Quotations

Our first settlers were chosen by Englands best judges.
-- Sir Douglas Copland, 9/7/60.

All these foreign countries should be abolished.
-- Senator R.J.D. Turnbull, Independant, Tasmania 23/10/65.

I am not entirely happy about the shape of the present egg.
-- Secretary, (NSW) Egg Board, 23/5/59.

I think nuclear power under water will spread like wildfire.
-- Admiral Sir Caspar John, 17/2/62.

Every American sleeps better in his bed because he knows that if his country is attacked New Zealand will come to his defence.
-- NZ PM Keith Holyoake, 19/10/68.

If I believed in hell, I should imagine it as one vast gymnasium with the wicked perpetually engaged in physical training and trying to lose weight.
-- Robert Morley, 29/5/65.

I never got any complaints.
-- Assistant Commandant at Aushwitz, 11/1/64.

We wrote to Jean-Paul Satre over a month ago and he hasn't replied. We assume that means he's coming.
-- Aust Uni's Arts Festival Organiser, 27/5/67.

We will achieve this with every legitimate means - diplomacy, infiltration, skirmishes, major battles or total war.
-- President Sukarno 24/3/62.

The people (of West New Guinea) have to be brought down from the mountains and the trees, and if they don't come voluntarily, then on the point of a bayonet.
-- General Djatikusumo, Indonesian Ambassador to Malaya, 20/6/63.

Who ate my commanding officer?
-- Congolese lieutenant 26/11/60.

Every journalist must make his own decision. You must either follow the official line or you must leave the job and you will be liquidated.
-- Mr Evzen Ervan, Czech party official. 16/11/68.

Death is the last of my worries.
-- Bernard Malmud in The Fixer.

Never lend people money, it gives them amnesia.
-- Groucho Marx.

I've always had a weakness for foreign affairs.
-- Mae West 24/10/59.

Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-- P.J. O'Rourke

While you are away, movie stars are taking your women. Robert Redford is dating your girlfriend, Tom Selleck is kissing your lady, Bart Simpson is making love to your wife.
-- Iraqi radio announcer Baghdad Betty transmitting to allied Gulf War troops.

If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.
-- Senior Pentagon official, explaining why the U.S. military censored footage showing Iraqi soldiers sliced in two by U.S. helicopter fire.

You always write it's bombing, bombing, bombing. It's not bombing, it's air support.
-- Air Force Colonel David Opfer, complaining to reporters about their coverage of the Vietnam War.

Capital punishment is our societies recognition of the sanctity of human life.
-- Orrin Hatch, Senator from Utah.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by resorting to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
-- H. L. Mencken

I think that the undecideds could go one way or the other.
-- George Bush, 1988

We may be finding that in some blacks, when the choke hold is applied, the veins or arteries do not open up like in normal people.
-- Daryl Gates, former L.A. police chief.

Casual drug users should be taken out and shot.
-- Daryl Gates

I didn't inhale.
-- Presidential candidate Bill Clinton

Honest businessmen should be protected from the unscrupulous consumer.
-- Lester Maddox, then governer of Georgia, on why his state should not create a consumer protection agency.

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
-- Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C.

Who ever heard of Casablanca? I don't want to star opposite some unknown Swedish broad.
-- George Raft, on the role of Rick in Casablanca.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
-- Aristotle

Ward, come upstairs and talk to The Beaver.
-- June (Mrs. Frisky) Cleaver

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that could change.
-- Vice-President Dan Quayle

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in
our air and water that are doing it.
--Dan Quayle (from A-word-a-day)

I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.
-- Richard Nixon, discussing Watergate in 1978

Isn't there any other part of the matzo you can eat?
-- Marilyn Monroe, after being served matzoball soup three meals in a row.

My work is done, why wait?
-- Suicide note of Kodak founder George Eastman

Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It's not fair that some men should be happier than others.
-- Oscar Wilde

Bite the wax tadpole.
-- Coca-Cola name as originally translated into Chinese (later changed to "May the mouth rejoice").

Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.
-- Ad slogan "Pepsi comes alive" as initially translated into Chinese.

They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--
-- Last words of Union commander General John Sedgwick, spoken as he was watching enemy troops at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway.
-- Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board, on Chlordane.

I have no weakness for shoes. I wear very simple shoes which are pump shoes. It is not one of my weaknesses.
-- Imelda Marcos, owner of 3,400 pairs of shoes.

Facts are stupid things.
-- Ronald Reagan

Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years, with time off for good behavior?
-- New York Senator James H. Donovan commenting on capital punishment.

Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
-- General William Westmoreland on why the media should be controlled in wartime.

I stand by all the misstatements.
-- Dan Quayle, then vice-presidential hopeful, defending his verbal gaffes.

The Desired Swan Song

Swans sing before they die -
'twere no bad thing
should certain persons die
before they sing.

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 

Page by dropbears