Organizations cannot make a genius out of an incompetent. On the other hand, disorganization can scarcely fail to result in efficiency. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Three of the gravest failings, want of sense, of courage, or of vigilance. — Thucydides
Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses. — Quentin Crisp
In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. — Laurence J. Peter
Mistakes are not always the result of someone's ineptitude. — Jessica Savitch
Stupidity has a knack of getting its way. — Albert Camus
Bangs and smoke were more often the marks of ineptitude than expertise. — J. K. Rowling
Keep in mind that life produces no maestros, only students of varying shades of ineptitude. — Bette Greene
They weren't moving. Perhaps I was dazzling then with my ineptitude. It had happened before. — MaryJanice Davidson
It made him proud that 29 months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude. — Joseph Heller
Incompetence Quotes
If an incompetent chieftain is removed, seldom do we appoint his highest-ranking subordinate to his place — Attila the Hun
Behold the crucifix; what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree. — Anton Szandor LaVey
Unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency. — W. E. B. Du Bois
Always assume incompetence before looking for conspiracy. — Niccolo Machiavelli
The only weapon with which the unconscious patient can immediately retaliate upon the incompetent surgeon is hemorrhage. — William Stewart Halsted
Useful men, who do useful things, don't mind being treated as useless.
But the useless always judge themselves as being important and hide all their incompetence behind authority. — Paulo Coelho
Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence. — John Kenneth Galbraith
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent. — Laurence J. Peter
The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight. — Fyodor Dostoevsky
There are few things more dangerous than a mixture of power, arrogance and incompetence. — Bob Herbert
In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity. — John Barth
Inconsiderate, rude behavior drives me nuts. And I guess the inconsiderate rudeness of social ineptitude definitely fuels my work. — Cindy Sherman
On the contrary, it might even be a projection of what the truth is of the Bush Administration's complacency and ineptitude on the terrorism in its first 9 months in office. — Sidney Blumenthal
If you look at the history of demagoguery and fascism, it always happens when there are two things. It requires a gentle populace to allow it to happen, whether through laziness, ignorance or ineptitude, but it also requires a very angry, dissatisfied section of the populace who want egregiously simple answers to very complicated problems. — Moby
If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude. — A. E. Housman
The greatest fears that governments have are freedom of speech and exposing the corruptness, the ineptitude, and the double dealing going on that they don’t want the public knowing about. — Gerald Celente
Who knows better than artists how much ugliness there is on the way to beauty, how many ghastly, mortifying missteps, how many days of granitic blockheadedness and dismaying ineptitude there is on the way to accomplishment, how partial all accomplishment is, how incomplete? — Tony Kushner
There are all too many who, on account of their notorious ineptitude, thrive better in a rationalist system than in freedom. Freedom is one of those difficult things. — Carl Jung
Our government has become incompetent, unresponsive, corrupt. And that incompetence, ineptitude, lack of accountability is now dangerous. — Carly Fiorina
Aptitude can show calling, but it isn't the only indicator. Ineptitude or dysfunction may reveal calling more than talent, curiously enough. — James Hillman
F For Fake is a talentless concoction of unparalleled ineptitude... It would have been a more generous gesture to show a retrospective of old Welles films rather than remind everyone of how low his ability as a filmmaker has plummeted. — Rex Reed
There is virtue in virtuosity, especially today, when it protects us from the tedious spectacle of ineptitude. — Robert Hughes
A sure sign of ineptitude and malice is manifested when one's attacker is willing to cover himself with mud in order to try and make some of it adhere to his target. — Christopher Hitchens
The design of the notorious Palm Beach County "butterfly ballot" in the 2000 Presidential election is certainly one of them. But I would say most of the time this is less about a conscious attempt to manipulate an outcome, and more about pure ineptitude. — Michael Bierut
Part of why I started a band was due to feelings of shyness and social ineptitude. I saw it as some way of being able to interact with people from a safe distance. — Jarvis Cocker
For those of us who consider ourselves political moderates, life is a dispiriting slog, a sorry mix of rectitude and ineptitude. — Joe Klein
Fact is, the desperate desire to be cool has skewed our culture toward nihilism, carelessness, and ineptitude. It is now cool to be an idiot. A jackass. It's cool to be a failure, as long as your failure is the basis for a reality show. — Greg Gutfeld
Part of why I started a band was due to feelings of shyness and social ineptitude. I saw it as some way of being able to interact with people from a safe distance. It's always been about trying to get to know people. Albeit, it's a bit of a contradiction because you can't really get to know people when they're 10 feet away and there's a big mass of them. — Jarvis Cocker
Some of this is bureaucratic ineptitude and a great deal of this is an administration that doesn't understand the urgency of the situation, and therefore this [Barack Obama] administration has not reached out actively to the private sector and said, we need help. — Carly Fiorina
There's a whole company called Palantir that does nothing but derive and create algorithms riches to search through big data. We're not using their capabilities. For heaven's sake, some of this is just ineptitude. — Carly Fiorina
Who knew, in 2000, that compassionate conservatism meant bigger government, unrestricted government spending, government intrusion in personal matters, government ineptitude, and cronyism in disaster relief? Who knew, in 2000, that the only bill the president would veto, six years later, would be one on funding stem-cell research? A more accurate term for Mr. Bush's political philosophy might be incontinent conservatism. — Christopher Buckley
There is no better example of the weakness of our dominant medicine than its clearly ineffective War On Cancer. By the same token, there is no better example of the superiority of complementary, alternative medicine than its management of this dread disease. We are equally concerned about whether mainstream medicine's demand for proof works to maintain it at its current level of ineptitude. — Robert Atkins
The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating; it was not a superior ability which she would have found honour in challenging; it was ineptitude - a grey spread of cotton that seemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way. She stood, disarmed, before the riddle of what made this possible, she could find no answer. — Ayn Rand
Chaos and ineptitude are anti-human; but so too is a superlatively efficient government, equipped with all the products of a highly developed technology. — Aldous Huxley
To me, art almost always speaks more forcefully when it appears in an imperfect, accidental, and fragmentary way, somehow just signaling its presence, allowing one to feel it through the ineptitude of the interpretation. I prefer the Chopin that reaches me in the street from an open window to the Chopin served in great style from the concert stage. — Witold Gombrowicz
In fishing, golf and gardening, if you don't have a healthy tolerance for your own ineptitude, then it isn't for you. — William Bernard Ziff, Jr.
When you've managed to stumble directly into the heart of the unknown - either through the misdirection of others, or better yet, through your own creative ineptitude - there is no one there to hold your hand or tell you what to do. In those bad lost moments, in the times when are advised not to panic, we own the unknown, and the world belongs to us. The child within has full reign. Few of us are ever so free — Tim Cahill
Theirs [the Beatles] is a happy, cocky, belligerently resourceless brand of harmonic primitivism... In the Liverpudlian repertoire, the indulged amateurishness of the musical material, though closely rivaled by the indifference of the performing style, is actually surpassed only by the ineptitude of the studio production method. (Strawberry Fields suggests a chance encounter at a mountain wedding between Claudio Monteverdi and a jug band.) — Glenn Gould
Let me put it bluntly: anyone who says that money isn't important doesn't have any! Rich people understand the importance of money and the place it has in our society. On the other hand, poor people validate their financial ineptitude by using irrelevant comparisons. They'll argue, "Well, money isn't important as love." Now, is that comparison dumb or what? What's more important, your arm or your leg? Maybe they're both important. — T. Harv Eker
The deeper we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become - the more we realize that everything in life is a gift. The tenor of our lives becomes one of humble and joyful thanksgiving. Awareness of our poverty and ineptitude causes us to rejoice in the gift of being called out of darkness into wondrous light and translated into the kingdom of God's beloved Son. — Brennan Manning
My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known. — Peter S. Beagle
In Conclusion
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