Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm. — Graham Greene
Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope. — Aristotle
Not knowing anything is the sweetest life. — Sophocles
I think a lot of times we don't pay enough attention to people with a positive attitude because we assume they are naive or stupid or unschooled. — Amy Adams
I am not innocent. Innocence is a science of the sublime. And I am only at the very beginning of the apprenticeship. — Helene Cixous
We are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything. — Neil Postman
Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm. — Graham Greene
There's a confidence that comes from youth and not knowing better. — Kiefer Sutherland
... pure and intelligent women can be deceived and misled by the baser sort, their very innocence and experience making them credulous and the helpless tools of the guilty and bold. — Catharine Beecher
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't. — Mignon McLaughlin
The innocent is the person who explains nothing. — Albert Camus
When people are bewildered they tend to become credulous. — Calvin Coolidge
The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool. — Stephen King
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. — Henri Matisse
Short Being Naive Quotes
I am skeptical in principle, gullible in practice. — Mason Cooley
People judge things by their own experience, not knowing of the wide world outside. — Japanese Proverbs
Ignorance is bliss. I wish I still had some. — Adam Pascal
One is easily fooled by that which one loves. — Moliere
You always get exaggerated notions of things you don't know anything about. — Albert Camus
A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly. — Elizabeth Gaskell
Our willingness to believe the news is, in many cases, not entirely innocent. — Eula Biss
You can be sincere and still be stupid. — Charles Kettering
Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain. — Euripides
The great challenge of adulthood is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence. — Bruce Springsteen
Being Naive Image Quotes
Being positive in a negative situation is not naive. It's leadership.
Naivete Quotes
I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously. — Baron de Montesquieu
Sometimes a good idea comes to you when you are not looking for it. Through an improbable combination of coincidence, naivete and lucky mistakes. — Kary Mullis
Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The cemetery is full of people who thought they could change themselves tomorrow. — Boonaa Mohammed
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. — Michelle Pfeiffer
Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity. — Eric Hoffer
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. — Hideki Yukawa
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. — Glen Cook
I feel like I've survived so much, and been through so much. And sometimes I miss the innocence of those times. Life was different. New York was different. The music business was different. I miss the simplicity of it, the naivete of everyone around me. — Madonna Ciccone
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. — Judith Jamison
Don't Be Naive Quotes
It's rather naive, apart from being ethically objectionable, to assume that our investigators travel around the country with bags of money trying to bribe witnesses to lie on the witness stand. We just don't operate that way. — Jim Garrison
I think the first experience scared the hell out of me. Within months of my initial marriage [on Angela Bowie], I realized I had done a really naive and rather stupid thing. . . . I don't think either of us had any real resolve about being together. The result was it made me wary of relationships. — David Bowie
But at a certain point, and I don't really know... people have asked me this. I don't know exactly what it was that pushed me towards directing, but I think it was a naive notion that if I directed I would be able to play all the roles. A kind of greed. — Peter Bogdanovich
These days there are a lot of people who just want to be famous. I think that comes from a naive place, because those people generally don't know what it's like. — Catherine Keener
Especially from my experience as a quant in a hedge fund - I naively went in there thinking that I would be making the market more efficient and then was like, oh my God, I'm part of this terrible system that is blowing up the world's economy, and I don't want to be a part of that. — Cathy O'Neil
Primitive, naive drawing can also be good drawing but it's hard to pull off. I don't think most submitters realize that. — Robert Mankoff
I believe that everything is political, and as such it should concern all of us. Authors who claim they don't deal with politics in their work are being naive, because even that is a political stance. — Elena Poniatowska
Artists will come into my office and say, "I just came from another label and they said you're research guys, you're data guys." I don't know what that means. Everybody who says that is being naive. — Monte Lipman
I don't think we should ever be at war. That's kind of naive, I suppose. — Sandy Duncan
The field (of filmmaking) is suddenly sexy, ... so it's deluged with these wannabes who say 'I don't want to be a secret agent, I'll be a filmmaker.' I think a lot of people are really kind of naive. — John Landis
How can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, 'Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then, let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!' — Neal A. Maxwell
It would be extremely naive to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically. — Paulo Freire
I look for the good in people. Sometimes I get hurt for it, but it's rare and it's worth it. You may hear me say optimistic things that sound naive. I'm not naive. I've read too much history to be naive. I just think love wins out over the darker parts of human nature in the end. — Lex Fridman
Let's not be naive, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God. — Pope Francis
Help each other to live and to grow in the Christian faith so as to be valiant witnesses of the Lord. Be united, but not closed. Be humble, but not fearful. Be simple, but not naive. Be thoughtful, but not complicated. Enter into dialogue with others, but be yourselves. — Pope Benedict XVI
Dare to be naive. — Richard Buckminster Fuller
I think it's taken me this long to really trust myself, but now I do, I really do. Thanks to my experience and wisdom, I've learned not to be so naive and trusting. Today I question everything and listen to my instincts. — Deborra-Lee Furness
It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption. — James Thurber
In a restaurant one is both observed and unobserved. Joy and sorrow can be displayed and observed "unwittingly," the writer scowling naively and the diners wondering, What the hell is he doing? — David Mamet
Is not life exactly what it ought to be, in a certain sense? Isn't it only the naive who find all of this baffling? If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself? — Richard Wright
Children are always looking at the world as if it was for the first time in their lives. So, we should always look to the world with the eyes of a child. I am not saying be naive, I am saying be innocent in the sense of discovering things. — Paulo Coelho
A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk's leap toward immortality. — Clifton Fadiman
It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be. — Anatole France
My first record was about childhood. There were a lot of nursery rhyme and fairytale references; it was all about being naive. — Mika
What attracted me to immunology was that the whole thing seemed to revolve around a very simple experiment: take two different antibody molecules and compare their primary sequences. The secret of antibody diversity would emerge from that. Fortunately at the time I was sufficiently ignorant of the subject not to realise how naive I was being. — Cesar Milstein
Being positive in a negative situation is not naive. It's leadership. — Ralph Marston
Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time... Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Was it a risky move? Yes, but at that moment, the reason why I came out is I thought it wasn't going to be a big deal. Maybe I was naive. Maybe I thought it was 2014, and people will understand that there's gay NFL players. There's gay athletes everywhere. But I was clearly wrong. It was a huge deal. — Michael Sam
Being naive simply means that we reject received wisdom that something is a problem. We are always naive relative to some definition of the situation, and if we try to become less so, we may accept a definition that confines the definition of small wins to narrower issues than is necessary. — Karl E. Weick
I want to hear raucous music, to see faces, to brush against bodies, to drink fiery Benedictine. Beautiful women and handsome men arouse fierce desires in me. I want to dance. I want drugs. I want to know perverse people, to be intimate with them. I never look at naive faces. I want to bite into life, and to be torn by it. — Anais Nin
To be able to write a play a man must be sensitive, imaginative, naive, gullible, passionate; he must be something of an imbecile, something of a poet, something of a liar, something of a damn fool. — Robert E. Sherwood
We confess our bad qualities to others out of fear of appearing naive or ridiculous by not being aware of them. — Gerald Brenan
Early in the morning, I fell in love with the girl that later on became my wife. At that time, we were so naive. I wanted to charm her, so I read her Capital by Marx. I thought somehow she would be convinced by the strength of his criticism about capital. — Shimon Peres
We can try to gain some of the sensibility of some of the indigenous populations of the world or our predecessors 800 years ago. We can laugh at them as being naive and unsophisticated, but unless we can gain that sensibility that there has to be rights of nature as Bolivians and others put it, then we're going to be destroyed. — Noam Chomsky
Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. — Robert McNamara
It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it, despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart. — Jonathan Carroll
Leaders must not be naive. I used to say, "Liars shouldn't lie." What a sad waste of words that is! I found out liars are supposed to lie. That's why we call them liars - they lie! What else would you expect them to do? — Jim Rohn
Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general's warning. — Alan Kay
Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be. — Gore Vidal
It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings. — Steven Pinker
Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately. — Saul Bellow
Kitsch is deceptive. It has many different levels, and some of them are high enough to be dangerous to the naive seeker of true light. — Clement Greenberg
Probably I am very naive, but I also think I prefer to remain so, at least for the time being and perhaps for the rest of my life. — Edsger Dijkstra
I tend to be naive and gullible, I guess, but I try to believe that governments believe what they say. — James Hansen
It would be as naive to study the song of the nightingale, as it would be ridiculous to try and win a King's Gambit against a representative of the old chess guard. — David Bronstein
It all sounds rather naive and sentimental to be talking about children laughing and dancing and singing together when we all know perfectly well that what children do in real life is snarl and take drugs. — Douglas Adams
The general thrust these days is: Oh, come on, it's all in the past, nobody's interested any more, it didn't work, everyone knows what the Americans are like, but stop being naive, this is the world, there's nothing to be done about it and anyway fuck it, who cares? But let me put it this way-the dead are still looking at us, waiting for us to acknowledge our part in their murder. — Harold Pinter
We have dreamt of every woman there is, and dreamt too of the miracle that would bring us the pleasure of being a woman, for women have all the qualities -- courage, passion, the capacity to love, cunning -- whereas all our imagination can do is naively pile up the illusion of courage. — Jean Baudrillard
I say at this point, for different reasons, Bush and Hussein are both very threatening to world peace and to deny that is to be incredibly naive. — Janeane Garofalo
I've always thought that we, as human beings, would be naive and arrogant to pretend that we're the only life form in the galaxy. — Jonathan Frakes
The popular, and one may say naive, idea is that peace can be secured by disarmament and that disarmament must therefore precede the attainment of absolute security and lasting peace. — Ludwig Quidde
Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director. — H. L. Mencken
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