haterz: People who think you are a moron. Using this term will do little to dissuade them.
open/close all folders
Comic Strips
Dogbert: (selling cars) I can let you have this one for five thousand.
Customer: Three thousand.
Dogbert: No, but I can sell you that car for four thousand.
Customer: Thirty-five hundred.
Dogbert: Sold.
Customer: (driving off) I guess you don't get a lot of negotiators like me.
Dogbert: It's the first time anybody bought the car they came here in.
Customer: Three thousand.
Dogbert: No, but I can sell you that car for four thousand.
Customer: Thirty-five hundred.
Dogbert: Sold.
Customer: (driving off) I guess you don't get a lot of negotiators like me.
Dogbert: It's the first time anybody bought the car they came here in.
— Dilbert
Literature
"He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn his lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy."
— The Sphere in Flatland, preaching against the King of Pointland.
A little learning is a dangerous thing ;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
—Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism
Film — Live-Action
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the centre of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
— Agent Kay, Men in Black
Otto: Don't call me stupid.
Wanda: Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?
Otto: Apes don't read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.
Live-Action TV
"Who's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I want to say it happened in 1941, that's my right!"
Bill: I have spoken in front of dozens of fraternal organizations across this great land of ours. Shriners, Lions clubs, Elk lodges. It's like I'm their king or something.
Dave: A kingdom of fat men in little cars. You must be very proud.
Dave: A kingdom of fat men in little cars. You must be very proud.
—NewsRadio, "In Through the Out Door"
"You think you're in charge? It's adorable just how wrong you are."
— Root, Person of Interest
Control: How do you use The Machine?
Root: I don't. She uses me.
Control: [incredulous] You view The Machine as your superior?
Root: No, much more. My power, my reason for existing, my friend. The Machine looks out for me.
Root: I don't. She uses me.
Control: [incredulous] You view The Machine as your superior?
Root: No, much more. My power, my reason for existing, my friend. The Machine looks out for me.
"The surest sign you're talkin' to a dummy is when he tells you he knows it all!"
—The Wiz, The Wiz Live!
"The less you know about history, the easier it is to imagine you’d always be on the right side of it."
"You're so stupid, you don't even realize you're being used for your stupidity!"
— Dan, Veep
Radio
"You see, 666 is a doubling of 33. And 33 is pi."
— Alex Jones
Theatre
I do now remember a saying. "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."
— Touchstone, As You Like It
Video Games
Web Original
"Never trust an author who has written more books than they have read."
— Rational Wiki on Phyllis Schlafly
"What was terrifying about Bush was that he didn’t know much about the world and, more to the point, didn't care to. He was eager to play the cowboy: decisive, independent, and beholden to nobody. While the rest of the world stared, slack-jawed, and tried to figure out if America realized that westerns were works of fiction."
But seriously, Iggy is right. I’m sure that in a few years, rap historians will say that Iggy’s “Fancy” did for hip hop what Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech did for the civil rights movement.
And how many rappers can say that they were a Jeopardy! answer (that nobody got)?
Who dat, who dat, indeed.
And how many rappers can say that they were a Jeopardy! answer (that nobody got)?
Who dat, who dat, indeed.
—Michael K.
, "Iggy Azalea Thinks Iggy Azalea Made Hip Hop More Accepting"
![](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/external_link.gif)
"Voltaire said, 'To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.' Bill O'Reilly, I imagine, would think that Voltaire was a pinhead."
— John Haggerty
, "My Personal Fox News Nightmare: Inside a Month of Self-Induced Torture"
![](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/external_link.gif)
"You know you're in trouble when an article begins by citing a 'fascinating Ross Douthat blog' and it doesn't mean fascinating in the sense of someone looking at a catalog of medical deformities might say 'that was a fascinating scrotum face oozing pus.' The rest of the article is a big 'no shit, Sherlock' about Republicans liking Ronald Reagan."
"I once saw him set up a joke about natural selection by mocking the audience for not knowing what natural selection was. That was what, fifth grade for most of us? It helped me understand Carlos better as a comic. He assumes we're all stupid because for some reason, he thinks we only went to school until age 10... Does it really count as social criticism when the society you're criticizing only exists in your Meximagination? 'People are stupid! All these people are confusing cereal commercials for the news! That's Boo Berry, not Peter Jennings, you dee duhDEE! What next, do they elect Honey Comb President!!??!? I'm out!'"
"Being part of the Skins in any capacity means agreeing to have your shame surgically removed from your body. Imagine if Donald Trump’s Twitter feed were a football team. That’s the Skins. Three days in Ashburn and you automatically become ignorant, self-important, arrogant, trolling, entitled, and breathtakingly STUPID. So, so fucking stupid. This is the dumbest organization in America of ANY kind, be it a team, or a company, or a political action committee, or a non-profit organization. Line 'em all up and the Skins will out-moron them at every turn... It's like they're constantly pointing out an ingrown toenail to you. BOY LOOK AT THIS PUS-FILLED TOENAIL. I GOT HOPES FOR THIS TOENAIL. REAL PROUD OF THIS TOENAIL."
— Drew Magary
, "Why Your Team Sucks 2015!: Washington Redskins"
![](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/external_link.gif)
"To try to stem the rising tide of kids coming down with measles because their parents are scared of the autism boogeyman, science has been forced to pump money into researching this issue again and again and again, coming out with study after study that shows no link. That's money that could have been used to research cancer cures of for developing better vaccines or even a serum to inject directly into Jenny McCarthy's brain to kill the stupid directly. But instead it's funding studies to debunk that same old autism/vaccine trope that's already been debunked. And it's all pointless, because to conspiracy theorists all of that new 'evidence' is just further proof that The Man is working against them. 'If there's nothing to it, why are scientists studying it so much?'"
"The Matrix, of course, is his favorite movie. The stark realities that film presented, the way in which it perfectly illuminated the 'illusion of ignorance' that most people inhabit—Ayn Rand herself couldn't have written it better. Ayn Rand was a woman, sure, but she also hated women, and boy could she write, so he still loves her. It sucks that she wasn't also hot, but you can't win ‘em all."
— Megan Koester
, "The Anatomy of a Men's Rights Activist"
![](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/external_link.gif)
"You know, a lot of people today are saying that this generation of kids are in fact are the stupidest. Now that's debatable. Now I believe there have always been stupid people. But the internet provides greater opportunity for stupidity to be expressed and paraded. In this day and age with the internet, ignorance is a choice!
"I think there’s a great cautionary tale here about what happens when you listen to the fans. Because the hardcore followers of any franchise, Star Trek or otherwise, who make the most noise are generally the ones most bogged down by their own personal hang-ups and obsessions, and therefore the least capable of knowing what would make for a good story."
"Evolutionary psychology helps us explain why human nature is the way it is - including its flaws. It does NOT mean that bigotry, psychopathy and vice have been vindicated, nor that you can just make bullshit up and declare it fact.
"Evolutionary psychology is to neo-chauvinists what quantum physics are to New Agers: a barbarous name the cargo cult invokes in an attempt to imbue their woo with scientific legitimacy."
— Pharaoh Bastethotep, Fundies Say the Darndest Things![](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/external_link.gif)
![](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/external_link.gif)
Western Animation
"Soon you'll realize: the wiser you become, the more you have to learn."
— Carmen Sandiego, Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?, "Déjà Vu"
"Dumb people are always blissfully unaware of how dumb they really are." (drools)
Real Life
"An inferiority complex would be a blessing, if only the right people had it."
— Alan Reed
"There seems to be a notion abroad among women, rather akin to the superstition that the speech and actions of idiots are inspired, and that the human being most entirely exhausted of common sense is the fittest vehicle of revelation. To judge from their writings, there are certain ladies who think that an amazing ignorance, both of science and of life, is the best possible qualification for forming an opinion on the knottiest moral and speculative questions."
"One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision."
"This is the epitaph I want on my tomb: 'Here lies one of the most intelligent animals who ever appeared on the face of the Earth.'"
— Benito Mussolini, 1937
"I am the object of criticism around the world. But I think that since I am being discussed, then I am on the right track."
— Kim Jong-il, Supreme Leader of the People's Republic of North Korea
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge."
— Daniel J. Boorstin, often attributed to Stephen Hawking
"He's a stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like."
— Paul Krugman on Newt Gingrich
"Besides claiming that he turned WCW's numbers around, Russo also claimed for years that when he left the WWF, things started to rapidly go downhill. In reality, everything across the board—from ratings to buy rates to merchandise figures—increased, in some cases dramatically, and this was during a time when three of the company's biggest stars Undertaker, Austin, and McMahon) had been off television for months."
—R. D. Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez, The Death of WCW
"Many assume that the real experts on the subject of money are those who have a lot of it. But the opinions of wealthy tycoons are often dissociated from scientific evidence, out of touch with reality and all too plainly wrong. Amassing wealth as an individual is not the same thing as building and sustaining broad economic growth across nations. Often, making a private fortune is a matter of luck. 'Fortuna' is the Latin word for luck, after all."
It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
—Thomas Sowell
"Anti-populism is an essential part of a political myth that is dear to a certain class of people. Hating populism is the built-in corollary to this group’s grand vision of how society ought to be directed: which is to say, by responsible professionals, meaning they themselves, always concurring prudently with one another, always doing their best to steer the world through complex problems. The core of this myth, as the political theorist Michael Rogin once put it, is 'the hope that if only responsible elites could be left alone, if only political issues could be kept from the people, the elites would make wise decisions'.
Unfortunately, elites have been making decisions of seismic foolishness for many years now: bank deregulation, Wall Street bailouts, deindustrialization, the opioid epidemic and the Iraq war, to name but a few. Besides, the context of cold war complacency is long gone. Self-assured liberalism crumbled decades ago. Consensus is an ideal that no longer beguiles the academic mind: it’s all about conflict today. But somehow the old 50s faith continues to play right through it all, tootling its one-note song of anti-populist indignation even as the rightwing night falls."
— Thomas Frank, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism
"[Libertarianism is] a fantasy where the strongest and most self-reliant folks end up at the top of the heap, and a fair number of men share the fantasy that they are these folks. They believe they've been held back by rules and regulations designed to help the weak, and in a libertarian culture their talents would be obvious and they'd naturally rise to positions of power and influence. Most of them are wrong, of course. In a truly libertarian culture, nearly all of them would be squashed like ants - mostly by the same people who are squashing them now. But the fantasy lives on regardless."
— Kevin Drum