This one's pretty self-explanatory. We all have our favorite bons mots uttered by the famous, the obscure, the rising and the falling. Here are a few of mine:
"Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." -- Frank Zappa
"Any asshole can write a tone-row. It takes a composer to write a tune." -- Leonard Bernstein
"People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them." -- Dave Barry
"I hate rap music, which to me sounds like a bunch of angry men shouting, possibly because the person who was supposed to provide them with a melody never showed up." -- Ibid.
"We humans do not need to leave Earth to get to a hostile, deadly, alien environment; we already have Miami." -- Ibid.
If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you'd find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from The Beverly Hillbillies." --Ibid.
"The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above- average drivers." -- Ibid.
"You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!" -- Ibid.
"I'm fat and I'm lazy and I'm proud of it." -- Garfield the Cat
"Eighty percent of success is showing up." -- Woody Allen
"On the plus side, death is one of those things that's done just as easily lying down." -- Ibid.
"I can't listen to that much Wagner. I keep getting the urge to conquer Poland." -- Ibid.
"I took a speed-reading course and read War & Peace in 20 minutes. It involves Russia." -- Ibid.
"Gentlemen, you may smoke." -- Edward VII, announcing to the press in 1901 that his mother, Queen Victoria, had died.
"Put that back! He didn't say 'Abandon Ship!'" -- Ward Bond, playing a Navy chief in the film Mr. Roberts, commanding two sailors to cease putting a life raft over the side during a General Quarters alarm.
"It's from my mother. All she ever says is, 'Stay away from Japan.'" --Ibid., Jack Lemmon as Ensign Pulver, opening a letter during mail call.
"If there are any souls in hell, it is because that is where they insist on being." -- W.H. Auden
"To the man-in-the-street, who I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life,/The word 'intellectual' suggests right away a man who's untrue to his wife." -- Ibid.
"When statesmen gravely say 'We must be realistic,' chances are they're weak, and therefore pacifistic. But when they speak of 'principles,' look out: perhaps/Their generals are already poring over maps." -- Ibid.
"The man who thinks he can solve the world's problems has probably never faced up to his own." -- Henry Miller
"I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me for a member." -- Groucho Marx.
"I've decided that instead of getting married again, I'll just find a woman I don't like and buy her a house." -- Overheard in a bar
"A group of politicians deciding to dump a president because his morals are bad is like the mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday." -- Russell Baker.
"Ever notice that the words'acrimony' and 'matrimony' rhyme, as do 'married' and 'buried'?" --Actually, I said this. Hey, I have my moments too.
"A camel is an animal that looks like it was put together by a committee." -- Anonymous
"Football combines two of the worst features of American life: violence and committee meetings." -- George F. Will
"An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening." -- Marlon Brando
"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day." -- Frank Sinatra
"I know what custody of the children means: get even." -- Lenny Bruce
"Satire is tragedy plus time." -- Ibid.
"In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls." -- Ibid.
"Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the cost becomes prohibitive." -- William F. Buckley, Jr.
"Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair." -- George Burns
"Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer." -- William Burroughs
"People are hypocrites. If you ask them what they want to see on TV, they'll tell you they want better quality programming. And then what do they watch? 'Gilligan's Island.'" -- Johnny Carson
"All it takes to write 5,000 words a day of that kind of prose is a quart of whiskey and a lack of interest in syntax." -- Ernest Hemingway, trashing his rival William Faulkner
"Did you ever notice that people who are good with a computer don't use it for much of anything except being good with a computer? They know all about information technology, but they don't have much interest in the information. I'm the opposite." -- Andy Rooney
"There goes the good time that was had by all." -- Bette Davis, commenting on a passing starlet
"The pursuit of the uneatable by the unspeakable." -- Oscar Wilde's description of a fox hunt.
"A jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer." -- Robert Frost
"A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel." -- Ibid.
"We are the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful." -- 1960s Vietnam veteran's graffiti
"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." -- Eric Hoffer
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." -- Samuel Johnson
"Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned." -- Dick Gregory
"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river." -- Nikita Kruschchev
"How do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists, then believe what they read." -- Karl Kraus
"Books -- what they make a movie out of for television." -- Leonard L. Levinson
"A promiscuous person is usually someone who's getting more sex than you are." -- Victor Lownes
"The longer the title, the less important the job." -- George McGovern
There are four stages to a marriage: first there's the affair, then there's the marriage, then there's the children, then finally there's the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce." -- Norman Mailer
"Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands." -- Jayne Mansfield
"Never send a monster to do the work of an evil scientist." -- the 'evil scientist' in the Bugs Bunny cartoon Water, Water Every Hare.
"What men value in this world is not rights, but privileges." -- H.L. Mencken
"When women kiss it always reminds me of prizefighters shaking hands." -- Ibid.
"Puritanism -- the haunting fear that somewhere someone might be happy." -- Ibid.
"Fascist: a word the Left uses to describe anyone and anything it doesn't like." -- George Orwell
"So, does your long hair make you a girl?" "Not necessarily. Does your wooden leg make you a table?" -- An exchange between Joe Pyne and Frank Zappa in a television interview
"Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." -- Ronald Reagan
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." -- George Santayana
"Few revolutionists would be such if they were heirs to a baronetcy." -- Ibid.
"You can't put sour cream on shit." -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"The chief cause of problems is solutions." -- Eric Sevareid
"Morality consists in suspecting other people of not being legally married." -- George Bernard Shaw
"Alcohol is a very necessary article. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven O'clock at night that no sane person would do at eleven O'clock in the morning." -- Ibid.
"An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do." -- Dylan Thomas
"The trouble with the rat-race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." -- Lily Tomlin
"A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car." -- Kenneth Tynan
"For certain people, after age 50, litigation takes the place of sex." -- Gore Vidal
"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of citizens to give to the other." -- Voltaire
"When you are down and out something always turns up, and it is usually the noses of your friends." -- Orson Welles
"When choosing two evils, I always like to take the one I've never tried before." -- Mae West
"Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner." -- Oscar Wilde
"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes." -- Ibid.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -- Tom Wolfe
"An expert is a man who has stopped thinking. Why should he think? He's an expert." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
"Obscentiy is whatever gives a judge an erection." -- Anonymous
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