See Also: ABSURDITY, DULLNESS, FOOLISHNESS, INSULTS, MIND

1. Assholes are like weeds, a bitch to get rid of and when you do, another one grows back in the same place —Jonathan Kellerman
2. Brains like mashed potatoes —Anon
3. Dumb as a beetle —Anon

   The beetle has been linked to dullness and stupidity since the sixteenth century.

4. Dumb as a stick of wood —Anon
5. Dumb as pure white lead —John Updike
6. Had the brains of a Playboy bunny and fucked like one —Jonathan Valin
7. He’d be sharper than a serpent’s tooth, if he wasn’t as dull as ditch water —Charles Dickens

   A Dickensian twist on King Lear’s lament about an ungrateful child.

8. He’s like the man who thinks it’s raining when you pee in his eyes —Anon
9. His head was as empty as a politician’s speech —Anon
10. I’m as thick as a plank —Princess Diana excusing herself from playing a game with a patient during a hospital visit, quoted, Public Radio
11. (About as) intelligent as a bundle of shawls —Henry James
12. Isn’t very intelligent … he’s like a hound that simply follows the scent. He crumples his nose up, looking for his fleas —Henri-Pierre Roche
13. Like dogs, that meeting with nobody else, bit one another —John Ray’s Proverbs
14. (He) looked as if he’d stood in line twice when the brains were being handed out —Christopher Hale
15. Look stupid as a poet in search of a simile —Thomas Holcroft
16. A man with a small head is like a pin without any, very apt to get into things beyond his depth —Josh Billings
17. (A snail’s about as) smart as mud —CBS-TV news story about snails being grown for escargot lovers, November 5, 1986
18. (That man is) so stupid it sits on him like a halo —Emlyn Williams
19. (The free press in Israel has belatedly awakened to the meaning of this act, which was as) stupid as cracking the safe of your own bank —William Safire, New York Times/Op-ed, March 9, 1987

    Safire’s simile refers to Israel’s recruitment of an American as a spy.

20. Stupid as jugs without handles —Honoré de Balzac
21. Stupid as oysters —August E. F. Von Kotzbue
22. To serve an unintelligent man is like crying in the wilderness, massaging the body of a dead man, planting water-lilies on dry land, whispering in the ear of the deaf —Panchatantra
23. While he was not dumber than an ox, he was not any smarter either —James Thurber