A Quote by Iain Banks

Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot.

Iain Banks

Quote Topics

Empathize Halfway Idiot Like Stupidity Thinking

Quote Author

Iain Banks
Scottish - Writer
February 16, 1954 - June 9, 2013

Laughter is an important part of a good relationship. It's an immense achievement when you can move from your thinking that your partner is merely an idiot to thinking that they are that wonderfully complex thing called a loveable idiot. And often that means having a little bit of a sense of humour about their flaws.

Alain de Botton

[He] may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot.

Groucho Marx

A 'nidiot' is something different from an idiot. An idiot is someone whose problems are caused by not concentrating enough. A 'nidiot' is someone who makes his life more complicated by thinking too much rather than not enough. I'm not an idiot, but I'm definitely a 'nidiot'!

Jon Richardson

You could reason with someone who was halfway educated and appeal to his intelligence, but I felt helpless in the face of utter stupidity.

Robert Cormier

He's halfway sick and halfway stoned. He'd sure like to kick, but he's too far gone. So they wind him down with methadone.

James Taylor

Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot. I implore you, send him back to his father and brothers, who are waiting for him with open arms in the penitentiary. I suggest that we give him ten years in Leavenworth, or eleven years in Twelveworth.

Groucho Marx

I try to be a positive person, but I'm also always looking and wondering, 'Maybe this could be done differently.' As soon as your mind is in a critical mode, you're halfway through designing; as soon as you start thinking about whether something could be better, you're already halfway through a solution.

Thomas Heatherwick

Who's the bigger idiot, the idiot or the idiot who gets fooled by the idiot?

Woody Allen

Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.

Werner Herzog

I'm an idiot anyway, but sometimes you feel like an idiot times ten when you're stoned.

Billie Joe Armstrong

If stocks are attractive and you don't buy, you don't just look like an idiot, you are an idiot.

Jeremy Grantham

I'm a son of immigrants. I'm not going to reduce my commitment to immigration. But can I empathize with the fact that if your town was 95 percent all white and now it's down to 60, that that can scare you? Can I empathize with that? Yeah.

Anand Giridharadas

In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.

Jeffrey Eugenides

I have been thinking a lot about what we see in villains, how we relate to villains, and what it is about certain villains that we actually empathize with. Like Macbeth. We're not supposed to like a guy who kills the king and takes over, but there's something about him we're really fascinated by.