14 Smart People Who Said And Did Utterly Dumb Things

Humanity has no shortage of smart people. That's one single positive note for our species. But smart people do have something of a shortage of in what areas they're smart. We love to take Albert Einstein's word as Gospel truth, but if you ever come across an Einstein quote about the most effective way to build a Pokemon deck or run a pick and roll in basketball, it's pretty safe to say you can disregard that information. Bill Gates is almost certainly terrible at Spades. Things are different, and not everyone is smart about everything all the time, is what we're saying.

Even in fields of expertise, everybody makes mistakes. It's just that, when you're an expert, you have money, influence, political power, or what have you, you're able to make some pretty gigantic screw-ups. Here are a few times smart people fell short of the high standards they'd set for themselves: