Stereotyping People by Their Favourite Philosopher

Continuing in the spirit of recent helpful stereotyping efforts, I contribute this:

Socrates
People who didn’t study philosophy.

Plato
People who did study philosophy, but only as an elective.

Aristotle
People who know they should tidy their room, but never do.

Democritus
People who don’t know who Leucippus is.

Leucippus
People who are constantly reminding you that “so-and-so didn’t actually first invent that, you know.”

Heraclitus
People who burn incense.

Parmenides
People who cross their legs in a slightly stiff and awkward way.

Pythagoras
People who are suspicious of beans.

Thomas Aquinas
People who express overly convoluted arguments to justify things that we all already agree with.

Francis Bacon
People who like art, but know little about science.

Thomas Hobbes
Highly intelligent, highly irritable men.

Rene Descartes
Americans who call him “dez-car-dees” and love saying “I think therefore I am” but don’t know what “cogito ergo sum” means.

John Locke
People who read Newsweek, but only because they haven’t yet discovered The Economist.

David Hume
Jolly people with a lingering sense of urgency.

Immanuel Kant
People who are never, ever late.

Machiavelli
People who wear their collars turned up, and probably earn more than you.

Baruch Spinoza
Cat people.

Gottfried Leibniz
People who wear berets, but shouldn’t.

George Berkeley
People who got the heebie-jeebies from watching The Matrix.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Fops and cads.

Hegel
People who pause in conversation, grasping for the longest word they can think of to express a simple idea.

Friedrich Nietzsche
People who came to philosophy during the most awkward 15 minutes of their teenage years.

Adam Smith
People who secretly enjoy romantic comedies.

Karl Marx
Men with beards and women who don’t wear makeup.

John Stuart Mill
People who like scotch and soda.

Gottlob Frege
People who wear different coloured socks.

G.E. Moore
People who take just that bit too long precisely dividing the bill after dinner.

Bertrand Russell
People who secretly want to smoke a pipe.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
People you’re always surprised to see in the queue to the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

Jean-Paul Sartre
People who once smoked – and may still do – even though they hate it.

Simone de Beauvoir
Men who think quoting philosophy impresses women; women who aren’t impressed by men quoting philosophy.

Martin Heidegger
People with a disconcerting lazy eye, so you never know if they’re talking to you.

Maurice Merleau Ponty
People who complain about missing the great art exhibition that just left town.

Jaques Derrida
People with expansive bookshelves, prominently displayed, few of which have been read.

Michel Foucault
Good looking people who wish they were better looking.

John Rawls
People who fantasise about working for Obama.

Ayn Rand
People who are polite but insistent, and who wear comfortable shoes.

Richard Rorty
People who still like merlot, no matter what anyone thinks.

John Mackie
People who don’t say much, but when they do, you sit back and listen.

David Lewis
People who don’t get sarcasm.

David Chalmers
People with a disarming, but condescending, smile.

Noam Chomsky
People who confuse a conversation for an argument at dinner parties.

Daniel Dennett
People who have never watched commercial television.

Q.W. Quine
People who don’t know anyone who actually does watch commercial television.