“(…) who is he that is not 'he' because of an idiot's ignorance?”

— Jack Kerouac , book Vanity of Duluoz

Vanity of Duluoz (1968)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "(…) who is he that is not 'he' because of an idiot's ignorance?" by Jack Kerouac?

Jack Kerouac photo

Jack Kerouac 266

American writer 1922–1969

Related quotes

“The man who is satisfied, because he thinks he is safe, who feels that he has religion enough, because he thinks he has enough to save him from hell, is as ignorant of the power as he is a stranger to the consolation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Gardiner Spring (1785–1873) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 106.

“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.”

H.L. Mencken book Notes on Democracy

Part 2, chapter 4 http://books.google.com/books?id=Xw-DAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+demagogue+is+one+who+preaches+doctrines+he+knows+to+be+untrue+to+men+he+knows+to+be+idiots%22&pg=PA103#v=onepage
1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)
Context: The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and pretends to believe it himself.

“He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“The idiot is indeed the good man, but only because he doesn't know any better.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever (1976)

“The world's best swordsman doesn't fear the second best; he fears the worst swordsman, because he can't predict what the idiot will do.”

David Weber (1952) author

quote from Honor Harrington (Take on Mark Twain's original quote)
"Honorverse", The Honor of the Queen (1993)

“The bourgeois … is free not because he is conscious of his causality, but because he is ignorant of the social causes that determine his being.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Further Studies in a Dying Culture (1949), Chapter IV: Consciousness: A Study in Bourgeois Psychology

“Who is he?"
"An idiot, said Adrian. "Makes me look like an upstanding member of society.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“Man can act only because he can ignore.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, p. 124
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

“So do you think it's true what they say? About girls liking bastards?'
'He's not a bastard. He's an idiot.'
'Do girls like idiots then?”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

“The specialist serves as a striking concrete example of the species, making clear to us the radical nature of the novelty. For, previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his speciality; but neither is he ignorant, because he is "a scientist," and "knows" very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with an the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XII: The Barbarism Of "Specialisation"

Related topics