"Is it because journalists, as a class, are habitual liars, and prefer what is not true to what is true? I don't think it is. Rather, it is because journalists are, in the main, extremely stupid, sentimental and credulous fellows — because nothing is easier than to fool them — because the majority of them lack the sharp intelligence that the proper discharge of their duties demands."
— H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: A Selection
"What I learned during the frankly horrifying research that I had to slog through in order to accomplish this, was that yes, there is a conspiracy, in fact there are a great number of conspiracies that are all tripping each other up. And all of those conspiracies are run by paranoid fantasists, and ham fisted clowns. If you are on a list targeted by the CIA, you really have nothing to worry about. If however you have a name similar to someone on a list targeted by the C.I.A., then you are dead."
"In all of the books that have come out about the Reagan administration, it's been extremely difficult to hide the fact that Reagan didn't have the foggiest idea what was going on. Whenever he wasn't properly programmed, the things that would come out of his mouth were like — they weren't lies, really, they were just kind of the babbling of a child. If a child babbles, it's not lies, it's just sort of on another plane. To be able to lie, you have to have a certain degree of competence, you have to know what truth is. And there didn't seem to be any indication that that was the case here."
— Noam Chomsky on Iran-Contra, Understanding Power
"I don't think Bush could plan a bowl of cereal."
— Dylan Avery, former 9-11 Truther
"Sometimes I think that Kanye West is less a musician than he is an ongoing study for unemployed anthropology majors. He's one of the biggest, most self-absorbed assholes on the planet, and yet people waste trillions of gigabytes of bandwidth to talk about what Kanye's assholishness MEANS."
— Drew Magary
, Make It Stop
, Make It Stop"I think the game has more to do with the star than the movie. I mean the star in the sky, the real Betelgeuse. It's a red supergiant that's going to explode one day... This particular star is always pulsating; it's so inconsistent that it's sometimes called the 9th brightest star in the sky, but usually the 10th. These fluctuations in inconsistencies are exactly what they were going for with the unpredictable nature of this game."
"There are, to my mind, two ways to read this story. Either it's a flawed but mostly edgily brilliant piece of early post-modernism, or it's a complete crap-fest."
David: You know, I think we’re coming at this the wrong way, Chris. I think this episode is actually a satire of the way the media shamelessly rips off The Matrix. I don’t think we got it initially — it’s actually rather brilliant.
Chris: So basically, you’re saying that “Brian Peterson” and “Kelly Souders” are actually clever pseudonyms for Andy Kaufman?
David: At this point, Occam's Razor may actually point me towards that being the case, since the alternative is that a group of grown people all sat around a table and agreed that this was a story that needed to be told. That’s really too terrible a premise to accept.
Chris: So basically, you’re saying that “Brian Peterson” and “Kelly Souders” are actually clever pseudonyms for Andy Kaufman?
David: At this point, Occam's Razor may actually point me towards that being the case, since the alternative is that a group of grown people all sat around a table and agreed that this was a story that needed to be told. That’s really too terrible a premise to accept.
— Chris Sims and David Uzumeri on Smallville ("Collateral")
Smallville ("Collateral")"Can't tell if trolling or just stupid."
— The Internet
"Really, the comforting side in most conspiracy theory arguments is the one claiming that anyone who's in power has any plan at all."
"Unfortunately, in your sleep deprived state you accidentally manage to create a glitch that kills players when their avatars die! [...] Next thing you know, your tutorial NPC is nowhere to be found* and players are dropping like Dorito-encrusted flies. Now, in this case any sane man would simply turn off the servers before anyone else got hurt. But because you've now been awake long enough to think that the government is run by Flubar, King of the Mole Men, the best idea that comes to your mind is to double, tripple and quadruple down. So you lock everyone into the game, tell them they'll die if they don't finish it and try to make it look like this was all part of your "Master Plan", instead of an ever spiraling series of events that you've long since lost control of."
— Kayaba, explaining his "plan" in Sword Art Online Abridged
"Un-frickin'-believable. All this time I assumed he was some Machiavellian schemer. But in the end... he was just as big a fuck-up as the rest of us."
— Kirito, summarizing the above "plan", also in Sword Art Online Abridged
"To call this place 'evil' implies a clarity of purpose that I do not want to attribute to anyone involved."
— Derek, on the titular Sex House
"You know, a lot of people today are saying that this generation of kids are in fact are[sic] 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! AND THEY'RE STILL CHOOSING IGNORANCE."
— Filthy Frank, referring to types of people on the internet
"Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."
— Deep Throat, All the President's Men
"But one really shouldn't worry about this sort of thing unless there's genuine hatred behind it, and I don't get that impression. Capcom aren't bad people, they're just idiots!"
In momenta (sic) of chaos and tragedy many try to find reason and someone to blame. The prospect of her being murdered sounds much more intriguin (sic) than the prospect of this being a fatal accident carried out by unfortunate events. There are a lot of suspicious circumstances surrounding this case after all. For now more signs point to it being an unfortunate tragedy brough (sic) on by inebriation and carelessness.
— Comment by johnatan delacuso on this video about the Kenneka Jenkins case
about the Kenneka Jenkins case"A sharp knife can be very dangerous. A dull one can be even more dangerous."
— A saying on knife usagenote
"Christ, Nick! Are you crazy or are you just dumb?!"
Niomi: This whole station is a work area. You're not going to find many criminals here.
Sam: I'm hoping I do. If what I'm seeing is because of incompetence, it's going to be a lot harder to fix.
Sam: I'm hoping I do. If what I'm seeing is because of incompetence, it's going to be a lot harder to fix.
— Freefall
"Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory."
— Sir Bernard Ingham, Press Secretary to Margaret Thatcher, in the Observer, March 17th 1985.
Kohler: Do you actually suspect Klink of disloyalty?
Burkhalter: Disloyalty? No. Stupidity? Yes.
Burkhalter: Disloyalty? No. Stupidity? Yes.
— General Albert Burkhalter and his brother-in-law Major Kohler discussing Stalag 13's CO and resident dumbass Colonel Klink, Hogan's Heroes
