Wit & Attitude Quote by Charles Bukowski

Bukowski’s line is a barroom grenade: funny at first hit, ugly on the second. Calling “almost everybody” a genius isn’t starry-eyed humanism; it’s a setup. He’s talking about the raw, feral intelligence people arrive with before the world sands them down into something manageable. “Genius” here isn’t an IQ score. It’s appetite, nerve, the untrained ability to see and feel without asking permission.

Then comes the punch: “buried an idiot”. Bukowski’s cynicism is aimed less at individual failure than at the machinery that manufactures it. Schooling, jobs, rent, status anxiety, the daily bribery of comfort - these aren’t neutral forces. They reward compliance and punish intensity. The idiot isn’t born; he’s produced, slowly, through a thousand small bargains: take the safer path, don’t make it weird, don’t risk looking foolish, don’t try too hard. By the time you’re “buried”, the transformation is complete and socially approved.

The line also carries Bukowski’s signature contempt for respectable culture. In a literary world that loves pedigree and polish, he insists genius is common and fragile, while idiocy is the real achievement of adulthood. It’s a bleak joke with a moral demand embedded in it: if you end up dull, it won’t be because you lacked talent. It’ll be because you traded it away and called the trade “growing up”.