how extremely stupid not to have thought of that

founder Ray Dalio told me, “If you don’t look back at yourself and think, ‘Wow, how stupid I was a year ago,’ then you must not have learned much in the last year.

You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid — and I know they are — yet I won't be wiser?

Because I was an idiot.

But what could I do? Be stupid for a while? I wasn't sure I knew how, even after so many years of careful observation.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

I sometimes think that my own weakness lies in not realizing the full depths of the weakness and stupidity of men. As a reasonable creature myself I seem to have an unfortunate tendency to expect others unlike myself to be reasonable.

How many simple pleasures I denied myself, because I thought that’s what goodness was. How stupid that it took me until the end of the world to realize it was something else entirely.

Being stupid means avoiding thinking by jumping to conclusions.

This is stupid. I now have stupid all over me.

That day, I began to be incredulous. Or, rather, I regretted having been credulous. I regretted having allowed myself to be borne away by a passion of the mind. Such is credulity.

How could you be so damn stupid? How could you do that?

The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.

it is really impossible to appreciate what is meant by the Tao without becoming, in a rather special sense, stupid.