Wit & Attitude Quote by Dean Koontz

Koontz’s line works because it flatters no one, least of all the reader. The phrase “can always be relied upon” borrows the tone of a safety manual or a corporate mission statement, then weaponizes it: the one dependable human trait isn’t courage or compassion, it’s enthusiastic self-sabotage. “With vigor” is the knife twist. Stupidity here isn’t passive ignorance; it’s effortful, muscular, almost proud. People don’t merely stumble into bad choices - they sprint.

The real mischief sits inside “God-given right.” By draping foolishness in the language of rights and providence, Koontz satirizes how moral legitimacy gets claimed by whoever shouts loudest. It’s a send-up of a culture that treats conviction as evidence and frames any correction as oppression. If it’s a “right,” then being wrong becomes sacred, and accountability becomes heresy.

Context matters: Koontz writes thrillers in which ordinary people face extraordinary danger, and the plot often turns on human error - denial, groupthink, hubris, the refusal to see what’s in front of you. This quip functions like a grim authorial shrug: the monsters may be supernatural, but the most reliable engine of catastrophe is human decision-making under stress, pride, and tribal loyalty.

The subtext is less “people are dumb” than “people protect their dumbness.” The line lands because it catches a familiar pattern: we don’t just make mistakes; we build identities around them, then defend them like freedoms.