Incompetents Quotes & Sayings

In the art of squeezing the last ounce of labor out of a two-legged animal, those primitive ancients were pretentious incompetents! Did they ever think of calling their slave "Monsieur" or letting him vote now and then, or giving him his newspaper? And especially had they thought of sending him to war to work off his passions? After twenty centuries of Christianity (as I personally can bear witness) your modern man simply can't control himself when a regiment passes before his eyes. It puts too many ideas into his head. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

She certainly didn't have the ability to share her ability with the envious ones - she could only share the products of her ability. They gladly took those, and then resented her for being able to produce them. Most human beings, she concluded long ago, love to worship from afar people with extraordinary ability, but prefer to have their friends be genial incompetents. And, of course, most of them get their preference. — Orson Scott Card

Some of our superiors were indeed men of brains and learning and disinterested goodwill, but some were stuffed shirts, and some incompetents, and some timid souls escaping the fray, and some climbers, and some as bitter and jealous as some of us were at being inadequately appreciated. But still there they were, up in the sunshine above the smoke, a patch-elbowed tweedy elite that we might improve when we joined it, but that we never questioned. Especially during the Depression, when every frog of us was lustful for a lily pad. — Wallace Stegner

Think of it! An opportunity to remake the world! An opportunity to create a steam-driven utopia! To re-educate humanity to despise violence. And what do they do, those incompetents? They opt for the pretty clothes and the empire-mad European imperialist culture of the 19th century. Damn those fools. Those geeks, arrogant, myopic, ivory tower board gamers. Damn them. — Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

It's hard upon occasions to be forceful and sublime
When you're treated as incompetents three-quarters of the time. — Alice Duer Miller

In my profession it isn't a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money - it's always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won't be discovered for another hundred years? I'll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need. — Walter Moers

At school, I never had a hold on English history, and cheder was a place run by sadistic incompetents, so I felt alienated from the Jewish part of my past. — Clive Sinclair

Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that any old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to govern his national comrades, but that, by the very greatness of the responsibility to be assumed, incompetents and weaklings are frightened of. — Adolf Hitler

It's hard to imagine any group of people being held in less esteem than we are by our clients. The overwhelming majority of them feel that we are either bumbling incompetents
after all if we're otherwise why aren't we in private practice making real money?
or, even worse, actively conspiring with the DA against them as evidenced by the fact that we know and appear to act friendly towards a lot of these people who are prosecuting them. — Sergio De La Pava

There are many lights in the shadows and many shadows in the lights; lots of talents in the shades, lots of incompetents in the luminosities. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I think my father was sick of being on the sidelines watching a bunch of incompetents in his mind. And in our world, in our business world, these people wouldn't last five minutes in real companies, and he's sick of them making decisions that are costing our children, their children behind them, trillions of dollars and really giving up the great power that we've built up over the last 200 years. — Donald Trump Jr.

I knew in my gut that there was something wrong with a system that couldn't fire its incompetents, and I had my share of incompetent college teachers. — Luke Ford

Government schools can go for decades delivering low-quality services, and what's the result? The people who manage it earn higher pay. It's nearly impossible to fire the incompetents. And, taxpayers, who support the service, are given higher tax bills. — Walter E. Williams

Incompetents invariably made trouble for people other than themselves. — Larry McMurtry

Joe Kennedy isn't in the habit of having incompetents around. I wouldn't have lasted three months if I didn't have some ability. — Sargent Shriver

More than once I was tormented by the thought that if Providence had put me in the place of the incapable of criminal incompetents or scoundrels in our propaganda service, our battle with Destiny would have taken a different turn. — Adolf Hitler

Evaluation schemes that implicate 100% of the staff to detect a small % of incompetents are a waste of time. — Andy Hargreaves

All, from police forces to armed forces, are rigid hierarchies of salaried employees, and all are necessarily cumbered with incompetents who cannot do their existing work, cannot be promoted, yet cannot be removed. — Laurence J. Peter

If he had been one of Xcor's males, the Brother might well have had to be killed so that Xcor could retain his prime position: It was a basic tenent of leadership that one eliminated those who presented a potential challenge to one's position ... although it wasn't as if his band were incompetents - after all, one had to eliminate the weak as well.
The Bloodletter had taught him that and so much more. — J.R. Ward

Everybody has a different kind of talent and a different timetable as to when they develop .. — Itzhak Perlman

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries. — Everett Dirksen

Thigpen gave her that cringing, sly feeling incompetents in denial always engendered. In government service, she'd felt it enough times to trust her instincts. Randy — Nevada Barr

At the end of the day, let there be no excuses, no explanations, no regrets. — Steve Maraboli

Businessmen all think of themselves as big or little professional wizards, but in practice they usually turn out to be hopeless incompetents. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The overriding problem with our country, and our world in general, is that we are, in large part, managed by incompetents. Most of these are men who have spent their lives seeking power rather than themselves. — Robert James Waller

It's kind of like Silence of the lambs meets Boogey Nights. — Brittany Daniel

Now you listen to me," says Ove calmly while he carefully closes the door. "You've given birth to two children and quite soon will be squeezing out a third. You've come here from a land far away and most likely you fled war and persecution and all sorts of other nonsense. You've learned a new language and got yourself an education and you're holding together a family of obvious incompetents. And I'll be damned if I've seen you afraid of a single bloody thing in this world before now ... I'm not asking for brain surgery. I'm asking you to drive a car. It's got an accelerator, a brake and a clutch. Some of the greatest twits in world history have sorted out how it works. And you will as well." And then he utters seven words, which Parvaneh will always remember as the loveliest compliment he'll ever give her. "Because you are not a complete twit. — Fredrik Backman

What is courage without fear? — Emily R. King

[Speaking to a group of wealthy New Yorkers]
A million years ago, the cave man, without tools, with small brain, and with nothing but the strength of his body, managed to feed his wife and children, so that through him the race survived. You on the other hand, armed with all the modern means of production, multiplying the productive capacity of the cave man a million times - you are incompetents and muddlers, you are unable to secure to millions even the paltry amount of bread that would sustain their physical life. You have mismanaged the world, and it shall be taken from you. — Jack London

Good work does not matter, because a man is judged by his worst output and another man takes all the credit of his best as a rule. Bad work does not matter, because other men do worse, and incompetents hang on longer in India than anywhere else. Amusements do not matter, because you must repeat them as soon as you have accomplished them once, and most amusements only mean trying to win another person's money. Sickness does not matter, because it's all in the day's work, and if you die another man takes over your place and your office in the eight hours between death and burial. — Rudyard Kipling

For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it. — Ayn Rand

For six months I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. — Chuck Palahniuk

One bright and thankful look at the cross is worth a thousand morbid, self-condemning reflections. — A.B. Simpson