Quotes / Feigning Intelligence

"They were going from door to door asking if anyone knew any scientists. I said look no further. They asked me if I knew anything about power plants. I said as much as anyone I'd ever met. They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics. I told them I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said welcome aboard."

—Fantastic, Fallout: New Vegas

GLaDOS: (pained) Ohhhhh — now he's playing classical music.
Wheatley: [As well as classical music, the sound of book pages quickly being turned can be heard] Oh, sorry, sorry, hope that didn't disturb you just then! It was the sound of books. Pages being turned. So that's just what I was doing. I was just reading, ah, books. So, not a moron. Anyway, just finished the last one now. The hardest one. Machiavelli. Do not know what the fuss was about. Understood it perfectly. Have you read that one?
GLaDOS: Yes.
Wheatley: Yeah, doubt it. Well, on with the test. Wish there was more books! But there's not.

— Portal 2

Demon: Sometimes I haunt the houses of the very wealthy people. You come as a wise man, chase me away and these people will be so happy they'll give you a reward.
Yegor: But... I am not a wise man.
Demon: Sadly that is true. But it's a simple enough matter to make you pass for one.

—Hellboy: The Exorcist of Vorsk

I'm not just making up marketing advice like the uneducated white guy in their twenties will offer unsolicited, despite having no training, education, or knowledge of the subject at hand. I've read a great deal of books on the subject, and if I was an asshole, I'd pull out the fanciest sounding ones I could because my opinions can't carry a blog on their own and you need some other asshole to confirm them. Who is this "Noam Chungus" I'm hearing so much about? And why is getting the libertarian succ?

— Froghand, from Nintendo Switch and Other Such Shit.

Then he tried to blast my claims intellectually. I countered that by a very simple dodge. Whenever he said something that nobody but he could understand, I replied with something which I could not even understand myself. ‘I don’t fancy,’ he said, ‘that you could have worked out the principle that evolution is only negation, since there inheres in it the introduction of lacuna, which are an essential of differentiation.’ I replied quite scornfully, ‘You read all that up in Pinckwerts; the notion that involution functioned eugenically was exposed long ago by Glumpe.’ It is unnecessary for me to say that there never were such people as Pinckwerts and Glumpe. But the people all round (rather to my surprise) seemed to remember them quite well, and the Professor, finding that the learned and mysterious method left him rather at the mercy of an enemy slightly deficient in scruples, fell back upon a more popular form of wit. ‘I see,’ he sneered, ‘you prevail like the false pig in Aesop.’ ‘And you fail,’ I answered, smiling, ‘like the hedgehog in Montaigne.’ Need I say that there is no hedgehog in Montaigne? ‘Your claptrap comes off,’ he said; ‘so would your beard.’ I had no intelligent answer to this, which was quite true and rather witty. But I laughed heartily, answered, ‘Like the Pantheist’s boots,’ at random, and turned on my heel with all the honours of victory.

— The Man Who Was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton

Duck Dodgers: Maybe if I stare at this piece of paper long enough, people will think I can read.
[Beat]
Martian Commander X-2: I wonder if he's really even reading the treaty...
The Eager Young Space Cadet: Who's he trying to kid? I know he returned the Addicted to Reading tapes I gave him last Christmas.

— Duck Dodgers, "The Fudd"

...Fine. I admit it. I.. I'm not that smart. I never was. THERE, are you happy?! I... I... I just... I used to be a forgettable little bluebird. No one even remembered my name. Then... one day, came the spelling bee Noelle and I studied for. When it came down to the two of us... she got nervous and couldn't speak. She lost. And I won. That was when I tasted it. The praise. The glory! The... SUPERIORITY! The addictive POWER of being... SMART!! Since then, year after year, I've been number 1 in the class. ...But it's only because Noelle helps me study. She's... the real smart kid. But everyone's expectations of me are so high now. What am I going to do once I go somewhere without her...?

— Berdly in Deltarune, displaying a surprising degree of self-awareness.

Squidward: People talk loud when the want to act smart, right?
Plankton: CORRECT!!!

— SpongeBob SquarePants, "Band Geeks

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