Scott Adams

From BillionQuotes

Scott Adams (born June 8, 1957), American cartoonist and satirist, best known for his Dilbert series of comic strips and books

1 Dilbert comic strip
- 1.1 Dogbert
2 Books by Scott Adams
3 The Dilbert Newsletter
4 Bob The Dinosaur
5 External links

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Dilbert comic strip

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Dogbert

Businesses used to be like Christianity; if you were faithful and obedient, you could obtain bliss in the afterlife of retirement. Now its more of a reincarnation model. If a worker learns enough in his current job, he can progess to a higher level of employment elsewhere.
- Dogbert

Dogbert : I'm going back to my old job as a network systems administrator.
Dilbert : Why?
Dogbert : I'm attracted by the potential for reckless abuse of power.
- Dogbert the Sysadmin

I have forgotten my password. I humbly beg for assistance.
I have no time for boring administrative tasks, you fool! I'm too busy upgrading the network.
You could have given me a new password in the time it took to belittle me.
Yeah, but which option would give me job satisfaction?
- Dogbert the Sysadmin & Asok

I dont know how to use my email.
You need to upgrade your IQ a few points. Try listening to classical music.
- Dogbert's Tech Support Service

I have total access to every employee's email. With a few strategic edits, I will transform the office into Melrose Place.
- Dogbert the Sysadmin

I need a job where my immense ego seems normal.
- Dogbert

63% of all statistics are made up... including this one.
- Dogbert

When virtual reality gets cheaper than dating, society is doomed…
- Dogbert

All great ideas look like bad ideas to people who are losers. Its always good to test a new idea with known losers to make sure they dont like it.
- Dogbert

You must use the stars as your management guide.
Does that work?
If you believe it works, then you are not bright enough to make your own decisions anyway. So randomness is probably an improvement.
- Dogbert the Astronomer-Consultant & The Pointy Haired Boss.

My invention can detect human stupidity. It has a very simple interface. All I do is point it at people.
Then what does it do?
Why would it need to do anything else?
- Dogbert, in his "Out! Out! You Demons of Stupidity" phase

I have a new personal crusade. I'm going to hunt down the people who have strong opinions on subjects they dont understand. Then I'll bop them with this cardboard tube.
- Dogbert's phase continues

You're not entitled to your opinion. I copyrighted all of the stupidest opinions in the universe so they can never again be uttered.
- Dogbert

My company lost a frooflepoopillion dollars. I'm embarrassed to tell people where I work.
Never be afraid to tell the truth about yourself.
Because honesty is the best policy?
Because no one pays any attention to what you say.
- Dilbert and Dogbert

Dear Tim, your book does not meet our current publishing needs. You plot was lame and I hated your characters. By association I have come to hate you too. For safety reasons, I have hired an illiterate person to rip up your manuscript.
- Dogbert the Publisher

How's the book publishing business coming along?
Great! I get to reject a dozen authors a day. I call them untalented dolts and they *thank* me for it.
Eventually, you have to publish something.
Yeah, well, thats the conventional wisdom
- Dogbert & Dilbert

I'm writing a book that debunks the effectiveness of business consultants.
But common sense would say that you're being a consultant yourself. So your opinion is logically flawed. Only people with no common sense will buy your book.
I prefer to call them the mass market..."
- Dogbert & Dilbert

My guest today on 'Money Chatter' is the head of the 'Dogbert Mutual Fund'. Its reported that your fund is the highest of the decade. Tell us how you made that happen.
Okay. Apparently, this guy will read anything you hand him"
- Dogbert is interviewed...

I've hired the Dogbert 'Touchy-Feely' Institute to teach us about teamwork
We'll start with an exercise about trust. I want each of you to sign blank cheques and give them to me.
What will this teach us about trust?
It will teach you that trust is an excellent quality for others to have.
- Pointy Haired Boss, Dogbert & Dilbert

Your biggest asset is rampant ignorance. You would never start a project if you knew how much it would really cost. Employees stay here because they don't know there are better jobs across the street. Customers buy your products because they don't know about all the bugs. I recommend wearing trash cans on your heads to avoid accidental exposure to knowledge.
- Dogbert, the trash-can-selling consultant

There are two essential rules to management. One, the customer is always right; and two, they must be punished for their arrogance.
- Dogbert

Work is for losers. A winner says 'That's on my list' and never commits to a deadline.
- Dogbert

Do you ever feel guilty for scamming innocent people out of their money?
I only scam people who would do the same thing to me if they were smarter.
- Dilbert and Dogbert

The Dogbert method of eliminating guilt is simple. All of your problems are caused by invisible people named Juan and Cindy. All you have to do is find them and kill them.
- Dogbert

Welcome to Dogbert's School for the Socially Oblivious. Today I'll pair you with someone whose social defect will cancel out your own.
- Dogbert, branching out

Today I'll teach you to recognize when you're boring. This is called a yawn. When you see one, stop talking about yourself.
- Dogbert, Social Obliviousness 101

My recommendations are based on an analysis of accountablity. As a consultant, I'm not accountable to your stockholders. So I can recommend anything that amuses me.

I like to con people. And I like to insult people. If you combine con & insult, you get consult!

If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day. But if you teach a man to fish he will buy an ugly hat. And if you talk about fish to a starving man then you are a consultant.

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Books by Scott Adams

There's a gigantic gray area between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities. I call that the Weasel Zone and it's where most of life happens.
- Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel (2002)

Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
These days it seems like any idiot with a laptop computer can churn out a business book and make a few bucks. That's certainly what I'm hoping. It would be a real letdown if the trend changed before this masterpiece goes to print.
- The Dilbert Principle (1995)

People are so conditioned to take sides that a balanced analysis looks to them like hatred.
- Dilbert, in Daily Dilbert, 26 March 2005

In Japan employees occasionally work themselves to death. It's called Karoshi. I don't want that to happen to anybody in my department. The trick is to take a break as soon as you see a bright light and hear dead relatives beckon.
- Pointy-haired Boss.

My market research indicates that 50% of your customers are above the median age.
- Dogbert.

So, I heard the Fed increased the money supply, but I checked my bank balance and it's the same as before.
- Dogbert's world of amazingly ignorant people.

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The Dilbert Newsletter

The Official Publication of Dogbert's New Ruling Class

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Newsletter 58

"DNRC Stops Global Terrorism!"
- As you know, the best way to solve a problem is to identify the core belief that causes the problem; then mock that belief until the people who hold it insist that you heard them wrong.
- The core belief that drives terrorism is the notion of a "holy place," along with the idea that some people belong there and other people don't. That's why the only solution to terrorism is for religious scholars to hold a global summit to agree on the definition of "holy place." Once they agree on a definition, it will be easier to mock it into submission.
- At some point during the summit, probably after a week or so, the scholars would tire of saying to each other, "Nice hat" and asking, "What setting do you use to trim your ratty beard?" Then they'd get down to the business of defining what makes a place holy. Someone would suggest that the key things are the location and the fact that something holy happened there. Eventually, someone with a second-grade understanding of space, possibly the busboy, would point out that everything in the universe has moved a gazillion miles since the holy event, and the concept of location is meaningless unless all the reference points stay put. The best-case scenario is that the "holy place" is now a billion miles away, floating in empty space.
- After some embarrassed mumbling, the scholars would insist that they knew all along that location wasn't important. One of them would break the awkwardness by suggesting that a holy place must be defined by the "stuff" that comprises it. That's good news, because the Middle East is made entirely of dirt. The wise King Solomon probably would have advised people to help themselves to as much holy dirt as they wanted. He might have gone so far as to suggest that people put holy dirt in their socks so they can enjoy walking on it wherever they go. But first he would have invented socks and patented the idea, because in addition to being wise, he had a good head for business.
- Religious scholars should also help the rest of us understand the question of holy depth. Is it just the top layer of soil that's holy, or does the holiness continue lower into the ground? It's important because if there's no bottom limit, then whatever is on the exact opposite side of the earth is also holy, only upside down. The residents would have to stand on their heads to get the full benefit of the holy rays, but it would be worth it.
- Feel free to forward this Holy Place argument to any Induhviduals who need the enlightenment that comes from having their core beliefs mocked. I can't guarantee that this will stop terrorism, but whatever you're doing now isn't working.

Highly intelligent and well-informed people disagree on every political issue. Therefore, intelligence and knowledge are useless for making decisions, because if any of that stuff helped, then all the smart people would have the same opinions. So use your "gut instinct" to make voting choices. That is exactly like being clueless, but with the added advantage that you'll feel as if your random vote preserved democracy.
- Response to an "Ask Dogbert" letter

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Newsletter 57

The Dilbert Newsletter # 57 (September 28th, 2004)

Democracy might have some rough edges, but it's still the best system in the world. If you don't believe it, here are some true quotes overheard from the citizens who will help decide which leader should have the nuclear launch codes:
- "If there was a rainbow at night, how would you know it was there?"
- "Just because he's our landlord doesn't mean he owns the place."
- "Wasn't bronchitis a dinosaur?"
- "All old people should be shot at birth."
- "I know that area of town like the back of my head."

The biggest issue this election is something called flip-flopping, and all candidates are accused of doing it. A strong leader is expected to maintain steadfast resolve in his opinion even if the environment changes or he gets new information. In any other context, that would be considered the first sign of a brain tumor. When presidents do it, it's called leadership, and frankly, we can't get enough of it.
Tip: Place your houseplants in front of the television during the next presidential debate and watch how leafy they get.

The official DNRC position in this campaign is that other people's votes shouldn't count. So find someone who disagrees with all of your opinions and convince that person to stay home on election day. Promise that you'll do the same. Then use your absentee ballot to vote from home so that technically you didn't lie. If there is one thing that our role models in this election have taught us, it's that omitting important information is completely different from lying.

Here are some more true tales of Induhviduals, as reported by vigilant DNRC operatives in the field. I am making them more relevant by adding the phrase "And then he/she voted" after each one.
- While looking at a house, my brother asked the real estate agent which direction was north because, he explained, he didn't want the sun waking him up every morning. She asked, "Does the sun rise in the north?"
  When another person jumped in and explained that the sun rises in the east (and has for some time), she shook her head and said, "Oh, I don't keep up with that stuff."
  And then she voted.
- I used to work in technical support for a 24x7 call center. One day I got a call from an Induhvidual who asked what hours the call center was open. I told him, "The number you dialed is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week". He responded, "Is that Eastern or Pacific time?" Wanting to end the call quickly, I said, "Uh.. Pacific."
  And then he voted.
- So my colleague and I were eating our lunch in our cafeteria, when we overheard one of the admin assistants talking about the sunburn she got on her weekend drive to the shore. She drove down in a convertible, but "didn't think she'd get sunburned because the car was moving."
  And then she voted.

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Newsletter 48

The Dilbert Newsletter # 48 (June 2003)

[On Islamic terrorists…] Like the proverbial dog chasing a car, the Induhviduals haven't considered what would happen if they caught one. For example, let's say they (the Induhviduals, not the dogs) accomplish their stated goal of destroying the economies of the Western world. Is that really a good plan for people who live in a desert and import most of their food? Just for the record, if I'm down to my last potato, I'm not sharing it with a guy who wants to kill me so he can get a better supply of virgins in paradise.

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