Pithy sayings vs. fake intelligent remarks

Two different people, and each one manages to annoy/amuse me.

The first lives for his pithy sayings. I think he thinks in terms of embroidered bathroom frames. I can see him, sitting in his office, thinking hard, turning words around in his mind, until suddenly it comes to him - like a light bulb - he pulls out paper and a pen and he writes it down. He sits back in his chair, looks again at the paper, says the words aloud, and smiles. He has solved the mysteries of life: he has managed to come up with a completely obvious truth, put it in a short, slightly poetic statement, and he now will continue to practice it until he has the chance to use it. And when that chance does come, he smiles, and with great emphasis in his voice, with intense eye contact, with his body language leaning forward, begging you with every pore of his body to listen, he says his line....
There will be the people that love that statement. They'll nod their head. They'll agree verbally. They'll write it down. They'll think about it for just a few seconds, before realizing that it was something that they already knew, just said in a slightly prettier form. Then, they'll hurry along to catch up with what else this man is saying, less they miss any more pithy sayings.
The other people will immediately think, "Yeah, Okay, what else do you have to say?" And when realizing that in fact this man has little more to offer than pithy sayings, will summarily tune him out.


The other man likes to speak in fake intelligent talk. This means that he uses slightly obscure words. But here's the problem: They aren't actually obscure words to someone who knows words even slightly well. But his speaking this way does reach the desired effect, here's why: The people who are listening that don't know words very well, can still catch the general meaning of what he is saying. He'll use about 4 different words for the same thing and chances are they'll only know 1 or 2, but then this person feels intelligent because they still understood what this man was saying even though they didn't understand all the words. This makes them feel like he is smarter than they are, but only just by a little bit, enough that they can still understand him, still connect with him, and still understand what he is saying. This makes them feel understood.
The other group of people listening to him realizes quickly that he uses too many words to describe one thing, and that they usually tend to be the wrong words. Contrary to this man's belief, using 4 commonplace words and 2 slightly obscure words in place of just one word is not in any way intelligent. The other group listening almost wants to laugh at his trying to remain intelligent when he actually isn't being intelligent at all, he's just using a lot of words.


These are both real people, and both men have great merit. I have heard both of these men speak multiple times. I have even remarked on their sayings/remarks individually. But recently, I heard them back-to-back, and that may have been what set me off on comparing them.