Imbeciles Quotes - Page 4

• Truth exists. The sole purpose of this proposition is to assert the existence of truth against imbeciles and sceptics.

  Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury

  Truth, Purpose, Sole

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• What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?

  Blaise Pascal

  Truth, Pride, Men

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• So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.

  Herman Melville

  Hope, Heart, Cutting

  Herman Melville, General Press (2016). “Moby Dick”, p.242, GENERAL PRESS

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• ""Dear girl," continued Bob advancing with an imbecile grin upon his countenance, which he imagined no doubt to be a seductive smile, "fly with me! Be mine! Share with me the wild free life of a barrister! Say that you return the love which consumes my heart - oh, say it!" Here Bob put his hand over a hole in his waistcoat and struck a dramatic attitude.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Girl, Attitude, Humorous

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, John Michael Gibson, Richard Lancelyn Green (1982). “Uncollected stories”, Harvill Secker

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• There is no supernatural, there is only nature. Nature alone exists and contains all. All is. There is the part of nature that we perceive, and the part of nature that we do not perceive. ... If you abandon these facts, beware; charlatans will light upon them, also the imbecile. There is no mean: science, or ignorance. If science does not want these facts, ignorance will take them up. You have refused to enlarge human intelligence, you augment human stupidity. When Laplace withdraws Cagliostro appears.

  Victor Hugo

  Nature, Ignorance, Mean

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• Jazz: Music invented for the torture of imbeciles.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Sarcastic, Jazz, Torture

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• The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.

  Joseph Conrad

  Thinking, Air, Ivory

  Joseph Conrad (2002). “Heart of Darkness and Other Tales”, p.125, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.'s if possible.

  R. D. Laing

  Children, Fool, Dirty Minds

  "The Politics of Experience". Book by Ronald David Laing, p. 58, 1967.

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• Christianity is an old metaphysical fiction, stuffed with fables, contradictions and absurdities: it was spawned in the fevered imagination of the Orientals, and then spread to our Europe, where some fanatics espoused it, where some intriguers pretended to be convinced by it and where some imbeciles actually believed it.

  Frederick The Great

  Europe, Imagination, Fiction

  Attributed to Frederick II of Prussia in "Civilization: The West and the Rest", Book by Niall Ferguson, 2011.

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• The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Atheist, Imagine, Proof

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.71, Random House

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• Men have always been a prey to distractions, which arethe original sins of the mind; but never before today has an attempt been made to organize and exploit distractions, to make of them, because of their economic importance, the core and vital center of human life, to idealize them as the highest manifestations of mental activity. Ours is an age of systematized irrelevances, and the imbecile within us has become one of the Titans, upon whose shoulders rests the weight of the social and economic system

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Irrelevance, Origin Of Life

  Aldous Huxley (1992). “Huxley and God: essays”, Harpercollins

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• Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.

  Noam Chomsky

  Ideas

  Interview with David Samuels, chomsky.info. November 12, 2010.

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• One of the most visible effects of a child's presence in the household is to turn the worthy parents into complete idiots when, without him, they would perhaps have remained mere imbeciles.

  Georges Courteline

  Children, Parent, Idiot

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• To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events.

  David Hume

  Stupidity, Events, Ordinary

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• An author who gives a manager or publisher any rights in his work except those immediately and specifically required for its publication or performance is for business purposes an imbecile.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Rights, Giving, Purpose

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• Hercule Poirot: I am an imbecile. I see only half of the picture. Miss Lemon: I don't even see that.

  Agatha Christie

  Missing, Half, Hercule Poirot

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• As 99 per cent of English authors and 100 per cent of American ones [authors] are just such imbeciles, managers and publishers make a practice of asking for every right the author possesses.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Practice, Asking, Cents

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• My dear creature, I have done with all debate. But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either MY COUNTRY, RIGHT OR WRONG, which is infamous, or MY COUNTRY IS ALWAYS RIGHT, which is imbecile.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Country, Mean, Jingoism

  Patrick O'Brian (1990). “Master and Commander (Vol. Book 1)”, p.194, W. W. Norton & Company

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• He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Brave, Bulldogs, Lobster

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2015). “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, p.36, Zillmann Publishing

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• It was stealing her breath, imbecile. Go get a towel." -Christophe, Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow

  Lilith Saintcrow

  Angel, Crow, Towels

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• Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will. Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race. What crimes would have been spared the world, if they had choked the first imbecile who thought of speaking of you.

  Marquis de Sade

  War, Men, Race

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• IMBECILE!" the chef shouted. "Next time why don't you just put your whole HAND in the food, hey? Yes, your whole hand, or maybe your FACE! I arrange the food on plates with care, are you understanding what I am telling you? It is part of the art form of cooking, yes? A lovely plate of food is a thing of beauty! And then you, NUMBSKULL, come along and put your fat greasy FINGERS all over my plate, and SHAKE the plate, and move my food all around the plate until it looks like pigs' vomit!" "Chef Vlad!" I cried out in delight.

  Kenneth Oppel

  Art, Moving, Pigs

  Kenneth Oppel (2009). “Skybreaker”, p.40, Harper Collins

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• It seems to us that in intelligence there is a fundamental faculty, the alteration or the lack of which, is of the utmost importance for practical life. This faculty is judgment, otherwise called good sense, practical sense, initiative, the faculty of adapting one's self to circumstances. A person may be a moron or an imbecile if he is lacking in judgment; but with good judgment he can never be either. Indeed the rest of the intellectual faculties seem of little importance in comparison with judgment.

  Alfred Binet

  Self, Intellectual, Fundamentals

  "The development of intelligence in children" by Alfred Binet, Théodore Simon, translated by Elizabeth S. Kite, Reprinted 1973, New York: Arno Press, (pp. 42-43), 1983.

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• Anyone who calls my music "impressionist" is an imbecile.

  Claude Debussy

  Impressionists

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• Only a f-kin imbecile would think they un-correctable, cause you're susceptible to becoming more than a spectacle.

  Immortal Technique

  Thinking, Causes, Becoming

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