Incompetence Quotes

“Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 3001: The Final Odyssey

“The most dangerous irony is, people are angry with others because of their own incompetence.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie; in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”
― Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

“He can occasionally see to an enemy," she conceded. "If he manages to get his sword pointed in the right direction and the enemy does him the favor of falling upon it in precisely the right way.”
― Lynn Kurland, Star of the Morning

“Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else - cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments - as long as the paperwork's filled out properly. And in on time.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“It happens; incompetence is rewarded more often than not.”
― Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
― Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle

“I hate incompetence. I think it’s probably the only thing I do hate. But it didn’t make me want to rule people. Nor to teach them anything. It made me want to do my own work in my own way and let myself be torn to pieces if necessary.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Six-Pack didn't despise George W. Bush to the degree that Ketchum did, but she thought the president was a smirking twerp and a dumbed-down daddy's boy, and she agreed with Ketchum's assessment that Bush would be as worthless as wet crap in even the smallest crisis. If a fight broke out between two small dogs, for example, Ketchum claimed that Bush would call the fire department and ask them to bring a hose; then the president would position himself at a safe distance from the dogfight, and wait for the firemen to show up. The part Pam liked best about this assessment was that Ketchum said the president would instantly look self-important, and would appear to be actively involved--that is, once the firefighters and their hose arrived, and provided there was anything remaining of the mess the two dogs might have made of each other in the interim.”
― John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River

“Democracies, as we know, are prone to every error from incompetence and corruption to misguided fetishes and gridlock. Therefore, it is astonishing, in a sense, that we would be willing to submit the direction of our societies to the collective wisdom of an imperfect and frequently disengaged public. How could we be so naïve? To that fair question, we must reply: how could anyone be so gullible as permanently to entrust power—an inherently corrupting force—to a single leader or party? When a dictator abuses his authority, there is no legal way to stop him. When a free society falters, we still have the ability--through open debate and the selection of new leaders--to remedy those shortcomings. We still have time to pick a better egg. That is democracy's comparative advantage, and it should be recognized and preserved.”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning

“To the incompetence of our enemies.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“You see, evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction,’ said the angel. ‘It is ultimately negative, and therefore encompasses its downfall even at its moments of apparent triumph. No matter how grandiose, how well-planned, how apparently foolproof an evil plan, the inherent sinfulness will by definition rebound upon its instigators. No matter how apparently successful it may seem upon the way, at the end it will wreck itself. It will founder upon the rocks of iniquity and sink headfirst to vanish without trace into the seas of oblivion.’
Crowley considered this. ‘Nah,’ he said, at last. ‘For my money, it was just average incompetence.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Incompetence is prevalent in the engineering field.”
― Steven Magee, Magee’s Disease

“There is no shortage of willful incompetence within the government regarding environmental radiation.”
― Steven Magee

“It is time to end the willful incompetence regarding altitude sickness and shift work disorder in professional astronomy.”
― Steven Magee

“There is a lot of incompetence in Florida.”
― Steven Magee

“There was so much incompetence at the dangerous Desoto Solar Farm that they could not even execute their illegal non-disclosure termination agreement correctly!”
― Steven Magee

“By the time I left the electrical utility industry, I had seen levels of incompetence, illegal and dangerous activities that I could never have imagined to be possible!”
― Steven Magee

“Incompetence: The COVID-19 pandemic hit the world in 2019. It takes three years to train a nurse. In 2022 there is a shortage of nurses. Why wasn’t a massive government funded training program initiated to train huge numbers of nurses in 2019?”
― Steven Magee

“Greatest Nation On Earth...LOL!!!”
― Steven Magee

“Christmas 2022 revealed the hazards of flying budget airlines.”
― Steven Magee

“Couples therapy? Never again!”
― Steven Magee

“The pandemic revealed the incompetence of government.”
― Steven Magee

“Witnessing the incompetence of the police has made me scared to call them!”
― Steven Magee

“The more skill it takes to accomplish a task, the more difficult it is to comprehend the knowledge needed to deal with it, the more likely it is that someone incompetent will perform it.”
― Luigina Sgarro

“You have to characterize your coworkers and avoid the ones that degrade the workplace harmony.”
― Steven Magee

“The doctor was clueless!”
― Steven Magee

“The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The Dark Cloud
Is the incompetence of a bastard that thinks they’re above the law
Is the crude behavior of someone who has an obvious flaw
Is the triumph of high achievement meeting a monster’s claw
Is the crew of failures that likes to lie and pretends that they can saw”
― Aida Mandic, The Dark Cloud