A Quote by Spider Robinson

Never attribute to malice, that which can be reasonably explained by stupidity.

Spider Robinson

Quote Topics

Attribute Explained Malice Never Reasonably Stupidity Which

Quote Author

Spider Robinson
Canadian - Writer
Born: November 24, 1948

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Robert A. Heinlein

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Never attribute to malice or other deliberate decision what can be explained by human frailty, imperfection, or ignorance.

Harold S. Kushner

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. Think about it. People aren't out to get you, they're just stupid.

Jane Espenson

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

Unknown

For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols

Aldous Huxley

I've always lived by this philosophy, when it comes to conspiracies, never to attribute to deviousness that which can be explained by incompetence.

Dean Devlin

If there be one attribute of the Deity which astonishes me more than another, it is the attribute of patience. The Great Soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry. In the realm of nature, every thing has been wrought out in the august consciousness of infinite leisure; and I bless God for that geology which gives me a key to the patience in which the creative process was effected.

J. G. Holland

One can overlook stupidity, until it evolves into malice.

Lizabeth Scott

Stupidity without malice isn't horrible; some people can't help it.

Ricky Gervais

In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.

Jeffrey Eugenides

We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?

Iris Murdoch

It is not always easy to diagnose. The simplest form of stupidity - the mumbling, nose-picking, stolid incomprehension - can be detected by anyone. But the stupidity which disguises itself as thought, and which talks so glibly and eloquently, indeed never stops talking, in every walk of life is not so easy to identify, because it marches under a formidable name, which few dare attack. It is called Popular Opinion.

Robertson Davies

The fundamental claim of intelligent design is straightforward and easily intelligible: namely, there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence.

William A. Dembski

To most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable - else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?