Elmer Rice Quotes

I don't like intellectuals, or, at least, people who call themselves that way, because I am under the impression that there is always something condescending in their demeanour, and I don't like condescending people.

I come armed with a really good ignorance. I don't strive toward ignorance. I come by it naturally.

They are so knowing, that they know nothing.

False modesty can be worse than arrogance.

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

What hypocrites we seem to be whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words sound so humble, while our hearts are so proud.

Pedants, who have the least knowledge to be proud of, are impelled most by vanity.

Man," I cried, "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!

People are so skillful in their ignorance!

Those who pretend to know what they don't, will be thought ignorant of even what they know.

Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.

That's what the world is like: people talk as if they knew everything, but ifyou dare to ask a question, they don't know anything.

The worst kind of arrogance is arrogance from ignorance.

Mediocre people have an answer for everything and are astonished at nothing. They always want to have the air of knowing better than you what you are going to tell them; when, in their turn, they begin to speak, they repeat to you with the greatest confidence, as if dealing with their own property, the things that they have heard you say yourself at some other place. A capable and superior look is the natural accompaniment of this type of character.

He realized...that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious.

When I see hipsters wearing Mao hats or Lenin T-shirts, I'm grateful. It's like truth-in-labeling. For now I know you are: Woefully ignorant, morally stunted, purposively asinine, or all three.

But my thoughts ran a wool-gathering; and I did like the countryman, who looked for his ass while he was mounted on his back.

We spend a good part of our lives trying desperately to convince ourselves as well as everybody else that we know more than we really do.

And so we plough along, as the fly said to the ox.

Snobs talk as if they had begotten their own ancestors.

I guess ignorance is bliss -- when I do interviews people always say, "Aren't you upset that people make fun of you?" and I'm like, "Are they making fun of me?" I guess I just don't get it.

There is a pleasure in affecting affectation.

Plain intellectual thinking is the peak of ignorance because all that you will know is to play with a few aspects and make others look like fools.