Sometimes people try to sound smart by quoting old adages. (If you want to be really smart, you should write your own old adages!) Some old adages are wise and sensible most of the time, while other adages are sensible only under some circumstances but not others. “Look before you leap” is sensible some of the time, while “Haste makes waste” is more sensible at other times. (Adages should be used to supplement thinking; not as a substitute for thinking!)
Finally, there are a handful of well-known adages that are always wrong! These stupid adages have somehow withstood the proverbial “test of time” alongside the wiser adages. I have picked out the six stupidest adages I know of, and I will proceed to show just how stupid each of them is by accompanying them with images to make the idiocy of those adages crystal clear. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I have prepared a 1000-word rebuttal to each of these nuggets of non-wisdom!
I will start with “Different strokes for different folks”…
Next is “Do what you love; the money will follow”…
No list of stupid adages would be complete without “Spare the rod and spoil the child”…
Next up is a 2-in-1: “Two wrongs don’t make a right” and “It takes two to tango”. Both adages have the same basic meaning, and they are both idiotic and wrong, as illustrated below.
Both of those sayings basically mean that in any conflict, both parties are to blame. So, going by either of those bone-headed adages, a woman who uses pepper spray against a rapist is just as much of a criminal as the rapist; and the people of Ukraine are just as bad as Vladimir Putin for fighting back against his unprovoked invasion.
Last but not least: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”...