moron quotes — a list i made on a sunday

i made a list of moron quotes, partly to procrastinate, partly because mom was about to call. dad has at least three solid entries. tom, before the wedding, contributed two. i invented one and attributed it to abraham lincoln, who, statistically, said many things, and who is in no position to refuse.

writing this from the desk on a saturday at 9:08am, with the lined notepad open and a column titled “attributed to” that already has more guesses than facts. carla is upstairs in the annual planning meeting, third floor, conference room with the grey carpet, and i have approximately fifty minutes before anybody comes looking for me.

the list started small. it grew the way these lists grow, which is fast and then crooked.

1. moron quotes, why we collect them

people collect moron quotes for the same reason they collect refrigerator magnets from cities they only stopped in for gas. the quote is a souvenir from a moment of recognition. you read it, you nod, you think “yes, that is a thing somebody finally said out loud”, and then you forget who said it within fourteen minutes.

dave, on the phone last week between his second and third laugh of the call, recommended i collect quotes “the way other guys collect grievances,” which is also a moron quote, technically, since it landed without dave noticing he had said something useful. i started this list because mom calls every sunday and asks what i’ve been up to, and “nothing” stopped working around year three. now i have a small inventory of quotes i can pretend to be reading, which is a form of small talk i can sustain for the duration of a phone call without either of us noticing the seams. the unopened mail pile sits on the kitchen counter while i do this, which is its own ongoing investigation.

the genre, broadly, lives next to the more general field of moron etymology and the longer story of the word, which i have written about elsewhere and will probably write about again before i’m done with the desk and the notepad and the cup that needs a refill.

the rules i set were simple. one: the quote has to be short. two: it has to be about a moron, by a moron, or for a moron. three: i don’t have to verify it, because verifying things is a hobby for the wealthy, and a pension is a faith-based retirement system, and so is most of what passes for citation around here. that one i actually believe.

2. the canonical moron quotes from real authors

these are the ones that show up on coffee mugs. i mean show up in books, and then on the coffee mugs. the chronology runs roughly the way a long lineage of comedies about idiocy runs, which is to say not very chronologically — but the naked gun taught me everything i know about treating a serious sentence like a punchline, so i’ll take the genealogy where i find it.

1. mark twain, allegedly: “never argue with a moron. they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” the quote is also attributed to a half-dozen other people, which is, structurally, a moron quote about a moron quote.

2. confucius, allegedly: “the man who asks a question is a fool for a minute. the man who does not ask is a fool for life.” i have asked roughly seven questions in my entire adult life, all of them about wifi.

3. einstein, allegedly: “two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and i’m not sure about the universe.” einstein did not say this. he was busy. but every list of moron quotes opens with it, because the alternative is opening the list with something that doesn’t have a name attached, and we all need the comfort of an attribution, even a wrong one.

4. george carlin, who actually said it: “think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” this is a real quote. carlin gets a star next to his name on the notepad.

3. the apocryphal moron quotes i half-remember

these are the ones i read on a poster in a dentist’s waiting room in 2017 and have not been able to find since. i am not going to verify them. that’s not what this list is.

5. “a moron is a person who, when you point at the moon, looks at the finger.” attributed to some zen monk. probably not real. on the notepad anyway.

6. “the only true moron is the one who knows he is a moron and does it anyway, on purpose, with feeling.” i think i made this one up at 2am in 2019. i have decided to credit it to oscar wilde, who is not in a position to clarify. the timestamp on this entry, written in pencil at 11:23am, is the only honest part of the line.

7. “every village has its moron. the trick is not being the village.” attributed to a man at a wedding i went to alone. he had a beard and a strong opinion about cheese. i wrote it on a napkin and the napkin survived three apartments. that beats most of my other paperwork.

8. “abraham lincoln said: the difference between a moron and a genius is which side of the table you’re on.” lincoln did not say this. i made it up while the kettle was boiling. it is now, technically, a lincoln quote, because it has been written down. that is how attribution works on the internet, which is what i’m describing as the_wall_of_insults_digital — a collection of lines that became real because somebody put them in a list. this list, for example.

4. the family moron quotes, including dad’s

dad is in the fantasm category at this point — he doesn’t appear on stage, he’s only quoted — but his contributions to the moron quote canon are, in this household, significant. dad used to say a lot of things while standing at the back door looking at the lawn. some of them were about the lawn. most of them were not.

9. dad, looking at the microwave the day i bought my third one: “only a moron buys the same thing twice and expects it to last longer.” this is the seventh microwave now. dad would have a chapter.

10. dad, watching me try to assemble a piece of furniture in 1997: “a moron with instructions is still a moron, just with paperwork.” the third yoga mat lives under the couch as a monument to this philosophy.

11. dad, in his only recorded opinion on technology: “the moron of the future will be the one who believes the screen.” dad died before the screen got really persuasive, but the line still tracks.

12. tom, before the wedding, in a parking lot: “the moron is the guy who refuses to grow up. so, hi.” tom was, in fairness, talking about himself, but i wrote it down anyway. tom now has a volvo with seats that adjust in different directions and a pension that he understands. mine, as established, is faith-based.

13. mom, on a sunday call in 2022: “a moron knows he’s a moron. it’s the people who don’t who break the appliances.” mom knew. mothers know. she didn’t even know about the seventh microwave when she said it. she was talking, theoretically, about a man at her bridge group. the line landed somewhere else.

5. closing pulpit — the best moron quote is the one he says about himself

the broader picture, if there is one, is that quoting morons is a national pastime adjacent to feeling slightly less dumb than you actually are. the comfort is structural. you read the line, you assign it to a great mind, and you go on with your day. nobody checks. nobody has time. the dumb feeling — that small, useful, productive dumb feeling — gets parked for a few hours, which is enough.

related work, if you want to keep going: i have written about how to tell a moron joke and ruin the room, and about a longer list of moron famous names i print and stand behind. they sit next to this list on the same desk in the same conference-room-adjacent silence.

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