Stupidity Quotes: Admit Your Stupid Mistakes

It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful.
~ Anton LaVey

Have you ever done anything really stupid?

I’m sure the politically correct among us hate the word stupid.  They think it sounds too harsh.  It is too rude for them. 

They don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I think that if we don’t call out stupid for what it is, then we will find ourselves swimming in it.

By identifying our own stupid behavior, we can learn from our mistakes, correct ourselves and do better next time.  This is a healthy way to grow.  It is an important skill to develop for living life to the fullest.

Let’s be big enough people to call something stupid when we see it.  Yes, tact is important, but so is growth and excellence.  The alternative is a world of mediocrity where anything is acceptable.  That’s not where I want to live!

What Is Stupid?

How can you identify stupidity?  Well, the dictionary assigns a few definitions to it that I think help to clarify:

• a poor ability to understand or to profit from experience
• lacking intelligence, understanding, reason, wit or sense
• a person who is not very bright or repeatedly makes dumb mistakes

Of course, I think Forest Gump said it best:

Stupid is as stupid does.
~ Forest Gump

People’s actions are what makes them stupid.  We know stupid when we see it.  It has nothing to do with your IQ.  It has more to do with whether you take ridiculous risks and whether or not you learn from your mistakes.

Stupid doesn’t have anything to do with age, race, sex or religious background.  It is an equal opportunity employer.  Despite the jokes about blonds, teens, priests and Pollacks certain ethnic groups, stupid doesn’t follow any such boundaries. 

I Admit It, I’ve Been Stupid

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. ~ Albert Einstein

All of us have done stupid things and will likely do more stupid things in the future.  Of course, we hate to admit it.  I know I hate to admit my stupidity.  However, to get the ball rolling, here are a few of the stupid things I’ve done:

• I borrowed thousands of dollars at relatively high interest rates for a bunch of stuff that I no longer own and can’t even remember.  In the past, as soon as I’d pay off one thing, I’d go borrow even more to buy some other piece of junk that I didn’t need.  Burying myself in debt was stupid.
• I made several mistakes when I had my own business.  For example, I once got crossways with a client’s wife who ran a division of the company.  It was a stupid mistake and it didn’t take long before it cost me my biggest account.
• I once came up over a hill way too fast on an icy road that I drove down on a daily basis.  I knew the road ended at the bottom of the hill and I had to make a left-turn to avoid an accident.  I couldn’t stop resulting in several hundred dollars of damage to my car.  It was a stupid and costly mistake.

The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
~ Harlan Ellison

Another great example is the stupidity a bunch of smart people demonstrated out in the Gulf of Mexico recently.  I believe in capitalism, but unethical greed is a whole other matter.  It appears that BP and their cohorts threw caution to the wind out of greed which resulted in a catastrophic oil spill disaster.  That’s stupid in a big way!  Whatever you’ve done I doubt it compares to this level of stupidity.

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
~ Elbert Hubbard

At times, it really seems that there is no limit to stupidity.  It causes plane crashes, oil spills and business failures (think Enron).  The best way to recover from a stupid mistake is to just admit it, fix it the best you can and move on.

Face the Music and Grow From Your Mistakes

Life is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.
~ John Wayne

Are our egos so fragile that we can’t admit it when we do something stupid?  I agree with John Wayne about life being tough, but I’d modify his quote to say that it’s even tougher when you can’t own up to your stupidity.  The beginning of learning is admitting we have made a mistake.

If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?
~ Will Rogers

If only stupidity could get us out of our messes.  Wouldn’t that be great?  However, this is just not the way the world works.  Ignoring our mistakes or trying to cover them up usually just makes things worse.

Think about all the politicians who have made dumb mistakes and lied to cover them up.  I’m talking about people like Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.  They did some really stupid things and made the whole thing a lot worse for themselves by failing to admit what they had done.  For Nixon, it cost him the Presidency.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
~ Hanlon’s Razor

We are all fallible.   We make mistakes.  We aren’t bad people.  We just do dumb things sometimes.  It is in this moment when we do not admit our first, often smaller mistake, that real stupidity starts to take root.  We add to our mistake by failing to admit it and instead trying to hide it.  This never works out.

I have learned that the better thing to do is to come clean and accept the consequences while they are still manageable.  This avoids a simple mistake from snowballing into something really crazy.

Let Stupid Be Your Teacher

One must be a little foolish, if one does not want to be even more stupid.
~ Michel de Montaigne

Yes, it might make you feel a little foolish to admit your stupidity from time-to-time, but this brief embarrassment will save you a ton of grief.  The only person that is truly stupid is one that doesn’t learn from his/her mistakes.  Stupid actions are only really stupid if we fail to grow from them.  My advice is to forgive yourself, learn from the event and move on!

Photo by Buster Benson

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