Benjamin Hoff Quotes

Intellectual sodomy, which comes from the refusal to be simple about plain matters, is as gross and abundant today as sexual perversion and they are nowise different from one another.

A lot of times when you're around really, really smart people, you don't really understand them.

Any sufficiently badly-written science is indistinguishable from magic.

Why does everyone have to pretend to be stupid and not know long words?

What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

I think it's easy to make impenetrable music that nobody can get, and you can hide behind that sometimes.

A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.

I just don't like big guys who speak cryptically and act like they understand the language better than me.

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

Jargon is part ceremonial robe, part false beard.

Being obscure in acronyms is great. I think I'll start making up my own... INYM - I'm Not Your Momma.

I learned over the years that it's easy to appear smart referencing things that people don't know.

They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.

A theme is always necessary, a plain, simple, unadorned theme to confuse the ignorant.

There are some people, who I'll charitably call snobs, who are dismissive of any conversation that doesn't begin with the full level of complexity. That's just not how the world works.

An expert is someone who takes something you already know and makes it sound confusing.

Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke.

I'm not being condescending, I'm too busy thinking about far more important things you wouldn't understand.

A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure.

Deep down, you see, I long to be arcane, esoteric. I would love to confound people with their own language.

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

intelligence is always intimidating to those who aren't!

We cannot tell some people what it is believe, partly because they are too stupid to understand, partly because we are too proudly vague to explain.