"A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing."
— Common Saying
It is not enough to wear the mantle of Galileo; that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment. You must also be right.
— Miscellaneous (attributed to Robert L. Park)
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Comic Strips
"Dammit Brian! How can you be so smart and so stupid all at the same time?"
— Bob, Knights of the Dinner Table
Fan Works
Gabriel: "I see...a lot of myself in you."
Marinette: "You know, there was a time when that would have been a compliment. Now I can't think of any greater insult."
Gabriel: "Ninety-nine times out of one hundred...you are the smartest human being in the room. But that...one-hundredth time...really fucks you over."
Marinette: "And this was number one hundred, wasn't it?"
Gabriel: "This was ninety-nine. Next time... you'll lie here instead of me…"
Marinette: "You know, there was a time when that would have been a compliment. Now I can't think of any greater insult."
Gabriel: "Ninety-nine times out of one hundred...you are the smartest human being in the room. But that...one-hundredth time...really fucks you over."
Marinette: "And this was number one hundred, wasn't it?"
Gabriel: "This was ninety-nine. Next time... you'll lie here instead of me…"
Literature
The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel.
"Rashleigh," said his father, looking fixedly at him, "thou art a sly loon—thou hast ever been too cunning for me, and too cunning for most folks. Have a care thou provena too cunning for thysell—two faces under one hood is no true heraldry."
— Rob Roy
Live-Action TV
Penny: Why didn't you just have soup at home?
Sheldon Cooper: Penny, I have an IQ of 187. Don't you imagine that if there was a way for me to have soup at home, I would have thought of it?
Penny: You could have soup delivered.
Sheldon: (Beat) I did not think of that.
"Can you beat me? Clever enough to bet your life? I bet you get bored, don't ya? I know you do. Man like you — so clever. But what's the point of being clever if you can't prove it?"
— Jefferson Hope, Sherlock "A Study in Pink"
Music
So I'll start a revolution from my bed
'Cause you said the brains I had went to my head
'Cause you said the brains I had went to my head
He's wise enough to win the world
But fool enough to lose it
But fool enough to lose it
—Rush, "New World Man"
Tabletop Games
"Demons prefer to deal with those who believe themselves too wise to be fooled."
Theatre
"The man who has everything figured out is probably a fool. College examinations notwithstanding, it takes a very smart fella to say "I don't know the answer!""
— Jerome Lawrence, Inherit the Wind
Odysseus: Yet suddenly you doubt that I could figure this out?
Eurylochus: Captain, how much longer till your luck runs out? How much longer till the show goes south? How much longer till this all falls down? You rely on wit and people die on it.
Eurylochus: Captain, how much longer till your luck runs out? How much longer till the show goes south? How much longer till this all falls down? You rely on wit and people die on it.
— EPIC: The Musical, "Luck Runs Out,"
Video Games
"Just 'cause a city flies don't mean it ain't got its fair share of fools."
— Booker, Bioshock Infinite
Web Comics
"YOu MAY THINK YOu'RE SMART. BuT EXCESSIVE SMARTNESS CAN MAKE YOu BE MORE OF AN IDIOT."
— Caliborn, Homestuck
Web Original
Economists are, with the exception of cult leaders, quite possibly the only group of people in the world that can be so consistently wrong and so stubbornly steadfast in their commitment to making public predictions. The perpetual failure to be right also contributes to the arrogance of your typical economist because blue collar slobs don’t make multiple billion dollar mistakes regularly and blue collar slobs certainly don’t get promoted for those mistakes.
When the facts change, Laffer changes the facts back, so he won't have to change his mind.
— Matt O'Brien
on economist Art Laffer
on economist Art LafferThe wallet-immolating failure of Howard the Duck may come as less of a surprise to us now, in the year 2014, because (George) Lucas famously has the self-awareness of reheated spaghetti. But back in the golden 1980s, Howard the Duck's cataclysmic release was the first terrifying sign that the Bearded One might not actually have any idea what the fuck he is doing.
What makes Armond reviews perversely fascinating is that he is so obviously intelligent, yet this intelligence has been harnessed to the warped imperatives of an increasingly frustrated personality. Where your average critical hack job is just banal, White’s ability to disconnect the dots exerts a kind of bizarro brilliance.
— Paul Brunick on film critic Armond White
As I'm fond of pointing out, back when I worked as an executive search consultant for Fortune 500 companies, clients would often tell me, "Don't send me any Harvard MBAs." When I first asked why, a CEO told me bluntly, "No common sense and no ability to manage people. They let people do what they want and don't provide any oversight. That's the Harvard culture." (George W. Bush, Harvard MBA, '74.)
Among his positions you will find:
· AIDS Denialism
· Climate change denialism
· Alien abductions; Mullis writes of having once spoken to a glowing green raccoon, later speculating that the raccoon “was some sort of holographic projection and … that multidimensional physics on a macroscopic scale may be responsible.” He was also using LSD at the time, but when he weighed the hypotheses the multi-dimensional alien projection clearly won out.
· Astrology.
In short, Mullis is a prime example of a victim of the Nobel Disease, a diagnosis based on the observation that many Nobel-prize winning scientists have become notoriously prone to crankery and pseudoscience in their later years.
· AIDS Denialism
· Climate change denialism
· Alien abductions; Mullis writes of having once spoken to a glowing green raccoon, later speculating that the raccoon “was some sort of holographic projection and … that multidimensional physics on a macroscopic scale may be responsible.” He was also using LSD at the time, but when he weighed the hypotheses the multi-dimensional alien projection clearly won out.
· Astrology.
In short, Mullis is a prime example of a victim of the Nobel Disease, a diagnosis based on the observation that many Nobel-prize winning scientists have become notoriously prone to crankery and pseudoscience in their later years.
— Encyclopedia of American Loons on Kary Mullis
on Kary MullisIn part why Libertarian is a disease of techno-geeks is that you have to be fairly intelligent to find that sort of long axiomatic proof at all convincing. Of course, the task is easier when they are "proving" that you don't have to pay taxes, but it gets harder when they try to prove anti-discriminations laws are bad, as we'll see below.
— Seth Finkelstein, "Libertarianism Make You Stupid"
, "Libertarianism Make You Stupid"The number of GOOD owners in professional sports is alarmingly small. Most of them are shrewd businessmen who lose all of that shrewdness the second they take over your shitty baseball team.
— Drew Magary, "Who is the Worst Owner in Sports?"
, "Who is the Worst Owner in Sports?" Web Video
"James Watson, who famously helped define the structure of DNA, gave a long spiel in 2007 that, based upon his research, he believes that black people are mentally inferior. So yes, I would completely believe that a scientist would say something extremely stupid."
Western Animation
Negaduck: At the bridge I planted a tiny crumb of bread from our questionable room service. It should lead Darkwing Duck here right about... now. (opens the door, causing Darkwing to faceplant as he enters)
Darkwing: Aha! You thought I'd never find you!
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you wouldn't notice the enormous flag.
Darkwing: Aha! You thought I'd never find you!
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you wouldn't notice the enormous flag.
— Darkwing Duck, "Just Us Justice Ducks (Part 1)"
"That's it! The answer was so simple, I was too SMART to see it."
— Princess Bubblegum, Adventure Time
Lisa Simpson: Oh, Dr. Hawking, we had such a beautiful dream. What went wrong?
Stephen Hawking: Don't feel bad, Lisa. Sometimes, the smartest of us can be the most childish.
Lisa: Even you?
Hawking: No. Not me. Never.
That Guy: Back in the 1980s, I was the toast of Wall Street. I was having whiskey with Boesky, and cookies with Milken. But then, I was diagnosed with terminal Boneitis.
Fry: "Boneitis"? That's a funny name for a horrible disease.
That Guy: There was no cure at the time. One Drug Company was close, but I arranged a hostile takeover and sold off all the assets. Made a cool $100 mil.
Fry: "Boneitis"? That's a funny name for a horrible disease.
That Guy: There was no cure at the time. One Drug Company was close, but I arranged a hostile takeover and sold off all the assets. Made a cool $100 mil.
—"Future Stock", Futurama
Real Life
I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.
When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.
— David Hume
Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic... It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough.
— Aldous Huxley
It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed an idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.
...he is an intellectual 'crackpot' who imagined that he could correct all the economic ills of the world and who resented the fact that ordinary mortals were not sufficiently intelligent to understand his aims and motives.
—Escorting officer P. V. Holder on Ezra Pound
McNamara was apotheosized as the very model of the modern star business executive, the first non-Ford to be president of Ford Motor Company and the first MBA from Harvard to ascend so high in government. Or so he was lionized until his management genius (and its accompanying arrogance) proved to be worthless, if not counterproductive, to manage an intractable guerrilla war in Vietnam.
— Frank Rich on Robert Mcnamara, The Greatest Story Ever Sold
"Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons."
— Michael Shermer, skeptic
"Most of us think with in relatively narrow boundaries, but an occasional individual manages to get outside of the box; those are the people who make new discoveries, those are the creative people. But occasionally it is difficult to get back in to the box."
—Kari Stefanss on Bobby Fischer
"She has everything that a great critic needs except judgment. And I don't mean that facetiously. She has great passion, terrific wit, wonderful writing style, huge knowledge of film history, but too often what she chooses to extol or fails to see is very surprising."
— Woody Allen on Pauline Kael
"He had learned how to maneuver everyone to come around to his point of view...That was his attitude to me as well: 'I know what is best because look at who I am.' There are some people who, no matter how intelligent they are, they think they know my business better than I do. And they are very difficult to reach."
— Eric Konigsberg (emphasis added), "Age of Riches -- Challenges of $600-a-Session Patients"
