Quote of the day by Franz Kafka: “It’s only because of their stupidity that they are able to be so sure of themselves.”

“It’s only because of their stupidity that they are able to be so sure of themselves.”

Explanation: The quote has been borrowed from the author’s famous work The Trial where the protagonist is arrested and prosecuted by a mysterious court.

When the protagonist expects to find intelligence and justice in the court, he is disappointed to find a bunch of people who are so full of confidence but none of their arguments make any sense.

Kafka here is implying that if a person is certain of knowing everything, then they don’t know enough because a curious mind is dazzled by the complexity of life and hardly satisfied. Only people who are so sure of a subject are the ones who are afraid to understand the whole picture and exercise control to limit its scope.

In other words, the author is trying to say that doubt is a sign of intelligence and certainty, a trait of a limited mind.

In today’s context it could mean if a person or system is unwilling to doubt themselves, they probably don’t know it all. 

About the author: Franz Kafka was a German-speaking writer (born in 1883) from Prague (Austria-Hungary). His ideas had a monumental impact on modern English literature. With his life cut short by tuberculosis, only some of his impressionable works got published.

Born into a middle class Jewish family, Kafka had a difficult relationship with his father. Hence, the feelings of guilt, inadequacy and anxiety became a central theme in most of his works.

His most celebrated novel The Trial, The Castle and others depicted protagonists trapped within insensible systems of authority or hierarchies that remain unexplainable. 

Themes of bureaucracy, law and punishment also marked many of his works.