Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

We're All Average Sometimes

This one stings because it's mathematically true—that's what a median does—but we usually think it means something harsher. The real insight isn't that people are dumb. It's that we're all swimming in the same waters of distraction, conflicting information, and cognitive limits. You can be reasonably intelligent and still make choices that look foolish from the outside, because you're tired, or you believed something plausible, or you just didn't have the mental bandwidth that day.

What makes Carlin's observation useful isn't feeling superior to the average person. It's recognizing that you probably are the average person sometimes—and that's okay. We all have gaps in knowledge, moments of lazy thinking, beliefs we've never questioned. The quote works best not as a put-down but as a reminder to stay humble about what you actually know, to be skeptical of easy answers that make you feel like the smart one in the room, and to have some patience with people (including yourself) who are working with incomplete information.