Inept Quotes & Sayings

I followed your footsteps," he said, in answer to the unspoken question. "Snow makes it easy."
I had been tracked, like a bear.
"Sorry to make you go to all that trouble," I said.
"I didn't have to go that far, really. You're about three streets over. You just kept going in loops."
A really inept bear. — Maureen Johnson

For the first few months, I was a comically inept parent. The first night home from the hospital, I held her bare body against my bare chest until a friend who was a doctor came by and asked what I was doing, and told me to put some clothes on that baby. — Nick Flynn

In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856), watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blundering about during an amputation. Both men contracted an infection and died, as did the patient. Nightingale commented that it was the only surgery she'd ever seen with 300 percent mortality. — Sam Kean

[Presently, science undergraduates] do not learn to write clearly and briefly, marshalling their points in due and aesthetically satisfying order, and eliminating inessentials. They are inept at those turns of phrase or happy analogy which throw a flying bridge across a chasm of misunderstanding and make contact between mind and mind. — William Lawrence Bragg

It took real talent to be that inept. — Shanna Swendson

common sense observations of human behavior support a similar dissociation in reasoning abilities which cuts in both directions. We all know persons who are exceedingly clever in their social navigation, who have an unerring sense of how to seek advantage for themselves and for their group, but who can be remarkably inept when trusted with a nonpersonal, nonsocial problem. The reverse condition is just as dramatic: We all know creative scientists and artists whose social sense is a disgrace, and who regularly harm themselves and others with their behavior. The absent-minded professor is the benign variety of the latter type. At work, in these different personality styles, are the presence or absence of what Howard Gardner has called "social intelligence," or the presence or absence of one or the other of his multiple intelligences such as the "mathematical. — Antonio R. Damasio

I've never been good at the money thing. I have had a couple of really nice but inept managers, and a business accountant that ripped me off. But I cannot totally blame my money making lameness on them. — Jill Sobule

What are you doing here?" Dastien stomped over to me, his eyes a bright shade of amber. He was pissed and looking like a crazy-man. "Reading." What was his problem? I lifted my mug and took a sip while he stared. He gave a desperate laugh and sank into the seat across from me. "I haven't felt this out of control in years." He leaned forward, putting his head in his hands. "No. I don't think I was ever this inept." I should've felt bad for him, but I didn't. It reassured me. If — Aileen Erin

You return when you feel like it, like rain.
And like rain you are tender, with the rain's inept tenderness.
A passion so general I could be anywhere.
You carry me out into the wet air.
You lay me down on the leaves and the strong thing is not the sex,
But waking up alone under the tress after. — Linda Gregg

This softening she sees in me isn't enough to make me affectionate, but it's just enough to render me inept. I can't give her what she wants - virtuousness - or what she needs - protection. — Nenia Campbell

My own view on capital punishment is that it is morally justified, but that the government is often so inept and corrupt that innocent people might die as a result. Thus, I personally oppose capital punishment. — Ed Crane

I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept. — Neil Gaiman

That is why I need you to take into account the elasticity of time, its ability to expand or contract like an accordion regardless of clocks. I am sure this is something you will have experienced frequently in your own lives, depending on which side of the bathroom door you found yourselves. In Andrew's case, time expanded in his mind, creating an eternity out of a few seconds. I am going to describe the scene from that perspective, and therefore ask you not to blame my inept storytelling for the discrepancies you will no doubt perceive between the events and their correlation in time. pg. 61 — Felix J. Palma

Every difficult work presents us with a choice of whether to judge the author inept for not being clear, or ourselves stupid for not grasping what is going on. Montaigne encouraged us to blame the author. An incomprehensible prose-style is likely to have resulted more from laziness than cleverness; what reads easily is rarely so written ... — John Kennedy Toole

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

So far I have felt like a very inept slapstick performer." "Inept slapstick? Isn't that a bit redundant? — Neal Stephenson

If people are failing, they look inept. If people are succeeding, they look strong and good and competent. That's the 'halo effect.' Your first impression of a thing sets up your subsequent beliefs. If the company looks inept to you, you may assume everything else they do is inept. — Daniel Kahneman

Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so competent at everything else. — Letty Cottin Pogrebin

I'm really about as good at relaitionships as I am at being a vampire. I'm kind of a smart but surprisingly inept kind of girl. — Chloe Neill

Intellectual cowardice is only one of the problems of the academic community. Fort rubbed their
noses in the swill generated by their gibberish and illiteracy. It was no secret then or now that
academic publications are designed to protect the inept and to conceal ignorance. People with
nothing to say, who even lack the ability to say nothing, can hide behind the academic method for a
lifetime. — John A. Keel

Take one sexually inept wage-slave,'" she went on, "'one dissatisfied female, two or (if preferred) three small television-addicts; marinate in a mixture of Freudism and dilute Christianity; then bottle up tightly in a four-room flat and stew for fifteen years in their own juice. — Aldous Huxley

He's a rather brilliant defensive tactician," Grimm said. "I agree," Bayard said. "The problem is that he's an inept defensive strategist. — Jim Butcher

The powers of nature are so great, and our power is so inept. So,in order to cope with the incredible anxiety that human self-consciousness produced, I think we created God in our own image, and then portrayed this God as having supernatural power that we didn't have. — John Shelby Spong

But he recognized that the illusions of the child only differed from those of the man in that they were more picturesque; belief in fairies and belief in the Stock Exchange as bestowers of happiness were equally vain, but the latter form of faith was ugly as well as inept. — Arthur Machen

But at the same time, in reality, what a difference there is between the world today, and what it used to be! And with the passage of more time, some two or three hundred years, say, people will look back at our own times with horror, or with sneering laughter, because all of our present day life will appear so clumsy, and burdensome, extraordinarily inept and strange. Yes, certainly, what a life it will be then, what a life! — Anton Chekhov

Should I be offended? (Livia)
Please don't be. I pride myself on being socially inept. But the only people I ever intentionally offend are my bevy of brothers. And speaking of, where's Big Bad Angry One? (Zarina) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Political journalists, socially inept or no, are not nerds. Most of them can't do math, a fact that campaigns and politicians regularly exploit. — Alex Pareene

Ultimately, any type of discipline is flawed because it keeps the person who is being disciplined inept. As long as the experience is happening to you, while it is imposed on you, it is not your dream. When discipline is administered externally, the participant is dependent on the administrator of the discipline. When discipline is administered internally, the athlete becomes a victim of the structure of the discipline. Either way, only the discipline, not the dream, is being pursued. — Cecile Reynaud

All the players looked absurdly inept, as though they were expressly drafted to be humiliated, entrepreneurs in the industry of losing. — Aleksandar Hemon

She had never been a proficient flirt. Her spasms of kittenish behaviour were graceless and inept, like normal conversation on roller skates. but the combination of the retsina and sun made Emma feel sentimental and light-headed. She reached for her roller skates. — David Nicholls

I'm very disappointed with the McCain campaign. In my opinion, it was inept. — Paul Broun

I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded, yielding nothing tangible. Her inept acrostics, maudlin evasions, theopathies - every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything seemed yellowly blurred, illusive, lost. — Vladimir Nabokov

I saw the figure of 178 Billion wasted/stolen from the people of a country by its corrupt and inept government. Such a figure could truly transform the entire country; education, health, roads, schooling, entrepreneurial environment ... of millions of people, rather than be secreted away as a few more 0000's in global bank accounts for the greeders.
We need to Rethink Public Service, Values, Ethics and Leadership. — Tony Dovale

All I want to say is that when you stop being delusional and start feeling desperate because you're too inept to figure this out on your own, you know who to come to. — Veronica Roth

Under the all-encompassing aid system, too many places in Africa continue to flounder under inept, corrupt and despotic regimes who spend their time courting and catering to the demands of the army of aid organizations. — Dambisa Moyo

I dislike a picture that is too suave or too skilfully done. But, contrariwise, I also dislike a picture that looks too inept or blundering. — Robert Motherwell

One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for may people, is not that he's socially inept - because everybody's been there - but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it. — Neal Stephenson

The Samoan puts the burden of amatory success upon the man and believes that women need more initiating, more time for maturing of sexual feeling. A man who fails to satisfy a woman is looked upon as a clumsy, inept blunderer. — Margaret Mead

In societies that worship money and success, the losers become objects of scorn. Those who work the hardest for the least are called lazy. Those forced to live in substandard housing are thought to be the authors of substandard lives. Those who do not finish high school or cannot afford to go to college are considered deficient or inept. — Michael Parenti

Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept. — Agnes Repplier

Girls would say: "I have a boyfriend for that." So in addition to putting their pleasure literally into someone else's hands - an inept teenage boy - these are the same girls who say they do not climax with a partner. It's the opposite with boys; they say because they can do that themselves, girls should perform oral sex. — Peggy Orenstein

Noah's mom and dad were academics and socially inept, so Noah had never invited her over to his house because his parents wouldn't like it. And Eden had never invited Noah over to her house because she didn't want him to die. — Samantha Young

She was as inept at causing pain as she was at giving pleasure. Strange lioness, indeed! She thought she possessed claws, but when she tried to bare them, nothing emerged from her magnificent velvet paws. Her scratches were of velvet! — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

She wasn't religious. She didn't believe in heaven or hell, only in ghosts, Ouija boards, tables which rapped and little inept voices speaking plaintively of flowers — Graham Greene

Among equals gratitude is reciprocal; her gratitude to these Titans, who called themselves average and were unaware of their own tremendous strength in being able to live, only made her feel more lost, inept, and lonely than ever. — Joanne Greenberg

Parisians are so besotted, so silly and so naturally inept that a street player, a seller of indulgences, a mule with its cymbals,a fiddler in the middle of a crossroads, will draw more people than would a good Evangelist preacher. — Francois Rabelais

In subtle ways, Professor Vaughn showed us how to pay the land its due respect. He was patient with us if we tied an inept half hitch or ran the jeep into quick mud, but he bristled if we complained too much about the heat, or the smell of the cattle tank we used for a bath, or joked sarcastically about the social life of some small town. At the university, he lectured with such precision and speed that two students often teamed up for note taking. But stopped out on some two-track road in Jornada del Muerto, he could chew on a shaft of grass for an hour, languidly exchanging philosophy with a local cowboy. The professor even adopted a slower, lulling speech pattern in the field, and used local phrases liberally.

Time moved slowly in the desert and we were expected to fall into that rhythm. — Michael Novacek

Romney was proving an inept candidate - incapable of connecting with voters, inspiring conservatives, or restraining himself from planting his penny loafers in his piehole - was no surprise. What troubled them more was that Mitt was winning only by burying his rivals in an avalanche of money and manure. — Anonymous

Simon said nothing, thinking of all the good men who'd died because this inept, faithless fool had been born a King's son. — Sharon Kay Penman

We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision. They are representatives of abstract forces who have reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of the past. There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers. The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident, inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push. — William S. Burroughs

The room was full of people. "Ninety-eight days," said the queen, folding her hands in her lap. "You said it would take six months." Eugenides picked at a nub in the coverlet. "I like to give myself a margin. When I can." "I didn't believe you," the queen admitted with a delicate smile. "Now you know better." The king smiled back. They might as well have been alone. The queen turned her head to listen. There was shouting in the guardroom. Costis tensed. His hand went to his belt, looking for his sword. "That will be Dite," said the king. "He must have been in the outer rooms. I may as well see him." The queen rose and stepped behind the embroidered screen in front of the fireplace. Her attendants withdrew. The king's attendants remained, digesting the fact that their helpless, inept king had promised his wife to destroy the house of Erondites in six months and had done it in ninety-eight days. — Megan Whalen Turner

Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that techincally inept business types are known as suits. — Paul Graham

I gave myself a good talking to. I could not turn into an inept idiot, because some guy hadn't accepted my apology ... To hell with him. I was Joss Butler. I took shit from no Man! -Chapter 16 — Samantha Young

He would be sad to learn that she had dismissed God long ago, as she would have dismissed an inept servant. — Margaret Weis

One place that I really feel comfortable is being a comedienne. I'm very socially inept. There's so many things that I can not do in life, and this is, like, the one thing that I have mastery over. It's my world. And anybody who's coming to the show, it's like they're coming because they know that this is my world. — Margaret Cho

She was socially inept, an affliction I am quite intimate with. — Rabih Alameddine

When you're younger, you see the people who are in power and think they must have that position because of some degree of skill. And as you get older, you realize it's not true, that most people in those positions are absolutely inept. And this naturally makes you feel better about yourself. — Morrissey

Henry David Thoreau, Susan B. Anthony, W. E. B. DuBois, and Lyndon B. Johnson are just a few of the famous Americans who taught. They resisted the fantasy of educators as saints or saviors, and understood teaching as a job in which the potential for children's intellectual transcendence and social mobility, though always present, is limited by real-world concerns such as poor training, low pay, inadequate supplies, inept administration, and impoverished students and families. These teachers' stories, and those of less well-known teachers, propel this history forward and help us understand why American teaching has evolved into such a peculiar profession, one attacked and admired in equal proportion. — Dana Goldstein

Over the years, we met every kind of person imaginable. But no one makes worse first impressions than writers. — Brian K. Vaughan

Encyclopedia-selling was known to be the last resort of the feckless, the inept, and the desperate — Margaret Atwood

Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept? — Frank Herbert

Those secrets residing in their hearts and minds held magnificent Energy. Humans were too inept to see it as anything but evil. — Auden Johnson

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable. — Oscar Wilde

I've never raped or killed anybody, or hurt a kid. I've done all the more inept, high-volume stuff - like, "Whoops, sorry I came in your hair. Don't worry, I won't use your name when I tell this story on stage." — Henry Rollins

It took me thirty-six years; and, in some fifty stories, ranging in length from short-shorts to novels, I think I must have touched, in one way or another, on every aspect of computers and computerization. And (mark this!) I did it without ever knowing anything at all about computers in any real sense. To this day, I don't. I am totally inept with machinery ... on my typewriter I turn out books at the contemptible rate of one a month — Isaac Asimov

If you must be Sherlock Holmes," she observed, "I'll get you a nice little syringe and a bottle labelled cocaine, but for God's sake leave that violin alone. — Agatha Christie

The government is somewhat inept, but the private sector is inept in general. How many companies do venture capitalists invest in that go poorly? By far most of them. However, every once in a while a Google or a Microsoft comes out, so people keep giving them money. — Bill Gates

Self-promotion has never been a point, and I'm incredibly inept at self-promotion. — Jeremy Davies

Most technology companies are culturally inept. They're never going to get curation right. — Jimmy Iovine

The United States has been utilizing what may prove to be the most historically inept strategy in the entire history of warfare, in which the enemy nations are occupied while allowing its own territory to be colonized. — Theodore Beale

Wonder Woman completely eschewed a damsel in distress role by instead being a superhero of unparalleled skill, and the inversion of the typical gender roles didn't stop there. Like her superhero peers, Wonder Woman had her own damsel in distress, a fawning love interest who always got captured and had to be rescued. "Her" name was Steve Trevor. A major in the US Air Force, Steve was a highly decorated pilot who was often called on to perform important secret missions. He appeared to be the quintessential American hero and was drawn that way by H. G. Peter, with a strong jaw, muscular build, and handsome face. However, the man was entirely inept. — Anonymous

Fear transforms your body like an inept sculptor does a perfect block of stone...It's just that you're chipped away at from within, and no one sees how many splinters and layers have been taken off you. You become ever thinner and more brittle inside, until eve the slightest emotion bowls you over. One hug, and you think you're going to shatter and be lost. — Nina George

Subtle brain differences often cause people like me to respond differently - strangely even - to common life situations. Most of us have a hard time with social situations; some of us feel downright crippled. We get frustrated because we're so good at some things, while being completely inept at others. There's just no balance. It's a very difficult way to live, because our strengths seem to contrast so sharply with our weaknesses. "You read so well, and you're so smart! I can't believe you can't do what I told you. You must be faking!" I heard that a lot as a kid. — John Elder Robison

I did not like being dependent on others, found it hard to trust them, and was very inept at expressing my feelings. — Marie Kondo

As the shift in valuable skills continues, organizations are finding not only that they have no jobs for the disengaged and socially inept, but that such people are toxic to the enterprise and must be removed. — Geoff Colvin

There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book takes the reader into a new world of experience; it is an experiment. A bad book, unless the writing is inept, reinforces the intransigent attitude of the reader not to experiment with a new world. Since there are criminals and psychopaths and sociopaths in all my novels they are in a way psychological thrillers. — John Franklin Bardin

What a joy walking is. All the cares of life, all the hopeless, inept fuckwits that God has strewn along the Bill Bryson Highway of Life suddenly seem far away and harmless, and the world becomes tranquil and welcoming and good. — Bill Bryson

My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees. — Douglas Adams

Ooh, it's too embarrassing to share my innermost romantic secrets - although I have written Danielle the odd poem. If anything they are more comedic than romantic. They used to be well-received but that was before she started studying Shakespeare at drama college. Now I feel so inept. — Gary Lineker

King Arthur is profoundly stupid and inept.. then there's Clive Owen, rising above it all. Aloof yet watchful, the actor cultivates an inner stillness that is perfect for faintly ironic brooders. He neither distances himself from this risible material nor pulls out the stops and opens himself to ridicule. His King Arthur tells us little about Arthur, but much about protecting one's flank. The mark of a box-office king? — David Edelstein

The greatest scandal of the century in American psychiatry ... is the growing mania among thousands of inept therapists, family counselors, and social workers for arousing false memories of childhoood sexual abuse. — Martin Gardner

The Israelis are very smart about politics and strategy, but there are a few exceptions. One is Lebanon, the other is Gaza, where they were completely inept. — Daniel Pipes

The good news, to relieve all this gloom, is that a democracy is inherently self-correcting. Here, the people are sovereign. Inept political leaders can be replaced. Foolish policies can be changed. Disastrous mistakes can be reversed. — Theodore C. Sorensen

I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. What I do, in my opinion, is by no means extraordinary. — Billy Joel

If you bound the arms and legs of gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him down with chains, threw him in a pool and he sank, you wouldn't call it a 'failure of swimming.' So, when markets have been weighted down by inept and excessive regulation, why call this a 'failure of capitalism'? — Peter Boettke

The most important quality of an inept person is to rely on popular belief and hearsay. — Marie De Gournay

Monarchs have a great weakness, however, for their own sons, no matter how feckless and inept. A statistical study should be done across cultures assessing the relative frequency of the bizarre outcomes to which monarchical succession is prone: failure to provide an heir or successor, provision of an heir completely inept, or division of rule among several incompatible ones. Orderly succession followed by a successful reign is the exception. — James J. O'Donnell

Twas such a useless thing. And so unnecessary. Many had suffered for the actions of a few. Wasn't that always the way of things? The collective suffered for the actions of an inept, ineffectual leader. — Maya Banks

Arcadius was nothing but an old hack, what Cenzars used to refer to as a faquin, an elven term for the most inept magician - knowledge without talent. — Michael J. Sullivan

Restaurants are minefields for the socially inept — Graeme Simsion

Many are saved from sin by being so inept at it. — Mignon McLaughlin

I don't like to think that I am a slave to technique, or so inept that I have to restrict myself to one method. — Walter J. Phillips

Her efforts received encouragement. In fact, they were welcomed as the Tallises began to understand that the baby of the family possessed a strange mind and a facility with words. The long afternoons she spent browsing through the dictionary and thesaurus made for constructions that were inept, but hauntingly so: the coins a villain concealed in his pocket were 'esoteric,' a hoodlum caught stealing a car wept in 'shameless auto-exculpation,' the heroine on her thoroughbred stallion made a 'cursory' journey through the night, the king's furrowed brow was the 'hieroglyph' of his displeasure. — Ian McEwan

Catholics believe that the Pope will never lead the Church into error, at least in his doctrinal formulations of matters of faith and morals. History well attests that popes can be corrupt, inept, and imprudent; but they have never - so Catholics claim - proposed as a matter of belief anything contrary to faith (CCC 890). Besides this, Catholics think there are purely logical reasons for why such a thing as a Magisterium is necessary. For the — Ryan N.S. Topping

Young people have this almost romantic attachment to civil rights, liberties, emancipating people from oppression, etc. The idea that such oppression exists in this country offends me, but it's able to be pushed and sold because education in this country is so woefully incompetent and inept. — Rush Limbaugh

And not only narrativity but the quality of the writing is of the first importance to me. Rightly or not, I believe a dull, inept style signals poverty or incompleteness of thought. I see the accuracy, scope, and quality of Darwin's intellect directly expressed in the clarity, strength, and vitality of his writing - the beauty of it. — Ursula K. Le Guin

He suddenly began to look wretched, much as I had seen him look as a schoolboy: lonely: awkward: unpopular: odd; no longer the self-confident businessman into which he had grown. His face now brought back the days when one used to watch him plodding off through the drizzle to undertake the long, solitary runs across the dismal fields beyond the sewage farms: runs which were to train him for teams in which he was never included. — Anthony Powell

Inept lying was almost as good as honesty. — Graham Moore

But mainly, he hates that he didn't get there in time to save you."
... "He did save me." My voice sounds inept.
Jack shakes his head, gently. "No love, not in the way he wishes. — Samantha Towle

It was crazy: marriage. You gave your whole life, your whole happiness, over to one other human being, even the best of them inept at times, prone to reach for some other fulfillment, some other pleasure. — Anne Taylor Fleming