There Are Two Kinds of People in the World

...The kind that puts everyone into two groups and everyone else.

Unfortunately, there are more than two kinds of There Are Two Kinds of People in the World jokes in the world: tautologies, false dichotomies, unitary groupings, and jokes. Only a sith deals in absolutes.

1. Tautologies: "There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who fit, and those who don't." Logically, this statement is self-evident: either you are, or you aren't. This has a few common variants;
   • "X, and everyone else", where the assertion is that X group is very special or important which is why it's noted separately.
2. False Dichotomies: "There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who like X, and those who have no taste." (Or "those who lie", "good/evil/normal people", etc.) To a humorless logician, these are just false. To everyone else, there are two kinds of this joke: the ones that fall flat and offend everyone, and the ones that are funny regardless.
   • "People who victimize others and people who are victims". This is usually spouted by The Social Darwinist or a similarly ruthless type, to justify why they constantly screw everyone over, convienently ignoring that you actually can defend yourself without becoming an aggressor.
   • "Masters and slaves/people who give orders and people who take them". This usually asserts that you shouldn't disobey, because anyone not in the first category must be in the second one, and also ignores people who are in both categories (a middle manager both gives and takes orders).
   • "People who fit in/follow the rules, and people who change the world". The assertion here, conversely, is that you should be bold and take risks. G.B. Shaw's quote in the Literature section below is one of the most famous of this type. The false dichotomy is that not everyone who ignores the rules succeeds in changing the world.
3. Unitary Groupings: "People who have had X happen to them, and people who will have X happen to them." The two or three groups are actually a single one divided into future, past, and sometimes present tense.^note Differs from a Tautology mainly in not truly being self-evident as defined: the hidden message here is that if you're part of group A, event B will happen to you.
4. Meta-jokes: "There are two kinds of people in the world: The kind who puts everyone into two groups, and everyone else". These play off of the structure of the phrase. Most of these, once the joke is understood, fall into one of two classes: A Tautology utilizing the theme of the joke or a Subversion of the phrase itself.

Compare With Us or Against Us, The Three Certainties in Life. See also My Friends... and Zoidberg, where this trope is modified into a more insulting form.

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Examples

Advertising

• For Volkswagen, Shaw's creed is paraphrased as "passengers" and "drivers", with the hope of encouraging more people to be drivers.

Anime and Manga

• Black Butler: Ciel to Joker at the end of Book of Circus.
  "Only two kinds of people exist in this world—those who steal and those who are stolen from. Today I am former; the person who has come to steal your futures away from you."
• Dragon Ball Z: "There are only two kinds of people: those who obey Freeza, and those who do not obey Freeza!"
• Sena from Haganai has this to say: "... There are two types of women. Ones that I can get along with, and all the other bitches. All those bitches who I can't get along with should just die..."
• According to Haruhi Suzumiya in Remote Island Syndrome, there are two kinds of people when you're in a mystery, those who are suspicious, and those who are suspicious for not being suspicious.
• Inu × Boku SS: Kagerou constantly declares that everything in the world, even inanimate objects, is either a sadist or a masochist.
• In Liar Game, Yokoya sees the two kinds of people as those who dominate, and those who are dominated.
• Naotsugu in Log Horizon believes with a passion that All Men Are Perverts and that they are either openly perverted like him or closet perverts.
• Parodied in Mr. Fullswing, where Amakuni says that there are two kinds of people in this world... those with clothes and those without. While that's, like, technically true, it means absolutely nothing.
• A variation appears in Outlaw Star:
  Hilda: Well, it's just like it is with the stars; there are bright ones, and there are those that are dim.
• In episode 4 of Samurai Champloo the Yakuza boss Rikiei states that there are two kinds of people in this world, the rulers and the ruled.
• Every single episode of Sands of Destruction does this as part of Idiosyncratic Episode Naming and also has a character say it as their Catchphrase. For instance, Episode 1 starts with a character saying "There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who want to destroy it, and those who want to protect it."
• Wake Up, Girls! begins with Mayu saying that there are three ways to make people happy: Those who make many people happy throughout the world, those who make the people around them happy, and those who make themselves happy.

Comic Books

• Batman: Earth One: In classic villain fashion, Oswald Cobblepot gloats to a captive Batman that there are two kinds of people in Gotham: predators and prey. Alfred points out a third kind that he's forgetting: survivors.
• The second Trickster's father's Master/Slave definition in The Flash:
  "There's two things you can be in life, Axel. Either you're the trickster, or you're the one gettin' tricked!"
• Preacher includes a scene where it is suggested that a person who likes Laurel and Hardy and hates Charlie Chaplin is a "stand up guy" while a person who prefers Chaplin "probably rapes sheep". This is supposed to parody a Tarantino line about whether you prefer Elvis to the Beatles.
  • And from another Garth Ennis series: "...People who like Clint Eastwood movies, and dweebs."
• In Superman's Pal: Jimmy Olsen (2019), Batman, irritated that Superman brought a civilian (even if he's an Action Survivor and Intrepid Reporter), says that only two kinds of people exist: soldiers and enemies. He strikes Jimmy's camera out of his hands and asks if he's an enemy, because he definitely doesn't look like a soldier. He swings away without giving anyone a chance to react, leaving Supes embarrassed that his attempt to introduce two of his friends went that poorly.
• From Y: The Last Man:
  Alter: There are only two kinds of people, those above the earth and those beneath it. Which side do you choose?

Fan Works

• In The Last Son Doctor Doom discusses the Master/Slave tautology with Superman:
  "Magneto told me of you... Kal-El. What you do not seem to understand is that, ultimately, there are only two kinds of people in this world: the kings, (gesturing himself) and everyone else. You, however, choose the way of the hero; you are not one of the riff-raff, yet you refuse to be a king. That, my alien friend, both intrigues and disturbs me."
• My Immortal seems to divide the entire population of its derailed Harry Potter-verse into "Goths" and "Preps." (And, occasionally, posers — preps who pretend to be goth but really aren't.)
• In New Hope University: Major In Murder, Dr. Eugene Alameda makes this point in his proposal for a killing game involving talented university students.
  "My father used to tell me that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who fear chaos and those who embrace it."
• In Hunter (UnwelcomeStorm), Sophia keeps thinking that the two kinds are predator and prey. Until she meets Taylor in Yharnam, who shows her the third kind: rabid beasts.

Films — Animated

• In Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea, the Big Bad says this phrase constantly, changing the actual contrast based on the current situation.
• The Bad Guys (2022):
  Snake: I'll give Marmalade this; at least he sees the world for what it is! A place where some people are scary, and some people are scared.

Films — Live-Action

• (500) Days of Summer: "There's only two kinds of people in the world. There's women. And there's men."
• V.I.N.CENT, the snarky robot from The Black Hole, believes there are three.
  V.I.N.CENT: There are three basic types, Mr. Pizer: the Wills, the Won'ts, and the Can'ts. The Wills accomplish everything, the Won'ts oppose everything, and the Can'ts won't try anything.
  Captain Holland: Well, do us all a favor, V.I.N.CENT, and try to be a Can't.
• In Blade Runner, Chief Bryant throws the master/slave comparison at Deckard when he tries to refuse a case;
  "Stop right where you are! You know the score, pal. If you're not cop, you're little people!"
• The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day: Rocco's Shaw is that are "talkers" and "do-er's", and that "it's the do-er's that change this world."
• The ButterCream Gang has the main character's ex-best friend say this line after he falls under a bad influence. "There are two people in the world: Your friends and your enemies." He doesn't seem to have anything in mind about people he's never met.
• Cowboys & Aliens": Shaw. "Only two kinds of men get shot: criminals and victims."
• A variation in Domino:
  Domino Harvey: There are three kinds of people in the world: the poor, the rich, and everyone in between.^note Also a pretty useless observation. What she's literally saying is "everybody fits somewhere in terms of wealth or lack thereof".
• The Elite Squad has a Shaw with Captain Nascimento's opening monologue:
  Nascimento: There are three kinds of policemen in Rio. Those who are corrupt, those who look the other way, and those who go to war.
• Faust: Love of the Damned: Claire, the devil's right hand and psychosexual sadist, claims that all women fulfill one of two roles: victim or whore. Female Misogynist doesn't begin to describe her.
• In Focus, Nicky says, "There's two kinds of people in this world. There's hammers and nails. You decide which one you want to be."
• Full Metal Jacket: "Only two things come out of Texas! Steers and queers!" Which comes with a Genius Bonus, since a steer could refer to a castrated bull.
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Probably the Trope Codifier.
  • Blondie and Tuco from have this kind of thing going:
    Tuco: There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those with a rope around their neck, and the people who have the job of doing the cutting.
  • Another one appears when Blondie kills the assassins hired by Tuco to take him out, only to be ambushed by Tuco himself.
    Tuco: There are two kinds of spurs in the world, my friend. Those that come by the door, and those that come through the window.
  • Blondie does a Call-Back to this after unloading Tuco's gun so that he could kill Angel Eyes in the final showdown:
    Blondie: You see, in this world, there's two kinds of people, my friend. Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Drax tells Peter that Gamora will never be with him because "There are two types of being in the universe—those who dance, and those who do not." Of course, Drax being Literal-Minded, this isn't an Ice-Cream Koan; he just means that Peter likes dancing and Gamora doesn't. He then tells Peter that he met his wife at a big village gathering where she was the only person besides himself who was not dancing.
• In Insomnia Dormer's landlord says There Are Two Kinds of People in Alaska: Those who were born there and those who come there to escape something. Dormer's landlord says this after hearing his confession - and that she wasn't born there - to tell him You Are Not Alone.
• Jurassic Park III A Shaw; "There are two kinds of boys: Astronauts and Astronomers" (kids who watch the sky, kids who dream of flying in it)
• In The Longest Day, during the battle for Omaha Beach, a ranking character dealing with getting the men off the beach and past the bunkers gives a variation on this trope: "Two kinds of people are staying on this beach! The dead and those that are going to die!"
• In the 1962 adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate, there's a subtle example, in that there are "Those that enter a room and turn the television set on, and those that enter a room and turn the television set off."
• The Matrix: Master/Slave. "Two kinds of people: Those with power, and those without."
• According to Janis from Mean Girls, "There are two kinds of evil people: People who do evil stuff and people who see evil stuff being done and don't do anything to stop it."
• In the film Nothing to Lose with Tim Robins and Martin Lawrence.
  Rig: There are two kinds of people in the world: Killers, and everybody else. Which one are you, huh?
  Nick: ...I'm married. (shoots Rig's gun)
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding. "There are two kinds of people in the world: Greeks, and people who wish they were Greeks."
• From Pink Flamingos:
  Connie: I guess there's just two kinds of people, Miss Sandstone, my kind of people and assholes. It's rather obvious which category you fit into. Have a nice day.
• The silent film The Plastic Age has an intertitle that informs us that, "There are two kinds of girls at every dance – those who prefer to dance – and those who prefer not to."
• Pulp Fiction: In a deleted scene, Mia Wallace states that the two types of people in the world are Elvis Presley fans and The Beatles fans. She guesses correctly that Vincent is an Elvis man. This scene is why, in the final scene, Jules gives the nickname "Ringo" to the British robber Pumpkin, revealing that he's a Beatles man.
• Early in The Right Stuff, Pancho Barnes uses one of these to take a couple overly cocky future astronauts down a peg.
  Pancho: I tell you, we got two categories of pilots around here. We got your prime pilots that get all the hot planes, and we got your pud-knockers who dream about getting the hot planes. Now what are you two pud-knockers gonna have?
• In Saturday Night Fever, there are two types of "girls", according to John Travolta's character. "You gotta decide now, Annette. Are you gonna put out? You're either gonna be a nice girl or a cunt."
• Star Wars: Obi-Wan's infamous line in Revenge of the Sith, "Only the Sith deal in absolutes!" combines this with bizarre hypocrisy. Not that bizarre hypocrisy is anything new for him. It's even more bizarre when you realize that the refusal to deal in absolutes is precisely what caused Anakin Skywalker to turn to the dark side. He believed Palpatine's rationalization that it was acceptable to employ the dark side of the Force if the outcome was a benevolent one (in this case, saving his wife).
• From the movie Dirty Work:
  Mitch: There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who get stomped on and those who do the stomping.
  Kathy: Where did you come up with that theory?
  Mitch: That famous guy said it. What's his name? Oh yeah, Jesus!
  • Probably this is from Lenin's slightly politer 'there are two kinds of people in this world: who and whom [those who do and those to whom it is done]'
• In the Japanese movie Swing Girls, a jock-ish minor character seems to start all his sentences this way, leaving the protagonists on the negative end, of course. It isn't until the swing band's penultimate performance that he changes his mind.
• Team America: World Police has three kinds of people in the world: dicks (who fuck everything), pussies (who get fucked by everything), and assholes (who shit on everything).
  Gary Johnston: We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes. Assholes who just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick with some balls. The problem with dicks is that sometimes they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate. And it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies get so full of shit that they become assholes themselves. Because pussies are only an inch and a half away from assholes. I don't know much in this crazy, crazy world, but I do know that if you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!
• The main character of What About Bob? says, "There are two types of people in this world: Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don't. My ex-wife loves him."
• In Zig Zag (2002), ZigZag thinks the two kinds are good eggs and fear heads, and distinguishing between the two is difficult but important.

Literature

By Author:

• "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw
• Humorist Robert Benchley once noted that there were two types of people in the world: people who believe that there are two types of people in the world, and people who don't.
  • This was parodied in Donald Westlake's short story Don't You Know There's A War On?, in which the inhabitants of a planet consist of two types of people: people who believe what Robert Benchley said about there being two types of people in the world, and people who don't.

By Title:

• From The Acts of Caine's Blade of Tyshalle :
  "You know what they say. There are two kinds of people in the world: people who say things like 'There are two kinds of people in the world', and people who know those first people are full of shit."
• Discworld:
  • From The Truth:
    It is said that there are two types of people in the world: those who look at a glass that is exactly half full and say, "This is glass is half full," and those who look at the same glass and say, "This glass is half empty." But the world is ruled by the people who look at the glass and say, "Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full. And I had a bigger glass!"
  • Detritus tries to do Full Metal Jacket in Men at Arms:
    Detritus: Only ... (counts fingers) only two-er things come from Slice Mountain. Rocks, an' ... an' other sorts of rocks!
• Azure Bonds from The Finder's Stone Trilogy has a good Shaw:
  Alias: Riding a wagon along protected trading routes in a guarded merchant caravan doesn't make you an adventurer. Until you've hiked more than twenty miles a day, slept in a ditch, and eaten something that tried to kill you first, you're not an adventurer. Anyone who isn't an adventurer is a greengrocer.
• Foucault's Pendulum claims there four kinds of people in the world: "cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics." Although at another point it goes for the more traditional two: "writers and editors".
• From The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis: There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done."
• Subverted in Harry Potter, where Sirius Black points out that the world isn't divided into good people and Death Eaters when Harry's suspecting Dolores Umbridge of being a Death Eater in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. He's right. Umbridge isn't a Death Eater, but she most certainly is not a good person either.
• The treecats from David Weber's Honorverse recognize two types of enemy: those who have been appropriately dealt with, and those who are still alive.
• Fisk tries to use this in the Knight and Rogue Series to describe what kind of nobleman Michael's father is, but can't help but admit that if he bothered to think about it he'd probably come up with at least thirty types.
• In David Langford's The Leaky Establishment there are two kinds of nuclear weapons scientists: the hawks ("We're gonna build something that'll wipe out the bad guys!") and ostriches ("Gosh, this is an interesting application of the theory, let's not think about why we're doing it"). (Well, three types: hawks, ostriches and Roger Pell.) The main character is an ostrich.
• Invincible from Legacy of the Force has Wedge Antilles, in hiding, hearing of his daughter Syal starting to date. He is not at all happy.
  "There are two types of male pilots. Good men, such as the ones I never tried to break or run out of my squadrons, whom I would shoot before I ever trusted them with my daughter. And worse men, whom I would shoot if I caught them looking at my daughter."
• Love in the Time of Cholera: Florentino Ariza recalls his godfather, a doctor, making a comment about Ariza's chronic constipation: that the world is divided between those who shit well, and those who shit badly.
• A classic Master/Slave from Rainsford in The Most Dangerous Game: "This world's divided into two kinds of people: the hunter and the hunted."
• From the Pendragon series book The Quillian Games. After being given a room with a clown motif.
  There are two kinds of people in this world. People who hate and fear clowns... and clowns.
• There's a Pokémon novelization which promisingly opened stating that there are two types of people in the world: people who catch and train Pokémon themselves and people who try to steal other people's Pokémon. The immediate audience reaction is: "What about those people who sit around and have no interest in Pokémon whatsoever?"
  • The Pokémon world revolves around Pokémon. It is still a False Dichotomy because there are plenty of people who just keep them as pets who are not actually trainers.
• The Way of Kings (2010) (first book of The Stormlight Archive): Kaladin's father, a surgeon, told him a Shaw; that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who save lives, and those who take lives. When Kaladin asks about people who save lives by taking lives, his father tells him, "That's like trying to stop a storm by blowing harder. Ridiculous. You can't protect by killing." Later in life, at his Despair Event Horizon, Kaladin concludes that there is a third kind of people: the victims whose lives exist to be killed or saved.
• In the Well World series, retired space pirate Serge Ortega asserts that the universe contains only three kinds of people — scoundrels, hypocrites, and sheep — and that he is therefore proud to be a scoundrel.

Live-Action TV

• In Season 2 of Better Call Saul, it's shown that Jimmy's Start of Darkness happened at a very young age. His father was very much Stupid Good and would give money and/or free items from his store to any obvious scammer with a barely-thought-out sob story that a literal child could see through, never once entertaining the thought that these stories might be made up and even reprimanding Jimmy (the aforementioned child) for trying to point it out. When one of these scammers was alone in the store with Jimmy, he told Jimmy that there are two kinds of people in the world: wolves and sheep. Jimmy from that point resolved to be a wolf, and not a sheep like his father.
• The Big Bang Theory, "The Graduation Deterioration":
  Howard: There are two kinds of people in this world: those who call tech support, and those who laugh at those who call tech support.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6. Master/Slave.
  Jonathan: It's true, my friends. The way I see it, life is like an interstellar journey. Some people go into hypersleep and travel at sub-light speeds, only to get where they're going after years of struggle, toil and hard, hard work. We, on the other hand ...
  Andrew: Blast through the space-time continuum in a wormhole?
  Jonathan: Gentlemen... [lights cigar with flaming bill] CRIME is our wormhole!
• In Castle, this is heard during the Opening Narration for all of Season Two.
  Richard Castle: There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people; psychopaths and mystery writers. I'm the kind that pays better.
• From Corner Gas episode, "Whiner Takes All":
  Hank: There are two kind of people in this world: losers, and those who lose to losers. And, my friends, you just lost to me!
• In Harry Enfield and Chums. Perry on an Oasis fanboy kick tells Kevin, "There's only two types of people, right? There's us and there's wankers."
• A Shaw from a season 7 episode of House: "There are two kinds of people: those who move on, and those who can't."
• On I Love Lucy, Fred tells Ricky: "There are two kinds of people in this world: The earners and the spenders, or as they are more popularly known: The husbands and the wives."
• This is Swartz's explanation to White Woz in Kamen Rider Zi-O
  Swartz: There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who make use of others and those who get used.
• The good people of Law & Order love this trope. Notable example; in the Fifth Season premiere (which introduced Jack McCoy and Detective Van Buren) the case involved a woman who died from a dangerous alternate treatment for breast cancer. Van Buren observed, "There are two kinds of women in this world; those who are afraid of getting breast cancer, and those who already have it."
• In The Magnificent Seven, an establishing character moment for Ezra in the pilot is when he describes the villagers and the Seven in these terms
  Ezra: "There are two kinds of people in this life, my friend. Those who seek battle and seem not to fear death...like them. And those who avoid battle, but will stand and fight to the death if their loved ones are threatened...like them. That is true courage."
  • Provides a Call-Back later, after he flees the fight to save his own skin, as he turns back toward the village and adds "and there's a third kind", obviously in reference to himself.
• T.H.R.U.S.H. in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is specifically the Master/Slave comparison;
  Napoleon Solo: T.H.R.U.S.H. believes in the two-party system — the masters and the slaves.
• Manipulative Bastard Tammy Swanson on Parks and Recreation: "There are two kinds of women in the world. There are women who work hard and stress out about doing the right thing, and then there are women who are cool."
• From the Pushing Daisies episode "Circus Circus", the French acrobat tells Ned and Emerson a Shaw; that there are two types of people in the world- circus performers, and "stubs", those that watch.
• Brian Kinney of Queer as Folk (US) fame puts a homophobic spin on this trope with the oft-referenced quote: "There are two kinds of straight people in the world: the ones that hate you to your face, and the ones that hate you behind your back."
• Red Dwarf, "Meltdown": When Rimmer is inspecting the troops, he tells St. Francis: "There's only two kinds from Assisi, steers and queers — which are you, boy?"
  • Which is, of course, homage to Full Metal Jacket in reference to things that come from Texas.
• The Sarah Jane Adventures:
  • In the first episode, "Invasion of the Bane", Sarah Jane tells Maria and Luke; "There are two types of people in this world. There are people who panic, and then there's us."
  • In "The Day of the Clown", she gives new recruit Rani a similar speech:
  Sarah Jane: When it comes to getting a true glimpse of the universe, there are two types of people: those who refuse to believe, that would tell themselves anything to deny the evidence of their eyes, and those that embrace the universe and just how special life is. I want it to stay that way by keeping it safe and secret.
  Rani: And that's me?
  Sarah Jane: That's all of us.
• Kristen Wiig's parody of Kathie Lee Gifford on Saturday Night Live: "You know, there's two types of people in the world; people that get it and people that don't. And the people that don't get it know who they are." [long silence]
• Smallville, "Fever". Chloe's dad told her [offscreen] there are two kinds of girls, the ones you grow out of, and the ones you grow into. Well, the second part is straightforward enough, but there are girls you can grow out of in the Smallville 'verse? Who knew kryptonite infections could be so kinky?

Music

• "Two kinds of people in this world. Winners, losers." - Lindsey Buckingham, "Go Insane".
• Britney Spears, "Circus":
  There's only two types of people in the world:
  The ones that entertain, and the ones that observe
  [...]
  There's only two types of guys out there:
  Ones that can hang with me, and ones that are scared
• Subverted by the Flight of the Conchords introduction to the song "A Kiss is Not a Contract":
  "There are two kinds of people in the world. I'm one kind..." "And I'm the other."
• The Magnetic Fields song "Two Kinds Of People".
  There are two kinds of people: A) My love and I, B) Other.
• "The Quick and The Dead" by Accept:
  There's two kinds of people... The Quick and the Dead.
• Meta-version in "There is a War" by Leonard Cohen:
  "There is a war between the ones who say there is a war/and the ones who say there isn't."
• Merle Haggard's "My Own Kind of Hat" is a variant.
• Townes Van Zandt was fond of introducing some of his more Tear Jerker-ish songs with "There are only two kinds of music, the blues and 'Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah'. This ain't 'Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah'."
• "There are two types of guitarists in the world: Those who admit to being influenced by Jimi Hendrix, and liars." - Brian Cox
• Bob Miller's "The Rich Man and the Poor Man":
  There's just two kinds of people, the sinner and the saint;
  There's one that gets and always got while the other poor one ain't.
• Kanye West’s “New Slaves”:
  You see there’s leaders and there’s followers but I’d rather be a dick than a swallower.
• Watsky’s “Pink Lemonade”:
  Someone wise once wrote "Our world's divided into two types of folk. Now there's the type of people who divide the world into different types of people and then there's the type who don't"

Pro Wrestling

• From The Road Warriors' post-match interview on the October 3, 1987 NWA World Championship Wrestling:
  HAWK: "WELL, Tony Schiavone, There Are Two Kinds Of People, as far as me and Animal are concerned. Clamheads and Neo-Maxi Zoom Dweebies."^note Here, the LOD were the Neo-Maxi Zoom Dweebies and the Clamheads were The Four Horsemen.
• In Vendetta Pro, Jeckles The Jester boiled down the types of people in the world to three. Freaks, people who think you're a freak and people who know you're a freak. (If that doesn't make sense, more context won't help)
• Arn Anderson states there are three types of men in the world. There are tough men, there are wrestler-tough men, and then there's Meng.

Puppet Shows

• In the French satiric show Les Guignols de l'Info, making this kind of statements is the main schtick of the puppet parodying Clint Eastwood, as a reference to his role in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Radio

• In the BBC Radio 4 comedy Absolute Power (BBC) (but not the TV version) Charles Prentiss has a variety of poetic versions to put down Maurice the waiter (usually after Maurice has corrected his pronunciation of Maurice).
• The Susan Calman is Convicted episode "Children":
  Susan:: The world is divided into two kinds of people. There's the kind who, when you show them a picture of a cat and say it's your child, simply nod and smile, and then there's the kind who say "But that's not a child. It's a cat." I don't like those people.

Theatre

• "The Way Things Are", the Villain Protagonist song from I Can Get It For You Wholesale.
  You're the catcher or the pitcher
  You're bamboozled or you get richer
  You get done to or you do it,
  That's the way things are.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: The title character, in the big showstopping Villain Song "Epiphany," explains his Omnicidal Maniac Master/Slave stance by noting that there are two types of people; both deserving of death due to the Crapsack World they live in - those who fill the world with pain, and those who suffer.
  Because in all of the whole human race, Mrs. Lovett,
  There are two kinds of men and only two.
  There's the one staying put in his proper place
  And the one with his foot in the other one's face!
  Look at me, Mrs. Lovett, look at you!
  No, we all deserve to die...
  Even you, Mrs Lovett, even I!
  Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief.
  For the rest of us death will be a relief.
  We all deserve to die...

Video Games

• In Alice in the Country of Hearts, Alice says there are "tow" types of people — the kind that "upsets in an emergency" and the kind that "becomes clam down". Alice seems to be the second type.
• Early in Assassin's Creed, Al Mualim states that the Assassins choose their victims based on if they commit evil acts out of genuine malevolence or not. In the endgame, Al Mualim is revealed to be a traitor and brainwashes nearly all the Assassins. While Altaïr kills him to stop his evil scheme, the lucid Assassins keep the brainwashed ones occupied while doing their best to avoid killing the men who are not in control of themselves.
  Al Mualim: Some do ill out of ignorance or fear. These men can be saved. Others suffer from corrupted wills, their minds poisoned and twisted. These men must be destroyed.
• About a quarter of Andrew Ryan's dialogue in BioShock is devoted to his personal interpretation of Shaw - that everyone can be divided into one of two groups: men (people in control of their destinies) and slaves (people who let others dictate their lives). "A man chooses, a slave obeys." On occasion, he also draws distinction between men (here defined as innovators and creators) and parasites (those who cannot create and instead use society, government, and religion to feed on the work of men).
• Jeremiah Fink in Bioshock Infinite has a similar philosophy, one where the three groups are all mentioned under a single speech. Lions (those who are trusted and entitled to be in control), Cow/Cattle (those whom the Lions are meant to control and do not seek control themselves), and Hyenas (anarchists, bandits, basically everything that Jeremiah Fink despises in a person).
• Both Vladof and Dahl radio ads in Borderlands 2 have variations on this phrase. Vladof claims the two kinds of people are the oppressors and the oppressed ("Which one are you?"); Dahl says the three kinds are people who need to be killed, the people who kill them, and the people who pay the 2nd group.
• In Escape from Monkey Island, Admiral Casaba claims that in his experience there are only two types of pirates. "Those who are committing acts of wanton savagery, and those planning to commit acts of wanton savagery! If you allow groups of the latter to congregate for any lengths of time, they inevitably transform into mobs of the former!"
• In Fallout 4 if the Sole Survivor's relationship with Hancock lowers, he'll have this to say:
  "There are two types of people in the Commonwealth: those that help and those who harm. And right now, you ain't helping!"
• According to Quina from Final Fantasy IX, there are only two things in this world: Things you can eat, and things you no can eat.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade: At the start of the chapter "Pale Flower of Darkness", Sonia says to Ursula that there are two types of people in the world, Ursula. "Those chosen to lead and those fit only to serve: human refuse". She considers herself the former, "a perfect specimen chosen by Lord Negal", and tells Ursula that to be like her she has to use the refuse to your advantage, "Treat them as equals and they will only drag you down".
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Tommy "The Nightmare" Smith's view on the world: "There's two kinds of people in this world: Those who like me... and those who can go to hell!"
  • Trevor Phillips of Grand Theft Auto V says at one point, "There are people who are useful to you and people who ain't, and the people who ain't got to go".
• Zeke Dunbar paraphrases Shaw prior to the finale of inFAMOUS 2:
  "The way I see it, there's basically two types of people. Most of them are guys like me. Guys that sit on the couch, we might not like the shit that happens to us, but we deal with it. Then there are guys like you."
• A disgruntled cook in Jade Empire puts it like this: "In this world, there are heroes, and there are people who clap as heroes walk by." Guess which one you are?
• LEGO Legends of Chima Online: The "Expand Your Land" post on the game's website has Longtooth say there are two types of Commanders when it comes to outposts: the ones who expand their territory and those who don't.
• In Max Payne 3, Max asserts that there are two types of people: those who spend their lives building a future, and those who spend their lives trying to rebuild the past. He also admits to being stuck somewhere in between.
• Murder in the Alps: When the protagonist writes about the shooting at the railroad traffic control building in her diary during Forgotten Memento, she concludes that in such an unforeseen epicenter of chaos, people can be divided into two camps: "the risk-blind, reckless responders with wannabe-hero syndrome" or "the risk-averse, keep-your-head-down-type Darwinists". She adds that neither are really wrong.
• Parodied in Mutant Football League:
  Player: There are two types of people in this world. But I'm the only one worth caring about.
• In Paper Mario: Color Splash, there's a Toad in Redpepper Crater drying himself off (shirtless) with a hair dryer. In the Spanish translation, if you talk to him, he says "There are two kinds of Toads in the world: those with no style... and me."
• In Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal, one trainer says "THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF MEN IN THE WORLD, SAVVY AND NOSAVVY WHAT KIND OF YOU?"
• SimCity Buildit: Type 1 - One of the opinion bubbles mentioned that there are 2 types of people - Shoppers and Workers. This won't work out in real life, though.
• Team Fortress 2 example: "There are two sorts of men in this world: the sort with blood pouring out of a hole in their heads, and the sort holding the Ambassador."
• In Wargame: European Escalation and its sequels, artillery units often say, "There are two types of people in this world: artillerymen, and targets."
• Lampshaded by You Don't Know Jack: We at Jellyvision believe there are two kinds of people in the world... males and females.

Visual Novel

• In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Nagito Komaeda says this in a monologue at the beginning of Chapter 2.
  "There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who are born with worth, and everybody else."

Web Comics

• In this strip of El Goonish Shive, Nanase's mom has a great Shaw; "There are two kinds of people in this world Nanase: good people who make things better and bad people who make things worse."
• In Freefall, Winston admits to Florence that he has sometimes been abruptly reminded of her doghood.
  Florence: There are two kinds of people. Those who admit that I occasionally weird them out and those who lie about it.
• Friendly Hostility: To a Maharassa, there are three kinds of people in the world: family to protect, bitches to sex up, and prey.
• Luke Surl found another two.
• The Mimic in Rusty and Co. observes that "There's really only two kinds'a vilains out there..."
• Implied in Schlock Mercenary — "There are customers we serve, and then there are customers we service."
• A Softer World. Master/Slave: In this world, there are two kinds of people, people like me, with knives, and people like you, with eyeballs
  • There are two kinds of people in this world. And I don't like them.
• Tranquility Base has two robots do it with style: "There are 10 types of people, those that understand binary and those who don't."
• Urban Jungle parodies the glass half empty/half full idea here

Web Original

• Cracked: "There are two kinds of people in this world: People who love Journey ironically and people who love Journey genuinely."
• I hate both of them.◊
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged gives us this from Vegeta and an episode later, more accurately from Perfect Cell.
  "You're either perfect or you're not me."
• The Joker Blogs gives us one in episode 9
  Joker: Y'know, there are three kinds of people in this world: The optimistic who find the glass half full, and the pessimistic that see it as half-empty. Then there's the paranoid; they just think someone's drinking out of their glass.
  Corrigan: Which one are you?
  Joker: I'm the one that knocks the glass over.
• The FanFiction Critic delivers an oddly specific one in one of her reviews. "There are two types of people. There are normal people and then there are people who want to have sex with this. "This" being Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Guess which kind wrote the fic she's reviewing.
• In the French webnovel Les Aventures de Morgoth (Chapter 6 part 20), Vertu explains about her greatest enemy:
  Vertu: Mankind is divided into two categories: Those who overestimate Condeezza, and those who don't know her. Natural selection quickly removed those who underestimated her.
• Mocked in this Seanbaby "Kick to the Groin" comic. "I mean, you can say that two-kinds-of-people in the world crap about anything....I mean, you could say like: There are two types of people in this world: Go-kart technicians and people whose job don't involve go-kart technicians".
• The RiffTrax description of Buffalo Rider: "When you really stop and think about it, there are two kinds of movies: movies where rugged men punch mountain lions, and movies where this sadly does not happen. Fortunately, Buffalo Rider is the inaugural member of this first group."
• "Basically, Paladin": There are two kinds of Paladin glamour in Final Fantasy XIV — the serious Knight in Shining Armor type with a name like "Noble Stark", and the comical Stripperific Rummage Sale Reject Moogle-cosplay type with a name like "Fuzzy Mc'Bunbuns".
• From the Red vs. Blue zombie PSA: "There are two kinds of people in the world, Doc. Those who have a plan prepared for when the zombies take over the Earth, and those who don't. We call those last people 'dinner'."

Western Animation

• When Two-Face threatened to release a binary poison on Gotham in Batman: The Animated Series, he claimed there would be two kinds of people in Gotham: The dying and the dead.
• One part of Disney's "Mars and Beyond" was about what kind of people live on the planets in the solar system:
  [Animated depiction of two Venusians standing side-by-side with neutral expressions, flashing red and yellow. The right one suddenly hits the left one with a mallet, plumping him into the ground with his head out.]
  Narrator: There are two kinds of people on Venus: mild people and fierce people.
  [The left Venusian turns yellow and smiles (mild), the right Venusian turns red and frowns (fierce).]
• According to Peter Griffin of Family Guy:
  There are two kinds of people in this world, Chris. There are bullies and there are nerds. And there are hot Asian chicks. They'll do what you want. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You better believe it, buddy. They will do what you want because they know, they know what you want. Oh, oh, oh, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you. I won't hurt you. Me big American man. My point being that I'm a bully.
• Parodied in Futurama when "That Guy" from the 1980s becomes the CEO of Planet Express.
  That Guy: Let's cut to the chase. There are two kinds of people - sheep and sharks. Anyone who's a sheep is fired. Who's a sheep?
  Zoidberg: Uh, excuse me, which is the one people like to hug?
  That Guy: Gutsy question. You're a shark. Sharks are winners. And they don't look back. 'Cause they don't have necks. Necks are for sheep. (Everyone hunches their shoulders except Bender, who physically retracts his head) I am proud to be the shepherd of this herd of sharks.
• In It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown's party invitation prompts Lucy to say there are two kinds of people; people to invite and people not to invite. She assumes Charlie Brown was put on the wrong list.
• Kaeloo features this quote from the episode "Let's Play Gangster Poker":
  Stumpy: In this world, there's two kinds of people. Those who have a banana, and those who dig. You dig.
• Recess: in the episode "Hustler's Apprentice", Hustler Kid's first lesson to Gus is that "There's two types of people in the world, players and chumps."
• In "Chuckie's Wonderful Life" on Rugrats, Bitch in Sheep's Clothing Angelica torments Chuckie under the guise of helping. No wonder he tried to run away after these encouraging words:
  Angelica: Chuckie, there are two kinds of people in this world, people like me who make things better, and people like you, who just seem to get in the way.
  Chuckie: You really mean it, Angelica?
  Angelica: I'm sorry, Chuckie. We'd all just be better off without you.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer Simpson's "Only two types of guy wear Hawaiian shirts - gay guys and big fat party animals! And Bart doesn't look like a big fat party animal to me!" Made even funnier by Marge's pointing out that that logic presumably makes it fine for him to wear them...
    • When Homer goes to college, he immediately separates the students into two groups: jocks and nerds. And then puts himself in the jock category.
    Homer: Hey pal, did you get a load of the nerd?
    "Jock": I beg your pardon?
• Parodied in "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000" of South Park when Cartman is sent to juvie. When asked one reason why he shouldn't be beat up, Cartman says he's just like everyone else. The main guy says there are two types of kids: those who like Animaniacs and those who don't. Despite getting the right answer about not liking Animaniacs, the situation isn't improved much as there are no friends in prison.
• Spongebob Squarepants: In "Not Normal", Squidward Tentacles tells SpongeBob that there are two kinds of people, people that are normal and SpongeBob.
• Total Drama: Shepherds and sheep, according to Heather in "Hide and Be Sneaky". She sees herself as the former and Lindsay as the latter.
• In Transformers: Generation 1, there's Barricade who firmly believes there are only two kinds of mechanoids: Decepticons and losers.
• Wing Commander Academy: Daimon Karnes, in "The Last One Standing", to Blair. The two kinds of people in the galaxy, according to him, are those who fly in order to get somewhere, and those who love to fly.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Web", Gumball says that "There are two kinds of people in this world: those who need everything spelled out for them, and..." Darwin can't figure out the second kind he's implying.

Jokes

• "There are two types of vessels - submarines and targets".
• "There are two kinds of aircraft - stealth aircraft and targets".
• "The world is divided into those who have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and those who are going to read them." - The Sunday Times.
• "There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't."
• Slight modification: there's a tale floating around Parris Island (the US Marine Corps training facility) that during the height of the Vietnam War a Drill Instructor asked his squad of new recruits if they had any questions. One recruit asked the rather naive question of what the squads chances of going overseas were, with the DI giving the following answer.
  "There are three types of Marines. Those who are overseas, those who have been overseas, and those who are going overseas. So I'd say your chances are pretty damn good."
• "There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those that understand binary, and those that don't."
  • "There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those that understand ternary, those that don't, and those who mistook it for binary." And so on.
  • "There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand Hexadecimal and F the rest."
  • "There are 11 types of people in this world: those that don't understand binary, those that kind of understand binary, and those that are 0001 0011 0011 0111^note 1337."
  • From the more self-disparaging nerds: "There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those that understand binary, and those that get laid."
  • Subversion by Asymmetric Publication's twitter (the guys who made KoL): "There are 10 types of people. Those who think binary jokes are funny, those who don't and 8 types on a scale between the first two."
  • Then there's this variation: "There are 11 types of people in the world, those who understand binary, those who understand ternary, those who understand quaternary, those who understand quinary...^note Whatever base n you choose, 11 will always equal n+1
  • There are 11 kind of people in the world: those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who think they understand binary but will insist on saying that joke out loud...
  • On a related note, from the programming community: "There are two types of programmer: 1) Those who start their arrays with one, and 1) those who start their arrays with zero."
• In Our Dumb World (an atlas put out by the people at The Onion), the entry on Canada divides Canadians into two groups: the polite ones, and the ones who are too polite to point out that they've been placed in the wrong group.
• There are two types of bikers in the world. Those who have come off their bikes, and those who are going to come off their bikes.
• "There are two types of opinions in this world: Mine, and incorrect." - Internet communities
• There are three kinds of people in the world: Those who know Wagner, those who know Apocalypse Now, and those who know Bugs Bunny.
• There are two kinds of pilot in this world: Those who landed gears up, and those who will.
• There are two kinds of horseback riders in the world: those who have fallen off, and those who aren't serious about it.
  • There are two kinds of horseback riders in the world: those who will fall off, and those who will fall off again.
• There are two kinds of pedestrians in Rome: the quick and the dead.^note Referencing the King James Bible, which uses "quick" to mean "alive".
• Infantrymen hold that there are two kinds of people: Grunts, and People other than Grunts (POGs). What is directly defined as a POG, however, is a bit nebulous in practice - at the least, some consider a POG to be a damaging attitude and mindset rather than literally not being an infantryman, while others will apply the term more literally and say no grunt will inherently disrespect you on account of being a POG.
• There are two types of people in this world. One is people who can infer based on what they're given.
• There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data...
• There are two types of gun-owners: Those who have had a gun go off by accident, and those who WILL have a gun go off by accident.
  • Similarly, there are two types of computer owners: those who haven't had a hard drive crash, and those who will.
• There are two kinds of people in the world: those who say there is no such thing as infinite recursion, and those who say "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who say there is no such thing as infinite recursion, and those who say "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who say there is no such thing as infinite recursion, and those who say "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who say there is no such thing as infinite recursion, and those who say "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who say there is no such thing as infinite recursion, and those who say "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who say there is no such thing as infinite recursion, and those who say...
• There are two kinds of people in the world: those who grieve over the world rolling god knows where to...and those who are rolling the world there.
• Billy West was sufficiently disgruntled after working with John Kricfalusi that his website once separated people into two categories: "Ren And Stimpy fans" and "human beings".
• Here's one for cynics: There are two types of people in the world: people who suck, and wait a minute, there is no second category— everybody sucks.
• "There are two kinds of people; those who say they're nervous before speaking in public, and those who lie." The quote is often attributed to Mark Twain.
• "There are only two kinds of hard problems in computer science: Cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors."
• "There are two kinds of programming languages: the ones programmers whine about, and the ones programmers don't use."
• "There are two kinds of people: Those who pee in the shower, and liars."
• "There are two kinds of editors: Those that can spot errors easily, and those that can."
• "There are two kinds of women who enlist in the military: Bikes and dykes."
• There are two types of people in the world: flathead and Phillips.
• "There are two types of people in the world: those who use bookmarks, and monsters."
• A common joke about the small Saskatchewan/Manitoba town of Flin Flon:
  Person 1: The only things that come out of Flin Flon are hookers and hockey players!
  Person 2: My wife's from Flin Flon.
  Person 1: What position does she play?
• "There are eleven types of people in the world: those that understand Roman numerals, and those that don't."

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