Naivety Quotes

“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.”
― Thomas Szasz

“I am naïve and I have fucked up but I tell you something else. I believe in change. I don't mind getting my hands dirty because my hands are dirty already. I don't mind giving my life to this because I'm only alive because of the compassion and love of others.”
― Russell Brand

“I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.”
― Andre Gide

“Hope is for people who can't see the Truth.”
― Jeff Lindsay, Dexter Is Dead

“No matter how kind you are, always expect a few imbeciles.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“A girl got kicked out of the swimming hole today. Inge Hachmann. They said they wouldn’t let us swim with a half-breed. Unsanitary. A half-breed, Werner. Aren’t we half-breeds too? Aren’t we half our mother, half our father?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“(On getting married at 19)
We told ourselves we had forever and we never looked back. The problem was that we never really looked ahead.”
― Crystal Woods, Write like no one is reading

“I guess I just grew up thinking that when we become adults, we get to do what we love. For work, for fun, forever. I don't know where I got that from. Seems silly now.”
― Crystal Woods, Write like no one is reading 2

“My weakness consists in not having a discriminating eye for the incidental --- for the externals, --- no eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next mean. Next man---that's it. I have met so many men." he pursued, with momentary sadness--- "met them too with a certain, certain impact, let us say; like this fellow, for instance--- and in each case all I could see was merely a human being. A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be better than total blindness, but has been of no advantage to me-- I can assure you. Men expect one to take into account their fine linen. But I never could get up any enthusiasm about these things. Oh! It's a failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of men too indolent for whist-- and a story...." [p.44]”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“His own naivety taunted him like a flicker of madness.”
― Jane Harper

“For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“In our day everyone wants to appear intelligent, one would prefer to be accused of crime than of naiveté if the accompanying risks could be avoided. But since intelligence cannot be drawn from the void, subterfuge are resorted to, one of the most prevalent being the mania for "demystification", which allows an air of intelligence to be conveyed at small cost, for all one need do is assert that the normal response to a particular phenomenon is "prejudiced" and that it is high time it was cleared of the "legends" surrounding it; if the ocean could be made out to be a pond or the Himalayas a hill, it would be done. Certain writers find it impossible to be content with taking note of the fact that a particular thing or person has a particular character or destiny, as everyone had done before them; they must always begin by remarking that "it has too often been said", and go on to declare that the reality is something quite different and has at last been discovered, and that up till now all the world has been "living a lie". This strategy is applied above all to things that are evident and universally known, it would doubtless be too naive to acknowledge in so many words that a lion is a carnivore and that he is not quite safe to meet.”
― Frithjof Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds: A New Translation with Selected Letters

“Em resumo, há nos homens, quando eles se deixam guiar pelos olhos, uma tal credulidade da qual sua majestosa sabedoria não suspeita, fazendo que os mais avisados dentre eles sejam frequentemente enganados por nós.”
― John Cleland, Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

“Most often, what I don’t know will have a vastly greater bearing on my life that what I do know.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“In this world, where the strong prey upon the weak, and the cunning manipulate the naive, it is imperative that you become the master of your own thoughts. Allow yourself to explore the darkest corners of your mind, for it is in these shadows that the seeds of power are sown. Visualize the life you desire, unfettered by moral constraints or social expectations, and embrace the ruthless pursuit of your ambitions.”
― Kevin L. Michel, Machiavellian Dreams: A Manual

“I have not seen Bly since the day I left it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed eyes it would now appear sufficiently contracted. But as my little conductress, with her hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced before me round corners and pattered down passages, I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all color out of storybooks and fairytales. Wasn’t it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm!”
― Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

“The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine”
― Mary Shelly

“It was pretty absurd travelling up through Peru to arrive in Iquitos, hoping to find an expedition! Life does not work like that. To say it was naive would be kinder than I deserve!”
― Gordon Roddick

“They had been dreams borrowed from stories, dreams she had clung to because she had yet to imagine her own dreams.”
― Stephanie Garber, A Curse for True Love

“But someone may ask, is there any real reason why these sages, whether Buddhist or Stoic, should not recapture the soul of the child? One fact prevents them, according to Wust; they have broken away from the filial relationship with the Supreme Spirit, and this alone is what enables a man to have a child-like attitude towards the ultimate secret of things. This relationship is automatically destroyed by the triumph of naturalistic philosophy, which depersonalised the supreme principle of the universe: for to this view necessity can only appear as either fate or blind chance; and a man weighed down by such a burden is in no state ever to regain his vanished delight and absolute trust. He can no longer cling to the deep metaphysical optimism, wherein the primal simplicity of the creature in the morning of life joins the simplicity of the sage - better here to call him the saint - who, after journeying through experience, returns to the original point of the circle; the happy state of childhood which is almost the lost paradise of the human mind.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“The Triumph of Goodness"
If only the reality
was like cartoons
like teenager books and stories
or like the countless movies and soap operas
produced specially for the naïve
in which goodness triumphs at the end…
Anyone who follows the reality of the world
closely and deeply,
shall find that the triumph of goodness
is nothing but
a myth
a trick
created by the evildoers themselves
to trick us into thinking that goodness, honesty, and virtues
win in the end…
The world turns upside down
when we discover that
all these good and well-selected virtues
are nothing but myths fabricated
by the vicious and the evil ones
to permanently maintain their control over the naïve
who believe that goodness triumphs
just like at the end of movies…


[Original poem published in Arabic on February 26, 2024 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako

“They say it's a disorder when life is too sweet, and no, I am not sixteen. Not anymore and maturity has rankled the taste of naïvety for me, yet I remember how it feels to be lost at thirteen. Always trying to hold myself together for the sake of others.”
― Haig Moses, An Abundance of Apricots

“My lack of questioning does not come from gullibility or naivety, rather, I piece together the reality by discerning intent.”
― Aegelis, Specks of Shadows, Flecks of Light

“The tranquility of the moment reminded me that life was full of uncertainties, but also of endless possibilities.
As much as I hated to admit my own defeat in my war of feelings and naivety, I really liked her.”
― Dari A. Malaunt, Unrequited Echoes

“Unanimity is a naive glimpse of fools.”
― Marcese Maschietto

“Don't be so naive that you follow anyone who has light in their hand, because anyone who tells you to follow them will certainly have light in their hand; no one will take darkness in their hand and expect you to follow them!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Gossip fades when it reaches the ears of the wise. Rumors are sparked by the resentful, spread by the gullible, and accepted by the naive.”
― Eduvie Donald

“Behren's work resists easy classification. It is part expedition journal, part museum installation, part allegorical theatre. At the centre of the evolving vision stands a deceptively humble object - a brightly coloured toy submarine, discovered on a North Frisian island in 1974. Since then, this modest vessel has become a recurring avatar in his practice: a symbol of human curiosity, displacement, naivety. It drifts through imagined polar landscapes, burrows into archaeological strata, and even interrupts canonical works of European art history with both humour and quiet poignancy.”
― Christina Jansen, 50 Years of Naboland

“If he must curse Weissmann, then he must also curse himself. Weissmann's cruelty was no less resourceful than Pökler's own engineering skill, the gift of Daedalus that allowed him to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the inconveniences of caring. They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“A fool knows not whom to fear.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman