Quotes4study

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.

Mark Twain

To which of the warring serpents should I turn with the problem that now faces me? It is easy, and tempting, to choose the god of Science. Now I would not for a moment have you suppose that I am one of those idiots who scorns Science, merely because it is always twisting and turning, and sometimes shedding its skin, like the serpent that is its symbol. It is a powerful god indeed but it is what the students of ancient gods called a shape-shifter, and sometimes a trickster.

Robertson Davies

Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity a total embrace of the entire Kosmos a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?

Ken Wilber

Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars, White, black, and gray, with all their trumpery.

JOHN MILTON. 1608-1674.     _Paradise Lost. Book iii. Line 474._

People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.

Bill Watterson

As to whether we can fulfil the moral law, I should say hardly any of us. Some of us are utterly incapable of fulfilling its plainest dictates. As there are men born physically cripples, and intellectually idiots, so there are some who are moral cripples and idiots, and can be kept straight not even by punishment. For these people there is nothing but shutting up, or extirpation.

T. H. Huxley     Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley

From stratagem to stratagem we run, / And he knows most who latest is undone; / An honest man will take a knave's advice, / But idiots only will be cozened twice.

_Dryden._

Your problem, Mario, is that you just don’t have the fucking brains for this shit. Takes a smart man to handle the dirty work of this world. Idiots are slowly weeded out, and it looks like your time’s up.

Nina Levine

There's no folk sic idiots as them that looks like geniuses.

_J. M. Barrie._

>Idiots only may be cozened twice.--_Dryden._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Rick Cook

It is a well known fact that warriors and wizards do not get along, because

one side considers the other side to be a collection of bloodthirsty idiots</p>

who can't walk and think at the same time, while the other side is naturally

suspicious of a body of men who mumble a lot and wear long dresses.  Oh, say

the wizards, if we're going to be like that, then, what about all those

studded collars and oiled muscles down at the Young Men's Pagan Association?

To which the heroes reply, that's a pretty good allegation from a bunch of

wimpsoes who won't go near a woman on account, can you believe it, of their

mystical power being sort of drained out.  Right, say the wizards, that just

about does it, you and your leather posing pouches.  Oh yeah, say the the

heroes, why don't you ...

        -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"

Fortune Cookie

In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made

school boards.

        -- Mark Twain

Fortune Cookie

    "You say there are two types of people?"

    "Yes, those who separate people into two groups and those that don't."

    "Wrong.  There are three groups:

        Those who separate people into three groups.

        Those who don't separate people into groups.

        Those who can't decide."

    "Wait a minute, what about people who separate people into two groups?"

    "Oh.  Okay, then there are four groups."

    "Aren't you then separating people into four groups?"

    "Yeah."

    "So then there's a fifth group, right?"

    "You know, the problem is these idiots who can't make up their minds."

Fortune Cookie

FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN:    #16

Relationships:

    First of all, a man does not call a relationship a relationship -- he

refers to it as "that time when me and Suzie were doing it on a semi-regular

basis".

    When a relationship ends, a woman will cry and pour her heart out to

her girlfriends, and she will write a poem titled "All Men Are Idiots".  Then

she will get on with her life.

    A man has a little more trouble letting go.  Six months after the

breakup, at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday night, he will call and say, "I just

wanted to let you know you ruined my life, and I'll never forgive you, and I

hate you, and you're a total floozy.  But I want you to know that there's

always a chance for us".  This is known as the "I Hate You / I Love You"

drunken phone call, that 99% if all men have made at least once.  There are

community colleges that offer courses to help men get over this need; alas,

these classes rarely prove effective.

Fortune Cookie

Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the

molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic.  A fourth affirms, with

Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether -- whose

existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A fifth

theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about

the matter than the others.

        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Fortune Cookie

IBM:

    I've Been Moved

    Idiots Become Managers

    Idiots Buy More

    Impossible to Buy Machine

    Incredibly Big Machine

    Industry's Biggest Mistake

    International Brotherhood of Mercenaries

    It Boggles the Mind

    It's Better Manually

    Itty-Bitty Machines

Fortune Cookie

<Knghtbrd> mariab - I am a Debian developer.  Red Hat is "the enemy" or

           something like that I guess..  Still, typecasting RH users as

           idiots or their distribution as completely broken by default

           is complete and total FUD.

Fortune Cookie

<xtifr> direct brain implants :)

<knghtbrd> xtifr - yah, then using computers would actually require some

           of these idiots to think!

<knghtbrd> ;>

Fortune Cookie

"I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour!  This is what

entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils."

        -- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson

Fortune Cookie

    Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she

lived with was made up of idiots.  Remember?  One of them was always

getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to

the farmhouse to alert the other ones.  She'd whimper and tug at their

sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do

you think something's wrong?  Do you think she wants us to follow her?

What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead

of every week.  What with all the time these people spent pinned under

the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever.

They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the

applications for.

        -- Dave Barry

Fortune Cookie

Technology is a constand battle between manufacturers producing bigger and

more idiot-proof systems and nature producing bigger and better idiots.

        -- Slashdot signature

Fortune Cookie

I am not … a "good man"! … And I'm not a bad man. … I am not a "hero" — and I'm definitely not a President — and no — I'm not an officer! … You know what I am? … I AM … an IDIOT! … with a box — and a screwdriver — passing through, helping out, learning. I don't need an army, I never have. …because love, it's not an emotion — Love is a promise!

Twelfth incarnation of the Doctor ~ in ~ Doctor Who

Vermouth always makes me brilliant unless it makes me idiotic.

E.F. Benson

One last thing,” said Beatty. “At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh? Well, Montag, take my word for it, I’ve had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They’re about nonexistent people, figments of imagination, if they’re fiction. And if they’re nonfiction, it’s worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another’s gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost.

Ray Bradbury

The bane of all that dread the Devil.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 1770-1850.     _The Idiot Boy._

I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.

Warren Edward Buffett

If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing him.

_Burke._

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

About Humor

It matters not whether our good-humour be construed by others into insensibility, or even idiotism; it is happiness to ourselves.

_Goldsmith._

I didn’t need you, you idiot. I picked you. And then you picked me back.

John Green

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

Charlie Chaplin

Persistence is useful, but there’s no point in being an idiot about it.

Scott Adams

Well, Hindsight, have you ever heard of the term Busy Idiot?

Jeremy Robert Johnson

"What do you take me for, an idiot?"

- General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life 's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _Macbeth. Act v. Sc. 5._

And Jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to cook for dinner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the table-cloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

It's hardly Mr. Clay's fault that you're an idiot.

Jen Turano

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no more! It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.

_Macb._, v. 5.

"So clear out," he says; "and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim _is_ your nigger—some idiots don't require documents—leastways I've heard there's such down South here. And when you tell him the handbill and the reward's bogus, maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting 'em out. Go 'long now, and tell him anything you want to; but mind you don't work your jaw any _between_ here and there."

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

When I was a kid I read these books, the Redwall books, fantasy books about a bunch of warrior mice, and the mice had this war cry that I always thought was cool: “Eulalia.” And like an idiot, that’s what I yelled off the Brooklyn Bridge: Eulaliaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Ned Vizzini

I am truly an idiot. I should have bargained with a marriage proposal before freeing you.” She leaned her forehead against the rung of the ladder, still shaking too much to trust herself. “No g-gentleman would push a lady in such circumstances,” she said through chattering teeth. “I am not a gentleman. I am a warrior, and we use whatever advantage we can get.” He gave her an affectionate slap on her rump. “What of it, Libby? I think you owe me a little something after this.

Elizabeth Camden

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

George Carlin

Four flips the gun in this hand, presses the barrel to Peter's forehead, and clicks a bullet into place. Peter freezes with his lips parted, the yawn dead in his mouth. "Wake. Up," Four snaps. "You are holding a loaded gun, you idiot. Act like it.

Veronica Roth

We have inherited an incredibly beautiful and complex garden, but the trouble is that we have been appallingly bad gardeners. We have not bothered to acquaint ourselves with the simplest principles of gardening. By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors.

Gerald Durrell

"May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?"

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

Fingunt se medicos quivis idiota, sacerdos, Jud?us, monachus, histrio, rasor, anus=--Any untrained person, priest, Jew, monk, playactor, barber, or old wife is ready to prescribe for you in sickness.

Proverb.

So basically, I'm like, who the fuck are you Maria Griffiths? A fucking idiot, is who.

Imogen Binnie

However, all his movements were purely mechanical, and he had interrupted none of the habitual preoccupations of his mind and labors. At that moment, he was thinking that the Manuel du Baccalaureat was a stupid book, and that it must have been drawn up by rare idiots, to allow of three tragedies of Racine and only one comedy of Moliere being analyzed therein as masterpieces of the human mind. There was a piercing whistling going on in his ears. As he approached the bench, he held fast to the folds in his coat, and fixed his eyes on the young girl. It seemed to him that she filled the entire extremity of the alley with a vague blue light.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

John Lennon

"Look here, Mr. Muishkin," shouted Hippolyte, "please understand that we are not fools, nor idiots, as your guests seem to imagine; these ladies who look upon us with such scorn, and especially this fine gentleman" (pointing to Evgenie Pavlovitch) "whom I have not the honour of knowing, though I think I have heard some talk about him--"

Fyodor Dostoyevsky     The Idiot

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

William Shakespeare

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

Mark Twain

Show me a good loser in professional sports and I'll show you an idiot.

Show me a good sportsman and I'll show you a player I'm looking to trade.

        -- Leo Durocher

Fortune Cookie

> I'm an idiot..  At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..

We need to find some new terms to describe the rest of us mere mortals

then.

        -- Craig Schlenter in response to Linus Torvalds's

Fortune Cookie

Vermouth always makes me brilliant unless it makes me idiotic.

        -- E. F. Benson

Fortune Cookie

The new Linux anthem will be "He's an idiot, but he's ok", as performed by

Monthy Python.  You'd better start practicing.

        -- Linus Torvalds, announcing another kernel patch

Fortune Cookie

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree

that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.

Fortune Cookie

_Statistics._--According to the census returns of 1901 the total number of persons described as idiots and imbeciles in England and Wales was 48,882, the equality of the sexes being remarkable, namely, 24,480 males and 24,402 females. Compared with the entire population the ratio is 1 idiot or imbecile to 665 persons, or 15 per 10,000 persons living. Whether the returns are defective, owing to the sensitiveness of persons who would desire to conceal the occurrence of idiocy in their families, we have no means of knowing; but such a feeling is no doubt likely to exist among those who look upon mental infirmity as humiliating, rather than, as one of the many physical evils which afflict humanity. Dr. Ireland estimates that there is 1 idiot or imbecile to every 500 persons in countries that have a census. The following table shows the number of idiots according to official returns of the various countries:-- Entry: IDIOCY

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 14, Slice 5 "Indole" to "Insanity"     1910-1911

The term _Imbecility_ has been conventionally employed to indicate the less profound degrees of idiocy, but in point of fact no distinct line of demarcation can be drawn between the conditions. As the scale of imbeciles ascends it is found that the condition is evidenced not so much by obtuseness as by irregularity of intellectual development. This serves to mark the difference between the extreme stupidity of the lowest of the healthy and the highest forms of the morbidly deprived type. The two conditions do not merge gradually one into the other. Absolute stupidity and sottishness mark many cases of idiocy, but only in the lowest type, where no dubiety of opinion can exist as to its nature, and in a manner which can never be mistaken for the dulness of the man who is less talented than the average of mankind. Where in theory the morbid (in the sense of deprivation) and the healthy types might be supposed to approach each other, in practice we find that, in fact, no debatable ground exists. The uniformity of dulness of the former stands in marked opposition to the irregularity of mental conformation in the latter. Comparatively speaking, there are few idiots or imbeciles who are uniformly deprived of mental power; some may be utterly sottish, living a mere vegetable existence, but every one must have heard of the quaint and crafty sayings of manifest idiots, indicating the presence of no mean power of applied observation. In institutions for the treatment of idiots and imbeciles, children are found not only able to read and write, but even capable of applying the simpler rules of arithmetic. A man may possess a very considerable meed of receptive faculty and yet be idiotic in respect of the power of application; he may be physically disabled from relation, and so be manifestly a deprived person, unfit to take a position in the world on the same platform as his fellows. Entry: IDIOCY

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 14, Slice 5 "Indole" to "Insanity"     1910-1911

Fog Lamps, n.:

    Excessively (often obnoxiously) bright lamps mounted on the fronts

    of automobiles; used on dry, clear nights to indicate that the

    driver's brain is in a fog.  See also "Idiot Lights".

Fortune Cookie

To generalize is to be an idiot.

        -- William Blake

Fortune Cookie

_Dreams of the Neuropathic, Insane, Idiots, &c._--Much attention has been given to the dreams of hysterical subjects. It appears that their dreams are specially liable to exercise an influence over their waking life, perhaps because they do not distinguish them, any more than their waking hallucinations, from reality. P. Janet maintains that the cause of hysteria may be sought in a dream. The dreams of the hysterical have a tendency to recur. Epileptic subjects dream less than the hysterical, and their dreams are seldom of a terrifying nature; certain dreams seem to take the place of an epileptic attack. Dreaming seems to be rare in idiots. De Sanctis divides paranoiacs into three classes: (a) those with systematized delusions, (b) those with frequent hallucinations, and (c) degenerates;--the dreams of the first class resemble their delusions; the second class is distinguished by the complexity of its dreams; the third by their vividness, by their delusions of megalomania, and by their influence on daily life. Alcoholic subjects have vivid and terrifying dreams, characterized by the frequent appearance of animals in them, and delirium tremens may originate during sleep. Entry: DREAM

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 7 "Drama" to "Dublin"     1910-1911

_Poor Law._--The following table gives the numbers in receipt of indoor and outdoor relief (exclusive of persons in institutions for the blind, deaf and dumb, and for idiots and imbeciles) in, the years 1902-1905, together with the total expenditure for relief of the poor:-- Entry: 3

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 14, Slice 7 "Ireland" to "Isabey, Jean Baptiste"     1910-1911

"Every group has a couple of experts.  And every group has at least one

>idiot.  Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained.  It's

sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all

of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated,

caustic twits."

        -- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet

Fortune Cookie

Overconfidence breeds error when we take for granted that the game will

continue on its normal course; when we fail to provide for an unusually

powerful resource -- a check, a sacrifice, a stalemate.  Afterwards the

victim may wail, `But who could have dreamt of such an idiotic-looking move?'

        -- Fred Reinfeld, "The Complete Chess Course"

Fortune Cookie

user, n.:

    The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."

        -- Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"

[I always thought "computer professional" was the phrase hackers used

 when they meant "idiot."  Ed.]

Fortune Cookie

This has been the subject of a great deal of research, but the results are not altogether conclusive; it seems, however, that, although the male brain is 4 to 5 oz. heavier than that of the female, its relative weight to that of the body is about the same in the two sexes. An average male brain weighs about 48 oz. and a female 43½ oz. The greatest absolute weight is found between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age in the male and a little later in the female. At birth the brain weighs comparatively much more than it does later on, its proportion to the body weight being about 1 to 6. At the tenth year it is about 1 to 14, at the twentieth 1 to 30, and after that about 1 to 36.5. In old age there is a further slight decrease in proportion. In many men of great intellectual eminence the brain weight has been large--Cuvier's brain weighed 64½ oz., Goodsir's 57½, for instance--but the exceptions are numerous. Brains over 60 oz. in weight are frequently found in quite undistinguished people, and even in idiots 60 oz. has been recorded. On the other hand, microcephalic idiots may have a brain as low as 10 or even 8½ oz., but it is doubtful whether normal intelligence is possible with a brain weighing less than 32 oz. The taller the individual the greater is his brain weight, but short people have proportionally heavier brains than tall. The weight of the cerebellum is usually one-eighth of that of the entire brain. Attempts have been made to estimate the surface area of the grey matter by dissecting it off and measuring it, and also by covering it with gold leaf and measuring that. The results, however, have not been conclusive. Entry: A

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Slice 4 "Bradford, William" to "Brequigny, Louis"     1910-1911

Index: