Incompetent Quotes & Sayings

In so many areas of life, I'm a spaz and incompetent. — Dave Matthews

A woman's heart is such a complex problem - the owner thereof is often most incompetent to find the solution to this puzzle. — Emmuska Orczy

Yet, after all, they were not bad souls; and though he failed so grotesquely, he did his incompetent best. — Isabella L. Bird

What worries me is that we are increasingly enmeshed in incompetent systems, that is, systems that exhibit pathological behaviour but cant fix themselves. — John Naughton

People meant very little to Mike, but their performance a great deal. He worshiped expertness of any kind. He loved his work passionately and had no tolerance for anything save for other single-track devotions. He was a master in his own field and he felt no sympathy except for mastery. His view of the world was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; — Ayn Rand

As incompetent in life as in death, I loathe myself and in this loathing I dream of another life, another death. And for having sought to be a sage such as never was, I am only a madman among the mad ... — Emil Cioran

The trial of hapless Timothy McVeigh shared many things in common
with the "trials" of other scapegoats from the past. Like Bruno Richard
Hauptmann, James Earl Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan, McVeigh received inept
legal representation. Stephen Jones presented almost no defense, resting
after only three and a half days and just twenty-five witnesses. Even
establishment talking head attorney Alan Dershowitz would criticize the
incompetent defense McVeigh received. — Donald Jeffries

Despite the fact that he has run the most incompetent administration in history, President Obama remains a solid bet for re-election in 2012. Obama's frontrunner status springs from two crucial facts: first, by overexposing himself in the public eye, he has made himself larger than life; second, the Republican field is pathetically weak. — Ben Shapiro

An author is like an incompetent bricklayer - doesn't use mortar and keeps rearranging the bricks until someone tells him to stop. — Chris Everheart

Lyon is unusual and seems to be exceptionally incompetent at publicising itself. In fact, it doesn't want visitors. It fears discovery. — Bill Buford

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent. — John Maynard Keynes

A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective. — Sun Tzu

I have no athletic skills whatsoever. I'm just literally incompetent. — James Gray

[The media's] fantasy of an America bristling with racists allows them to portray any criticism of our massively incompetent and dangerous president as just another sad episode of oh-so-typical white racism. — Ann Coulter

Let the gods distinguish between the wiched and the merely incompetent. — Glen Cook

Plague might be a social incompetent, but he was unquestionably a genius. — Stieg Larsson

You just need to be honest with how you're feeling. But, a lot of women are afraid of it because they think, 'Oh, they are going to take my baby away. They're gonna call me incompetent. I'm going to lose my job. I've got to be tough, it's a man's world.' — Marie Osmond

Liberals go straight to ugly racist stereotypes when attacking conservative blacks, calling them oversexualized, stupid and/or incompetent. — Ann Coulter

She was incompetent. Incompetent for life. She had never figured out how to figure things out. She was only vaguely beginning to know the kind of absence she had of herself inside her. — Clarice Lispector

The subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: It leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both. — Al Gore

I have very little patience for ignorant, incompetent people who don't care that they're ignorant and incompetent. — Tim Leffel

It is an illusion to suppose that a Dictator makes himself; at most he seizes an opportunity made for him by passive, stupid, incompetent, and above all, unsatisfied and fearful men. — Susan Stebbing

What have they done to your poor arm?' - Holly
'Oh, don't worry, it's just a graze.' - Lucy
'I'm talking about the bandages. That's simply the most incompetent bit of first aid I've ever seen. Lockwood, George - how much dressing did you use? — Jonathan Stroud

I mean, I may not hold the record in cleaning house either, but if I've got old milk cartons that smell like maggots I bundle them up and put them out."
"I'm on a disability pension'" he said. "I'm socially incompetent. — Stieg Larsson

If I feel depressed I will sing. If I feel sad I will laugh. If I feel ill I will double my labor. If I feel fear I will plunge ahead. If I feel inferior I will wear new garments. If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice. If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come. If I feel incompetent I will remember past success. If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals. Today I will be master of my emotions. — Og Mandino

The insatiable need for heartless power and ruthless control is the telltale sign of an uninitiated man - the most irresponsible, incompetent and destructive force on earth. — Michael Leunig

From "Not For Ourselves Alone:"
In Elizabeth Cady Stanton's time:
Women were barred by custom from the pulpit and professions
Those who spoke in public were thought indecent
Married women were prohibited from owning or inheriting property: in fact, wives were the property of their husbands, who were entitled by law to her wages and her body.
Women were prohibited from signing contracts
Women had no right to their children or even their clothing in a divorce
Women were not allowed to serve on juries and most were considered incompetent to testify.
Women were not allowed to VOTE. — Ken Burns

It's a peculiar thing about liberals. When it comes to middle-class people who are fully capable of caring for themselves, liberals seek to undermine their independence in every way possible. With seductive 'entitlements' like guaranteed retirement, health care, nutrition, education, and jobs, liberals attempt to lure the middle class into dependence on the state. But when it comes to those who are truly incompetent, those whose mental afflictions render them unable to manage their lives at all, liberals are suddenly transformed into absolutists for personal autonomy. — Mona Charen

I'd got over playing a character. People accepted who I was, and if I was incompetent and useless, they felt quite endeared to me. — Michael Palin

The friends of evangelical doctrine, and the advocates of orthodoxy, have the following objects to keep ever in view in this age; they must take care of their Bibles, that they be not mutilated or curtailed by lawless criticism; they must take care of their theology, that it be not perverted by false philosophy; and they must take care of their pulpits, that they be not occupied by heretical, unspiritual, or incompetent ministers. — John Angell James

The Americans said they had no choice but to do it like that because no one really knew which side the ISI was on and someone might have tipped off bin Laden before they reached him. The director of the CIA said Pakistan was "either involved or incompetent. — Malala Yousafzai

Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. — Ayn Rand

You should know how many incompetent men I had to compete with-in vain. — Inge Lehmann

The new "theory of justice" demands that men counteract the "injustice" of nature by instituting the most obscenely unthinkable injustice among men: deprive "those favored by nature" (i.e., the talented, the intelligent, the creative) of the right to the rewards they produce (i.e., the right to life) - and grant to the incompetent, the stupid, the slothful a right to the effortless enjoyment of the rewards they could not produce, could not imagine, and would not know what to do with. — Ayn Rand

I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me. — John Cleese

If someone gives you $1,000,000 you'd better become a millionaire so you can keep the money. Success doesn't want to hang around incompetent people. — Jim Rohn

Should a reasonable person not demand that philosophy should not be foolishly purveyed before people incompetent to see the point of it, as pearls before swine? For Nietzsche is utterly correct: philosophy is only for the healthy and whole-minded, the sick it has always only made even sicker. By means of philosophy they dig themselves even deeper into their pathetic delusions. — Kenny Smith

Dogs would make totally incompetent criminals. If you could somehow get a group of dogs to understand the concept of the Kennedy assassination, they would all immediately confess to it. Whereas you'll never see a cat display any kind of guilty behavior, despite the fact that several cats were seen in Dallas on the grassy knoll area, not that I wish to start rumors. — Dave Barry

Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation. — Anne Lamott

Pasteur equally as mischief-makers. As late as 1883, Michel Peter, a Parisian physician held in high esteem by his colleagues, went so far as to denounce Pasteur's work to his face, at an address at the National Academy of Medicine. "What do I care about your microbes? . . . I have said, and I repeat, that all this research on microbes are not worth the time spent on them or the fuss made about them, and that after all the work nothing would be changed in medicine, there would only be a few extra microbes. Medicine . . . is threatened by the invasion of incompetent, and rash persons given to dreaming." But as the discoveries mounted, these holdouts were increasingly marginalized. — Thomas Goetz

Redd turned to her assassins. "What is it I always say?"
The Cat, Sacrenoir, and the others bandied uncertain glances about.
"Don't be stupid?" ventured Alistaire.
"I should kill you now?" offered The Cat.
"Do I have to murder everyone myself?" tried Siren.
"No, idiots! When in doubt, go for the head. That's what I always say. — Frank Beddor

I meant that in politics there may be times when it's expedient to leave someone in power who's become incompetent, because in a web like that, there are ways to circumvent the damage that person might do. But — Kate Elliott

On an otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American Dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window. — Larry Correia

... your midthirties...is the age that women usually start to feel confident. Having finally left behind the...awfulness of your twenties...your thirties are the point where the good stuff kicks in...How odd, then, that as your face and body finally begin to display the signs (lines, softening, gray hairs) that you've entered the zone of kick-ass eminence and intolerance of dullards, there should be pressure for you to...totally remove them. Give the impression that, actually, you are still a bit gullible and incompetent, and totally open to being screwed over by someone a bit cleverer and older than you... Lines and grayness are nature's way of telling you not to fuck with someone--the equivalent of the yellow-and-black banding on a wasp...Lines are your weapons against the idiots. Lines are your 'KEEP AWAY FROM THE WISE INTOLERANT WOMAN' sign. — Caitlin Moran

You and many outstanding inventors and writers have striven for the ideal and have thereby helped yourself do remarkably well. REBT, therefore, does not oppose competition or striving for outstanding achievement. It advocates task-perfection, not self-perfection." "What does that mean?" "It means that you can try to be as good, or even as perfect, as you can - at any project or task. You can try to make it ideal. But you are not a good person if it is perfect. You are still a person who completed a perfect project, but never a good person for doing so." "How, then, do I become an incompetent or bad person?" "You don't! When you do incompetent or evil acts, you become a person who acted badly - never a bad person. — Albert Ellis

One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception - at least some of the time, incompetent or crazy. — John Gardner

I don't know enough to be incompetent. — Woody Allen

RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless. — Ambrose Bierce

Maybe a vague president and an incompetent and somewhat corrupt administration is what the nation needs. — P. J. O'Rourke

He was seeing a long line of men stretched through the centuries from Plato onward, whose heir and final product was an incompetent little professor with the appearance of a gigolo and the soul of a thug. — Ayn Rand

If we say leaders are incompetent, we are going to fuel extremist, populist, xenophobic and ultra-nationalist parties. — Jose Manuel Barroso

It is possible to be a great novelist - that is, to render a veracious account of your times - and a bad writer - that is, an incompetent practitioner of applied linguistics. — Angela Carter

He was, he would be the first to admit, a coward, an incompetent, and not even very good at being a failure. — Terry Pratchett

Our problem is that we assume prayer is something to master the way we master algebra or auto mechanics. That puts us in the "on-top" position, where we are competent and in control. But when praying, we come "underneath," where we calmly and deliberately surrender control and become incompetent. — Richard J. Foster

Three Observations 1) The computer may be incompetent in itself - that is, unable to do regularly and accurately the work for which it was designed. This kind of incompetence can never be eliminated, because the Peter Principle applies in the plants where computers are designed and manufactured. 2) Even when competent in itself, the computer vastly magnifies the results of incompetence in its owners or operators. 3) The computer, like a human employee, is subject to the Peter Principle. If it does good work at first, there is a strong tendency to promote it to more responsible tasks, until it reaches its level of incompetence. — Laurence J. Peter

people who are incompetent suffer a dual burden: not only are they incompetent, but they may also be too incompetent to assay their own incompetence, because the skills which underlie an ability to make a correct judgement are the same as the skills required to recognise a correct judgement. — Ben Goldacre

I start out with the assumption that a lawyer in a criminal case is going to be incompetent - substantially so. I find my assumption to be rarely wrong. Yet society starts out with the very opposite assumption. — Vincent Bugliosi

She kept repeating that if she had dedicated herself assiduously to every child in the neighborhood, in a generation everything would change, there would no longer be the smart and the incompetent, the good and the bad. Then she looked at her son and again burst out crying. — Elena Ferrante

The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se, forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system. — Hermann Broch

Two different primaries," she continued, striding around the office. "Two different cops, and both of them fucked up the case. What are they using to train them in Chicago
old videos of the Three Boobs?"
"I think that's Stooges," Roarke remarked.
"What?"
He glanced up, focused fully on her, and smiled at the absolute baffled fury on her face. "Stooges, darling. The Three Stooges."
"What's the difference, they're still incompetent knot-heads. — J.D. Robb

A review was published in Nature, very scathing, essentially calling me incompetent, though they didn't use that word. I am putting a reply on my Web site in a few days, where I go through their arguments, paragraph by paragraph. — Bjorn Lomborg

On the roads of failure, it is not uncommon to see the tears of the talented; and in the land of success, to hear the victorious screams of the incompetent! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

From a philosophical perspective, Linde's little story underscores the danger of assuming that the creative force behind our universe, if there is one, must correspond to the traditional image of God: omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely benevolent, and so on. Even if the cause of our universe is an intelligent being, it could well be a painfully incompetent and fallible one, the kind that might flub the cosmogenic task by producing a thoroughly mediocre creation. — Jim Holt

working more than 40 hours a week was stupid, wasteful, dangerous, and expensive - and the most telling sign of dangerously incompetent management to boot," Robinson writes. Further, more than a hundred years of research shows that "every hour you work over 40 hours a week is making you less effective and productive over both the short and the long haul." Really! Even though most people think this makes intuitive sense, they are still surprised to hear that it is actually true. This common sense is so widely ignored that overwork - and the problems with health, happiness, and productivity that it brings - is epidemic. — Christine Carter

The world is harsh to the brilliant.
The world is harsh to the competent.
The world is harsh to the beautiful.
The world is harsh to the attentive.
The world is kind to the unkempt.
The world is kind to the incompetent.
The world is kind to the corrupt.
The world is kind to the oblivious.

But if you figure that out, if you realize that, it's already over right then. — NisiOisiN

Islam requires us to believe that Jesus was so incompetent as a teacher and prophet that he was not able to instill this most simple fact in his followers' minds: that he was merely a human. Given that Islam's central proclamation is tawhid, this means Jesus was an abject failure. In fact, he was worse than a total failure, since he left his disciples believing the exact opposite of tawhid. — Nabeel Qureshi

Almost everybody we get together with about a matter, even if it is of the highest importance, is incompetent. — Thomas Bernhard

Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use. — Herbert Spencer

Constant complaints were being made of incompetent attendants, and some dozen women did double duty, and then were blamed for breaking down. If any hospital director fancies this a good and economical arrangement, allow one used up nurse to tell him it isn't, and beg him to spare the sisterhood, who sometimes, in their sympathy, forget that they are mortal, and run the risk of being made immortal, sooner than is agreeable to their partial friends. — Louisa May Alcott

That old if you 'need anything, let me know,' is a total crock. You hear people say it all the time, but you never see anyone actually call up the person who said it and say, "Hey, remember when you said to let you know if i needed anything? Well, I'm feeling really overwhelmed. Could you please come clean my kitchen, I'd feel like I had a bit of a head start." You will never hear someone say that, because then the person asking the other person to clean their kitchen is seen as a helpless, incompetent dick. -Diana Rowland (My life as a white trash zombie) — Diana Rowland

It's a dreadfully long monster of a book, and I certainly won't have time to read it, but I'm giving it a thorough skimming. The authors are utterly incompetent - no sense of style or structure at all. It starts out as a detective story, switches to science-fiction, then goes off into the supernatural, and is full of the most detailed information of dozens of ghastly boring subjects. And the time sequence is all out of order in a very pretentious imitation of Faulkner and Joyce. Worst yet, it has the most raunchy sex scenes, thrown in just to make it sell, I'm sure, and the authors - whom I've never heard of - have the supreme bad taste to introduce real political figures into this mishmash and pretend to be exposing a real conspiracy. You can be sure I won't waste time reading such rubbish. — Robert Shea

there would always be incompetent assholes in the world ... and many of them would be in places of power. — Christopher G. Nuttall

The irreducible, ultimate element in religious faith is the insistence that we are created things; male and female He created them; without God we are nothing. And yet, when men and women have children and become parents, they unmistakably become creators, incompetent, accidental and partial creators, no doubt, but creators none the less. It is their inescapable duty, and, with luck, their occasional delight to care and watch over their creations; even if this creative power is partly illusory because chromosomes and chance decide the whole business, parents cannot act as if it is illusory; they cannot sincerely believe in their ultimate helplessness. They must behave like shepherds, however clumsy, and not like sheep, however well trained.
The Sermon on the Mount is a wonderful, intoxicating sermon. But it is a sermon for bachelors. — Ferdinand Mount

Consumptive patients, with lungs incompetent to perform the duties of lungs, people with defective hearts that break down under excitement of the circulation, people with any constitutional flaw preventing the due fulfillment of the conditions of life are continually dying out and leaving behind those fit for the climate, food, and habits to which they are born ... And thus is the race kept free from vitiation. — Herbert Spencer

Absolutely not. I'm an expert in procrastination, but the last thing I want you to think is that I'm incompetent, too. Because I'm actually pretty good at what I do. -Jo — Nicholas Sparks

Government employees move up the ladder through educational credentials rather than merit. People are given jobs and promotions based on seniority, race and gender rather than ability or talent. Such a system often overlooks the deserving and rewards the incompetent. There is no payoff for achievement. — James Cook

When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well? — Cyril Connolly

There was some sort of maze-learning experiment involved in my final grade and since I remember the rat who was my colleague as uncooperative, or perhaps merely incompetent at being a rat, or tired of the whole thing, I don't remember how I passed. — Marilynne Robinson

Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family — Jane Smiley

I.Q. deficiency. There are some people who are an order of fries short of a Happy Meal, and what is often a characteristic about every one of these people is that they don't know it. They have no idea how incompetent or stupid they are. It's the exact opposite. They have the loftiest, highest self-image. — Rush Limbaugh

Something was seriously wrong with Burnside. Either his mental apparatus wasn't functioning or he was grossly incompetent. Probably both. — Edward J. Stackpole

I am an Imperial commissar. I will enflame the weak, support the wavering, guide the lost. I will be all things to all men who need me. But I will also punish without hesitation the incompetent, the cowardly, and the treasonous.
Ibram Gaunt — Dan Abnett

Whether the teacher is authoritarian, undisciplined, competent, incompetent, serious, irresponsible, involved, a lover of people and of life, cold, angry with the world, bureaucratic, excessively rational, or whatever else, he/she will not pass through the classroom without leaving his or her mark on the students. — Paulo Freire

Obama doesn't know how to be President. He doesn't know how the world works. He's incompetent. He's an amateur! — Bill Clinton

These women, genteel and beautiful, are the rebels who say no to the choices made by silly mothers, incompetent fathers (there are seldom any wise fathers in Austen's novels) and the rigidly orthodox society. They risk ostracism and poverty to gain love and companionship, and to embrace that elusive goal at the heart of democracy: the right to choose. — Azar Nafisi

You missed with me so close? What? You failed your assassin training classes? Did you even bother to show up? Or are you just that incompetent? (Syn) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer. — H. Beam Piper

I realized that the childish impression I had always had of my father, as Just Lawgiver, was entirely wrong. We were utterly dependent on this man, who was not only deluded and ignorant, but incompetent in every way. What was more, I knew that my mother was incapable of standing up to him. It was like walking into the cockpit of an airplane and finding the pilot and co-pilot passed out drunk in their seats. And standing outside the Lyceum, I was struck with a black, incredulous horror, which in fact was not at all unlike the horror I had felt at twelve, sitting on a bar stool in our sunny little kitchen in Plano. Who is in control here? I thought, dismayed. Who is flying this plane? — Donna Tartt

The majority of problems on this planet are the result of the idea that humans are not sovereign and autonomous, but property owned by primitive Gods and incompetent governments. — Christopher S. Hyatt

Excuse is the tool of the incompetent. A monument of nothingness, and those that use it are not wise. — Paul Adefarasin

To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted — Philip Larkin

When you've got a lot of slaves at your command, you tend to get a little bit fat. You tend to get a little bit lazy. You tend to get a little incompetent because there's not much that you do for yourself anymore. — Andrew Nikiforuk

I once called the head of a network a liar. In hindsight, I should have called him an incompetent liar. — Steven Levitan

-the men were found to have left behind their guns but to have lugged such essentials as monogrammed silver cutlery, a backgammon board, a cigar case, a clothes brush, a tin of buttons polish, and a copy of 'The Vicar of Wakefield.' These men may have been incompetent bunglers, but, by God, they were gentlemen. — Anne Fadiman

When placing an emergency call, it is important to remember that a corrupt or incompetent cop may be on their way to you. — Steven Magee

If I am incompetent, I am useless, the people of India will see that. — Rahul Gandhi

Just as violence is the last refuge of the inarticulate, so it is also the first resort of the incompetent, the easy out for the man who is capable of expressing himself only in the most primitive and vulgar of dramatic terms. He leaves us with only the obscenity of violence per se - and the pornographer thereof will always be with us, in film as in any other medium. And so will his audience. — Judith Crist

There will be a time when loud-mouthed, incompetent people seem to be getting the best of you. When that happens, you only have to be patient and wait for them to self-destruct. It never fails. — Richard Rybolt

According to Mark 11:12-13, God's messengers were not the only ones who were incompetent: 'He [Jesus] was hungry. And on seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.'
Imagine Jesus, the divine, holy, wisest of the wise not knowing that figs were out of season. Now allegedly Jesus could have performed a miracle and made figs magically appear, but he preferred sour grapes instead: Then he said to the tree, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.' (Mark 11:14) — G.M. Jackson

To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson