Top 92 Naivete Quotes & Sayings

I could only wonder again at the white race's naïveté in always sending forth our worst members as our emissaries.

I never pictured L.A. as a hub for amazing food, which I learned quite quickly is sheer naivete. The restaurants here are insane.

People like to use the word 'naivete' as a negative, but not for me.

If you're going to exude naivete, you can't really... walk out there like it's a Sting show. You can't be that well put together and then have this kind of innocent bravado.

I don't want to live in a world where I just kind of play on my naïveté - well if I don't know it, then it doesn't exist.

Doubt, or the absence of faith and naivete, is a vice peculiar to this age, for no one is obedient nowadays; and naivete, which means the dominance of temperament in the manner, is a gift from God, possessed by very few.

I think that I, Jack McBrayer, am somewhat of a people pleaser, and I do enjoy being good at my job. But I would never endanger my life with gullibility or naivete.

Mathematics is not yet capable of coping with the naïveté of the mathematician himself.

I am interested in marginality, in immaturity, in naïveté, in illusion, in fictions, in transitions, in the fact that at a certain moment in life there is no limit. I would like my photography to pose a question rather than make a precise statement.

I think that the worst form of naivete can be extreme cynicism. If you think that nobody comes to Washington to do any good whatsoever, that is almost as bad as being starry-eyed and thinking that they are all here to advance democracy.

At first, you can play into the naivete that people think you have because you don't dress well. They almost give you the benefit of the doubt. But when success comes, that's no longer a good angle, so now you're 'a political animal.'

I wouldn't say that I dislike the young. I'm simply not a fan of naïveté.

Knowingness is sexy. The opposite of sexy is naivete.

In recent years, we have seen the United States back away from pressuring the Castro regime, under the misguided view that placating them with an open hand would yield progress. That naivete has invited only more cruelty and oppression in return.

He seemed to be at that most dangerous of ages, where strength, skill, and confidence met naïveté and idealism; when young men skilled at the crafts of violence could be manipulated into employing those skills with brutal efficiency--and without questions.

It is hard and perhaps impossible for many people to recognize the difference between innocence and naiveté.

I'm not saying that the Americans had the same impact as the Jesuits, but I do see them as a very specialized populace, even in terms of being, to a degree, naïve. Because naiveté comes from lack of information.

Still uncertain as to our identity, we think that what matters in the work world is gaining attention and making friends. And these misconceptions and naïveté are brutally exposed in the light of the real world.

There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronizing wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.

I often say my naivete early on in my career worked in my favor.

Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do.

Reality is cruel. All of the naivete is going to be removed. Reality is always changing, and it is always unpredictable. All of the balance is going to be destroyed.

In some ways, my naivete saved me.

My signature scent is naivete.

Politics is opposed to morality, as philosophy to naïveté.

I felt the naivete of a child in my dancing. I cherished that feeling. I had what I call a knowledgeable naivete, and it worked for me.

I'm often characterized as an optimistic writer, and certainly my 'Neanderthal Parallax' and 'WWW' trilogies shade toward the utopian. I like to think that's not simple naivete, but rather a reasonable approach.

The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.

Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

The style of writing required in the great world is distinguished by a free and daring grace, a careless security, a fine and sharp polish, a delicate and perfect taste; while that fitted for the people is characterized by a vigorous natural fulness, a profound depth of feeling, and an engaging naivete.

Sometimes a good idea comes to you when you are not looking for it. Through an improbable combination of coincidence, naivete and lucky mistakes.

Highfalutin moral principles are impossible guides to foreign policy. At worst, they reflect hypocrisy; at best, extreme naivete.

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.

It takes certain kind of naiveté, or perhaps just stupidity, to know things will end and still hope otherwise.

Teens have a sensational narcissism and genuinely believe that their experiences are unique and can't be explained to adults. But we forgive them for their mistakes and naivete.

Truly original thinkers tend not to be entrepreneurs who've spent 10 years at Cisco and can be trusted to know what they're doing. They tend to be 26 years old and highflying. They often have a very childlike mind, with some naivete.

I never thought in terms of typing myself, because I wasn't that successful. After an actor has done a few pieces of work, his naïveté is the part of the craft he has to nurture most.

I had a naiveté that I would remember the things that I had written already, but I was getting lost in the forest of my own ideas and having to find my way out.

The childlike, gum-chewing naivete, the glamour rooted in despair, the self-admiring carelessness, the perfected otherness, the wispiness, the shadowy, voyeuristic, vaguely sinister aura, the pale, soft-spoken magical presence, the skin and bones . . .

Naivete is the real reason I applied to Juilliard. I wanted to study drama and not musical theater because I have a hard time dancing. I only applied there.

I don't know if it's naivete or just narcissism, but I start out with this notion that I can do anything. It's not until I get into it that I realize what I've thrown myself into, and then I will do anything not to humiliate myself. And that, I think, is the secret to my success.

I've developed a bit of a fascination with John Denver. I always thought he was kind of tacky and somewhat revolting and had a kind of simplistic weirdness, but on second listen, he actually did have an incredible voice, and the blatant naiveté of his work is straight-edge, in a way.

I'm incredibly hopeful - in many ways, still very naive. I think a lot of that has helped me. My sort of naivete has sort of gotten me in trouble at times, but I haven't stopped myself from doing things.

I prefer to have all of this apparatus - historical, literary, critical - and then, beyond initial innocence and naiveté, to try to achieve a new innocence, a new naiveté.

An empirical philosophy is in any case a kind of intellectual disrobing. We cannot permanently divest ourselves of the intellectual habits we take on and wear when we assimilate the culture of our own time and place. But intelligent furthering of culture demands that we take some of them off, that we inspect them critically to see what they are made of and what wearing them does to us. We cannot achieve recovery of primitive naïveté. But there is attainable a cultivated naïveté of eye, ear and thought.

Naïveté, thy name is me.

It is a testament to our naïveté about culture that we think that we can change it by simply declaring new values. Such declarations usually produce only cynicism.

Puberty is such a confusing time. You are still a child, with all that wonderful naivete and innocence, but your body is changing, and you're self-conscious and curious about its impact on others all at the same time.

It's very important to distinguish between innocence and naivete. The innocent do not deserve to be the victims of violence. But only the naive refuse to think about the origins of violence and to pursue the possibility that the genesis of that hatred could be addressed.

I gravitated to acting out of a mixture of instinct, naivete and opportunity.

originality" is everyone's aim, and novel techniques are as much prized as new scientific discoveries. [T.S.] Eliot states it with surprising naïveté: "It is exactly as wasteful for a poet to do what has been done already as for a biologist to rediscover Mendel's discoveries.

I think there's a lot of naivete and hubris within our mix of personalities. That's probably our worst crime. I keep wondering what a 'mature' record means.

I don't feel any sense of competition at all, and that might be my naïveté, but I don't feel pitted against anyone at all.

I really believe in completely being naive and having high hopes when meeting someone new. I can kind of re-do my stupidity or my naivete.

I didn't come from a wealthy family. I had no money. Maybe it goes back to naivete which is your greatest asset when you're young. If I was starting in comedy today and if it didn't work the first time, I'd probably quit. But I kept at it, kept at it.

I'm guilty of extraordinary naivete, I suppose. But it's a naivete that I really don't want to abandon, not even now.

The cloak of naiveté was the uniform of our success: we didn't know it couldn't be done.

Anyone who recognizes this regime [Israel] because of the pressure of the World oppressor, or because of naiveté or selfishness, will be eternally disgraced and will burn in the fury of the Islamic nations.

I walked onstage in a play at prep school, and with childish naivete, told myself, 'Wow, I'm an actor!'

The reason why the war ended in Bosnia was not because of amnesty but because a combined Croat-Bosnian offensive defeated the Serbs on the battlefield. Sometimes naïveté belongs not to the human rights activists but to the politicians.