Some interesting points: > Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous. > The impression one gains i

Some interesting points: > Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous. > The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. > And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem > it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere ... infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. ... The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. > ... one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like > This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain > In the 1970s, Carlo Cipolla, a social psychologist, developed FIVE LAWS OF STUPIDITY. The term itself, he said, wasn’t a description of intellectual acuity, but of social responsibility