“There are two kinds of idiots - those who don't take action because they have received a threat, and those who think they are taking action because they have issued a threat.”

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Do you have more details about the quote "There are two kinds of idiots - those who don't take action because they have received a threat, and those who think th…" by Paulo Coelho?
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Paulo Coelho 844
Brazilian lyricist and novelist 1947

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“There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.”

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Variant: There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.
Context: There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not. Both classes are extremely unpleasant to meet socially, leaving practically no one in the world whom one cares very much to know.

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“I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could — with 100 per cent certainty — know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.”

Hans Blix (1928) Swedish politician

from an unnamed Swedish radio program, quoted in Mirror.co.uk, "Blix Blasts 'Illegal' US War on Iraq", August 7, 2003 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13263825_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-BLIX-BLASTS--ILLEGAL--US-WAR-ON-IRAQ-name_page.html

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“Recently, those who have criticized the actions of the U.S. government... have been called “anti-American.””

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

..The term “anti-American” is usually used by the American establishment to discredit...its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they are heard, and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.<BR>But what does the term “anti-American” mean? Does it mean you are anti-jazz? Or... opposed to freedom of speech?...That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean that you don’t admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands... who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?<BR> This sly conflation of America’s culture, music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the U.S. government’s foreign policy (about which, thanks to America’s “free press”, sadly most Americans know very little) is... extremely effective strategy.<BR>To call someone “anti-American”, indeed to be anti-American, (or for that matter, anti-Indian or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it’s a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those the establishment has set out for you... If you don’t love us, you hate us... If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.

Come September, given at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, NM, USA http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf (29 Sep 2002).
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“To those who oppose war, I ask: If not now, when? How many more corpses are necessary before this country should take action?”

Leonard Peikoff (1933) Canadian-American philosopher

Fifty Years of Appeasement Led to Black Tuesday http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/547068/posts?page=152 (12 September 2001)
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“As threats went, it was not subtle, nor was it original. But it was one of those things that had stayed around because it tended to work.”

Sarah Zettel (1966) American writer

Source: Bitter Angels (2009), Chapter 19 (p. 246)

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