In general, geeks prefer to use brains rather than brawn, to get themselves out of a situation. So, their insults are often witty, literary and highly intelligent. But not always. Here are a few of our favorites.
Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking… Nerf herder!
— Princess Leia, The Empire Strikes Back
You know, you are a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain.
— The Doctor, Doctor Who
[You’re] a girl with as much talent for disguise as a giraffe in dark glasses trying to get into a polar-bears-only club.
— Black Adder, Black Adder
If you spend word for word with me, I shall make your wit bankrupt.
— William Shakespeare, The Two Gentelman of Verona
[He] may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.
— Groucho Marx as Rufus T. Firefly, Duck Soup
You’re about as much use as a condom machine in the Vatican.
— Rimmer, Red Dwarf
I’ll explain and I’ll use small words so that you’ll be sure to understand, you warthog-faced buffoon.
— Westley (The Dread Pirate Roberts), The Princess Bride
Don’t look now, but there’s one man too many in this room and I think it’s you.
— Groucho Marx as Rufus T. Firefly, Duck Soup
I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
— French Guard, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Well if it isnt fat stinking billygoat billyboy. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip-oil? Come get some in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou!
— Alex Delarge, A Clockwork Orange
You are a sad strange little man, and you have my pity.
— Buzz Light Year, Toy Story
To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I’ve known sheep that could outwit you. I’ve worn dresses with higher IQs.
— Wanda, A Fish Called Wanda
Your heart is full of unwashed socks. Your soul is full of gunk …The three words that best describe you are as follows, and I quote, “Stink, stank, stunk!
— The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
— Oscar Wilde
You bowl like your momma. Unless of course she bowls well, in which case you bowl nothing like her.
— Sheldon Cooper, Big Bang Theory
Shut up, Big-booty, you coward. You are the weakest individual I ever know.
— Doctor Emilio Lizardo/Lord John Whorfin, Buckaroo Banzai, Across the 8th Dimension
Well, I’ll tell you something that should be of vital interest to you. That you, sir, are a NITWIT!
— The Doctor, Doctor Who
I didn’t mean to say that the Enterprise [or your car/van/truck/RV] should be hauling garbage. I meant to say that it should be hauled away as garbage!
— Korax, Star Trek
Don’t get uncool and heavy on me now.
— Neil, The Young Ones
Your brain’s so minute, that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open, there wouldn’t be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
— Black Adder, Black Adder
I’m trying to thank you, you pointed-eared hobgoblin!
— Dr. Leonard McCoy, Star Trek
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
— Oscar Wilde
You are the most obnoxious, trumped-up, farty little smeghead it has ever been my misfortune to encounter!
— Kryten, Red Dwarf
You would bore the leggings off a village idiot.
— Black Adder, Black Adder
Shut your festering gob, you tit! Your type really makes me puke, you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous pervert!
— Monty Python
Well, of course, this is just the sort of blinkered philistine ignorance I’ve come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker’s cuss for the struggling artist. You excrement, you whining hypocritical toadies with your colour TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding masonic secret handshakes. You wouldn’t let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards. Well I wouldn’t become a Freemason if you went down on your stinking knees and begged me.
— Monty Python
You are a fart factory, slug-slimed sack of rat guts in cat vomit. A cheesy scab picked pimple squeezing finger bandage. A week old maggot burger with everything on it and flies on the side.
— Rufio, Hook
What are you, a captain in the innuendo squad?
— Micky, Doctor Who
Out. For. A. Walk… Bitch.
— Spike, Buffy The Vampire Slayer
I desire that we be better strangers.
— William Shakespeare, As You Like It
Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
—Anonymous
It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level.
— Marvin The Paranoid Android, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
You are so mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence.
— Evil, Time Bandits
Well, my days of not takin’ ya seriously are certainly comin’ to a middle.
— Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly
You’re not a complete idiot… some parts are missing.
— Anonomous
Listen, three eyes, don’t you try to outweird me. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.
— Zaphod Beeblebrox, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
— Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings
Bubble-headed booby.
— Dr Zachary Smith, Lost in Space
You’r so dumb you think Max Planck is a board used to build really wide houses.
— Anonymous
He’s out to lunch, breakfast, dinner, tea, supper, the lot. He’s not in for a single meal, if you ask me.
— Rimmer, Red Dwarf
You are very fat and stupid and persistently wear a ridiculous hat which you should be ashamed of.
— The Great Zaganza, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
They have a plentiful lack of wit.
— Hamlet, Hamlet
Hand over the calculator, friends don’t let friends derive drunk.
— Anonymous
Sir, I think you have a problem with your brain being missing.
— Zoe, Firefly
Allow me to congratulate you, sir. You have the most totally closed mind I have ever met.
— The Doctor, Doctor Who
You’re like a trained ape, only without the training.
— Simon, Firefly
I think… no, I am positive… that you are the most unattractive man I have ever met in my entire life. In the short time we’ve been together, you have demonstrated every loathsome characteristic of the male personality and even discovered a few new ones. You are physically repulsive, intellectually retarded, you’re morally reprehensible, vulgar, insensitive, selfish, stupid, you have no taste, a lousy sense of humor and you smell. You’re not even interesting enough to make me sick.
— Alexandra Medford, The Witches of Eastwick
You were right. That must be a novel experience for you.
— Avon, Blake’s Seven
To you, Baldrick [or other name], the Renaissance was just something that happened to other people, wasn’t it?
— Black Adder, Black Adder
You’re so dense, light bends around you.
— Anonymous
Smeg head.
— Lister, Red Dwarf
People, my god; people. Nature gave them tongues, technology gave them loudspeakers, and they all believe that because they can use both, whatever they say is important.
— Pat Cadagin, Rewired Anthology
You’re so stupid, you think a thesaurus is a monster from Jurassic Park.
— Anonymous
Four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one.
— Beatrice, Much Ado About Nothing
Freaking idiot.
– Napolean, Napolean Dynomite
There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.
— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
Copernicus just called: You’re not the center of the universe.
— Anonymous
The only decent impression he can do is of the man with no talent.
— Black Adder, Black Adder
Hab SoSlI’ Quch! [Your mother has a smooth forehead!]
— Anonymous, Klingon
You are a driver —and I use the word in the loosest possible sense, i.e., meaning merely somebody who occupies the driving seat of what I will for the moment call — but I use the term strictly without prejudice — a car while it is proceeding along the road — of stupendous, I would even say verging on the super-human, lack of skill.
— Dirk Gently, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
Never hung poison on a fouler toad. Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes.
— Anne, Richard III
You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk!
— The Wizard, The Wizard of Oz
He’s about as effective as a cat-flap in an elephant house.
— Black Adder, Black Adder
You don’t have the brains to understand. All you have is printed circuits.
— Captain Kirk, Star Trek
If brains were photons you would be perfect for the double slit experiment.
— Anonymous
Look, we all have something to bring to this discussion. But I think from now on the thing you should bring is silence.
— Arnold Rimmer, Red Dwarf
