Quotes & Sayings About Dunces

We all appear as dunces when feigning an interest in things we care nothing about. — C.S. Lewis

When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
[Thoughts on Various Subjects] — Jonathan Swift

I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs and councils governed by foolish servants. I have known great ministers, distinguished for wit and learning, who preferred none but dunces. I have known men of valor cowards to their wives. I have known men of cunning perpetually cheated. I knew three ministers who would exactly compute and settle the accounts of a kingdom, wholly ignorant of their own economy. — Horace Walpole

The flat-brimmed cap is the modern day dunce cap. — Daniel Tosh

There is no dunce like a mature dunce. — George Santayana

We are next informed that bookworms, a term which seems to be held applicable to whoever has the smallest tincture of book-knowledge, may not be good at bodily exercises, or have the habits of gentlemen. This is a very common line of remark with dunces of condition; but whatever the dunces may think, they have no monopoly of either gentlemanly habits or bodily activity. — John Stuart Mill

Rebukes are easy from our betters,
From men of quality and letters;
But when low dunces will affront,
What man alive can stand the brunt? — Jonathan Swift

Wit, who never once Forgave a brother, shall forgive a dunce. — Charles Churchill

What passes for wine among us, is not the juice of the grape. It is an adulterous mixture, brewed up of nauseous ingredients, by dunces, who are bunglers in the art of poison-making; and yet we, and our forefathers, are and have been poisoned by this cursed drench, without taste or flavour - The only genuine and wholesome beveridge in England, is London porter, and Dorchester table-beer; but as for your ale and your gin, your cyder and your perry, and all the trashy family of made wines, I detest them as infernal compositions, contrived for the destruction of the human species. — Tobias Smollett

What am I then ... ? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. Childhood, maturity and old age all have brought me their thoughts ... their perspectives on life. I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living. — Charles Caleb Colton

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. — Jonathan Swift

Yeah, I think A Confederacy of Dunces is probably the perfect New Orleans book. — Poppy Z. Brite

Whoa! If I'm gonna be a doorman, I gonna be the mos sabotagin doorman ever guarded a plantation. Ooo-wee. The cotton fiel be burn to the groun before I'm through."
Watch out, Jones. Don be getting yourself in no trouble."
Whoa! — John Kennedy Toole

ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists. — Ambrose Bierce

VITUPERATION, n. Saite, as understood by dunces and all such as suffer from an impediment in their wit. — Ambrose Bierce

The Society of North American Magic Realists welcomes its newest, most dazzling member, Louis Maistros. His debut novel is a thing of wonder, unlike anything in our literature. It startles. It stuns. It stupefies. No novel since CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES has done such justice to New Orleans. If Franz Kafka had been able to write like Peter Straub, this might have been the result. — Donald Harington

I would like to see 'A Confederacy of Dunces' by John Kennedy Toole adapted. — Tamara Feldman

In fame's temple there is always a niche to be found for rich dunces, importunate scoundrels, or successful butchers of the human race. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

I like characters like Ignatius Reilly in 'A Confederacy of Dunces' and Ricky Gervais's character in 'The Office.' They think one thing about themselves, but the truth is as far from that as it can be. So I began to think about how to put that kind of character in a book for kids. — Stephan Pastis

Jail was preferable. There they only limited you physically. In a mental ward they tampered with your soul and worldview and mind. — John Kennedy Toole

Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce. — Charles Churchill

Waiting for the Electricity is a wildly original and ambitious debut, a novel that tackles cultural clashes with satirical hilarity. I haven't read a first novel this promising since The Confederacy of Dunces. — Jill Ciment

Not all celebrities are dunces. — Carroll O'Connor

When, on your dangerous mission gone,
You underrate our foes as dunces,
Be wary, not of sudden gun,
But of your partner at the dances. — Stanley Kunitz

I have worked with some of the greatest minds in astrophysics and it is now clear that they were the dunces of astrobiology. — Steven Magee

The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists. — Ivan Turgenev

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits. — Alexander Pope

The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic. — C.S. Lewis

When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric. — Jonathan Swift

It is unclear if corporate governments are truly the dunces of human health or if they are just faking it in order to propagate a biologically toxic agenda on an unsuspecting global population. — Steven Magee

Sanity, in my opinion, is an achievement. I have seen very few well-balanced people in my life who were not dunces. — Corra May Harris

The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces. — Isaac D'Israeli

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers
or should I say, nurses?
will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us. — C.S. Lewis

The use of proverbs is characteristic of an unlettered people. They are invaluable treasures to dunces with good memories. — John Hay

But you are a charming and beautiful dunces, madame. And," he continued in French, "a charming and beautiful woman
can get away with murder. Can you imagine that any man here would prosecute you for assassinating our language? — Loretta Chase