“Can no one imagine an incompetent Legend?”
Armor
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John Steakley2
American writer 1951–2010Related quotes
Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer
Re: New Lisp ? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.functional/msg/b69c767370ee7c43 (Usenet article). <br class="br">Usenet articles, Miscellaneous
“Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence”
Laurence J. Peter (1919–1990) Canadian eductor
Source: The Peter Principle (1969), p. 107 (The Mathematics of Incompetence)
“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”
Alan Turing (1912–1954) British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist
Variant: Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.
“There's only one legend. That's me.”
Roberto Durán (1951) Panamanian boxer
http://www.cmgworldwide.com/sports/duran/quotes.html
“One of the chief features of incompetence was an inability to see it in oneself.”
Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream
Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 13, p. 295
“Kissing Mother Superior, incompetent, hairball, poppy seeds, on the can.”
Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad
Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad
“Never attribute to incompetence that which can be adequately explained by jet lag.”
Charles Stross The Laundry Files
Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 7, “Communion” (p. 134)
C. J. Cherryh (1942) United States science fiction and fantasy author
The Camelot Project interview (1996)
Context: When the legend is retold, it mirrors the reality of the time, and one can learn from studying how various authors have attempted to retell the story. I don't think we have an obligation to change it radically. I think that if we ever move too far from the basic story, we would lose something very precious. I don't, for instance, approve of fantasy that attempts to go back and rewrite the Middle Ages until it conforms to political correctness in the twentieth century. That removes all the benefit from reading the story. If you don't understand other people in their time and why they did what they did, then you don't understand your own past. And when you lose your past, you lose some potential for your own future.