Quotes About The Simple Minded

“The actor Richard Burton once wrote an article for the New York Times about his experience playing the role of Winston Churchill in a television drama:
"In the course of preparing myself ... I realized afresh that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. I hate them virulently. They have stalked down the corridors of endless power all through history ... What man of sanity would say on hearing of the atrocities committed by the Japanese against British and Anzac prisoners of war, 'We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men, women, and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of the earth? Such simple
minded cravings for revenge leave me with a horrified but reluctant awe for such single
minded and merciless ferocity."
”

— Richard Francis Burton

“Like simple minded goldfish, we often believe the boundaries of our bowl to be the entire ocean.”

— Laren Grey Umphlett

“Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance - not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.”

— Jane Jacobs

“To read a poem with no thought in mind but to paraphrase it into a single, simple and usually high-minded prose statement is the destruction of poetry.”

— John Ciardi

“Folks, the message of Christ is simple. It's not heady, or high-minded, or supremely intellectual at all. It is simple on purpose. It is simple enough to be understood by every person.”

— Curtis A. Chamberlain

“Something simple-minded and morally vacuous? A hamster, perhaps? Maybe Veronica?"
"Excuse me!" Veronica griped form the back table.
"Those are gerbils, Mr. Charbonnet, not hamsters. And I'd thank you to minimise the insulting commentary."
"My apologies, sir." Alec nodded. "The gerbil is a noble beast. I shouldn't have compared it to Veronica.”

— Cecily White

“If I grew up in the simple-minded belief that women were as strong and intelligent as men, it was because I came from a society that had once believed it.”

— Shirley Abbott

“A congeries of motives prevents us from blowing up our spinning mills and reviving the distaff. Gandhi had a try at this sort of revolution: he was as simple-minded as a child trying to empty the sea on to the sand with the aid of a tea-cup.”

— Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

“When "such things happened" it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always criminal of the woman. All the elderly ladies whom Archer knew regarded any woman who loved imprudently as necessarily unscrupulous and designing, and mere simple-minded man as powerless in her clutches. The only thing to do was to persuade him, as early as possible, to marry a nice girl, and then trust her to look after him.”

— Edith Wharton

“All the elderly ladies whom Archer knew regarded any woman who loved imprudently as necessarily unscrupulous and designing, and mere simple-minded man as powerless in her clutches. The”

— Edith Wharton

“Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn't mean stupid. It just meant that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the complicated bits around the edges.”

— Terry Pratchett

“It's stupid to have a simple-minded view.”

— Jeremy Paxton

“Divinity for the sake of the simple-minded is beautiful. Those theological assertions you write, say, or live by that you later feel foolish about, it means God still lives in you enough to tell you that they were indeed foolish. By mistakes you know you are alive.”

— Criss Jami

“The man grinned back at me with that perfect sincerity we fear and call simple-minded.”

— Gregory David Roberts

“As any old Taoist walking out of the woods can tell you, simple-minded does not necessarily mean stupid.”

— Benjamin Hoff

“African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view. I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative. So it's just brainwashing and people not being open-minded, pure and simple.”

— Herman Cain

“Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves!”

— Jerome K. Jerome

“I can't write. I can handle bits of simple-minded advert copy or a poster slogan, so answering questions is about all I'm good for.”

— Charles Saatchi

“The truth of the matter is, beauty is a specific thing, rare and fleeting. Some of us have it in our teens, 20s and 30s and then lose it; most of us have it not at all. And that's perfectly okay. But lying to yourself that you have it when you don't seems to me simple-minded at best and psychotic at worst.”

— Julie Burchill

“In terms of the actual curriculum for management education, my own view is very simple-minded: The world is incredibly complex, it changes all the time, and we should not even hope that we could create a general model that accurately describes the world in all its possible states.”

— Dan Ariely

“It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant.”

— Jane Austen

“Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.”

— Iain Banks

“We're simple-minded, the team at Hulu, which is, we think if we can obsess over quality and build a better mousetrap, that good things will happen. Users will adopt the service, advertisers will see great value in it, and that's what we're seeing.”

— Jason Kilar

“Oblonsy was fond of a pleasant joke, and sometimes liked to perplex a simple-minded man by observing that if you're going to be proud of your ancestry, why stop short at Prince Rurik and repudiate your oldest ancestor - the ape?”

— Leo Tolstoy

“Peterson remembered with a smile that the US Department of the Interior had made a thorough prediction of trends in 1937, and had missed atomic energy, computers, radar, antibiotics, and World War II. Yet they all kept on, with this simple-minded linear extrapolation that was, despite a bank of computers to refine the numbers, still merely a new way to be stupid in an expensive fashion.”

— Gregory Benford

“The simple minded know many things that the wise ignore”

— Vincent Van Gogh

“Radical politics tend to be simple minded.”

— Israel Horovitz

“My Master ...
Say all you wish of me.
It does not matter to me:Shallow.. Stupid.. Crazy.. Simple minded.
It does not concern me anymore.
For whoever writes about her concerns.
in the logic of Men is called
a stupid woman.
and didn't I tell you in the beginning
that I am a stupid woman?”

— Nizar Qabbani

“The Ann Arbor superintendent ridicules what he describes as "simple-minded solutions [that attempt] to make things equal." But, of course, the need is not "to make things equal." He would be correct to call this "simple-minded." Funding and resources should be equal to the needs that children face. The children of Detroit have greater needs than those of children in Ann Arbor. They should get more than children in Ann Arbor, more than kids in Bloomfield Hills or Birmingham. Calling ethics "simple-minded" is consistent with the tendency to label obvious solutions, that might cost us something, unsophisticated and to favor more diffuse solutions that will cost us nothing and, in any case, will not be implemented.”

— Jonathan Kozol

“Power as I possess is not, as many believe, given in exchange for a soul. To hear the ignorant speak, one would think it is merely a simple bargain, an exchange of vows, perhaps, and the power one seeks simply flows from the fingertips for the asking. But no, it is not so easy as that! The truly great gifts are not gifts at all, but treasures obtained after long and difficult searching, prizes won only through hard-fought victories over relentless, near-invincible adversaries. [ ... ]
The ignorant speak of hidden arts, but they are not hidden. Indeed, there is nothing secret about them at all; they are freely open and available to any who would pursue them. Ah, but the price! The price is nothing less than the devotion of an entire life. So perhaps the simple-minded are right, after all, in thinking of the acquisition of power as a pact in which the soul is bartered. There is no other way.
- Morgian”

— Stephen R. Lawhead

“Many people think that love represents chains, bondage, the opposite of freedom. But people who believe such things are simple-minded creatures who have been lied to, and who easily accept the general trend of the lie. It is in fact love that is the only thing powerful enough to set one free from even the most deeply-embedded and thoroughly-wound chains of the soul, the mind, and the body. The fact is that we are born into chains and born into bondages; these things are put upon us by fear, pain and doubt. When you are thoroughly loved by someone in mind and in heart, this has the power to set you so free, more free than you have ever been before. And that is because freedom is not the equivalent of detachment. Freedom is the equivalent of that which sets you free. And when someone loves you the way that only they can, that is what sets you free.”

— C. JoyBell C.

“I like to take advantage of the simple-minded because I can.”

— Jim Cornette

“Perhaps MacKinnon should reflect on these suggestions that the censorship issue is not so simple-minded, so transparently gender-against-gender, as she insists. She should stop calling names long enough to ask whether personal sensationalism, hyperbole, and bad arguments are really what the cause of sexual equality now needs.”

— Ronald Dworkin

“The surest way of achieving your goal is through the single-minded pursuit of simple actions.”

— Helmuth Von Moltke The Elder

“I see no greatness in my self ... I'm a simple-minded, child-like, insipid sort of moronic and kind of akward feeling adolescent.”

— Neal Cassady

“How simple-minded of the Germans to imagine that we British could be cowed by the destruction of our ancient monuments! As though any havoc of the German bombs could possibly equal the things we have done ourselves!”

— Osbert Sitwell

“We recognize that our progress as a species does not have to be defined in terms of wealth or material and physical growth any more than our progress as individuals has to be defined in terms of physical growth. Physical growth of the body reaches a limit, but the character and the soul of the individual continues to grow, or at least has a chance to continue, often to our last breath. It is simple minded to define our well being in material terms, when that well-being has an aesthetic dimension, and intellectual dimension, a moral dimension.”

— Wes Jackson

“The simple-minded always look for something - if it's not pornography, it's DVDs or the Internet or video games - but I don't think there's anything inherently evil about Facebook.”

— David Fincher

“If history teaches us anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly.”

— Ronald Reagan

“This morning arrives a letter from my ancient silver-mining comrade, Calvin H. Higbie, a man whom I have not seen nor had communication with for forty-four years ... [Footnote: Roughing It is dedicated to Higbie.] ... I shall allow myself the privilege of copying his punctuation and his spelling, for to me they are a part of the man. He is as honest as the day is long. He is utterly simple-minded and straightforward, and his spelling and his punctuation are as simple and honest as he is himself. He makes no apology for them, and no apology is needed.”

— Mark Twain

“Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think that in such a cse to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional but withal a great mercy.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“Insecure managers create complexity. Frightened, nervous managers use thick convoluted planning books and busy slides filled with everything they've known since childhood ... ... . They worry that if they're simple, people will think they're simple minded. In reality, of course, it's just the reverse. Clear, tough minded people are the most simple.”

— Jack Welch

“The trick, though, is to not lose compassion, to not allow the sense of absurdity to outweigh the awareness of real beings, with real feelings. Mean-spirited humor turns the world into cardboard, the way Midas's simple-minded greed turned food into inedible and useless stuff.”

— Jane Hirshfield

“You have to use your judgment. In cases like that, we say, 'let's be simple minded. We know this is a feature that's good for customers. Let's do it.”

— Jeff Bezos

“It is usual for a woman, even though she may ardently desire to give herself to a man, to feign reluctance, to simulate alarm or indignation. She must be brought to consent by urgent pleading, by lies, adjurations, and promises. I know that only professional prostitutes are accustomed to answer such an invitation with a perfectly frank assent
prostitutes, or simple-minded, immature girls.”

— Stefan Zweig

“We are simple-minded enough to think that if we were saying something we would use words. We are rather doing something. The meaning of what we do is determined by each one who sees and hears it.”

— John Cage

“Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded ...”

— Plato

“Our scientific world is our world of reasoning. It has its greatness and uses and attractions. We are ready to pay homage due to it. But when it claims to have discovered the real world for us and laughs at the worlds of all simple-minded men, then we must say it is like a general grown intoxicated with his power, usurping the throne of his king”

— Rabindranath Tagore

“She didn't mean to be sexy that moment, but even a winter nightgown couldn't hide that lovely outline. When will I outgrow my simple-minded fascination with the form she had happened to choose for her body? Never, I thought”

— Richard Bach