Crackpots Quotes

• The other day I started to take a course in psycho-ceramics. What is psycho-ceramics? It's the study of crackpots.

  Joey Bishop

  Ceramics, Psycho, Study

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• When you're one step ahead of the crowd you're a genius. When you're two steps ahead, you're a crackpot.

  Shlomo Riskin

  Two, Crowds, Steps

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• Every inventor is a crackpot until his idea succeeds.

  Mark Twain

  Ideas, Succeed, Inventor

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• Everybody has the right to express what he thinks. That, of course, lets the crackpots in. But if you cannot tell a crackpot when you see one, then you ought to be taken in.

  Harry S. Truman

  Taken, Thinking, Courses

  Harry S. Truman (1956). “Memoirs: Years of trail and hope”

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• Most of the crackpot papers which are submitted to The Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published. When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer himself it will be only half-understood; to everybody else it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.

  Freeman Dyson

  Crazy, Science, Discovery

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• Whatever their limitations, Freud and Marx developed complex and subtle theories of human nature grounded in their observation of individual and social behavior. The crackpot rationalism of free-market economics merely relies on an abstract model of how people "must" behave.

  Ellen Willis

  People, Social Behavior, Human Nature

  Letter to "The New York Times", February 27, 1997.

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• Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Success, Education, Knowledge

  The Valley of Fear ch. 1 (1915)

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• Crackpot is an excellent job because the expectations are so low. No one ever tells crackpots that they should be doing more.

  Scott Adams

  Funny, Jobs, Expectations

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• The only funny part about Colonial Dunsboro is maybe it's too authentic, but for all the wrong reasons. This whole crowd of losers and nutcases who hide out here because they can't make it in the real world, in real jobs — isn't this why we left England in the first place? To establish our own alternate reality. Weren't the Pilgrims pretty much the crackpots of their time? For sure, instead of just wanting to believe something different about God's love, the losers I work with want to find salvation through compulsive behaviors.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Jobs, Real, Believe

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• It's creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of our time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos. What it's going to be, I don't know. Even after all that rushing around, where we've ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. And maybe knowing isn't the point. Where we're standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Dark, Night, Reality

  "Choke". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, May 22, 2001.

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• Sometimes I say philosophers should be at the table because they're the only people who know that they're not going to walk away with big money to support their research or to fund their crackpot solutions.

  Dale Jamieson

  People, Support, Research

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity.

  Thomas J. Watson

  Life, Motivational, Fear

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• Cuba's poverty is caused by the crackpot Marxist doctrines imposed by its sociopathic ruler and promoted by half the liberal arts professors on American faculties.

  David Horowitz

  Art, Cuba, Doctrine

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• All artists are crackpots. And it's their finest feature.

  Irving Stone

  Artist, Finest, Features

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• We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.

  Neal Stephenson

  Smart, Urban Legends, Self

  "Snow Crash". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1992.

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• Education is a vast sea of lies, waste, corruption, crackpot theorizing, and careerist log-rolling.

  John Derbyshire

  Lying, Sea, Rolling

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• The notion that inventors are anorak-wearing crackpots with glasses held together with Sellotape is beguiling but wrong.

  Trevor Baylis

  Glasses, Together, Madness

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• I'd seen Sage bleed. I'd made Sage bleed. Not that it hurt him any; he healed so quickly...In smaller doses it has incredible healing powers. Ben's voice rang out in my head. I remembered he said that earlier, about...the Elixir of Life.The crackpot, completely bogus, absolutely insane Elixir of Life.Did it actually exist? Had Sage had some? Enough to keep him alive, young, and speed-healing for the last five hundred years?And if so, had he used that time to find one woman, again and again in different incarnations, to love her...or destroy her?

  Hilary Duff

  Love, Hurt, Healing

  Hilary Duff (2011). “Elixir”, p.182, Simon and Schuster

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• Here at great expense,' [Colonel Groves] moaned to Oppenheimer, 'the government has assembled the world's largest collection of crackpots.

  Steve Sheinkin

  Military, Government, World

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• We inherited these principles and these freedoms and we here highly resolve that we shall pass them on, as we will pass on an undivided Republic purged of racism and slavery, to our descendants. The popgun discharges of a few pathetic sectarians and crackpot revisionists are negligible, and will be drowned by the mounting chorus that demands: 'Mr Jefferson! BUILD UP THAT WALL'.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Wall, Racism

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• Pure science is a myth: Both mathematical theoreticians like Albert Einstein and practical crackpots like Henry Ford dealt with different aspects of the same world.

  Edward Abbey

  Different, World, Aspect

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.49, RosettaBooks

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• If the guy out in the woods with the Michigan Militia is a real estate negotiator, instead of some crackpot, and has a normal life, that's unnerving. You don't want to think it's as normal as the guy next door, hedging his lawn. It's easier to demonize or separate them off from 'us.'

  Michael Moore

  Real, Thinking, Doors

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• We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire—a crackpot machine—that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate. We are, most of us, dependent employees. …Edward Abbey (1927-1989)

  Edward Abbey

  Survival, Machines, World

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• I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!" yelled Uncle Vernon. Hagrid seized his pink umbrella and whirled it over his head "NEVER -" he thundered "- INSULT -ALBUS -DUMBLEDORE - IN - FRONT - OF - ME!

  J. K. Rowling

  Uncles, Magic, Fool

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• Everybody was strange. In a fit of frustration, she scratched out strange and wrote the word CRACKPOTS in big letters.

  Kristin Cashore

  Frustration, Letters, Strange

  Kristin Cashore (2012). “Bitterblue”, p.68, Penguin

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