Quotes & Sayings About Imbeciles

So nobody must be allowed to think at all. Down with the public schools! Children must be drilled mentally by quarter-educated herdsmen, whose wages would stop at the first sign of disagreement with the bosses. For the rest, deafen the whole world with senseless clamour. Mechanize everything! Give nobody a chance to think. Standardize "amusement." The louder and more cacophonous, the better! Brief intervals between one din and the next can be filled with appeals, repeated 'till hypnotic power gives them the force of orders, to buy this or that product of the "Business men" who are the real power in the State. Men who betray their country as obvious routine.
The history of the past thirty years is eloquent enough, one would think. What these sodden imbeciles never realize is that a living organism must adapt itself intelligently to its environment, or go under at the first serious change of circumstance. — Aleister Crowley

He could pass off the inferior bottles on tables seven and four. Table seven knew nothing of wine, sending back a bottle of Riesling as "corked" because it had bits of cork in it, the imbeciles. Table four had gulped down a very special old pale brandy as though it was common wood alcohol, which was probably what they had been drinking because they had said that his brandy lacked bite. They deserved inferior burgundy. The bottles that had been stored too close to the stove might have enough bite by now for table four. A wine waiter's revenge may be long in coming, but it arrives in the end. — Kerry Greenwood

In my experience, eloquent men are right every bit as often as imbeciles. — George R R Martin

We put [young children] into kindergarten where their reasoning powers are ruined; or, if we can afford it, we buy Montessori outfits that were invented for semi-imbeciles in Italian slums; or we send them to outdoor schools and give them prizes for sleeping. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

One of the most obvious results of having a baby around the house is to turn two good people into complete idiots who probably wouldn't have been much worse than mere imbeciles without it. — Georges Courteline

Most of the time, it is not imbeciles or bigots who do the most stupid things. Some of the most problematic things are done by some of the smartest people. — Mats Alvesson

I sometimes wonder if the world is run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who mean it. — Mark Twain

And it is a great fact of history that the most mediocre and well-meaning imbeciles can strike down the mighty with surprising effectiveness when there is such a huge disparity of souls. — Anne Rice

Almost any fool can paint an academy picture, and any imbecile can shoot off a Kodak. — Ezra Pound

I only meant, you know, you shouldn't be wasting your time on imbeciles. I know how hard it is to find the right person, but that's no reason to exhaustively work your way through all the wrong people. You seem to be living your romantic life by some kind of process of elimination. It's like matching a Louis Quatorze armchair with one of those plastic patio tables. It simply doesn't work." "Oh, I see," Bel said. "I'm an armchair, is that it?" "A Louis Quatorze armchair," I qualified. "And my boyfriends are patio tables." "Actually," I remembered, "this one's more like one of those self-assembly Swedish wardrobes. — Paul Murray

Fate is for imbeciles; all is possible to the resolved mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.s if possible. — R.D. Laing

Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because sometimes they take a rest. — Alexandre Dumas

When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new 'niches for imbeciles' were opened up. You — Yuval Noah Harari

Trying to figure out how to best manage his time between doing a task for imbeciles and avoiding imminent and painful death by protocol. I — Sam Sykes

The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred imbeciles. — Robert Anton Wilson

The controversy between rule of law and rule of men was never relevant to women because, along with juveniles, imbeciles, and other classes of legal nonpersons, they had no access to law except through men. — Freda Adler

It was not a matter, mind you, of the certainty I had of being more intelligent than everyone else. Besides, such certainty is of no consequence because so many imbeciles share it. — Albert Camus

You need to know a lot about your own tiny field of expertise, but for the vast majority of life's necessities you rely blindly on the help of other experts, whose own knowledge is also limited to a tiny field of expertise. The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history. There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging.5 Survival in that era required superb mental abilities from everyone. When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new 'niches for imbeciles' were opened up. — Yuval Noah Harari

Talks on art are almost useless. The work which goes to bring progress in one's own subject is sufficient compensation for the incomprehension of imbeciles. — Paul Cezanne

There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging.5 Survival in that era required superb mental abilities from everyone. When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new 'niches for imbeciles' were opened up. You could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker. — Yuval Noah Harari

There are four types of men in the world: lovers, opportunists, lookers-on, and imbeciles. The happiest are the imbeciles. — Hippolyte Taine

It is a poor, unwise and very imbecile people who cannot take care of themselves. — Brigham Young

As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost. — Ernest Renan

Moreover, each man's malevolence quite involuntarily exaggerated the other's importance, as if the chief of villains were confronting the king of imbeciles. — Marcel Proust

I don't know whether the world is full of smart men bluffing or imbeciles who mean it. — Morrie Brickman

The camera's a ballpoint pen, an imbecile; it's not worth anything if you don't have anything to say. — Roberto Rossellini

Africa with 400 million Black People can
do it. If you cannot do it, if you are not prepared to do it then you
will DIE. You race of cowards, you race of imbeciles, you race of good
for-nothings, if you cannot do what other men have done, what other
nations have done, what other races have done, THEN YOU HAD BETTER DIE. — Marcus Garvey

The epithets of imbeciles have never bothered me. — Rosa Bonheur

The only thing I want to say is, I know I'm not Einstein, but I'm not the queen of the imbeciles either. — Vanessa Paradis

The program of scientific experimentation that leads you to conclude that animals are imbeciles is profoundly anthropocentric. It values being able to find your way out of a sterile maze, ignoring the fact that if the researcher who designed the maze were to be parachuted into the jungles of Borneo, he or she would be dead of starvation in a week ... If I as a human being were told that the standards by which animals are being measured in these experiments are human standards, I would be insulted. — J.M. Coetzee

Composers aren't daring enough. They're afraid of that sacred idol called 'common sense', which is the most dreadful thing I know - after all, it's no more than a religion founded to excuse the ubiquity of imbeciles! — Claude Debussy

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish. — Stephen Fry

Christians will support the people of Israel simply because they live in the land of Israel. But we all know Churches worldwide would not want to support Israel if Israel was full of African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans. Christians frequently say "They (other countries) shouldn't mess with the JEWS, they are God's Chosen People". But nobody uses what's in the actual bible to figure out who the Real Children of Israel are today (according to scriptures). So if we still don't know the answer to this question then who are we? Imbeciles? Bastards? Canaanites? Gentiles? THE BRAINWASHING OF THE BLACK CHURCH STARTED IN SLAVERY AND IS PUSHED ONTO THE YOUNG — Ronald Dalton Jr

Only imbeciles are innocent. — Orhan Pamuk

It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed. — H.L. Mencken

Truth exists. The sole purpose of this proposition is to assert the existence of truth against imbeciles and sceptics. — Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert Of Cherbury

I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of detective fiction "from the woman's point of view." To such demands, one can only say "Go away and don't be silly. You might as well ask what is the female angle on an equilateral triangle. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles. — Horace Greeley

Stupid. Stupid. Foaly, we are both imbeciles. I don't expect lateral thinking from the LEP, but from you ... "
... "What is it?" [Holly] asked, afraid of the answer, which must surely be terrible.
"Yeah," agreed Foaly, who always had time to feel insulted. "Why am I an imbecile? — Eoin Colfer

No adult is without problems except a happy imbecile. — Herman Wouk

I am just wondering how this world would be if everyone done their job competently and efficiently. I am so tired of imbeciles. I do believe their function on this earth is to torment those who have common sense. — Patricia H. Graham

Christianity is an old metaphysical fiction, stuffed with fables, contradictions and absurdities: it was spawned in the fevered imagination of the Orientals, and then spread to our Europe, where some fanatics espoused it, where some intriguers pretended to be convinced by it and where some imbeciles actually believed it. — Frederick The Great

I never could think of prostitutes as human beings or even as women. They seemed more like imbeciles or lunatics. But in their arms I felt absolute security. I could sleep soundly. It was pathetic how utterly devoid of greed they really were. And perhaps because they felt for me something like an affinity for their kind, these prostitutes always showed me a natural friendliness which never became oppressive. Friendliness with no ulterior motive, friendliness stripped of high-pressure salesmanship, for someone who might never come again. Some nights I saw these imbecile, lunatic prostitutes with the halo of Mary. — Osamu Dazai

Jazz: Music invented for the torture of imbeciles. — Henry Van Dyke

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. — Laurence J. Peter

In front of her, Samuel Rain's spectacles shimmered, and she belatedly realized they weren't old-fashioned at all, but tools to allow him to see to a microcellular level. "Imbeciles." The engineer shut the interface panel, nodded at Vasic to close the protective carapace. "Stealing my work and thinking they know what to do with it. Like monkeys deciding to program a computronic system."
"Can you fix it?" Vasic asked.
"No, I'm brain damaged." With that, he put away the tool, snapped the toolbox shut, and hefted it. "Come back tomorrow."
Ivy stared after the engineer, hope a tight, hard knot in her chest. "He's either mad or brilliant."
"There's often only a razor-thin line between the two."
"And" - Rain called over his shoulder - "bring the dog! — Nalini Singh

I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest. — Alexandre Dumas

Never could think of prostitutes as human beings or even as women. They seemed more like imbeciles or lunatics. But in their arms I felt absolute security. I could sleep soundly. — Osamu Dazai

The doctor frowned upon drinking and often expressed wonderment at men who willingly made imbeciles of themselves. — Rick Yancey

The satisfaction an imbecile derives from having right on his side and being certain of success is especially irritating. — Marcel Proust

The car housed a hysterical bumper sticker: Save the Planet, and I permitted a moment of contemplation to truly bask in this thought. Save the planet? What a joke. Save the planet from what? From ourselves? And save it for what? For ourselves? It was a kind of perpetual stupidity in a tug-of-war battle over trivial matters. Only imbeciles see things in black and white: liberal or conservative, yes or no, this or that. Those in power laugh at those people in their morally inverted shades of grey, basking in the labels they've created so the people are easier to control. — Bruce Crown

He was a young man of savage & unexpected originality, a diseased genius & quite frankly, a mad genius. Imbeciles grow insane & in their insanity the imbecility remains stagnant or agitated; in the madness of a man of genius some genius often remains: the form & not the quality of intelligence has been affected; the fruit has been bruised in the fall, but has preserved all its perfume & all the savor of its pulp, hardly too ripe. — Remy De Gourmont

Perhaps you think I'm losing the thread of my thought? Not a bit of it! I'm still telling you the story of how I murdered my wife, They asked me in court how I killed her, what I used to do it with. Imbeciles! They thought I killed her that day, the fifth of October, with a knife. It wasn't that day I killed her, it was much earlier. Exactly in the same way as they're killing their wives now, all of them ... — Leo Tolstoy

When he really wanted to get juicy, he would write in Latin. Remember? I was seventeen before I realised that immissio penis in os meant sticking it in the mouth."
"And immissio penis in anum, those who practiced that, he called us moral imbeciles and moral depravities, certain barbarous races devoid of morality. I grew up in constant fear! — Larry Kramer

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons. — C.S. Lewis

As he grew older, which was mostly in my absence, my firstborn son, Alexander, became ever more humorous and courageous. There came a time, as the confrontation with the enemies of our civilization became more acute, when he sent off various applications to enlist in the armed forces. I didn't want to be involved in this decision either way, especially since I was being regularly taunted for not having 'sent' any of my children to fight in the wars of resistance that I supported. (As if I could 'send' anybody, let alone a grown-up and tough and smart young man: what moral imbeciles the 'anti-war' people have become.) — Christopher Hitchens

Can it really be said that before the day of our pretentious science, humanity was composed solely of imbeciles and the superstitious? — R. A. Schwaller De Lubicz

Do not lounge in the cities! There is room & health in the country, away from the crowds of idlers & imbeciles. Go west, before you are fitted for no life but that of the factory. — Horace Greeley

There are men on that Commission who would steal the brakes off a mountain railway just before they went down in it...It's a struggle with suicidal imbeciles.

The Secret Places of The Heart (Kindle Location 59) — H.G.Wells

The Bible. That is what fools have written, what imbeciles commend, what rogues teach and young children are made to learn by heart. — Voltaire

Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. — Henry James

The world is turning into a cesspool of imbeciles. — Harlan Ellison

God takes care of imbeciles, little children and artists. — Camille Pissarro

He denounced him openly as a charlatan
a fraud with no valuable knowledge of any kind, or powers beyond those of an ordinary and rather inferior human being. — Mark Twain

Christianity - An old metaphysical romance, filled with marvels, contradictions, and absurdity, born in the ardent imagination of Orientals, has spread into our Europe. Enthusiasts have purveyed it, careerists have pretended to accept it, imbeciles have believed it. — Frederick The Great

Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death
in a cesspool. — Charles Bukowski

They are imbeciles who call my work abstract. That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things. — Constantin Brancusi

I is another. If the brass wakes the trumpet, it's not its fault. That's obvious to me: I witness the unfolding of my own thought: I watch it, I hear it: I make a stroke with the bow: the symphony begins in the depths, or springs with a bound onto the stage.
If the old imbeciles hadn't discovered only the false significance of Self, we wouldn't have to now sweep away those millions of skeletons which have been piling up the products of their one-eyed intellect since time immemorial, and claiming themselves to be their authors! — Arthur Rimbaud

The mother of the imbecile is always pregnant, — Vincenzo Nibali

The only valid political system is one that can handle an imbecile in power without suffering from it — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The terms "idiot" and "lunatic" were acceptable diagnostic terms in England up until 1959. "Imbecile" and "feeble-minded person" were, likewise, listed as official categories in the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. England has always lagged a bit behind in discarding outdated terms for the disadvantaged. When I was there in 1980, it was still possible to shop for used clothing at the local Spastic Shop. That is, compared to the United States, where it takes, oh, about twenty-five minutes for a diagnostic euphemism to become a conversational faux pas. — Mary Roach

Some children I have met are very beautiful. Some children are imbeciles, vulgar, terrible. — Jeanne Moreau

I can't stand films that make the kids out to be heroes and the parents to be imbeciles. — Molly Ringwald

To believe everything is to be an imbecile.
To deny everything is to be a fool. — Charles Nodier

Any idiot or imbecile can easily make enemies; the important and the hard thing is to make friends easily and keep them as friends always! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

As 99 per cent of English authors and 100 per cent of American ones [authors] are just such imbeciles, managers and publishers make a practice of asking for every right the author possesses. — George Bernard Shaw

As long as imbeciles are around, The crooked will cash out. — Cyrus J. Kayvan

One of the most visible effects of a child's presence in the household is to turn the worthy parents into complete idiots when, without him, they would perhaps have remained mere imbeciles. — Georges Courteline

Anyone who calls my music "impressionist" is an imbecile. — Claude Debussy

An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius. — Billy Wilder

One of the greatest things I've ever seen happen was the morning I opened the newspaper and it said that some very powerful government officials had decided to change the name of "french fries" to "freedoom fries" and "french toast" to "freedom toast". It was impressive. I wanted to write a letter to them just to thank them, just for proving globally that they were absolute imbeciles. — Johnny Depp

Two imbecile parents, whether related or not, have only imbecile offspring. — Charles Davenport

The American psychologists classified persons on the basis of IQ tests, labeling those judged feebleminded in descending order as morons, imbeciles, or idiots — Henry Friedlander

In retrospect, of course I regret calling them (Charlton fans) morons. Imbeciles would have been more appropriate. — Simon Jordan