Quotes about idiot
page 4

“Idiots are not responsible for what they do. The real guilt falls on rational people who sit on their hands while the morons run wild. You can opt out if you want to. Play it safe. But if you do, don’t complain when the roof comes down.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 6 (p. 48)

People

“I could start this review by stating that Dumb and Dumberer lives up to its name, or by calling it stupid, moronic, and idiotic, but I believe that approach is a trap, since a movie like this might relish being the object of such bland invectives. Instead, let me try a few that can't possibly be misconstrued as twisted praise: unfunny, boring, torturous, and unwatchable. … [N]o movie could be more aptly compared to raw sewage than this film - Directed By Troy Miller.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1484 of Dumb and Dumberer (2003). Zero star reviews

Stupidity

“FRANCIS PICABIA
is an imbecile, an idiot, a pickpocket!!!
1921
BUT
He saved Arp from constipation!
The first mechanical work was created
by madam Tzara the Day she put
little Tristan into the world, however she
didn't know it
funny girl
Francis Picabia
is an imbecilic Spanish professor
who has never been dada
FRANCIS PICABIA IS NOTHING
FRANCIS PICABIS likes the morality of idiots
Arp's binocle is Tristan’s testicle
FRANCIS PICABIS IS NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!
But Arp was Dada before Dada.”

Francis Picabia (1879–1953) French painter and writer

Quote of Picabia in his 'Manifesto, 1921'; as cited in Manifesto: A Century of Isms, ed. Mary Ann Caws, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001, p 319
1920's

World, Girl

“We could walk into a Chinese restaurant right here in Chicago. And the waiter could have been born here, raised here, went to college here, he has never left the city limits. I'm the idiot that walks in that restaurant and goes [in exaggerated Chinese] "Uh, yes. I'll have fried rice. Egg roll…" And you can see him go "I am so going to spit in your food, I swear to God." And it drives my daughter crazy. 'Cause she goes "why do you do that? That is so insulting to them!"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Aged and Confused (2009)

God, Food, Daughters

““It’s no use!” it was the custom of his grandfather to say. “There’s not a bit o’ use in having brains! All they do is get you into trouble! A lucky idiot’s ten times better off than a brainy man with a jinx on him! A smart man starts thinkin’, and he thinks himself into a jail cell if his luck is bad, and good luck’s wasted on him because it ain’t reasonable and he don’t believe in it when it happens! It’s taken me a lifetime to keep my brains from ruinin’ me! No, sir! I hope none o’ my descendants inherit my brains! I pity ‘em if they do!”
Hoddan had been on Darth not more than four hours. In that time he’d found himself robbed, had resented it, had been the object of two spirited attempts at assassination, had ridden an excruciating number of miles on an unfamiliar animal, and now found himself in a stone dungeon and deprived of food lest feeding him obligate his host not to cut his throat. And he’d gotten into this by himself! He’d chosen it! He’d practically asked for it!
He began strongly to share his grandfather’s disillusioned view of brains.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 4

Food, Hope, Thinking, Time

““The rest of the materials inside your submarine must have floated—must have flown around! What did you think?”
“Some people,” Lebret confessed, “suggested poltergeists.”
“Poltergeists!” Dakkar’s huge face registered astonishment. “Are you all idiots?”
“It was a chaotic time,” said Lebret, weakly.
“Poltergeists!” repeated Dakkar, disbelievingly. “I was certain it would be scientists who responded to my message! Instead they have sent down a clutch of gullible mystics and table-rappers!” He sounded genuinely disgusted.”

Adam Roberts book Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

Source: Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (2014), Chapter 24, “Dakkar” (p. 228)

People, Thinking, Time

“I carried out my purpose: War and Peace, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina, and so forth. Would you believe it? Something is gained in translation; the originals are even more depressing and soporific than translations. I’m not sure what purpose Russian fiction has, but it can’t be entertainment.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XIX : Something is gained in translation—, p. 166

War, Peace

“We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.”

Carl Bernstein (1944) American journalist

An A-Z of cultural terms, The Guardian (1992)

Stupidity, Time

“We thank God that our enemies are idiots.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

6 February 2006
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/06/wiran06.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_06022006
2006

God

“He had an ability to surprise, as does every major idiot, and, of course, to irritate, all in the space of a single second.”

Javier Marías book Tu rostro mañana

Tenía capacidad para sorprender, como todos los imbéciles mayúsculos, y por supuesto para irritar de nuevo en un solo segundo.
Source: Tu rostro mañana, 2. Baile y sueño [Your Face Tomorrow, Vol. 2: Dance and Dream] (2004), p. 213

“In 1945, therefore, I proved a sentimental fool; and Mr. Truman could safely have classified me among the whimpering idiots he did not wish admitted to the presidential office. For I felt that no man has the right to decree so much suffering, and that science, in providing and sharpening the knife and in upholding the ram, had incurred a guilt of which it will never get rid. It was at that time that the nexus between science and murder became clear to me. For several years after the somber event, between 1947 and 1952, I tried desperately to find a position in what then appeared to me as a bucolic Switzerland,—but I had no success.”

Erwin Chargaff (1905–2002) Ukrinian-born biochemist who emigrated to the United States

Erwin Chargaff, Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life before Nature (1978), 4.

Fools, Suffering, Appearance, Science

“I like to take chances, and that's the key to comedy -- dancing like an idiot but doing it with wild abandon.”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

Attributed

Chance, Dance

“Most of the time I'm a professional idiot. I really don't care about what other people think, which can be a bad thing.”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

The Hit magazine 1985

People, Thinking, Time

“I am not, as I consider, to decide cases in favour of fools or idiots, but in favour of ordinary English people, who understand English when they see it, and are not deceived by any difference in type, but who have before them a very plain statement.”

George Jessel (jurist) (1824–1883) British politician

Singer Manufacturing Co. v. Wilson (1876) L.R. 2 C.D. 447.

People, Fools, Understanding

“You try to claim that the GPLv3 causes "More developers", and that, my idiotic penpal, is just crazy talk that you made up.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

LKML
June 18, 2007
http://groups.google.com/group/linux.kernel/msg/43013fe224f562e0.
2000s, 2007

“I say on the air all time, "if you take what I say as gospel, you're an idiot."”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Stelter
Brian
Carter
Bill
Fox News’s Mad, Apocalyptic, Tearful Rising Star
New York Times
2009-03-29
0362-4331
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/business/media/30beck.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
2000s, 2009

Time

“All this sitting about in cafés to calm down
Simply wears me out. And their idea of literature!
The idiotic cut of the stanzas; the novels, full up, gross.

I have lived it, and I know too much.
My café nerves are breaking me
With black, exhausting information.”

Rosemary Tonks (1928–2014) British poet

The Sofas, Fogs and Cinemas

Literature, Idea

“It's not that Perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: can lisp do what perl does easily? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/fc76ebab1cb2f863 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Perl

Way, Behavior

“For a lazy man I work awfully hard, I couldn't live without acting. In fact anybody who can live without that feeling is a complete idiot.”

Peter Lorre (1904–1964) Austrian actor

Movie Villain Peter Lorre http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-peter-lorre-19640324-story.html

Feeling

“Technical criticism in particular is the despair of the artist. No one but an idiot would offer a poet his comments in terms of spondees and trochees; why must the painter daily suffer the indignity? Any picture which makes one conscious first of its technical qualities, good or bad, is not a good picture, whatever else it may be.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

The Artist Speaks (1951)

Suffering, Despair

“I writhe when I see myself on the screen. I'm such a dreadfully clumsy hulking image. I say to myself, "Why doesn't he get off? Why doesn't he get off?" I mean, I look like such an idiot. Some fat awkward thing dredged up from some third-rate drama company. I must stop thinking about it, otherwise I shan't be able to go on working. ”

Peter Sellers (1925–1980) British film actor, comedian and singer

Mr. Strangelove (1999)

Thinking

“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)

“That is just total nonsense and anybody who believes that is an idiot or a liar. The race issue was a fundamental problem. It was just a cancer on American society from day one.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

Regarding claims that the American Civil War was not about slavery; "After Words with Bruce Bartlett" http://www.c-span.org/video/?204475-1/words-bruce-bartlett (7 April 2008), C-SPAN 2000s

Problem

“Welcome to Raw Is Jericho! And I am the new millennium for the World Wrestling Federation. Now for those of you who don't know me, I am Chris Jericho, your new hero, your party host, and most importantly, the most charismastic showman to ever enter your living rooms via a television screen. And for those of you who DO know me, well, all hail the Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-a!
Now when you think of the new millennium, you think of an event so gigantic that it changes the course of history. You think of a dawning of a new era. In this case, the dawning of a new era in the WWF. Thank you, thank you. And a new era is what this once proud and profitable company sorely needs. What was once a captivating, trend-setting program has now deteriorated into a cliched, let's be honest, boring snoozefest that is in dire need of a knight in shining armor, and that's why I'm here. Chris Jericho has come to save the WWF!
Now let's go over the facts. Television ratings, downward spiral; pay-per-view buy-rates, plummeting; mainstream acceptance, non-existent; and reactions of the live crowds, complete and utter silence. And I know why you're silent! You're silent because you're embarrassed to be here. And quite honestly, I'm embarrassed for you. And the reason why you're embarrassed is because of the steady stream of uninteresting, untalented, mediocre "sports entertainers" who you're forced to cheer for and care for. No wonder you're not cheering! You could care less about every single idiot in that dressing room, [indicating The Rock] and especially this idiot in the center of the ring. You people have been led to believe that mediocrity is excellence. Uh-uh. Jericho is excellence. And now for the first time in WWF history, you have a man who can entertain you. You have a man who is good enough for you. You have a man who can make you jump up off your chairs, raise your filthy fat little hands in the air and scream "Go Jericho go! Go Jericho go! Go Jericho go!"”

Chris Jericho (1970) American professional wrestler, musician, television host, podcast host and author

Thank you.
The new millennium has arrived in the WWF, and now that the Y2J problem is here, this company—from the front-office idiots to all the amateurs in the dressing room, including this one, to everybody watching tonight—will never, ee-e-e-e-(slaps face) ever be the same... again!
August 9, 1999 - WWE Raw

People, World, History, Problem

“I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

In a panel discussion after the premier of the 2008 documentary I.O.U.S.A.. Panel at the Premier, 0:05:42ff., DVD extras, I.O.U.S.A. (2008)

Business

“Yes, yes, a formula that's a straitjacket.... not for me! All the same, he tries in vain, does Jean-Dominique [Ingres], to wring your heart with his glossy finish! I said this to Vollard, to shock him, he is very powerful! Nevertheless he [ Jean-Dominique Ingres, French classicist painter] is a damned good man... The most modern of the moderns. Do you know why I take my hat off to him? Because he forced his fantastic draughtsmanship down the throats of the idiots who now claim to understand it. But here there are only two: Delacroix and Courbet. The rest are scoundrels.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 192 in: 'What he told me – II. The Louvre'

Understanding, Heart

“One cannot assert authority by accepting one's own fallibility. Simply, people need to be blinded by knowledge - we are made to follow leaders who can gather people together because the advantages of being in groups trump the disadvantages of being alone. It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 192

People, Knowledge, Personality

“It is literally crazy to be committing to an ETS (emissions trading scheme) before seeing the outcome of Copenhagen... and frankly idiotic before we see the final form of the US emissions trading scheme”

Nick Minchin (1953) Australian politician

The Australian http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/turnbull-loses-vital-ets-ally/story-e6frgczf-1225799948099

“The Americans have sought consistently to undermine and destabilise the Governments of Grenada since 1979. They have sought consistently to undermine and destabilise the Government of Jamaica. They did so until Mr. Seaga was elected Prime Minister. They have consistently sought to undermine and destabilise any Government in the region who have sought to develop the interests of the people rather than the interests of the multinational companies that are busy exploiting those people. At the centre of the debate and of the activities of the United States lies its belief that its role is to defend the people who pay the Government — the multinational companies. The British Government are doing exactly the same. In every conference chamber around the world, the British Government support American foreign policy. They do not have a foreign policy in the Caribbean or central America. All they know is to follow the United States—except that when the issue of Grenada came up they did not know what to do. So, for three days running, we have had a pathetic appearance by the Foreign Secretary, who has been wondering what to do next. He comes to the House, wringing his hands, wondering what on earth to say next. He knows that he has been made to look an absolute idiot because he was incapable of standing up to the Americans for once. The one thing that the Americans do not respect is the Uriah Heep diplomacy that the British Government operate towards them. The Pavlovian response of agreeing to everything that the United States demands and wants has got them nowhere and has made them look incredibly stupid and shortsighted.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1983/oct/26/grenada-invasion in the House of Commons (26 October 1983). 1980s

People, Stupidity, World, Business

“When you see someone trying to manoeuvre it round the school gates you have to think, you are a complete idiot.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Criticising Londoners who drive 4x4s in an interview with GMTV (broadcast 23 May 2004), as quoted in "Drivers of 4X4s in London are idiots, says Livingstone" by Ross Lydall in Evening Standard (21 May 2004)

School, Thinking

“I hate people saying anything stupid. I don't really suffer fools very well at all. When people are acting like idiots, not that I'm not guilty of doing the odd idiotic thing myself from time to time, but when people say stupid things, it stresses me out. I have a pretty thick skin about people coming up to me and saying things to me when I'm out, I don't really mind that too much. but when people are just loud and annoying, it drives me crazy.”

Joshua Jackson (1978) Canadian actor

As quoted in the article 'End of an Era?' in Live and Kicking magazine (2000)

Hate, People, Stupidity, Fools

“[The Settlement House] must be grounded in a philosophy whose foundation is on the solidarity of the human race, a philosophy which will not waver when the race happens to be represented by a drunken woman or an idiot boy.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

Source: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), Ch. 6

Boy, Housing

“It‘s [Fahrenheit 9/11] the work of a moral cretin and a political idiot. And it's up to the Democratic National Committee to say, do they want to continue being photographed with this man as we go into a very important election, not just in the United States, I might add, but first Democratic elections to be held in Iraq and in Afghanistan? In a few months, we will know the outcome of all these. In all three cases, Michael Moore says that the enemy is George Bush and Saddam Hussein and Mr. Zarqawi and Mr. Bin Laden are no problem. Indeed, they are—what a wonderful way to celebrate the Fourth of July weekend, by the way. Indeed, they are the Minutemen. They‘re the staunch American revolutionaries. Does he tell this to the widows that he goes and exploits?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Scarborough Country on MNSBC" http://web.archive.org/web/20070911061520/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5344115/, (2004-06-30): On Michael Moore 2000s, 2004

Way, Problem

“Idiots are really
one hundred per cent
when they are also
intelligent.”

Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet

The Final Touch : Portrait of nobody in particular
Grooks

Intelligence

“Mormonism, it seems to me, is—objectively—just a little more idiotic than Christianity is. It has to be: because it is Christianity plus some very stupid ideas.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

[Sam Harris, September 2007, http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/the-problem-with-atheism, "The Problem with Atheism", On Faith, 2014-05-21]
2000s

Stupidity, Idea

“I'd rather talk to people who do things than complain about other people who do things. I say they're idiots.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

1990s, Schafer interview (1995)

People

“Idiots. They were losing everything because of their short-sightedness. Maybe they deserved to lose it.”

Karl Schroeder (1962) Author. Technology consultant

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 8 (p. 89).

“Vermouth always makes me brilliant unless it makes me idiotic, but we'll hope for the best.”

E. F. Benson book Queen Lucia

Source: Queen Lucia (1920), p. 222.

Hope

“And lately fashion photographers, bored with Rome or the Acropolis, have ventured farther afield for the frisson of syncretism. Why not Calcutta? Why not the slums of Rio? Cairo? Mexico City? The attempt is for an unearned, casual brush with awe by enlisting untouchable extras. And if the model can be seen to move with idiot stridency through tragedy, then the model is invincible. Luxury is portrayed as protective. Or protected. Austere, somehow—“spiritual.””

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Irony posing as asceticism or as worldly-wise.
Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Fashion

““I hate students,” [Zizek] said, “they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.
In a recent interview at this year’s Zizek Conference in Ohio, Zizek talked about his personal life before delving into his thoughts on teaching. “I hate giving classes,” Zizek said, citing office hours and grading papers as his two biggest peeves. “I did teach a class here [at the University of Cincinnati] and all of the grading was pure bluff,” he continues. “I even told students at the New School for example… if you don’t give me any of your shitty papers, you get an A. If you give me a paper I may read it and not like it and you can get a lower grade.” He received no papers that semester. But it’s office hours that are the main reason he does not want to teach.
“I can’t imagine a worse experience than some idiot comes there and starts to ask you questions, which is still tolerable. The problem is that here in the United States students tend to be so open that sooner or later, if you’re kind to them, they even start to ask you personal questions [about] private problems… What should I tell them?”
“I don’t care,” he continued. “Kill yourself. It’s not my problem,””

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

As quoted by Eugene Wolters, " Professor of the Year: 'If You Don't Give Me Any of Your Shitty Papers You Get an A http://www.critical-theory.com/professor-of-the-year-if-you-dont-give-me-any-of-your-shitty-papers-you-get-an-a/'", Critical-Theory.com, May 26 2014; square brackets and lack of accent marks as in orginal

Life, Hate, People, Stupidity

“Idiots can do what I do. When I first started to do this [projecting photos on the canvas and painting them after having them traced in details with a piece of charcoal] in the 60's, people laughed. I clearly showed that I painted from photographs. It seemed so juvenile. The provocation was purely formal - that I was making paintings like photographs. Nobody asked about what was in the pictures. Nobody asked who my Aunt Marianne was. That didn't seem to be the point.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Richter's aunt had been murdered by the Nazis in the name of euthanasia, a crime for which his father-in-law from his first marriage, a Nazi doctor named Heinrich Eufinger, had been partially responsible. Richter painted a portrait of his aunt in 1965, based on an old photo. It was called 'Tante Marianne' / 9Aunt Marianne).
after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

People, Photo, Painting

“Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History

Way, Boy, Nature, Light

“The village idiots in her bed
Never cared that her eyes were red
Never cared that her brain was dead.
In the hours that her face was alive
It was a thing just to be by her side.”

Edie Brickell (1966) singer from the United States

"Little Miss S."
Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars (1988)

Dead

“Nationalisation…does not in itself engender greater equality, more jobs in the regions, higher investment or industrial democracy. The public knows this perfectly well, and so do the workers who have suffered from pit closures, steel redundancies and the run-down of the railways. It is idiotic to try to bamboozle them.”

Anthony Crosland (1918–1977) British politician

Speech in Rotherham (9 June 1973).

Democracy, Suffering

“In the old days, they put idiots in the village stocks. Now we put them on the Today programme.”

Godfrey Bloom (1949) UK EU parliament member

John Prescott, Evening Standard, Wednesday 7 August 2013, p. 16
About

“Boris Johnson, people always ask me the same question, they say, 'Is Boris a very very clever man pretending to be an idiot?”

Ian Hislop (1960) Satirical comedian, Editor, Television and radio presenter

And I always say, 'No.'
Parkinson, ITV, 19 November 2006.

People, Question

“Freedom and idiots make a volatile mix. And the sad truth is that the idiocy quotient in the general population is alarmingly high.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 7 (p. 59)

Truth, Sadness, Freedom

“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”

Rick Cook (1944) American writer

The Wizardry Compiled (1989)

Universe

“Only a complete moral idiot can believe for an instant that we are fighting against the wretched of the earth. We are fighting, as I said before, against the scum of the earth”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"A View from the Patriotic Left" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F01E41CB-A584-4597-B9BE-86BBD9B3F7A1, Boston Globe (2002-09-09)]: On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan 2000s, 2002

Fight

“Fame doesn't change anyone, it just finds idiots; if you are a anonymous idiot, only your family know it; but if you are famous, all people will know that you are idiot.”

Patricia Conde (1979) Spanish actress

La fama no cambia a nadie, lo único que hace es descubrir a los idiotas; si eres un idiota anónimo, sólo lo saben en tu casa y poco más, pero cuando eres famoso, lo sabrán en todo el mundo que lo eres.
blog oficial Patricia Conde

People, Family, Change

“I'm disappointed in myself because it seems like I've learned nothing from all these past controversies, and it's not that I think I can say or do whatever I want and get away with it; that's not it at all! I'm just an idiot, but that doesn't make what I said, or how I said it, okay. It was not okay. I'm really sorry if I offended, hurt, or disappointed anyone with all of this.”

PewDiePie (1989) Swedish YouTuber and video game commentator

2017, My Response (September)

Disappointment, Thinking, Learning, Past

“He flips to a drawing of a spindly boy wearing oversized glasses, hugging an ABC primer, and sniffing a daisy. This is the enemy. " The first [mistake] is to assume that he is a sort of cretinoid idiot, who can't see, think, or anything. It might be a fair, if dangerous, assumption that the enemy is at least as stupid as we are."”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

pg: 11
The Worlds of Herman Kahn: the intuitive science of thermonuclear war.

Stupidity, Boy, Thinking, Drawing

“If I sound grumpy, it is only because I have come across too many idiots of the "it can't be done" persuasion lately, the kind of managers who have an aquarium in their office because fifteen brains think better than one.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Upper limits of CL http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/b3b24fb7512f220f (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Thinking

“‘You can only be so thick-skinned. You can only pretend not to care for so long before you have to admit that you hate being made to look like an idiot. I hate seeing myself misquoted. I hate being linked romantically with girls I’ve been close to for years but never slept with. It’s just upsetting, isn’t it? My nan reads and believes these things. I say, “Hiya Nan, how are you getting on?””

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

and she’ll say, “Are you all right? What about that cat you injected with crack?”’
Mail On Sunday, September 2008

Hate, Girl, Cats, Reading

““I love reading manga!!” “I really, really love drawing them too!!” “I draw therefore I am!!” “This is proof that I exist!! I’m satisfied with just that!!!” The point is I’m a manga idiot.”

Hiromu Arakawa (1973) award winning Japanese manga artist

Interview with mobuta.com (2004)

Love, Reading, Drawing

“Never was the Church blessed with a stranger ally than this freest of free thinkers, who looked at churches very much as he would have looked at a layer of extinct oysters in a buried mud-bank. Strong's notion was that since the Church continued to exist, it probably served some necessary purpose in human economy, though he could himself no more understand the good of it than he could comprehend the use of human existence in any shape. Since men and women were here, idiotic and purposeless as they might be, they had what they chose to call a right to amuse themselves in their own way, and if this way made some happy without hurting others, Strong was ready enough to help.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Source: Esther: A Novel (1884), Ch. VIII

Women, Men, Happiness, Way

“From individual independence he proceeded to association. If it was inconsistent with the dignity of human nature to say that men were gregarious animals, like wild horses and wild geese, it surely could offend no delicacy to say they were social animals by nature, that there were mutual sympathies, and, above all, the sweet attraction of the sexes, which must soon draw them together in little groups, and by degrees in larger congregations, for mutual assistance and defence. And this must have happened before any formal covenant, by express words or signs, was concluded. When general counsels and deliberations commenced, the objects could be no other than the mutual defence and security of every individual for his life, his liberty, and his property. To suppose them to have surrendered these in any other way than by equal rules and general consent was to suppose them idiots or madmen, whose acts were never binding. To suppose them surprised by fraud, or compelled by force, into any other compact, such fraud and such force could confer no obligation. Every man had a right to trample it under foot whenever he pleased. In short, he asserted these rights to be derived only from nature and the author of nature; that they were inherent, inalienable, and indefeasible by any laws, pacts, contracts, covenants, or stipulations, which man could devise.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1810s, Letter to William Tudor (1818)

Life, Men, Law, Sex

“Now we live in an amazing, amazing world and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Conan http://www.thatvideosite.com/v/94 (2006)

World

“Technology is dangerous.”
“How do you mean?”
“It can provide horrendous weapons to idiots.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 26 (p. 242)

“One would have to be as unenlightened as an angel or an idiot to imagine that the human escapade could turn out well.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Angels, Imagination

“In all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter Thirteen (p. 434).

Age

“Only the idiot is equipped to breathe.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

“Kylie Minogue is just a demonic little idiot as far as I'm concerned. She gets cool dance producers to work with her for some bizarre reason, I don't know why. She doesn't even have a good name. It's a stupid name, Kylie, I just don't get it”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Noel Gallagher cited in " Kylie 'demonic', says Oasis star http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2070390.stm", at news.bbc.co.uk, 27 June, 2002 Controversy with other artists

Stupidity, Dance

“Every creature, every work of God, is admirably well made; but if any one appears imperfect in our eyes, it does not belong to us to criticise it. Perhaps that which we do not find right in its kind, turns to our advantage, without our being able to perceive it. Let us look at the state of the heavens, one while the sun shines, another time it does not appear; now the weather is fine; again it is unpleasant; one day is hot, another is cold; another time it is rainy, snowy or cloudy; every thing is variable and inconstant. Let us look at the surface of the earth: here the ground is flat; there it is hilly and mountainous; in other places it is sandy; in others it is barren; and elsewhere it is productive. Let us, in thought, go into an orchard or forest. What do we see? Trees high or low, large or small, upright or crooked, fruitful or unfruitful. Let us look at the birds of the air, and at the fishes of the sea, nothing resembles another thing. Let us look at the beasts. We see among the same kinds some of different forms, of different dimensions, domestic or wild, harmless or ferocious, useful or useless, pleasing or hideous. Some are bred for men's sakes; some for their own pleasures and amusements; some are of no use to us. There are faults in their organization as well as in that of men. Those who are acquainted with the veterinary art, know this well; but as for us who have not made a study of this science, we seem not to discover or remark these faults. Let us now come to ourselves. Our intellectual faculties as well as our corporeal organization have their imperfections. There are faculties both of the mind and heart, which education improve; there are others which it does not correct. I class in this number, idiotism, imbecility, dulness. But nothing can correct the infirmities of the bodily organization, such as deafness, blindness, lameness, palsy, crookedness, ugliness. The sight of a beautiful person does not make another so likewise, a blind person does not render another blind. Why then should a deaf person make others so also? Why are we Deaf and Dumb? Is it from the difference of our ears? But our ears are like yours; is it that there may be some infirmity? But they are as well organized as yours. Why then are we Deaf and Dumb? I do not know, as you do not know why there are infirmities in your bodies, nor why there are among the human kind, white, black, red and yellow men. The Deaf and Dumb are everywhere, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in Europe and America. They existed before you spoke of them and before you saw them.”

Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) French-American deaf educator

Statement of 1818, quoted in Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (2007) by Douglas C. Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey

Men, God, Pleasure, Education

“Like all boys my age, I was an idiot when it came to women.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 62, “Leaves” (p. 465)

Women, Age, Boy

“I am not bloodthirsty. I am working for my country and the coming generations. I can't waste my time on a few young idiots. I don't believe the tortures attributed to the SAVAK are as common as people say, but I can't run everything. Besides, we have ways of using psychological pressure that are much more effective than torture… My people have every kind of freedom, except the freedom to betray.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Gérard de Villiers (1975), The Imperial Shah: An Informal Biography, page 259
Attributed

People, Way, Freedom, Time

“He genuinely looked terrified. The poor man, he's actually seen the books. In England we have this one-eyed Scottish idiot.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

BBC News February 9, 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7873624.stm

Books

“In the very first year of his reign, he [Jahangir] tortured Guru Arjun Dev to death. His contempt for Hindus comes out clearly in his Tuzuk-i-Jahãngîrî: “A Hindu named Arjun lived in Govindwal on the bank of river Beas in the garb of a saint and in ostentation. From all sides cowboys and idiots became his fast followers. The business had flourished for three or four generations. For a long time it had been in my mind to put a stop to this dukãn-e-bãtil (mart of falsehood) or to bring him into the fold of Islam.” According to other accounts, he asked the Guru to include some sûrahs of the Quran in the Ãdi Grantha, which the Guru refused to do. In the eighth year of his reign, he destroyed the temple of Bhagwat at Ajmer. He persecuted the Jains in Gujarat, and ordered that Jain monks should not be seen in his kingdom on pain of death. Finally, he sent Murtaza Khan to Kangra for reducing that city of temples. The siege lasted for 20 months at the end of which he himself went to Kangra for slaughtering cows in that sacred place of Hindus, and building a mosque where none had existed before.”

Guru Arjan (1563–1606) The fifth Guru of Sikhism

Goel, S. R. (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India.

Death, Pain, Business, Time

“So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should ashamed—after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels—to call our "lives,") let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and "art" or "the arts." Let us not forget that every authentic "work of art" is in and of itself alive and that, however "the arts" may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as "beauty." This being so, our three ring circus is art—for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of "beauty" is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is "childish," is idiotic.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

"The Adult, the Artist and the Circus." Vanity Fair (October 1925)

Beauty, Fools, Art, Question

“It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes. When I was eight or nine I had an experience which came clearly to mind when I read your advice. I used to know a family in a little village near mine: father, mother and sons: they were small landowners and had an inn. Very energetic people, especially the woman. I knew (I had heard) that besides the sons we knew, this woman had another son nobody had seen, who was spoken of in whispers, as if he were a great disgrace for the mother, an idiot, a monster or worse. I remember that my mother referred to this woman often as a martyr, who made great sacrifices for this son, and put up with great sorrows. One Sunday morning about ten, I was sent to this woman’s: I had to deliver some crocheting and get the money. I found her shutting the door, dressed up to go out to mass, she had a hamper under her arm. On seeing me she hesitated then decided. She told me to accompany her to a certain place, and that she would take delivery and give me the money on our return. She took me out of the village, into an orchard filled with rubbish and plaster; in one corner there was a sort of pig sty, about four feet high, and windowless, with only a strong door. She opened the door and I could hear an animal-like howling. Inside was her son, a robust boy of 18, who couldn’t stand up and hence scraped along on his seat to the door, as far as he was permitted to move by a chain linked to his waist and attached to the ring in the wall. He was covered with filth, and his eyes shone red, like those of a nocturnal animal. His mother dumped the contents of her basket – a mixed mess of household leftovers – into a stone trough. She filled another trough with water, and we left. I said nothing to my mother about what I had seen, so great an impression it had made on me, and so convinced was I that nobody would believe me. Nor when I later heard of the misery which had befallen that poor mother, did I interrupt to talk of the misery of the poor human wreck who had such a mother.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Gramsci, 1965, p. 737 cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 35.

Life, Money, People, Family

“Anwar is as bent as a three-euro note: just bright enough to think he’s smarter than everyone around him, just stupid enough not to realize that they’ve got his number. He’s a walking poster-boy for the Dunning-Kruger Effect: If he says he’s going straight, it probably means one of his idiot friends told him shoplifting is legal.”

Charles Stross book Rule 34

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 20, “Liz: Bereavement Counselling” (p. 215)

Stupidity, Boy, Thinking

“My cousin fancies you are an idiot. There you experience the consequence of scorning "book larning," as you would say. Have you noticed, Catherine, his frightful Yorkshire pronunciation?”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Linton Heathcliff to Hareton Earnshaw (Ch. XXI).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Books

“20 years ago it would not have been possible for the world's economy to be run using a “mark.” Computer chip implants are now common and it is totally possible to eliminate cash, credit cards, checks, debit cards and go to all electronic transactions. Anyone who doesn't “go along to get along” will not be welcome on the planet. Have you seen the commercials where everyone is dancing smoothly through the checkout line buying their food until one idiot wants to pay with CASH? It “messes up the smooth flow” of things for everyone. Those commercials are psychological preparations for people to accept the mark. Watch for many more to be on TV!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 145

People, World, Food, Dance

“There were daily quarrels all summer. The point upon which we had our final disagreement was the decision of an offensive on the Caucasus and Stalingrad - a mistake, and Hitler didn't want to see it. I told him the Russians would put in another million men in 1942 and get another million in 1943. Hitler told me that I was an idiot - that the Russians were practically dead already. When I told Hitler about Russian armament potentials, especially for tank materials, Hitler flew into a rage of fury and threatened me with his fists.”

Franz Halder (1884–1972) German general

To Leon Goldensohn, April 12, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.
Sourced Encyclopedia of the Third Reich Louis L. Snyder

Men, Decision, Rage, Summer

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

Jack Kerouac book Vanity of Duluoz

Vanity of Duluoz (1968)

“I love being around people that are smarter than me, that think faster than me. So even if you're a dork, and you wear stupid clothes, and you make a fool of yourself, and everyone makes fun of you, and you're just an idiot—I don't care about the context. I don't care. If you're genius and I recognize it, I kind of dig that.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On people she is attracted to, The Return of Courtney Love (2006)
2006–2013

Love, People, Stupidity, Fools

“"my friend and i were watching mtv the other day when nelly came on and my friend was like "omg nelly rules". hes such an idiot, he only listens to trendy music. at least i like original stuff like beyonce.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

lol @ fox for laugh out loud sundays! http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=af_fox The Best Page in the Universe, April Fools

Music

“Father, why is the sky blue?' - the child is not really interested in the sky as such; the real stake of the question is to expose father's impotence, his helplessness in the face of the hard fact, to present the whole chain of reasons leading to it. The blue of the sky thus becomes not only the father's problem, but in a way even his fault. The sky is blue, and you're just staring at it like an idiot incapable of doing anything about it!”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

203
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Way, Question, Problem

“I had sudden insight into male psychology. My theory: Guys are idiots. Keep this theory in mind. It explains the phenomena while assuming no unnecessary agents.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Titans of Chaos (2007), Chapter 10, “Love’s Proper Hue” Section 3 (p. 146)

Guy

“You recently mentioned a speech of [Chancellor] Hertling to the students. Quite nice, but the one in the Herrenhaus [House of Lords] is very, very bad. This is the worst we have ever heard. So the dynasty is in danger if we do not introduce the idiotic equal franchise, against better conviction? And no Prussian gives him a reply? That is worse than the whole Bethmann and much worse than anything that happens or can happen at the front.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to Mrs Seeckt (9 September 1918), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 105-106.

Housing

“To hold vivisection to be never justified is a hard belief. But so is its opposite. I believe it is never justified because I can see nothing (except our being able to get away with it) which lets us pick on animals that would not equally let us pick on idiot humans (who would be more useful) or, for the matter of that, on a few humans of any sort whom we might sacrifice for the good of the many. If we do permit vivisection, here if anywhere we are under the most stringent minimum obligations. The very least we must make sure of is that no experiment is ever duplicated, or careless, or done for mere teaching's sake or as a substitute for thinking. Knowing how often, in every other sphere, pseudo-work proliferates in order to fill time and jobs, and how often activity substitutes for thought, and then reading the official statistics about vivisection, do you truly believe we do make sure?”

Brigid Brophy (1929–1995) novelist, essayist

Source: The Rights of Animals (1965), pp. 19-20

Thinking, Time, Reading, Animals

“To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit — General Knowledges are those Knowledges that Idiots possess.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, pp. xvii–xcviii (c. 1798–1809)
1790s

Knowledge

“"You're in the jungle, now. There are no rules." "Of course there are. Don't be an idiot."”

Matthew Stover book Shatterpoint

Nick Rostu and Mace windu on Jungle Rules, p. 206
Shatterpoint (2004)

“I am a Hindu, and I have eaten beef, and will again eat it. There is nothing wrong in beef eating. 90% of the world eats beef. Are they all sinners? And I refuse to believe that cow is sacred or our mother. How can an animal be a mother of a human being? That is why I say 90% Indians are idiots, Mr. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi included.”

Markandey Katju (1946) Indian judge

On beef ban in Maharastra, as quoted in "I am a Hindu, I have eaten beef, and will again eat it: Markandey Katju" http://www.abplive.in/india/2015/05/22/article594966.ece/I-am-a-Hindu-I-have-eaten-beef-and-will-again-eat-it-Markandey-Katju, ABPLive (22 May 2015)

World, Animals

“Faults of great people are idiots' consolation.”

Waldemar Łysiak book Statek

Statek (1994)

People

“Teenagers can be idiotic and stupid, but teenagers also model their behavior from the signals they get from adults.”

John Scalzi The Last Colony

Source: The Last Colony (2007), Chapter 4 (p. 72)

Stupidity, Behavior

“My theory is that we are all idiots. The people who don’t think they’re idiots — they’re the ones that are dangerous.”

Eric Sykes (1923–2012) English actor and director

Quoted in The Daily Telegraph, 4 Jul 2012 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/tv-radio-obituaries/9375396/Eric-Sykes.html

People, Thinking

“Greatest misconception about Wikipedia: We aren’t democratic. Our readers edit the entries, but we’re actually quite snobby. The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable, and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn’t be writing.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Source: The Encyclopedist’s Lair, The New York Times, November 18, 2007, 2007-11-19 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-domains-t.html?ex=1196139600&en=25f7b166ceba3519&ei=5070&emc=eta1,

People, Communication, Knowledge, Thinking

“"It [referring to calling a Minister "Idiot"] was probably not an appropriate term, but we support the war effort and believe we should be supporting our troops and our allies and be there with them doing everything necessary to win.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

Montreal Gazette, April 2003: On the Iraq war.
2003

War, Support, Effort

“Only in America, Rabbi Golden, do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, and walk up and down Collins Avenue in Florida in pedalpushers and mink stoles — and with opinions on every subject under the sun. It isn’t their fault they were given a gift like speech — look, if cows could talk, they would say things just as idiotic.”

Philip Roth book Portnoy's Complaint

Part 5: "Cunt Crazy"
Portnoy's Complaint (1969)

Age, Sun

“It is incredible that only idiots are absolutely sure of salvation. It is incredible that the more brain you have the less your chance is. There can be no danger in honest thought, and if the world ever advances beyond what it is to-day, it must be led by men who express their real opinions.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Great Infidels (1881)

Men, World, Chance

“I'd like to thank my parents for providing me with a high IQ & I'd like to thank my grams for encouraging me not to be a self absorbed idiot”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

21 May 2013 https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666/status/337038794068987907 Twitter https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666 posts

Parent

“The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist." This is simply vulgar propaganda, like the term "anti-Soviet" used by the most disgusting commissars to refer to dissidents. It is not only vulgar, but idiotic. Take the World Social Forum, called "anti-globalization" in the propaganda system -- which happens to include the media, the educated classes, etc., with rare exceptions. The WSF is a paradigm example of globalization. It is a gathering of huge numbers of people from all over the world, from just about every corner of life one can think of, apart from the extremely narrow, highly privileged elites who meet at the competing World Economic Forum, and are called "pro-globalization" by the propaganda system. An observer watching this farce from Mars would collapse in hysterical laughter at the antics of the educated classes.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Sniježana Matejčić, June 2005 http://www.galerija-rigo.hr/05/chomsky_en_2.htm. Quotes 2000s, 2005

Life, People, World, Education

“"Th' immortal mind of mortal man!" we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry;
Whose mind but means his sum of thought, an essence of atomic "I." Thought is the work of brain and nerve, in small-skulled idiot poor and mean;
In sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead when Death lets drop the scene.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Death, Sleep, Cry, Dead

“Principally I played pedants, idiots, old fathers, and drunkards. As you see, I had a narrow escape from becoming a professor.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Shakespeare over the Port (1960)

“Roger: Yeah, I don't know. It was awesome. It's a great feeling. I don't really know. It's built up so slowly that I can't even tell you when it actually went over the threshold of 500 kids or 1000 kids or 2000 kids or whatever - but we've stood it all. We've played with 80,000 kids at these festivals in Europe and we've played to eight kids, you know? It feels great. It feels great every time. As long as there's somebody out there singing or jumping around making an idiot out of themselves just as much as we are, then we think it's ok.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Feeling, Thinking, Singing, Time

“I think Joseph Beuys is the most missunderstood artist of the 20th century. He opened a door into art for any idiot and now they traipse around believing that they have to bestow their favour on this rubbish, although it has absolutely nothing to say.”

Ralf Metzenmacher (1964) German artist, designer and painter

Ralf Metzenmacher's Homepage: FAQ

Art, Thinking

“I am not talking to you, you are bloody idiot, you are part of the establishment, you work for MI6”

Mohamed Al-Fayed (1933) Egyptian businessman

His response to a journalist calling him a liar.

Parting

“There is a doctrine about the nature and place of the mind which is prevalent among theorists, to which most philosophers, psychologists and religious teachers subscribe with minor reservations. Although they admit certain theoretical difficulties in it, they tend to assume that these can be overcome without serious modifications being made to the architecture of the theory…. The official doctrine, which hails chiefly from Descartes, is something like this. With the doubtful exceptions of idiots and infants in arms every human being has both a body and a mind. Some would prefer to say that every human being is both a body and a mind. His body and his mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body his mind may continue to exist and function.”

Gilbert Ryle book The Concept of Mind

Source: The Concept of Mind (1949), Ch. I: Descartes' Myth, (1) The Official Doctrine

Death, Nature, Teachers

“I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.Please, just tell people to use KDE.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Message to usability@gnome.org mailing list, 2005-12-12, 2006-08-28, Torvalds, Linus http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-December/msg00021.html, 2000s, 2005

People, Disease, Thinking, Personality

Quotes about idiot page 4

Quotes about idiot
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