Quotes C

The Jacana Curmudgeon

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Quotations C

CANNIBALISM

A cannibal is a guy who goes into a restaurant and orders the waiter.

- Jack Benny.

I came across a tribe of cannibals who’d been converted by Roman Catholic missionaries. Now, on Friday, they only

eat fishermen.

- Max Kauffmann.

Cannibals are not vegetarians. They are humanitarians.

These ferocious cannibals captured a poor missionary - he gave them their first taste of religion.

Stephen King, author of numerous best-selling horror novels - many of which have been turned into equally terrifying

movies - once made the following observation: "Some people say that I must be a terrible person, but it’s not true. I

have the heart of a young boy......in a jar on my desk."

CANADA

Canada could have enjoyed:

English government,

French culture,

And American know-how.

Instead it ended up with:

English know-how,

French government,

And American culture.

- John Robert Colombo.

When I was there I found their jokes like their roads – very long and not very good, leading to a little tin point of a

spire which has been remorselessly obvious for miles without seeming to get any nearer.

- Samuel Buler.

Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.

- P. J. O'Rourke.

I don't even know what street Canada is on.

- Al Capone.

In Pierre Trudeau, Canada has finally produced a Prime Minister worthy of assassination.

- John Diefenbaker.

In 1972, Peter Gzowski, then summer host of This Country in the Morning, held a contest to complete (in the manner

of "As American as apple pie") the saying "As Canadian as...". Heather Scott, a seventeen-year-old summer music

school student at the time, heard of the contest, and immediately came up with the phrase that has since become so

famous. "As Canadian as... possible under the circumstances."

- R. W. Scott, Heather's father.

CATS

Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer.

- Bruce Graham.

Artists like cats, soldiers like dogs.

- Desmond Morris.

Cats do not go for a walk to get somewhere but to explore.

- Sidney Denham.

Cats don't belong to people. They belong to places.

- Wright Morris.

Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment, it trusts

nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything.

- Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Cats have nine lives. Which makes them ideal for experimentation.

- Jimmy Carr.

Managing senior programmers is like herding cats.

- Dave Platt.

As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat.

- Ellen Perry Berkeley.

The problem with cats is that they get the exact same look on their face whether they see a moth or an axe-murderer.

- Paula Poundstone.

Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you later.

- Mary Bly.

Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well.

- Missy Dizick.

Cat: a pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs, and patronizes human beings.

- Oliver Herford.

To bathe a cat takes brute force, perseverance, courage of conviction - and a cat. The last ingredient is usually

hardest to come by.

- Stephen Baker.

Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.

- Jeff Valdez.

Cats are to dogs what modern people are to the people we used to have. Cats are slimmer, cleaner, more attractive,

disloyal, and lazy. It’s easy to understand why the cat has eclipsed the dog as modern America’s favourite pet. People

like pets to possess the same qualities they do. Cats are irresponsible and recognise no authority, yet are completely

dependent on others for their material needs. Cats cannot be made to do anything useful. Cats are mean for the fun

of it. In fact, cats possess so many of the same qualities as some people (expensive girlfriends, for instance) that it’s

often hard to tell the people and the cats apart.

- P.J. O’Rourke.

We’ve got a cat called Ben Hur. We called it Ben till it had kittens.

- Sally Poplin.

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

- Robert A. Heinlein.

They smell and they snarl and they scratch; they have a singular aptitude for shredding rugs, drapes and upholstery;

they’re sneaky, selfish and not particularly smart; they are disloyal, condescending and totally useless in any rodent-free

environment.

- Jean-Michel Chapereau, on cats.

Its easy to understand why the cat has eclipsed the dog as modern America's favourite pet. People like pets to possess

the same qualities they do. Cats are irresponsible and recognize no authority, yet are completely dependent on others for

their material needs. Cats cannot be made to do anything useful. Cats are mean for the fun of it.

- P.J. O'Rourke.

There was an old bulldog named Caesar,

Who went for a cat just to tease her;

But she spat and she spit,

Till the old bulldog quit.

Now when poor Caesar sees her,

he flees her.

Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this.

Some people own cats and go on to lead normal lives.

There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast.

Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God.

Devoted to the study of cat bathing as a martial art.

I like cats too. Let's exchange recipes.

I love cats.…they taste just like chicken.

Ask me about microwaving cats for fun and profit.

CENSORSHIP

Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.

- Potter Stewart.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and he inquisitor

have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

- Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959.

Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government."

- Lenny Bruce.

To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list.

- John Aikin.

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

Prime Minister of Great Britain 1937-1940 (Conservative Party)

Listening to a speech by Chamberlain is like paying a visit to Woolworth’s. Everything in it’s place and nothing above sixpence.

- Aneurin Bevan.

He saw foreign policy through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe.

- David Lloyd George.

….the mind and manner of a clothes brush.

- Harold Nicholson.

CHANGE

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

- W. Edwards Deming.

We must be the change we wish to see.

- Mahatma Ghandi.

Stubbornness does have its helpful features. You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow.

- Glen Beaman.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

- Woodrow Wilson.

Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history.

- Joan Wallach Scott.

Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights.

- Pauline R. Kezer.

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.

- John Steinbeck, America and Americans.

If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.

- Kurt Lewin.

Change is inevitable....except from vending machines.

CHARM

There's a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me.

- John Erskine.

CHESS

Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only

wasting their time.

- George Bernard Shaw.

As elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.

- Raymond Chandler.

My problem with chess was that all my pieces wanted to end the game as soon as possible.

- Dave Barry.

CHICAGO

I think that's how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said, "Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty,

but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west.

- Richard Jeni.

This vicious, stinking zoo, this mean-grinning, mace-smelling boneyard of a city; an elegant rockpile of a monument to

everything cruel and stupid and corrupt in the human spirit.

- Hunter S. Thompson.

CINEMA

When people say while watching a film "did you see that?" No tosser, I paid 10 quid to come to the cinema and stare

at the fucking floor.

- Billy Connolly.

My movies were the kind they show in prisons and on aeroplanes, because no-one can leave.

- Burt Reynolds.

I saw the movie, 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' and I was surprised because I didn't see any tigers or dragons. And

then I realised why: they're crouching and hidden.

- Steve Martin.

I handed in a script last year and the studio didn't change one word. The word they didn't change was on page 87.
- Steve Martin, at the 2003 Oscars.

The most expensive habit in the world is celluloid, not heroin, and I need a fix every few years.
- Steven Spielberg (Time, 1979).

I dream for a living.

- Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg is so powerful he had final cut at his own circumcision.

- Robin Williams.

I feel like Adam when he said to Eve, `Back up, I don't know how big this gets.`

- Robin Williams, before opening an envelope for best supporting actress at the 71st Academy Awards.

Honey, you gotta pick a race first. All of a sudden you're a black man, then you're Diana Ross, now you're Audrey Hepburn.

Then he's got the little beard going on. He's like Lord Of The Rings, the entire cast. Michael's about to jump species.

- Robin Williams, on Michael Jackson.

CIVILIZATION

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

- Sigmund Freud.

An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that

they have Tide but not new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.

- David Letterman.

Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization.

- Edmond and Jules de Goncourt.

Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.

- Richard Bach.

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.

- Thor Heyerdahl, Fatu-Hiva.

Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.

- Brian Aldiss.

It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it.

- Henry Allen.

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

- Mark Twain.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

- Cyril Conolly.

Reporter: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think about Western Civilization?

Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to a six

inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

CLOTHING

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

- Dorothy Parker.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

- Oscar Wilde.

Unmentionables - those articles of ladies' apparel that are never discussed in public, except in full-page, illustrated ads.

- Changing Times.

People seldom notice old clothes if you wear a big smile.

- Lee Mildon.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

- Henry David Thoreau.

If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little

noose around your neck?

- Linda Ellerbee.

A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you.

- Françoise Sagan.

Fashion is like the id. It makes you desire things you shouldn't.

- Bob Morris.

It's always the badly dressed people who are the most interesting.

- Jean Paul Gaultier.

High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.

- Christopher Morley.

Clothes can suggest, persuade, connote, insinuate, or indeed lie, and apply subtle pressure while their wearer is

speaking frankly and straightforwardly of other matters.

- Anne Hollander.

Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women.

- Elsa Schiaparelli.

Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess.

- Edna Woolman Chase.

Did you hear about the Scottish drag queen? He wore pants.

- Lynn Lavner.

What a man most enjoys about a woman's clothes are his fantasies of how she would look without them.

- Brendan Francis.

Never wear anything that panics the cat.

- P.J. O'Rourke.

Stretch pants - the garment that made skiing a spectator sport.

Smile if you are wearing sexy underwear.

COFFEE

Decaffeinated coffee is kind of like kissing your sister.

- Bob Irwin.

Decaffeinated coffee is the devil's blend.

Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.

Coffee, n. break fluid.

COMMITTEES

If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock.

- Arthur Goldberg.

Football is a mistake. It combines two of the worst things about American life. It is violence punctuated by committee

meetings.

- George Will.

COMMON SENSE

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

- Albert Einstein.

The Irish people do not gladly suffer common sense.

- Oliver St John Gogarty.

COMMUNISM & SOCIALISM

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of inevitable blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the

equal sharing of inevitable misery.

- Winston Churchill.

The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist - Leninist) wishes to apologise for the late arrival of the 1986 worker’s

revolution.

I am a Marxist - of the Groucho tendency.

- Groucho Marx.

Communism is like one big phone company.

- Lenny Bruce.

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.

- Frank Zappa.

How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist?

It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

- Ronald Regan.

M is for Marx

And clashing of classes

And movement of masses

And massing of asses.

- Cyril Conolly.

A communist is a socialist without a sense of humour.

- George Cutton.

Communism might be likened to a race in which all competitors come in first with no prizes.

- Lord Inchcape.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

- Norman Mailer.

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

- George Orwell.

Communism is like one big phone company.

- Lenny Bruce.

‘Rabbi, can one build socialism in one country?’

‘Yes, my son, but one must live in another.’

- Anon, quoted in the Spectator.

The grave of Karl Marx is just another communist plot.

Under Capitalism man exploits man; under Socialism the reverse is true.

COMPLAINING

If you have time to whine and complain about something then you have the time to do something about it.

- Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book.

Untold suffering seldom is.

- Franklin P. Jones.

In trying to get our own way, we should remember that kisses are sweeter than whine.

COMPLIMENTS

What flatterers say, try to make true.

- German Proverb.

Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.

- Lord Chesterfield.

God was just showing off when he created you.

- From the movie Keeping the Faith.

Some people pay a compliment as if they expected a receipt.

- Kim Hubbard.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worthy of flattering.

- George Bernard Shaw.

Flattery is like a cigarette - it's alright so long as you don't inhale.

- Adlai Stevenson.

I can live for two weeks on a good compliment.

- Mark Twain.

There is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident.

- Charles Lamb.

COMPUTERS

But they are useless. They can only give you answers.

- Pablo Picasso.

"One World, One Web, One Program"

- Microsoft Promotional Ad.

"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer"

- Adolf Hitler.

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

- Emo Philips.

The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim.

- Edsger W. Dijkstra.

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.

- Nathaniel Borenstein.

My favourite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them.

- Penn Jillett.

Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software.

- Dave Barry.

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.

- Mitch Ratcliffe.

The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little.

- Eric Porterfield.

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.

- Doug Larson.

The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.

- Andrew Brown.

Bill Gates is a very rich man today .. and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: versions.

- Dave Barry.

Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth.

- Dave Barry.

I regularly read Internet user groups filled with messages from people trying to solve software incompatibility problems that, in terms of complexity, make the U.S. Tax Code look like Dr. Seuss.

- Dave Barry.

If you asked me to name the three scariest threats facing the human race, I would give the same answer that most people would: nuclear war, global warming and Windows.

- Dave Barry.

Software: These programs give instruction to the CPU, which processes billions of tiny facts called bytes, and within a fraction of a second it sends you an error message that requires you to call the customer-support hot line and be placed on hold for approximately the life-span of a caribou.

- Dave Barry.

Some archaeologists believe that Stonehenge - the mysterious arrangement of enormous elongated stones in England - is actually a crude effort by the Druids to build a computing device.

- Dave Barry.

Technically, Windows is an "operating system," which means that it supplies your computer with the basic commands that it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, stop operating.

- Dave Barry.

UNIVAC: a device, which contained 20,000 vacuum tubes, occupied 1,500 square feet and weighed 40 tons; there was also a laptop version weighing 27 tons.

- Dave Barry.

While you are destroying your mind watching the worthless, brain-rotting drivel on TV, we on the Internet are exchanging, freely and openly, the most uninhibited, intimate and, yes, shocking details about our "CONFIG.SYS" settings.

- Dave Barry.

You can use the Internet to find out, from anywhere on the planet: exactly how much coffee is in a certain coffee machine at Cambridge University in England; exactly how many sodas are available in certain vending machines at certain major universities; and much, much more.

- Dave Barry.

User, n. The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."

- Dave Barry.

There is only one satisfying way to boot a computer.

- J.H. Goldfuss.

THE COMPUTER SWALLOWED GRANDMA

The computer swallowed grandma.

Yes, honestly its true.

She pressed 'control' and 'enter'

And disappeared from view.

It devoured her completely,

The thought just makes me squirm.

She must have caught a virus

Or been eaten by a worm.

I've searched through the recycle bin

And files of every kind;

I've even used the Internet,

But nothing did I find.

In desperation, I asked Jeeves

My searches to refine.

The reply from him was negative,

Not a thing was found 'online.'

So, if inside your Inbox,

My Grandma you should see,

Please 'Copy', 'Scan' and 'Paste' her

And send her back to me!

Computers have lots of memory but no imagination

In an Internet without doors or walls, who needs Windows or Gates?

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into committees. That'll do them in.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but it uses up three thousand times the memory.

To err is human, but to really screw things up requires a computer.

C:\ Windows

C:\ Windows go

C:\ PC crawl

Windows XP is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhoea; massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.

Jesus saves! The rest of us better make backups.

In God we trust, all others we virus scan.

Problematic computers make great boat anchors.

Bits make bytes, bit nibbles turn me on.

If it's not on fire then it's a software problem.

I am logged in, therefore I am.

FATAL SYSTEM ERROR: Press F13 to continue...

The original point and click interface was a Smith & Wesson.

(A)bort, (R)etry, (K)ill innocent bystanders.

(A)bort (R)etry (I)nfluence with large hammer.

Windows 98 not found: (C)heer, (P)arty, (D)ance?

Backup not found: (A)bort, (R)etry, (M)assive heart failure?

General Brain Failure. (A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore.

System Failure. (B)ullshit (W)hine (S)urrender.

$ not found: (A)bort, (R)efinance, (D)eclare bankruptcy.

Hiroshima..45…..Chernobyl..86…..Windows..98

Melted M&M's on keyboard: Delete nephew? (Y/N)

Daddy, what does FORMATTING DRIVE C mean?

Daddy, why won’t this magnet pick up your disk?

Backups? We don' NEED no steenking baX%^~,VbKx.

No wanna work. Wanna bang on keyboard.

Data, data everywhere, and not a byte to eat.

On a clear disk you can seek forever.

My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.

Unlike computers, women reject a 3½” floppy.

C:\DOS

C:\DOS\RUN C:\DOS\OUTPERFORM\WINDOWS.

"DEL *.*" = 100% file compression.

BREAKFAST.COM Halted...Cereal Port Not Responding.

Why doesn't DOS ever say, "EXCELLENT command or filename!"?

Frankly my dear, I don't give a download.

As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.

Southern DOS: Y'all reckon? (Yep/Nope)

...file not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)

Does fuzzy logic tickle?

A computer's attention span is as long as it’s power cord.

SENILE.COM found ... Out Of Memory

All computers wait at the same speed.

ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI.

E-mail returned to sender. Insufficient voltage.

Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody"

- Bill Gates, 1981.

Hidden DOS secret: add BUGS=OFF to your CONFIG.SYS

Press any key to continue or any other key to quit.

Press any key.....no, No, NO!! Not THAT one!

Press <CTRL><ALT><DEL> to continue.

CONGRESS.SYS Corrupted: Re-boot Washington D.C (Y/N)?

Who is General Failure & why is he reading my disk?

Smash forehead on keyboard to continue ...

Beware of geeks bearing GIFs!

CONCENTRATION

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.

- Isaac Asimov.

CONFORMITY

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

- Oscar Wilde

Before you can break out of prison, you must first realize you're locked up.

Be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out.

- Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

Only dead fish go with the flow.

CONSCIENCE

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade name of the firm.

- Oscar Wilde.

There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.

- Ogden Nash

A guilty conscience is the mother of invention

- Carolyn Wells.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

- H.L. Mencken.

Conscience gets a lot of credit that belongs to cold feet.

A conscience is what hurts when all the other parts feel so good.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

CONSERVATISM

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

- John Kenneth Galbraith.

When a nation’s young men are conservative, its funeral bell has already rung.

- Henry Ward Beecher.

A conservative is a man who will not look at the new moon, out of respect for that ancient institution, the old one.

- Douglas Jerrold.

Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.

- Walter Lippmann.

A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now.

- Mort Sahl.

A radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

- Mark Twain.

Sir,

Dr. Roget included the following entry in his Thesaurus: Conservatism: ‘Inaction, passiveness, abstinence from action; non-interference; conservative policy.’

Can there be a moral somewhere in this?

Yours, &c.

- A.J. Woodman, letter to The Times.

I never dared be radical when young,

For fear it would make me conservative when old.

- Robert Frost.

A conservative is someone who admires radicals a century after they’re dead.

CONSISTENCY

The only completely consistent people are the dead.

- Aldous Huxley.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

- Oscar Wilde.

The only man who can change his mind is a man that’s got one.

- Edward Noyes Westcott.

CONVENTION

Necessity is the smotherer of convention.

- Lambert Jeffries.

CORRUPTION

Please God, let me prove to you that winning the lottery won't corrupt me

COWARDICE

Pacifism is simply undisguised cowardice.

- Adolph Hitler.

Courage is the fear of being thought a coward.

CREMATION

We’re all cremated equal.

- Goodman Ace.

She: Arthur.

He: Yes, love?

She: I think I’d like to be cremated.

He: OK love - get your coat on.

- Jerry Dennis.

CRIME

When I came back to Dublin I was court-martialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

- Brendan Behan.

After an incident in Croydon involving a prison van and a concrete mixer, police are looking for eighteen hardened criminals.

- The Two Ronnies.

I think crime pays. The hours are good. You travel a lot.

- Woody Allen.

Al Capone, in mood benign,

Sent a missive Valentine,

Those who got his commendation

Shot up in his estimation.

- Will Bellinger.

We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police.

- Jeff Marder.

It is our human folly to believe that the reason that there is so much crime is that there are so many crooks.

A truck load of Viagra has been hijacked. The police are looking for a bunch of hardened criminals.

Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are we supposed to do - write to these men? Why don't they just put their pictures on the postage stamps so the mailmen could look for them while they deliver the mail? Or better yet, arrest them while they are taking their pictures!

Nothing is illegal until you get caught.

CRISES

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

- Henry Kissinger

Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.

- Ashleigh Brilliant.

CRITICS & CRITICISM

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

- Benjamin Disraeli.

Critics - Drooling, drivelling, doleful, depressing, dropsical drips.

- Sir Thomas Beecham.

Taking to pieces is the trade of those who cannot construct.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

To escape criticism - do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

- Elbert Hubbard.

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves.

- Brendan Behan.

A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing, clanging loudly and vainly as the train goes by.

- Christopher Morley.

Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.

- P.G. Wodehouse.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense.

- Samuel Johnson.

The covers of this book are too far apart.

- Ambrose Bierce.

For critics I care the five hundred thousandth part of the tythe of a half-farthing.

- Charles Lamb.

This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

- Dorothy Parker.

He leads his readers to the latrine and locks them in.

- Oscar Wilde.

Critics are a dissembling, dishonest, contemptible race of men. Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.

- John Osborne.

I'm all in favour of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.

- Frank Lloyd Wright.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

- Samuel Johnson.

Go to the Martin Beck Theatre and watch Katherine Hepburn run the gamut of emotions from A to B.

- Dorothy Parker, reviewing The Lake.

….now that you’ve got me right down to it, the only thing I didn’t like about The Barrets of Wimplole Street was the play.

- Dorothy Parker.

It isn’t what you might call sunny. I went into the Plymouth Theatre a comparatively young woman, and I staggered out of it three hours later, twenty years older, haggard and broken with suffering.

- Dorothy Parker, reviewing Tolstoy’s Redemption.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

- Bertrand Russell.

Several tons of dynamite are set off in this picture - none of it under the right people.

- James Agee, reviewing Tycoon.

As a swashbuckling Cyrano, Mr. Woodward’s performance buckles more often than it swashes.

- Kenneth Hurren, reviewing Cyrano de Bergerac.

….so mediocre you can’t get mad at it.

- Judith Crist, reviewing Five Card Stud.

This long but tiny film….

- Stanley Kauffmann, reviewing Isadora.

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.

- William Faulkner (on Ernest Hemingway)

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?

- Ernest Hemingway (on William Faulkner)

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.

- Moses Hadas.

Doris Day: The only . . . talent Miss Day possesses is that of being absolutely sanitary: her personality untouched by human emotions, her brow unclouded by human thought, her form unsmudged by the slightest evidence of femininity.

- John Simon.

Melina Mercouri: As for Miss Mercouri, her blackly mascaraed eye-sockets gape like twin craters, unfortunately extinct.

- John Simon.

Diana Rigg is built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses.

- John Simon.

Miss Stapleton played the part as though she had not yet signed the contract with the producer.

- George Jean Nathan, reviewing The Emperor’s Clothes.

This film needs a certain something. Possibly burial.

- David Lardner, reviewing Panama Hattie.

Geraldine McEwan, powdered white like a clownish whey-faced doll, simpered, whined and groaned to such effect as the Queen, that Edward’s homosexuality became both understandable and forgivable.

- Milton Schulman, reviewing Edward II.

Seagulls, as the film stresses, subsist on garbage, and, I guess, you are what you eat.

- John Simon, reviewing Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

I never watch the Dinah Shore show – I’m a diabetic.

- Oscar Levant.

Leonard Bernstein has been disclosing musical secrets that have been well known for over four hundred years.

- Oscar Levant.

If Geraldo Rivera is the first journalist in space, NASA can test the effect of weightlessness on weightlessness.

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

CRUELTY

All cruelty springs from weakness.

- Seneca.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented hell.

- Bertrand Russell.

If lobsters looked like puppies, people could never drop them in boiling water. But instead, they look like science fiction monsters, so it's okay.
- George Carlin.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. So I beat the living shit out of him because I’m lack-toes intolerant.

CRYING

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

- Kurt Vonnegut.

The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.

- Isak Dinesen.

CURIOSITY

Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.

- Bernard Baruch.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

- Dorothy Parker.

I keep six honest serving-men,

They taught me all I knew;

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.

- Rudyard Kipling.

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

- Albert Einstein.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality.

- Albert Einstein.