Crackpot Quotes & Sayings

Listening to liberals invoke the sanctity of "science" to promote their crackpot ideas creates the same uneasy feeling as listening to Bill Clinton cite Scripture. — Ann Coulter

Education is a vast sea of lies, waste, corruption, crackpot theorizing, and careerist log-rolling. — John Derbyshire

Whatever their limitations, Freud and Marx developed complex and subtle theories of human nature grounded in their observation of individual and social behavior. The crackpot rationalism of free-market economics merely relies on an abstract model of how people "must" behave. — Ellen Willis

Jesus was a crackpot. — Rajneesh

Crackpot is an excellent job because the expectations are so low. No one ever tells crackpots that they should be doing more. — Scott Adams

The point is that we are among those who cannot get their mouths around all the little Yeses that add up to tacit acceptance of a world run by crackpot realists and subject to blind drift. And that, you see, is something to which we do belong; we belong to those who are still capable of personally rejecting. Our minds are not yet captive. — C. Wright Mills

For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end ... such men as these are crackpot realists: in the name of realism they have constructed a paranoid reality all their own. — C. Wright Mills

When you're one step ahead of the crowd you're a genius. When you're two steps ahead, you're a crackpot. — Shlomo Riskin

We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire - a crackpot machine - that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate. We are, most of us, dependent employees. ... Edward Abbey (1927-1989) — Edward Abbey

I'd seen Sage bleed. I'd made Sage bleed. Not that it hurt him any; he healed so quickly ... In smaller doses it has incredible healing powers. Ben's voice rang out in my head. I remembered he said that earlier, about ... the Elixir of Life.The crackpot, completely bogus, absolutely insane Elixir of Life.Did it actually exist? Had Sage had some? Enough to keep him alive, young, and speed-healing for the last five hundred years?And if so, had he used that time to find one woman, again and again in different incarnations, to love her ... or destroy her? — Hilary Duff

A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us. A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others.
Consequently, the person who is most likely to get new ideas is a person of good background in the field of interest and one who is unconventional in his habits. (To be a crackpot is not, however, enough in itself.) — Isaac Asimov

I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!" yelled Uncle Vernon. Hagrid seized his pink umbrella and whirled it over his head "NEVER -" he thundered "- INSULT -ALBUS -DUMBLEDORE - IN - FRONT - OF - ME! — J.K. Rowling

Lo, each subculture has its own language, and verily I am not a parody. You don't believe me? Get with the program, crackpot! — Barry Webster

We inherited these principles and these freedoms and we here highly resolve that we shall pass them on, as we will pass on an undivided Republic purged of racism and slavery, to our descendants. The popgun discharges of a few pathetic sectarians and crackpot revisionists are negligible, and will be drowned by the mounting chorus that demands: 'Mr Jefferson! BUILD UP THAT WALL'. — Christopher Hitchens

If the guy out in the woods with the Michigan Militia is a real estate negotiator, instead of some crackpot, and has a normal life, that's unnerving. You don't want to think it's as normal as the guy next door, hedging his lawn. It's easier to demonize or separate them off from 'us.' — Michael Moore

Fletcher in the flesh did not, by most accounts, appear to be the crackpot that that sentence suggests. — Anonymous

A crackpot theory. Instead of saying labor's exploited, as Marx did, Kelso says capital's exploited. It's worse than Marx. It's Marx stood on its head. — Milton Friedman

When I first started out, I was considered a crackpot. The doctors used to say, Don't go to that Jack LaLanne, you'll get hemorrhoids, you won't get an erection, you women will look like men, you athletes will get muscle-bound
this is what I had to go through. — Jack LaLanne

The Law and her sidekick, Tex, the Crackpot Coffee Guy were on the job. — Kristen Ashley

And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. Ahh . . . an educated man. Well, you're not as stupid as you look. Don't quote Nietzsche at me, kid. That German crackpot wouldn't know a real monster if it bit him on the ass. — Larry Correia

Everybody has the right to express what he thinks. That, of course, lets the crackpots in. But if you cannot tell a crackpot when you see one, then you ought to be taken in. — Harry S. Truman

Arnold has had his spokesman call me a crackpot. That was a mistake. — Warren Beatty

Once upon a time, there was a man who was convinced that he possessed a Great Idea. Indeed, as the man thought upon the Great Idea more and more, he realized that it was not just a great idea, but the most wonderful idea ever. The Great Idea would unravel the mysteries of the universe, supersede the authority of the corrupt and error-ridden Establishment, confer nigh-magical powers upon its wielders, feed the hungry, heal the sick, make the whole world a better place, etc. etc. etc.
The man was Francis Bacon, his Great Idea was the scientific method, and he was the only crackpot in all history to claim that level of benefit to humanity and turn out to be completely right. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

The idea that vaccines are a primary cause of autism is not as crackpot as some might wish. Autism's 60-fold rise in 30 years matches a tripling of the U.S. vaccine schedule. — Jenny McCarthy

Audience participation can often inject a dose of adrenalin into your average dial-tone literary reading, especially if a handful of audience-members are mentally unhinged, and let's face it - you can always depend on at least one crackpot at these things. — Lynn Coady

Most of the crackpot papers which are submitted to The Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published. When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer himself it will be only half-understood; to everybody else it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope. — Freeman Dyson

God isn't interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves. We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Every inventor is a crackpot until his idea succeeds. — Mark Twain

Cuba's poverty is caused by the crackpot Marxist doctrines imposed by its sociopathic ruler and promoted by half the liberal arts professors on American faculties. — David Horowitz

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost. — Thomas J. Watson Jr.

Ezra Pound was a crackpot on social and political issues, but he knew what he was talking about in matters of the written language. — Pete Hamill

We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information. — Neal Stephenson

Corvina's got it wrong. Penumbra's schemes didn't fail because he's a hopeless crackpot. If Corvina's right, it means nobody should ever try anything new and risky. Maybe Penumbra's schemes failed because he didn't have enough help. Maybe he didn't have a Mat or a Neel, an Ashley or a Kat - until now. Corvina — Robin Sloan

I want to give just a slight indication of the influence the book has had. I knew that George Orwell, in his second novel, A Clergyman's Daughter , published in 1935, had borrowed from Joyce for his nighttime scene in Trafalgar Square, where Deafie and Charlie and Snouter and Mr. Tallboys and The Kike and Mrs. Bendigo and the rest of the bums and losers keep up a barrage of song snatches, fractured prayers, curses, and crackpot reminiscences. But only on my most recent reading of Ulysses did I discover, in the middle of the long and intricate mock-Shakespeare scene at the National Library, the line 'Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter.' So now I think Orwell quarried his title from there, too. — Christopher Hitchens

People who fish for food, and sport be damned, are called pot-fishermen. The more expert ones are called crack pot-fishermen. All other fishermen are called crackpot fishermen. This is confusing. — Ed Zern

One of the great things about drama is that it makes you feel like you're not a crackpot, and that there are other people who think and feel the way you do. — James Purefoy

If everything, they said, was the creation and the operation of God, the statement had no more logic than "Everything is up." But, as so often happens, when one tyrant is dethroned, a worse takes his place. The Crackpot Myth was retained without the Potter. The world was still understood as an artifact, but on the model of an automatic machine. The laws of nature were still there, but no lawmaker. According to the deists, the Lord had made this machine and set it going, but then went to sleep or off on a vacation. — Alan W. Watts

Four months ago you refused to believe a place like Croak even existed, and now look at you. All jazzed up and concocting crackpot theories that probably involve a hidden flock of unicorns."
"Or dinosaurs," Lex said with a grin. "Let's not prematurely dismiss a Jurassic Park scenario. — Gina Damico