Came across this quote from Bertrand Russell this week from a 1933 essay about the rise of Nazism:

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

It strikes me as an inferior, snobbier version of Yeats’s great line from The Second Coming

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”

Maybe it’s because Russell appeals to intelligence as the differentiating factor while Yeats’s statement appeals to a vaguer normativity. Interesting kicker on Russell’s though:

“Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.”