Idiot Quotes - page 3

One of the most extraordinary things about industrial society of the present day is its idiot lack of memory. Tabloids and movies take the place of mental processes and revolts, crimes, despairs pass off in a dribble of vague words and rubber stamp phrases without leaving a scratch on the mind of the driven instalment-paying, subway-packing mass. (John Dos Passos)
Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot. View quote
Iain Banks
If we accept the Greek's definition of the idiot as an altogether private man, then we must conclude that many American citizens are now idiots. And I should not be surprised, although I don't know, if there were some such idiots even in Germany. View quote
C. Wright Mills
There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'. View quote
Larry Niven
We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal. View quote
Carl Bernstein
The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we [journalists], too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture! View quote
Carl Bernstein
You run into a party and [a] woman comes up to you. She's the most beautiful creature you ever saw - Ava Gardner - and says, "I like you and why don't we get together?" What are you going to say, "No"? You'd have to be an idiot. She was an incredible creature. View quote
Artie Shaw
Don't Keep reaching for the stars because you'll just look like an idiot stretching that way for no reason. View quote
Jimmy Fallon
The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this and every country but his own. View quote
W. S. Gilbert
I'm gonna be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender. Where the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender. And believe in whatever may lie in those things that money can buy, though true love could have been a contender. View quote
Jackson Browne
I object to being called a chess genius because I consider myself to be an all around genius who just happens to play chess, which is rather different. A piece of garbage like Kasparov might be called a chess genius, but he's like an idiot savant. Outside of chess he knows nothing. (Bobby Fischer)
Mechanical instruments, potentially a vehicle of rational human purposes, are scarcely a blessing when they enable the gossip of the village idiot and the deeds of the thug to be broadcast to a million people each day. View quote
Lewis Mumford
I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will. View quote
Warren Buffett
Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Only a complete moral idiot can believe for an instant that we are fighting against the wretched of the earth. We are fighting, as I said before, against the scum of the earth. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
A creature who is half an idiot, but who keeps a sharp look-out, and acts prudently all his life, often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of imagination. View quote
Stendhal
When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap. View quote
Cynthia Heimel
Working with a great director is wonderful for an actor because it means that you're not forced to take the advice of an idiot. View quote
Klaus Kinski
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. View quote
William Shakespeare
I was studying the sky like I was an astronomer, except it was daytime and I didn't have a telescope, so I was just an idiot. View quote
Sherman Alexie
A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares. (Igor Stravinsky)
Dr. Insulza is quite an idiot, a true idiot. The insipid Dr. Insulza should resign from the secretariat of the OAS for daring to play that role. View quote
Hugo Chávez
Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't. View quote
Friedrich Nietzsche
Even the brain, that most delicate and complex of all known organs, is not merely a lot of neurons added together. While a genius must have more of the gray matter than a sparrow, the idiot may have just as much as the genius. The difference between them must be explained in terms of how those substances are organized. View quote
Ervin László
English: Only a total idiot would think that a major channel is working to inform the audience. The channel sells product, it must be packaged. CNN, for example, is a colossal ideological tool in the West. An excellent example is the situation around Yugoslavia. How effectively a very civilized part of humankind was brainwashed! The question is in approaches. If a consumer "grubs" stale bread, nobody will offer him poppy-seed buns. I'm an absolutely engaged person. By myself. I have certain political views. I'm not a journalist. I practice political propaganda. I am a commentator, and if one comments on events without having one's own position, that's an unhealthy symptom. View quote
Mikhail Leontyev