What isGrand isnecessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the idiot is not worth my care. ~William Blake
Idiot,dolt, anddullard are terms used for a mentally deficient person, or someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way. The similarly used termsmoron,imbecile, andcretin have all gained specialized meanings in modern times. An idiot is said to beidiotic, and to suffer fromidiocy. Adunce is an idiot who is specifically incapable of learning. An idiot differs from afool, who is considered unwise, or an ignoramus, who is simply uneducated (an ignorant person), neither of which refers to someone with low intelligence. Such words are sometimes used as mildly derisive terms of endearment as well as harshly critical insults. The wordidiot is derived from the Greek ἰδιώτης,idiōtēs ("person lacking professional skill", "a private citizen", "individual"), from ἴδιος,idios ("private", "one's own"). In Latin the wordidiot ("ordinary person, layman") preceded the Late Latin meaning "uneducated or ignorant person." Its modern meaning and form dates back to Middle English around the year 1300, from the Old Frenchidiote ("uneducated or ignorant person"). In Athenian democracy an idiot was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively withprivate — as opposed topublic — affairs.
If we've learned anything from the best-sellingDiary of a Wimpy Kid children's book series, it's that those who see themselves surrounded by idiots are usually idiots themselves.
It is paltryphilosophy if in the old-fashioned way one lays downrules andprinciples in total disregard ofmoralvalues. As soon as these appear one regards them as exceptions, which gives them a certain scientific status, and thus makes them into rules. Or againone may appeal togenius, which is above all rules; which amounts to admitting that rules are not only made for idiots, but are idiotic in themselves.
Carl von Clausewitz,On War (1832), Bk. 3, Ch 3: "Moral Factors", as translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret
All right! I confess, I confess. I confess to your being a bigger idiot than I thought.
Galileo was no idiot.Only an idiot could believe thatscience requires martyrdom — that may benecessary inreligion, but intime a scientific result will establish itself.
David Hilbert, in defense of Galileo's recantation of his discoveries before a tribunal of the Inquisition, as quoted inMathematical Circles Squared : A Third Collection of Mathematical Stories and Anecdotes (1972) by Howard Whitley Eves, p. 125
Qui autem dixerit fratri suo, Raca: reus erit concilio.
But whoever will have called his brother, 'Idiot,', shall be liable to the council.
Idiots are not responsible for what they do. The realguilt falls on rational people who sit on their hands while the morons run wild. You can opt out if you want to. Play it safe. But if you do, don’t complain when the roof comes down.
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.
Friedrich Nietzsche, as quoted inThe Seattle Massacre : The Ripper Case Series (2011) by J. J. Knight, p. vii
Out, out, briefcandle! 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, Signifyingnothing.
You know there’s no advantage to be gained by murdering idiots—it doesn’t teach the idiot anything and it might give onlookers the idea that you take them seriously.
The idiot heard the sounds, but they had nomeaning for him. He lived inside somewhere, apart, and the little link betweenword andsignificance hung broken.
Even if we accept, as the basic tenet of truedemocracy, that one moron is equal to onegenius, is itnecessary to go a further step and hold that two morons are better than one genius?
Leó Szilárd,The Voice of the Dolphins: And Other Stories (1961)
Variant translation:I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.
As quoted in "Some Szilardisms on War, Fame, Peace",LIFE magazine, Vol. 51, no. 9 (1 September 1961), p. 79
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French!We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their ownlanguage.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain, in a draft manuscript (c.1881), quoted inMark Twain: A Biography (1912) by Albert Bigelow Paine, p. 724
I'd always, you see, even in my earlyteens, had these problems — problems of suddenly waking up in the middle of the night and having this horrifying vision thatlife is completely meaningless. You know — just thinking about something like the depths ofspace, and realizing it's got to come to anend somewhere, but apparently it doesn't, and then suddenly getting this terriblefeeling that maybelife is a total delusion.G. K. Chesterton once said that in his teens he sawhell, and I really think I did too. I went through extreme depressions, glooms. There was one occasion on which I decided actually to commitsuicide. I'd got into this state — I was working as a lab assistant at the school, and what would happen was that I'd make tremendous efforts to push myself up to a level ofoptimism. I'd do it in the evenings by readingpoetry, thinking, writing in my journals, then I'd go back to the school the next day and blaaahhh, right down to the bottom again. This was the feeling ofThe Mind Parasites — there's something that waits until you've got lots ofenergy and just sucks you dry like avampire. This sudden feeling thatGod was making fun of me made me feel one day, "For God's sake, let's not have any more of thisnonsense. I'm damned if I'll be played about with like this. Let me kill myself." And immediately I felt this, I felt a curious sense of inner strength. So I went off to night school quite determined that what I was going to do was to take down the bottle of potassium cyanide from the reagent shelves and drink it. I knew that cyanide burns a hole in the bottom of the stomach and kills you within seconds. Well, I went into the classroom quite determined. There was a group gathered around the professor at the desk. I went over to the reagent shelves, I took down the bottle of potassium cyanide, I uncorked it, and as I started raising this to my lips I suddenly had an extremely clear vision of myself in a few seconds' time with an agonizingpain in the pit of my stomach, and at the same time I suddenly turned into two people.I don't mean that literally, but I mean that there was I, and there beside me was this silly, bloody little idiot called Colin Wilson who was in a state ofself-pity and about to kill himself, and I didn't give a damn whether thefool killed himself or not. The trouble was, if he killed himself he'd kill me too. And quite suddenly a terrific sense of overwhelminghappiness came over me. I corked up the bottle, put it on the shelf, and for the next few days was in total control of myemotions and everything else. I realized suddenly that you can achieve these states of control, provided that you put yourself in a crisis situation. And that's why throughoutThe Outsider I keep saying the outsider's salvation lies in extremes.
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