GENERAL

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong,
is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
Douglas Adams

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams

I want to tell you a terrific story about oral contraception. I asked this girl to sleep with me and she said "no."
Woody Allen

To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
Woody Allen

The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. But not in that order.
Brian Pickrell
There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.

Frank Zappa

I am a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from humans.
Anonymous

Never answer an anonymous letter.
Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra

Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
Anonymous

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
Ursula K. LeGuin

We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.
Phyllis Diller

There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
W. C. Fields

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel Butler

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Douglas Adams

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
W. C. Fields

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
Carl Sagan

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
Redd Foxx

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
Gordon R. Dickson

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
Will Durant

Telling the truth to people who misunderstand you is generally promoting a falsehood, isn't it?
Anonymous

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
Carl Gustav Jung

If a person wants to be atheistic, it's his God-given right to be an atheist.
Michael Patton

If you don't want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.
Ogden Nash

Isn't it strange? The same people who laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take economists seriously.
Cincinnati Enquirer

I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.
W. C. Fields

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain -- and most fools do.
Dale Carnegie

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then give up. No use being a damned fool about it.
W. C. Fields

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Mark Twain

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
Will Rogers

God gave us a penis and a brain, but only enough blood to run one at a time.
Robin Williams

Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.
George Carlen

I can give you a definite perhaps.
Samuel Goldwyn

Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
Samuel Goldwyn

Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?
Stanislaw Lec

Creator: A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
Henry Louis (H. L.) Mencken

Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time.
Henry Louis (H. L.) Mencken

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.
Henry Louis (H. L.) Mencken

A human being. . . An ingenious assembly of portable plumbing.
Christopher Morley

Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion.
Spike Milligan

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Mark Twain

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Mark Twain

Buy land. They've stopped making it.
Mark Twain

In the first place God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
Mark Twain

Noise proves nothing - often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
Mark Twain

We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people.
Colonel Gerald Wellman

Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
Unknowns

All of the animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
Unknown

GROUCHO MARX

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

A man is as young as the woman he feels.

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

As soon as I get through with you, you'll have a clear case for divorce and so will my wife.

Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.

Dig trenches? With our men being killed off like flies? There isn't time to dig trenches. We'll have to buy them ready made.

Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.

Here's to our wives and girlfriends ... may they never meet!

How do you feel about women's rights? I like either side of them.

I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions - the curtain was up.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

I know, I know - you're a woman who's had a lot of tough breaks. Well, we can clean and tighten those brakes, but you'll have to stay in the garage all night.

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.

I sent the club a wire stating, 'Please accept my resignation'. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.

If I held you any closer I would be on the other side of you.

I've been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.

I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.

Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas and how he got in my pajamas I'll never know.

Marriage is the chief cause of divorce.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

[Mrs. Teasdale]: He's had a change of heart.
[Groucho]: A lot of good that'll do him. He's still got the same face.

Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

Paying alimony is like feeding hay to a dead horse.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.

Remember men, you are fighting for the ladies honor, which is probably more than she ever did.

Room service? Send up a larger room.

Send two dozen roses to Room 424 and put 'Emily, I love you' on the back of the bill.

She got her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing .. if you can fake that, you've got it made.

There's one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him. If he says 'yes,' you know he is a crook.

Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Time wounds all heels.

We took pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed. . . But we're going back next week.

Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?

Why, I'd horse-whip you if I had a horse.

Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?

Why was I with her? She reminds me of you. In fact, she reminds me more of you than you do!

Women should be obscene and not heard.

You know I could rent you out as a decoy for duck hunters?

You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I'll bet he was glad to get rid of it.

HISTORIC BLUNDERS

This `telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
Western Union internal memo, 1876

It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.
Pat Robertson, speaking of the Equal Rights Amendment Mar. 22, 1930

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.
Senator Dan Quayle, Sept. 15, 1988

The great question - which I have not been able to answer - is, "What does a woman want?"
Sigmund Freud

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year. Prentice Hall, editor in charge of business books, 1957

But what ... is it good for?
Anonymous engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

So we went to Atari and said, `Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, `No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, `Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'
Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer Inc. on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his personal computer.

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
Ken Olson , President, Chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Bill Gates, 1981

Natura non facit saltum. (Nature does not make leaps.)
Anonymous ancient motto frequently cited by Carolus Linnaeus

Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy.
Anonymous drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible.
Anonymous Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Attributed to Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

In a few years, all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and ... the only occupation which will then be left to the men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.
James Clerk Maxwell, 1871

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being suplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote ... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.
Albert A. Michelson, 1894

Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
New York Times, in editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work, 1921

Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.
Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

The good Christian should beware the mathematican and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicans have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.
Saint Augustine

First, . . . to want to affirm that in reality the sun is at the center of the world and only turns on itself without moving from east to west, and the earth . . . revolves with great speed around the sun . . .is a very dangerous thing, likely not only to irritate all scholastic philosophers and theologians, but also to harm the Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture false. Nor can one answer that this is not a matter of faith, since if it is not a matter of faith "as regards the topic," it is a matter of faith "as regards the speaker"; and so it would be heretical to say that Abraham did not have two children and Jacob twelve, as well as to say that Christ was not born of a virgin, because both are said by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of the prophets and the apostles.
Cardinal Bellarmine, in a Letter to Foscarinin, April 12, 1615

The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?
Anonymous associates of David Sarnoff's in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
Irving Fisher, 1929

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
H. M. Warner, founder of Warner Brothers film studios, 1927

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord Kelvin, 1895

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.
Simon Newcomb, 1902, eighteen months before Kitty Hawk

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

POLITICS

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain

Hell, I never vote for anybody. I always vote against.
W. C. Fields

If 'pro' is the opposite of 'con', what is the opposite of progress?
Paul Harvey

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
Will Rogers

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Benjamin Franklin

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers.
Nikita Khruschev

About the time we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
Herbert Hoover

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.
General Douglas MacArthur

We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex - but Congress can.
Cullen Hightower

H. L. Mencken:

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency.
This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right...

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.

George W. Bush:

It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet.

Will the highways on the Internet become more few?

It's your money. You paid for it.

Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?

That's a chapter, the last chapter of the 20th, 20th, the 21st century that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th century. This is the first chapter of the 21st century.

The administration I'll bring is a group of men and women who are focused on what's best for America, honest men and women, decent men and women, women who will not stain the House.

The important question is, How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimated me.

They said, `You know, this issue doesn't seem to resignate with the people.' And I said, you know something? Whether it resignates or not doesn't matter to me, because I stand for doing what's the right thing, and what the right thing is hearing the voices of people who work.

They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program.

This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses.

What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate. Quotas, I think, vulcanize society. So, I don't know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position.

When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there.

Vice President Dan Quayle::

Public speaking is very easy.

For NASA, space is still a high priority.

It's time for the human race to enter the solar system.

Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.

Hawaii is a unique state. It is a small state. It is a state that is by itself. It is a -- it is different than the other 49 states. Well, all states are different, but it's got a particularly unique situation.

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.

I have made good judgements in the Past. I have made good judgements in the Future.

I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have is that I didn't study my Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.

If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure.

It's wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago.

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will never, never surrender to what is right.

Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.

The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make.

The [Democrats] talked about putting people first. Well, they put people first unless you happen to be a spotted owl or a giant garter snake or some other endangered species and then that seems to have priority. Obviously, you take the bald eagle and things of that sort, of course you're going to make sure that they are saved and that they can live and you're going to take every precaution that you can. But others - we just need a little flexibility.

The loss of life will be irreplaceable.

[The US] condones violence in El Salvador.

We expect them [Salvadoran officials] to work toward the elimination of human rights in accordance with the pursuit of Justice.

Tobacco exports should be expanded aggressively because Americans are smoking less.

We're all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.

We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.

We don't want to go back to tomorrow, we want to go forward.

We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe.

We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed without them in Red Storm Rising.

Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts.

We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world.

What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.
(Vice President Dan Quayle attempting to quote the motto : "A mind is a terrible thing to waste.")

Ronald Reagan:

What does an actor know about politics?

I don't know why anyone would want to study the expansion of the universe.

I doubt evolution is real.

If I listened to Michael Dukakis long enough I would be convinced that... people are homeless and going without food and medical attention and that we've got to do something about the unemployed.

If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.

Trees cause pollution.