TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index I > Category: Idiot

Idiot Quotes (22 quotes)

Dilbert: Maybe I’m unlucky in love because I’m so knowledgeable about science that I intimidate people. Their intimidation becomes low self-esteem, then they reject me to protect their egos.
Dogbert: Occam’s Razor.
Dilbert: What is “Occam's Razor”?
Dogbert: A guy named Occam had a rule about the world. Basically he said that when there are multiple explanations for something the simplest explanation is usually correct. The simplest explanation for your poor love life is that you’re immensely unattractive.
Dilbert: Maybe Occam had another rule that specifically exempted this situation, but his house burned down with all his notes. Then he forgot.
Dogbert: Occam’s Razor.
Dilbert: I’m an idiot.
Dogbert: I don’t think we can rule it out at this point.
Dilbert comic strip (11 Jul 1993).
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Burn (99)  |  Correct (95)  |  Down (455)  |  Ego (17)  |  Exemption (3)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Forgetfulness (8)  |  House (143)  |  Intimidation (3)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Life (1870)  |  Love (328)  |  Low (86)  |  Luck (44)  |  Multiple (19)  |  Note (39)  |  Occam�s Razor (3)  |  People (1031)  |  Point (584)  |  Poor (139)  |  Protect (65)  |  Protection (41)  |  Reject (67)  |  Rejection (36)  |  Rule (307)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Esteem (7)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Situation (117)  |  Something (718)  |  Think (1122)  |  Unattractive (3)  |  Usually (176)  |  World (1850)

Newsreader: A huge asteroid could destroy Earth! And by coincidence, that's the subject of tonight's miniseries.
Dogbert: In science, researchers proved that this simple device can keep idiots off your television screen. [TV remote control] Click.
Dilbert cartoon strip (30 Apr 1993).
Science quotes on:  |  Asteroid (19)  |  Click (4)  |  Coincidence (20)  |  Control (182)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Device (71)  |  Earth (1076)  |  News (36)  |  Proof (304)  |  Remote (86)  |  Researcher (36)  |  Screen (8)  |  Simple (426)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Subject (543)  |  Television (33)  |  Tonight (9)

A man may be born a jackass; but it is his business if he makes himself a double one.
Science quotes on:  |  Business (156)  |  Himself (461)  |  Jackass (3)  |  Man (2252)

A man would have to be an idiot to write a book of laws for an apple tree telling it to bear apples and not thorns, seeing that the apple-tree will do it naturally and far better than any laws or teaching can prescribe.
On Secular Authority (1523). In Harro Höpfl (ed.), Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority (1991), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Apple (46)  |  Bear (162)  |  Better (493)  |  Book (413)  |  Do (1905)  |  Law (913)  |  Man (2252)  |  Natural (810)  |  Seeing (143)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Thorn (6)  |  Tree (269)  |  Will (2350)  |  Write (250)  |  Writing (192)

Break the chains of your prejudices and take up the torch of experience, and you will honour nature in the way she deserves, instead of drawing derogatory conclusions from the ignorance in which she has left you. Simply open your eyes and ignore what you cannot understand, and you will see that a labourer whose mind and knowledge extend no further than the edges of his furrow is no different essentially from the greatest genius, as would have been proved by dissecting the brains of Descartes and Newton; you will be convinced that the imbecile or the idiot are animals in human form, in the same way as the clever ape is a little man in another form; and that, since everything depends absolutely on differences in organisation, a well-constructed animal who has learnt astronomy can predict an eclipse, as he can predict recovery or death when his genius and good eyesight have benefited from some time at the school of Hippocrates and at patients' bedsides.
Machine Man (1747), in Ann Thomson (ed.), Machine Man and Other Writings (1996), 38.
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Ape (54)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Benefit (123)  |  Brain (281)  |  Break (109)  |  Clever (41)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Construct (129)  |  Death (406)  |  Depend (238)  |  Derogatory (3)  |  René Descartes (83)  |  Deserve (65)  |  Difference (355)  |  Different (595)  |  Drawing (56)  |  Eclipse (25)  |  Edge (51)  |  Everything (489)  |  Experience (494)  |  Extend (129)  |  Eye (440)  |  Eyesight (5)  |  Form (976)  |  Genius (301)  |  Good (906)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Hippocrates (49)  |  Honour (58)  |  Human (1512)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Ignore (52)  |  Imbecile (4)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Little (717)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Open (277)  |  Patient (209)  |  Predict (86)  |  Prejudice (96)  |  Recovery (24)  |  School (227)  |  See (1094)  |  Time (1911)  |  Torch (13)  |  Understand (648)  |  Way (1214)  |  Will (2350)

ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (1911), Vol. 7, The Devil's Dictionary,  88.
Science quotes on:  |  Dunce (2)  |  Ethnology (9)  |  Humour (116)  |  Lunatic (9)  |  Man (2252)  |  Tribe (26)  |  Various (205)

Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom—that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself.
As quoted, without citation, in Harold Eves, Mathematical Circles Squared (1971). Collected in Bill Swainson, The Encarta Book of Quotations (2000), 361.
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (615)  |  Establish (63)  |  Galileo Galilei (134)  |  Martyrdom (2)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Religion (369)  |  Require (229)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Result (700)  |  Science Requires (6)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Time (1911)  |  Will (2350)

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 [the doctors'] symbol.
From 'Can a Doctor Be a Humanist?' (1984). Collected in The Merry Heart: Reflections of Reading, Writing and the World of Books (1997), 98.
Science quotes on:  |  Doctor (191)  |  Merely (315)  |  Moment (260)  |  Scorn (12)  |  Serpent (5)  |  Shedding (3)  |  Skin (48)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Supposition (50)  |  Symbol (100)  |  Turning (5)  |  Twisting (3)

In 1945, therefore, I proved a sentimental fool; and Mr. Truman could safely have classified me among the whimpering idiots he did not wish admitted to the presidential office. For I felt that no man has the right to decree so much suffering, and that science, in providing and sharpening the knife and in upholding the ram, had incurred a guilt of which it will never get rid. It was at that time that the nexus between science and murder became clear to me. For several years after the somber event, between 1947 and 1952, I tried desperately to find a position in what then appeared to me as a bucolic Switzerland,—but I had no success.
Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life before Nature (1978), 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Biography (254)  |  Decree (9)  |  Event (222)  |  Find (1014)  |  Fool (121)  |  Guilt (13)  |  Knife (24)  |  Man (2252)  |  Never (1089)  |  Office (71)  |  Right (473)  |  Success (327)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Time (1911)  |  Will (2350)  |  Wish (216)  |  Year (963)

Knowledge is like a knife. In the hands of a well-balanced adult it is an instrument for good of inestimable value; but in the hands of a child, an idiot, a criminal, a drunkard or an insane man, it may cause havoc, misery, suffering and crime. Science and religion have this in common, that their noble aims, their power for good, have often, with wrong men, deteriorated into a boomerang to the human race.
In 'Applied Chemistry', Science (22 Oct 1915), New Series, 42, No. 1086, 548.
Science quotes on:  |  Adult (24)  |  Aim (175)  |  Cause (561)  |  Child (333)  |  Common (447)  |  Crime (39)  |  Criminal (18)  |  Deterioration (10)  |  Drunkard (8)  |  Good (906)  |  Havoc (7)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Inestimable (4)  |  Insanity (8)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Knife (24)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Man (2252)  |  Misery (31)  |  Noble (93)  |  Power (771)  |  Race (278)  |  Religion (369)  |  Sanity (9)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Value (393)  |  Wrong (246)

MOLECULE, n. The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. 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. The present trend of scientific thought is toward the theory of ions. The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion. A fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about the matter than the others.
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (1911), Vol. 7, The Devil's Dictionary,  220-221.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Closer (43)  |  Condensation (12)  |  Corpuscle (14)  |  Differ (88)  |  Distinguish (168)  |  Distinguished (84)  |  Doubtful (30)  |  Ether (37)  |  Existence (481)  |  Great (1610)  |  Humour (116)  |  Indivisible (22)  |  Ion (21)  |  Know (1538)  |  Matter (821)  |  Molecule (185)  |  More (2558)  |  Other (2233)  |  Precipitation (7)  |  Present (630)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Theory (24)  |  Scientific Thought (17)  |  Structure (365)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thought (995)  |  Trend (23)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Universe (900)

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.
In 'Maxims for Revolutionists: Education', in Man and Superman (1905), 230.
Science quotes on:  |  Being (1276)  |  Man (2252)  |  Pure (299)  |  Sense (785)  |  Specialist (33)

Not one idiot in a thousand has been entirely refractory to treatment, not one in a hundred has not been made more happy and healthy; more than thirty per cent have been taught to conform to social and moral law, and rendered capable of order, of good feeling, and of working like the third of a man; more than forty per cent have become capable of the ordinary transactions of life under friendly control, of understanding moral and social abstractions, of working like two-thirds of a man.
Quoted in Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography
Science quotes on:  |  Abstraction (48)  |  Become (821)  |  Capable (174)  |  Control (182)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Good (906)  |  Happy (108)  |  Healthy (70)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Law (913)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Moral (203)  |  More (2558)  |  Order (638)  |  Ordinary (167)  |  Psychology (166)  |  Refractory (3)  |  Render (96)  |  Social (261)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Transaction (13)  |  Treatment (135)  |  Two (936)  |  Understanding (527)

Only geniuses and idiots are mentally self-sufficient.
Unkempt Thoughts (1962), 73.
Science quotes on:  |  Genius (301)  |  Mentally (3)  |  Self (268)  |  Self-Sufficient (3)  |  Sufficient (133)

People in the computer industry use the term ‘user,’ which to them means ‘idiot.’.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Computer (131)  |  Industry (159)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  People (1031)  |  Term (357)  |  Use (771)  |  User (5)

Perseverance is the chief, but perseverance must have some practical end, or it does not avail the man possessing it. A person without a practical end in view becomes a crank or an idiot. Such persons fill our asylums.
In Orison Swett Marden, 'Bell Telephone Talk: Hints on Success by Alexander G. Bell', How They Succeeded: Life Stories of Successful Men Told by Themselves (1901), 32.
Science quotes on:  |  Asylum (5)  |  Become (821)  |  Chief (99)  |  Crank (18)  |  End (603)  |  Man (2252)  |  Must (1525)  |  Perseverance (24)  |  Person (366)  |  Practical (225)  |  View (496)

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.
Concluding sentence in 'History', collected in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1903), 41.
Science quotes on:  |  Antiquary (4)  |  Boy (100)  |  Child (333)  |  Dissection (35)  |  Farmer (35)  |  Indian (32)  |  Light (635)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nearer (45)  |  Read (308)  |  Stand (284)

The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, inconceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity.
In 'Introduction', The Annotated Alice (1974), viii.
Science quotes on:  |  Absurdity (34)  |  Appear (122)  |  Book (413)  |  Capable (174)  |  Complex (202)  |  Dance (35)  |  Find (1014)  |  Grotesque (6)  |  Gryphon (2)  |  Heart (243)  |  Illusion (68)  |  Inconceivable (13)  |  Last (425)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mad (54)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Metaphor (37)  |  Mock Turtle (2)  |  Moment (260)  |  Never (1089)  |  Never-Ending (3)  |  Nonsense (48)  |  Particle (200)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Reflect (39)  |  Tale (17)  |  Thing (1914)  |  View (496)  |  Wave (112)

The narrow slit through which the scientist, if he wants to be successful, must view nature constructs, if this goes on for a long time, his entire character; and, more often than not, he ends up becoming what the German language so appropriately calls a Fachidiot (professional idiot).
Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life before Nature (1978), 33.
Science quotes on:  |  Becoming (96)  |  Call (781)  |  Character (259)  |  Construct (129)  |  End (603)  |  German (37)  |  Language (308)  |  Long (778)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Professional (77)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Successful (134)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  View (496)  |  Want (504)

To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit. General knowledges are those knowledges that idiots possess.
Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Discourse II', Discourses (c.1808), as given in Geoffrey Keynes, Complete Writings (1957).
Science quotes on:  |  Alone (324)  |  Distinction (72)  |  General (521)  |  Generalize (19)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Merit (51)  |  Possess (157)

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.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Being (1276)  |  Brilliantly (2)  |  Creative (144)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fool (121)  |  Gigantic (40)  |  Hell (32)  |  Leap (57)  |  Line (100)  |  Most (1728)  |  Thin (18)

Why does man behave like perfect idiot? This is the problem I wish to deal with.
The Crazy Ape (1970), 11.
Science quotes on:  |  Behaviour (42)  |  Deal (192)  |  Dealing (11)  |  Man (2252)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Problem (731)  |  Why (491)  |  Wish (216)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.