

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