Background Image
...
Had Your Forefathers, Wigglesworth, Been As Stupid As You Are, The Human Race Would Never Have Succeeded In Procreating Itself.
-Alan Bennett
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

Had Your Forefathers, Wigglesworth,

Alan Bennett
...
Had Your Forefathers, Wigglesworth, Been As Stupid As You Are, The Human Race Would Never Have Succeeded In Procreating Itself.

Understanding the Quote: "had your forefathers, wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human..."

This quote by Alan Bennett reflects deeply on the theme of funny. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Funny, Stupid, Race, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Alan Bennett interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett is celebrated for insightful thoughts on funny and stupid. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 62818
Topic
Funny
Stupid
Race
More From Alan Bennett
I Suppose I'm The Only Person Who Remembers One Of The Most Exciting Of His Ballets-it's The Fruit Of An Unlikely Collaboration Between Nijinsky On The One Hand And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle On The Other.
Hands
Ballet
Collaboration
Deluded Liberal That I Am, I Persist In Thinking That Those With A Streak Of Sexual Unorthodoxy Ought To Be More Tolerant Of Their Fellows Than Those Who Lead An Entirely Godly, Righteous And Sober Life. Illogically, I Tend To Assume That If You ( Philip Larkin) Dream Of Caning Schoolgirls Bottoms, It Disqualifies You From Dismissing Half The Nation As Work-shy.
Dream
Godly
Thinking
What She Was Finding Also Was How One Book Led To Another, Doors Kept Opening Wherever She Turned And The Days Weren't Long Enough For The Reading She Wanted To Do.
Book
Reading
Doors
Nature Played A Cruel Trick On Her By Giving Her A Waxed Mustache.
Sarcastic
Giving
Mustache
Clichés Can Be Quite Fun. That's How They Got To Be Clichés.
Fun
Books Are Not About Passing Time. They're About Other Lives. Other Worlds. Far From Wanting Time To Pass, One Just Wishes One Had More Of It. If One Wanted To Pass The Time One Could Go To New Zealand.
Book
Other Worlds
Wish
Schweitzer In The Congo Did Not Derive More Moral Credit Than Larkin Did For Living In Hull.
Hull
Credit
Moral
If You Find Yourself Born In Barnsley And Then Set Your Sights On Being Virginia Woolf It Is Not Going To Be Roses All The Way.
Sight
Virginia
Rose
I Lack What The English Call Character, By Which They Mean The Power To Refrain.
Character
Mean
Refrain
One Reads For Pleasure...it Is Not A Public Duty.
Pleasure
Duty
Remember. You Are A Physician. You Are Not A Policeman Nor Are You A Minister Of Religion. You Must Take People As They Come. Remember, Too That Though You Will Generally Know More About The Condition Than The Patient, It Is The Patient Who Has The Condition And This If Nothing Else Bestows On Him Or Her A Kind Of Wisdom. You Have The Knowledge But That Does Not Entitle You To Be Superior. Knowledge Makes You The Servant Not The Master.
Remember You
Remembers You
People
Of Course My Standards Are Out Of Date! That's Why They're Called Standards.
Standards
Courses
Have You Ever Thought, Headmaster, That Your Standards Might Perhaps Be A Little Out Of Date? Of Course They're Out Of Date. Standards Are Always Out Of Date. That Is What Makes Them Standards.
Littles
Statistics
Might
To Play Trivial Pursuit With A Life Like Mine Could Be Said To Be A Form Of Homeopathy.
Play
Form
Pursuit
I'm Not Good At Precise, Coherent Argument. But Plays Are Suited To Incoherent Argument, Put Into The Mouths Of Fallible People.
Play
People
Mouths
I Don't Talk Very Well. With Writing, You've Time To Get It Right. Also I've Found The More I Talk The Less I Write, And If I Didn't Write No One Would Want Me To Talk Anyway.
Book
Writing
Want
If, For Instance, We'd Made The Film After The Show Had Been To Broadway, It Would Have Been Exactly The Same Film But We Would Have Been Assured That They Would Have Understood It. We Didn't Have To Do Any Alterations For Broadway. I Was Supposed To Go A Fortnight Before It Opened To Alter Anything That Was Necessary And There Was Nothing Really.
Broadway
Film
Made
I Dont Know Whether You've Ever Looked Into A Miner's Eyes For Any Length Of Time, That Is. Because It Is The Loveliest Blue You've Ever Seen. I Think Perhaps That's Why I Live In Ibiza, Because The Blue Of The Mediterranean, You See, Reminds Me Of The Blue Of The Eyes Of Those Doncaster Miners.
Time
Eye
Thinking
A Book Is A Device To Ignite The Imagination.
Book
Reading
Imagination
All The Effort Went Into Getting There And Then I Had Nothing Left. I Thought I'd Got Somewhere, Then I Found I Had To Go On.
Effort
Goes On
Found
The Best Moments In Reading Are When You Come Across Something - A Thought, A Feeling, A Way Of Looking At Things - Which You Had Thought Special And Particular To You. And Now, Here It Is, Set Down By Someone Else, A Person You Have Never Met, Someone Even Who Is Long Dead. And It Is As If A Hand Has Come Out, And Taken Yours
Inspirational
Motivational
Reading
Philip Larkin Used To Cheer Himself Up By Looking In The Mirror And Saying The Line From Rebecca, 'i Am Mrs De Winter Now!
Depression
Cheer
Winter
Cloisters, Ancient Libraries ... I Was Confusing Learning With The Smell Of Cold Stone.
Smell
Confusing
Library
That's A Bit Like Asking A Man Crawling Across The Sahara Whether He Would Prefer Perrier Or Malvern Water.
Men
Water
Sahara
The Breed Never Dies. Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, Practitioners In That School Of Snobbery Withviolence That Runs Like A Thread Of Good-class Tweed Through Twentieth-century Literature.
Running
School
Class
History Is A Commentary On The Various And Continuing Incapabilities Of Men. What Is History? History Is Women Following Behind With The Bucket.
Men
Buckets
Incapability
I'm Not "happy" But I'm Not Unhappy About It.
Contentment
Unhappy
Not Happy
My Films Are About Embarrassment.
Film
Embarrassment
There's Very Little In The Substance Of [the Lady In The Van] Which Is Not Fact Though Some Adjustments Have Had To Be Made. Over The Years Miss Shepherd Was Visited By A Succession Of Social Workers So The Character In The Play Is A Composite Figure. . . . A Composite Too Are The Neighbours, Pauline And Rufus, Though I Have Made Rufus A Publisher In Remembrance Of My Neighbour, The Late Colin Haycraft, The Proprietor Of Duckworth's.
Character
Play
Years
But Most Men Regard Their Life As A Poem That Women Threaten. They May Not Have Two Spondees To Rub Together But They Still Want To Pen Their Saga Untrammelled By Life-threatening Activities Like Trailing Round Sainsbury's, Emptying The Dishwasher Or Going To The Nativity Play.
Men
Play
Two
We Were Put To Dickens As Children But It Never Quite Took. That Unremitting Humanity Soon Had Me Cheesed Off.
Children
Cheesy
Humanity
Cancer, Like Any Other Illness, Is A Bore.
Cancer
Cancer Survivor
Illness
Here I Sit, Alone At 60, Bald And Fat And Full Of Sin Cold The Seat, And Loud The Cistern As I Read The (harpic) (lysol) Tin
Birthday
Tin
Cold
Why Is It Always The "intelligent" People Who Are Socialists?
Intelligent
People
Intelligence
I Can Walk. It's Just That I'm So Rich I Don't Need To.
Needs
Wealth
Rich
You Don't Put Your Life Into Your Books, You Find It There.
Book
I Turned Down A Knighthood. It Would Be Like Having To Wear A Suit Every Day Of Your Life.
Awards
Would Be
Knighthood
I've Never Seen The Point Of The Sea, Except Where It Meets The Land. The Shore Has A Point. The Sea Has None.
Ocean
Sea
Land
I Write Plays About Things That I Can't Resolve In My Mind. I Try To Root Things Out.
Writing
Play
Roots
To Begin With, It's True, She Read With Trepidation And Some Unease. The Sheer Endlessness Of Books Outfaced Her And She Had No Idea How To Go On; There Was No System To Her Reading, With One Book Leading To Another, And Often She Had Two Or Three On The Go At The Same Time.
Book
Reading
Ideas
Authors, She Soon Decided, Were Probably Best Met Within The Pages Of Their Novels, And Were As Much Creatures Of The Reader's Imagination As The Characters In Their Books. Nor Did They Seem To Think One Had Done Them A Kindness By Reading Their Writings. Rather They Had Done One The Kindness By Writing Them.
Kindness
Reading
Book
I Think The Writer's Quite Low Down In The Hierarchy Really. But The Fact That They Took The Piss Out Of Nicholas [hynter] Who, Besides Being The Director, Is Also Director Of The National Theatre Is, I'd Have Thought, Slightly More Risky.
Thinking
Theatre
Directors
Definition Of A Classic: A Book Everyone Is Assumed To Have Read And Often Thinks They Have.
Book
Thinking
Definitions
Memories Are Not Shackles, Franklin, They Are Garlands.
Memories
Franklin
Garlands
Those Who Have Known The Famous Are Publicly Debriefed Of Their Memories, Knowing As Their Own Dusk Falls That They Will Only Be Remembered For Remembering Someone Else.
Memories
Fall
Knowing
Reading Is Untidy, Discursive And Perpetually Inviting.
Reading
Briefing
Inviting
God Doesn't Do Notes, Either. Did Jesus Christ Say, "can I Be Excused The Crucifixion?" No!
Jesus
Christ
Notes
What I'm Above All Primarily Concerned With Is The Substance Of Life, The Pith Of Reality. If I Had To Sum Up My Work, I Suppose That's It Really: I'm Taking The Pith Out Of Reality.
Reality
Substance
Concerned
But Then Books, As I'm Sure You Know, Seldom Prompt A Course Of Action. Books Generally Just Confirm You In What You Have, Perhaps Unwittingly, Decided To Do Already. You Go To A Book To Have Your Convictions Corroborated. A Book, As It Were, Closes The Book.
Book
Action
Conviction
Were We Closer To The Ground As Children, Or Is The Grass Emptier Now?
Children
Grass
So Boring You Fall Asleep Halfway Through Her Name.
Sarcastic
Fall
Names
It's The One Species I Wouldn't Mind Seeing Vanish From The Face Of The Earth. I Wish They Were Like The White Rhinosix Of Them Left In The Serengeti National Park, And All Males.
White
Mind
Wish
F They'd Been Working With Alec Guinness, For Instance, They Wouldn't Have Known They Were Born If They'd Not Towed The Line!
Lines
Born
Guinness
You Always Know When You're Going To Arrive. If You Go By Car, You Don't. Apart From Anything Else, I Prefer Cycling. It Puts You In A Good Mood, I Find.
Cycling
Car
Good Mood
The Thing I Think About Is That Once You've Done It, You Then Start To Think About What You're Going To Do Next. It's Much Easier To Follow Something That's Not Been As Successful As This.
Successful
Thinking
Done
I Saw Someone Peeing In Jermym Street The Other Day. I Thought, Is This The End Of Civilization As We Know It? Or Is It Simply Someone Peeing In Jermyn Street?
Civilization
Saws
Ends
Had Your Forefathers, Wigglesworth, Been As Stupid As You Are, The Human Race Would Never Have Succeeded In Procreating Itself.
Funny
Stupid
Race
Never Read The Bible As If It Means Something. Or At Any Rate Don't Try And Mean It. Nor Prayers. The Liturgy Is Best Treated And Read As If It's Someone Announcing The Departure Of Trains.
Prayer
Mean
Trying
[b]riefing Is Not Reading. In Fact It Is The Antithesis Of Reading. Briefing Is Terse, Factual And To The Point. Reading Is Untidy, Discursive And Perpetually Inviting. Briefing Closes Down A Subject, Reading Opens It Up.
Reading
Facts
Briefing
If You Think Squash Is A Competitive Activity, Try Flower Arranging.
Flower
Thinking
Squash
I've Never Forgotten That Experience. But I Had Nobody At School That Was Either Like Hector Or Irwin. The Masters Had No Idea What Was Expected Of You In The Scholarship Exam, So You Just Had To Busk It Really.
School
Ideas
Forgotten
One Of The Hardest Things For Boys To Learn Is That A Teacher Is Human. One Of The Hardest Things For A Teacher To Learn Is Not To Try And Tell Them.
Teacher
Boys
Trying
Kafka Could Never Have Written As He Did Had He Lived In A House. His Writing Is That Of Someone Whose Whole Life Was Spent In Apartments, With Lifts, Stairwells, Muffled Voices Behind Closed Doors, And Sounds Through Walls. Put Him In A Nice Detached Villa And He'd Never Have Written A Word.
Wall
Nice
Writing
The Nearest My Parents Came To Alcohol Was At Holy Communion And They Utterly Overestimated Its Effects. However Bad The Weather, Dad Never Drove To Church Because Mam Thought The Sacrament Might Make Him Incapable On The Return Journey.
Dad
Journey
Weather
We Have Fish And Chips, Which W. And I Fetch From The Shop In Settle Market-place. Some Local Boys Come In And There Is A Bit Of Chat Between Them And The Fish-fryer About Whether The Kestrel Under The Counter Is For Sale. Only When I Mention It To W. Does He Explain Kestrel Is Now A Lager. I Imagine The Future Is Going To Contain An Increasing Number Of Incidents Like This, Culminating With A Man In A White Coat Saying To One Kindly, "and Now Can You Tell Me The Name Of The Prime Minister?"
Boys
Men
Names
An Article On Playwrights In The Daily Mail , Listed According To Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right And Centre. I Am Not Listed. I Should Probably Come Under Soft Centre.
Daily Mail
Should
Centre
I'm For The Freedom Of Expression, Given That It Will Be Under Strict Control.
Expression
Freedom Of Speech
Given
The Longer I Practise Medicine, The More Convinced I Am There Are Only Two Types Of Cases: Those That Involve Taking The Trousers Off And Those That Don't.
Science
Two
Medicine
The Appeal Of Reading, She Thought, Lay In Its Indifference: There Was Something Undeferring About Literature. Books Did Not Care Who Was Reading Them Or Whether One Read Them Or Not. All Readers Were Equal, Herself Included. Literature, She Thought, Is A Commonwealth; Letters A Republic.
Reading
Book
Literature
I Was An Only Child. I Lost Both My Parents. By The Time I Was Twenty I Was Bald. I'm Homosexual. In The Way Of Circumstances And Background To Transcend I Had Everything An Artist Could Possibly Want. It Was Practically A Blueprint.
Children
Artist
Parent
Life Is Generally Something That Happens Elsewhere.
Life
Life Is
Elsewhere
We Started Off Trying To Set Up A Small Anarchist Community, But People Wouldn't Obey The Rules.
Change
Organization
People
The Days Weren't Long Enough For The Reading She Wanted To Do.
Reading
Long
Enough
I Had No Idea Of Who Could Play It, No Notion Really. Then Richard Came To See Us But I Don't Think It Was Decided At That Meeting. The Trouble Is, As Soon As You've Chosen Somebody It Obscures Anybody Else You Might Have Thought Of. It's Like Going To A Place That You've Never Been To Before - You've Got A Picture Of It And Then You Go There And That Picture Is Totally Wiped Out By The Reality.
Reality
Thinking
Play
Polly: Education With Socialists, It's Like Sex, All Right As Long As You Don't Have To Pay For It.
Sex
Long
Pay
... Once I Start A Book I Finish It. That Was The Way One Was Brought Up. Books, Bread And Butter, Mashed Potato - One Finishes What's On One's Plate. That's Always Been My Philosophy.
Philosophy
Book
Way
It's Subjunctive History. You Know, The Subjunctive? The Mood Used When Something May Or May Not Have Happened. When It Is Imagined.
May
Mood
Used
It [cambridge] Wasn't A Holy Grail In The Sense That I'd Never Been To Cambridge. But Then, When I Did Go, The Contrast Between Leeds, Which Was Very Black And Sooty In Those Days, And Cambridge, Which Seemed Like Something Out Of A Fairystory, In The Grip Of A Hard Frost, Was Just Wonderful.
Holy Grail
Black
Frost
There Are More Microbes Per Person Than The Entire Population Of The World. Imagine That. Per Person. This Means That If The Time Scale Is Diminished In Proportion To That Of Space It Would Be Quite Possible For The Whole Story Of Greece And Rome To Be Played Out Between Farts.
Mean
Science
Space
Sometimes There Is No Next Time, No Time-outs, No Second Chances. Sometimes It’s Now Or Never.
Second Chance
Now Or Never
Next
...she Felt About Reading What Some Writers Felt About Writing: That It Was Impossible Not To Do It And That At This Late Stage Of Her Life She Had Been Chosen To Read As Others Were Chosen To Write.
Reading
Writing
Impossible
I Tried To Explain To Her The Significance Of The Great Poet, But Without Much Success, The Waste Land Not Figuring Very Largely In Mam's Scheme Of Things. "the Thing Is," I Said Finally, "he Won The Nobel Prize." "well," She Said, With That Unerring Grasp Of Inessentials Which Is The Prerogative Of Mothers, "i'm Not Surprised. It Was A Beautiful Overcoat."
Beautiful
Mother
Land
A Bookshelf Is As Particular To Its Owner As Are His Or Her Clothes; A Personality Is Stamped On A Library Just As A Shoe Is Shaped By The Foot.
Clothes
Shoes
Feet
I Have Never Understood Disliking For War. It Panders To Instincts Already Catered For Within The Scope Of Any Respectable Domestic Establishment.
War
Instinct
Scope
It Seems To Me The Mark Of A Civilized Society That Certain Privileges Should Be Taken For Granted Such As Education, Health Care And The Safety To Walk The Streets.
Taken
Civilization
Safety
Life Is Like A Box Of Sardines And We Are All Looking For The Key.
Life
Keys
Sardines
Books Are Not About Passing The Time. They're About Other Lives. Other Worlds.
Book
Other Worlds
Passing
At The Drabber Moments Of My Life (swilling Some Excrement From The Steps, For Instance, Or Rooting With A Bent Coat-hanger Down A Blocked Sink) Thoughts Occur Like 'i Bet Tom Stoppard Doesn't Have To Do This' Or There Is No Doubt David Hare Would Have Deputed This To An Underling.'
Doubt
Coats
Steps
One Recipe For Happiness Is To Have To Sense Of Entitlement.' To This She Added A Star And Noted At The Bottom Of The Page: 'this Is Not A Lesson I Have Ever Been In A Position To Learn.
Stars
Lessons
Recipes
Why Do We Not Care To Acknowledge Them? The Cattle, The Body Count. We Still Don't Like To Admit The War Was Even Partly Our Fault Because So Many Of Our People Died. A Photograph On Every Mantlepiece. And All This Mourning Has Veiled The Truth. It's Not So Much Lest We Forget, As Lest We Remember. Because You Should Realise The Cenotaph And The Last Post And All That Stuff Is Concerned, There's No Better Way Of Forgetting Something Than By Commemorating It.
War
People
Mourning
Your Whole Life Is On The Other Side Of The Glass. And There Is Nobody Watching.
Life
Glasses
Sides
To Read Is To Withdraw.to Make Oneself Unavailable. One Would Feel Easier About It If The Pursuit Inself Were Less...selfish.
Selfish
Easier
Pursuit
If I Am Doing Nothing, I Like To Be Doing Nothing To Some Purpose. That Is What Leisure Means.
Work
Mean
Purpose
There Is No Such Thing As A Good Script, Onlya Good Film, And I'm Conscious That My Scripts Often Read Better Than They Play.
Play
Scripts
Film
I'm All In Favour Of Free Expression Provided It's Kept Rigidly Under Control.
Business
Expression
Favour
Life Is Rather Like A Tin Of Sardines - We're All Of Us Looking For The Key.
Inspirational
Life
Moving Forward
Above Literature?' Said The Queen. 'who Is Above Literature? You Might As Well Say One Was Above Humanity.
Queens
Humanity
Literature
Our Father The Novelist; My Husband The Poet. He Belongs To The Ages - Just Don't Catch Him At Breakfast. Artists, Celebrated For Their Humanity, They Turn Out To Be Scarcely Human At All.
Husband
Father
Artist
Children Always Assume The Sexual Lives Of Their Parents Come To A Grinding Halt At Their Conception.
Children
Parent
Assuming
Art Comes Out Of Art; It Begins With Imitation, Often In The Form Of Parody, And It's In The Process Of Imitating The Voice Of Others That One Comes To Learn The Sound Of One's Own.
Art
Voice
Sound
No Mention Of God. They Keep Him Up Their Sleeves For As Long As They Can, Vicars Do. They Know It Puts People Off.
Long
People
Vicars
[talking About The Holocaust] 'but To Put Something In Context Is A Step Towards Saying It Can Be Understood And That It Can Be Explained. And If It Can Be Explained That It Can Be Explained Away.' 'but This Is History. Distance Yourselves. Our Perspective On The Past Alters. Looking Back, Immediately In Front Of Us Is Dead Ground. We Don't See It, And Because We Don't See It This Means That There Is No Period So Remote As The Recent Past. And One Of The Historian's Jobs Is To Anticipate What Our Perspective Of That Period Will Be... Even On The Holocaust.
Jobs
Distance
Mean
Mark My Words, When A Society Has To Resort To The Lavatory For Its Humour, The Writing Is On The Wall.
Inspirational
Funny
Wall
At Eighty Things Do Not Occur; They Recur.
Eighty
The Majority Of People Perform Well In A Crisis And When The Spotlight Is On Them; It's On The Sunday Afternoons Of This Life, When Nobody Is Looking, That The Spirit Falters.
Sunday
People
Majority
My Experience Came Before Most Of You Were Born. My School Was A State School In Leeds And The Headmaster Usually Sent Students To Leeds University But He Didn't Normally Send Them To Oxford Or Cambridge. But The Headmaster Happened To Have Been To Cambridge And Decided To Try And Push Some Of Us Towards Oxford And Cambridge. So, Half A Dozen Of Us Tried - Not All Of Us In History - And We All Eventually Got In. So, To That Extent, It [the History Boys] Comes Out Of My Own Experience.
School
Boys
Oxford
It Was The Kind Of Library He Had Only Read About In Books.
Book
Library
Kind
Standards Are Always Out Of Date. That's What Makes Them Standards.
Computer
Standards
Trending Author
Eliza Dushku
Jane Bryant Quinn
Eric Ries
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Joan Baez
Thom Mayne
Category
Information