"Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho."
Anon.
"Good writers borrow. Great writers steal."
Anon.
"I just told these people here: 'I feel like the Eighties have begun'."
Anon., interviewee outside the Dakota, 8 December 1980
"If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul."
Isaac Asimov
"Don't worry -- be happy!"
Avatar Meher Baba
"Rock is for everybody; it should be so implicitly anti-elitist that the
question of whether somebody's qualified to perform it should never even arise."
Lester Bangs
". . . rock and roll, as I see it, is the ultimate populist art form,
democracy in action, because it's true: anybody can do it."
Ibid.
"Sexual chaos reigns currently, but out of chaos may flow true understanding and harmony, and either way Elvis almost singlehandedly opened the floodgates."
Ibid.
"If love truly is going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe,
then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more
contemptuous indifference to each others' objects of reverence. I thought it was Iggy Stooge, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever else seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation's many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis's. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won't bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you."
Ibid., 1977
"I've always believed the New Left is rank."
Ibid.
"I don't know shit about sports."
Ibid.
"I mean, don't get me wrong, I have excellent liberal credentials, and I am not at all opposed to males going topless, but aren't there beaches for this kind of thing?"
Ibid., Freddie Mercury's Supermarket Sweep, The Village Voice, 12 December 1977
"'My mission,' Sam told Peter Guralnick, 'was to bring out of a
person what was in him, to recognize that individual's unique quality and
then to find the key to unlock it.' On the list of people who could
easily have said exactly the same thing: Charles Manson, Captain
Beefheart, Lee Strasberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Joseph Stalin. Sam Phillips,
clearly, is a shaman. Was, and still is. The power of the shamanistic gift is volatile, according to the nature of the gifted one himself: if he's been abused early or has an evil streak or's just a plain psychopath, then watch out; if he's fundamentally healthy and motivated by humanitarian or loving impulses, his effects on those around him, whose own talents vary wildly, though that makes no difference here, can often produce incidents, moments, occasions, personal chemistries that are absolutely magical in the strictest sense, and if we're lucky, they get recorded."
Ibid., April 1980
"Style is originality; fashion is fascism. The two are eternally and unalterably opposed."
Ibid., April 1980
"The whole point of American culture is to pick up any old piece of trash and make it shine with more facets than the Hope Diamond."
Ibid., April 1980
"Mr. McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
Dr. David Banner
"We call England the Mother Country because most of us came from Poland or Italy."
Robert Benchley
"The main thing is to make history, not to write it."
Otto von Bismarck
"Der alte Jude, das ist der Mann."
Ibid.
"I was never asked to join the Editorial Cartoonists Of America. No fraternity would have me in college, either. I think they know something."
Berkley Breathed
"Bragging about what a good deal you got is one of the many great art forms that my people, the Jews, have introduced to American culture."
David Brooks, 2004
"Me? Not like Germans? Why should I not like Germans? Just because they're
arrogant and have fat necks and do anything they're told so long as it's cruel,
and killed millions of Jews in concentration camps and made soap out of their
bodies and lampshades out of their skins? Is that any reason to hate their
fucking guts?"
Mel Brooks
"I feel good.."
James Brown ladies and gentlemen
"...and the rest is rock 'n roll."
last words onscreen in The Buddy Holly Story, 1978
"We do our work and go."
"So serious!"
Rose DeWitt Bukater, in Titanic (shaddup, I liked it)
"All Bob Dylan was singing was questions, 'How many miles?' and all that. I didn't want to hear any more questions. Give me some tough social situations and show that answers are possible. And sure enough, 'Heroin' was one of them. It wasn't sorry for itself."
John Cale
"Wayne's World! Wayne's World! It's party time -- excellent!"
Wayne Campbell (with help from Garth)
"The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury."
Charlie Chaplin
"I hate the sight of blood, but it's in my veins."
Ibid.
"We have clearly established that Joe is a Communist sympathizer."
Dr. Xiaoming Chen, 4 November 1999
"The aristocracy and the working class are united in the indissoluble bonds of a common immorality."
Randolph Churchill
"We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm."
Winston L. S. Churchill
"Uncle Jam Wants You." George Clinton
"Jimmy's got a little bit of bitch in him." Ibid.
"Go, Maggot Brain." Ibid.
"Mommy, what's a Funkadelic?" Ibid.
"Every man and every woman is a star." Aleister Crowley
"We place no reliance
On Virgin or Pigeon
Our method is Science
Our aim is Religion" Ibid.
"I drink Coca-Cola for breakfast!
I've got Jackie Onassis in my pants!"
The Dictators
"The fastest car and a movie star
Are my only goals in life;
It's the
hippest scene, it's the American dream,
And for that I'll always fight!"
Ibid.
"June 1st, '67
Something died and went to heaven!
I wish Sgt. Pepper
Never taught the band to play!"
Ibid.
"You can go anywhere else on Earth, outside the United States, and rock and roll music is symbolic of freedom. Not democracy. Not Christianity. Rock and roll music, which succeeeded where both politics and religion failed, to spread the American culture, for good or bad, to the rest of the world."
Jim Dickinson
"I am the blank page between the Old and the New Testament."
Benjamin Disraeli
"Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon."
Ibid.
"I will sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me!"
Ibid.
"If God does not exist, then everything is permitted."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Bonn propaganda describes the wall as a 'monstrous evidence of the
aggressiveness of world communism'. Have you ever considered it to be a sign of
aggressiveness when someone builds a fence around his property?"
The German
Democratic Republic ("East Germany") on the alleged "threat" of the wall in
Berlin, 1962
"Sleep is like a drug. Take too much at a time and it makes you dopey. You lose time and opportunities."
Thomas Alva Edison
"Know thyself."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I only like heavy metal when I'm the one playing it. I suppose it's a bit like smelling your own farts."
John Entwistle
"If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs."
Tina Fey
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and
creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast
carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other
people clean up the mess they had made . . ."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925.
"My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy."
"
President Gerald Rudolph Ford
"Sand-wich!"
Ibid., via Robert Smigel, on SNL's TV Funhouse
"E pur si muove!"
Galileo Galilei
"I equate Deadheads to people that like black licorice. There aren't many people that like black licorice, but the ones that do, REALLY REALLY like it! Or buttermilk, or whatever."
Jerry Garcia
"Do you believe in UFOs, astral projection, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trans-mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?"
"If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say."
Janine Melnitz and Winston Zeddemore, in Ghostbusters, 1984
"Hollywood has turned into an emotional Detroit."
Lillian Gish, 1987
"Stairway to Heaven is the best musical representation of an orgasm I've ever heard."
The Gold Coast Review, (CT, USA), 1971
"As far as ideology is concerned, to equate communist and fascist ideology
is stupid and absurd. Communist ideology in its pure form is akin to
Christianity. Its main ideas are the brotherhood of all peoples irrespective of
their nationality, justice and equality, peace, and an end to all hostility
between peoples...in its essence communism is a humanist ideology, and it never
had anything in common with the misanthropic ideology of fascism."
Mikhail Gorbachev, 1996
"Think beer; drink beer."
Matt Groening
"For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals.
Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination.
We learned to talk.
And we learned to listen.
Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings
to work together to build the impossible.
Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking.
And its greatest failures by NOT talking.
IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS!
Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future.
With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded.
All we need to do is make sure we keep talking."
Dr. Stephen Hawking, in Pink Floyd's The Division Bell
"You can still see the shadow from when the Zeppelin floated over America; it took like Islam in the desert . . ."
Michael Herr,
1976
"The Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof."
Thomas Hobbes
"There are two kinds of Jews in the world: the kind that go for broke and
the kind that go for the money. Those who go for broke say crazy things like,
'Every kid wants to fuck his mother,' or 'Workers of the world, unite.' Jewish
troublemakers. That's the creative, humanistic trend in Judaism, but there's
another: 'Don't rock the boat.' It fucked up my childhood."
Abbie Hoffman,
1976
Q: "If you had realized that Python would become the legend it is, is there anything you might have done differently during your heyday?"
A: "Well, I would have tried to meet Elvis because he loved Python. I met Linda Thompson (Elvis' former girlfriend) the other day and she said that Elvis knew all the Python sketches. He would watch all-night Python. He would learn and recite them. Took the tapes on his plane. He would call people Squire from the 'Nudge Nudge' sketch. I said to Linda, 'What? You're kidding!' She said, 'No, we'd be up all night. He'd make me learn these things and we'd laugh and laugh and laugh.' And I just felt so happy. I mean, I knew we had the Beatles but Elvis as well! You know, Elvis saved my life when I was 13 or 14. He saved all our lives."
Interview with Eric Idle, Memphis Commercial Appeal, 2007
"There are only two things I can't give up; one is coffee and the other is tobacco."
President Andrew Jackson
"I will fight no more forever."
Chief Joseph
"When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jnr.
"Television: a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done."
Ernie Kovacs
"I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty
hunters, desperadoes! Mugs, pugs, thugs! Nitwits,
halfwits, dimwits! Vipers, snipers, con men, Indian
agents, Mexican bandits! Muggers, buggerers,
bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull
dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers,
shit-kickers and -- Methodists!"
Hedley Lamarr, in Blazing Saddles
"And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll."
Led Zeppelin (James Patrick Page & Robert Anthony Plant), November 1971
"Who whom?" Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin
"We're all doing what we can."
John Lennon
"Why in the world do you think we're here?
Surely not to live in pain and fear!"
Ibid
"Woman is nigger of the world."
Ibid
"You shut up. You are ze audience. I am ze author. I outrank you!"
Franz Liebkind, in The Producers
"TR Strong, but coffee are stronger."
Abraham Lincoln
"Big gun make you go dead fast!"
David Lorch, playing Doom, 2 March 2000
"This is when we need Jesse Ventura to be President. Can we have another
election? We need him to go personally kick some ass."
Ibid.; 11 September 2001
"Politicians always try to reconcile faith and science, and you can't. You can't be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work, and on one day of the week go to a building and think you're drinking the blood of a two-thousand-year-old space god. That doesn't make you a rational person. That doesn't make you a 'person of faith'. That makes you a schizophrenic."
Bill Maher, 4 January 2007
"F. Scott Fitzgerald has an indespensible quote: 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at once and still retain the ability to function'. Or, as I like to call it, 'O.J. killed his wife, and the police are corrupt.'"
Ibid.
"New Rule: Don't Go Greek. No gay fraternities. Apparently, there are now dozens of them. Why bother? If you're gay, you already have a much better way of bonding with another man than the chug-a-lug. Fraternities are for fucking assholes, not for fucking assholes."
Ibid.
"There are few moments in the repertoire of recorded rock where a singer or writer has reached so deeply into himself that the effect of hearing them is akin to witnessing a murder, or a suicide: 'Like a Rolling Stone' by Bob Dylan, 'Reach Out I'll Be There' by the Four Tops, 'Love Child' by the Supremes, 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling' by the Righteous Brothers, Tonight's the Night by Neil Young, the first Plastic Ono Band album by John Lennon, 'Running Scared' by Roy Orbison, 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' by Bruce Springsteen -- all are sung and played as though lives depended upon them. To me, 'Layla' is the greatest of them all."
Dave Marsh, 1980
"Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it."
Karl Marx
"Who killed Bambi?" Malcolm McLaren
"Don't worry. Be happy."
Avatar Meher Baba
"Bi? The fucker's quad."
Melody Maker, on Lou Reed, 1974?
"The Declaration of Independence makes a difference."
Herman Melville
"After two of his top cabinet nominees withdrew their bids on Tuesday because of their failure to pay back taxes, President Obama said, 'This was a mistake. I screwed up.' That’s your mistake? I don’t know if you remember, but the last guy broke the world."
Seth Meyers, on SNL's Weekend Update, 7 February 2009
"You know you've got to go through hell / Before you get to heaven"
Steve Miller
"Anyone who needs Bob Dylan to tell them which way the wind is blowing is a serious mental defective."
Holmes Sterling Morrison (Velvet Underground)
Interviewer: "What do you think of the MC5?"
HSM: "I think seldom of the MC5."
Ibid., 6 March 1970
"Cut it out! Cut it out! Cut it out! The hell's the matter with you? Stupid? We're all very different people. We're not Watusi. We're not Spartans. We're Americans, with a capital 'A'.You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world! We are the wretched refuse! We're the underdog! We're mutts! Here's proof: his nose is cold! But there's no animal that's more faithful, that's more loyal, more lovable than the mutt. Who saw 'Old Yeller'? Who cried when Old Yeller got shot at the end? Nobody cried when Old Yeller got shot? I'm sure. I cried my eyes out. So we're all dogfaces, we're all very, very different, but there is one thing that we all have in common: we were all stupid enough to enlist in the Army. We're mutants. There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us - we're soldiers. But we're American soldiers! We've been kicking ass for 200 years! We're 10 and 1! Now we don't have to worry about whether or not we practiced. We don't have to worry about whether Captain Stillman wants to have us hung. All we have to do is to be the great American fighting soldier that is inside each one of us. Now do what I do, and say what I say. And make me proud."
Bill Murray, in Stripes
"For days afterward up in apartment 72 whenever the kitchen door opened, three cats came bounding forward to greet him."
Phillip Norman, John Lennon: The Life, at its end (or just beginning?)
"It's something you'll get used to
A mental mindfuck can be nice!"
Richard O'Brien
"The only possibility in the United States for a humane society would be a revolution with Elvis Presley as leader."
Peter Ochs
"We like to pile language on language."
P.J. O'Rourke (speaking about Hunter S. Thompson)
"To learn how to love and forget how to hate."
Ozzy Osbourne
"Do you know what causes low voter turnout in America? It's the result of having the fate of our nation at stake. This began with the bitter presidential election of 1828, which pitted the education, cultivation, and puritan constraint of John Quincy Adams against the yahoo populism of Andrew Jackson, thereby deciding permanently whether America would become a shining city upon a hill or an overlighted strip mall along a highway."
Ibid., November 2007
"Did you know that the percentage of young people in the crucial 'youthquake' age bracket of 15 to 24 was higher in 1973 (18.5 percent) than in 1967 (16.7 percent)? Therefore it was glam rock that ended the war in Vietnam."
Ibid.
"Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.'"
George Orwell, 1942
Q: "Your use of symbols was very advanced. The sigil [symbols of occult power] on Led Zeppelin IV and the embroidery on your stage clothes from that time period are good examples on how you left your mark in popular culture. It's something that major corporations are aggressively pursuing these days; using symbols as a form of branding."
A: "You mean talismanic magick? Yes, I knew what I was doing."
Jimmy Page (interviewed in Guitar World, January 2008)
"Crowley didn't have a very high opinion of women and I don't think he was wrong."
Ibid.
"Distance is depth."
Ibid.
"I'm still searching for an angel with a broken wing. Its not easy to find them these days. Especially when you're staying at the Plaza Hotel."
Ibid., 13 March 1975
"Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects
for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in
supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island."
Thomas Paine, 1776
"Do you know . . . what this country has done . . . through hardship? It's become the seat . . . of the greatest compositions and versatilities in music . . . the world has ever known!"
Sam Phillips, 2000
Q: "Today, it would be hard for a small label to do what you did. Do you think a lot of talent is getting overlooked?"
A: "It's unfortunate. I'm not against big companies, except I think they ought to forget the damn dollars . . . And I don't mean that to the extent that they shouldn't do right by their shareholders, and themselves, even. But music is too fine a thing, and too absolutely, emotionally helpful to so many different people. The greatest diplomat in the world is that thing you call music. That's the name: Ambassador Music. It's going to be tougher. But it may be around the corner, and I'm too old to do it, but online and stuff, that thing may be worked out to where some of these people that are doing some of these amazing things, it may come back where people with nothing can do something. I sure hope so. I really do. I really hope so."
Ibid., interview with The Onion's A.V. Club, 11 September 2002
"If I could find a white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel . . . I could make a million dollars."
Ibid
"If you're not doing something different, you're not doing anything."
Ibid
"I yam what I yam."
Popeye the Sailor Man
"That was the only period in recent history that delivered songs in color. Led Zeppelin, for example, would make you feel differently on each song."
Prince Rogers Nelson
"Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength."
Thomas Pynchon
"You're a poltician -- don't become one of Hitler's children! . . . Na, Na na nan . . .pick up the pieces . . . my brain is hanging upside down."
Joey Ramone, Bonzo Goes To Bitburg, 1987
"Electricity comes from other planets."
Lou Reed
"Heavenly wine and roses
Seemed to whisper to her when he smiled;
Heavenly wine and roses
Seemed to whisper to her -- and then she smiled."
Ibid, Sweet Jane, 1970
"My week beats your year."
Ibid.
"Lennon has been trying recently, but he's involved in a New York scene that was dead seven years ago, hanging around with people like Jerry Rubin . . . I don't really like people telling me what to do and pushing for peace and whatever. I say bullshit. My approach is, why don't we get down to what's really going on? The greatest thing about the Velvet Underground was its honesty . . . if you want to hear pretentiousness, just listen to John Lennon's 'Imagine'. All that 'possessions' shit."
Ibid., in Melody Maker, 1973
"One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."
Ibid.
"And the sign says, 'Thank you very much for not smoking'
My own sign says, 'I'm sorry, I'm smokin''
Don't treat me special, don't kiss my ass
Treat me like the way they treat 'em up in first class"
The Replacements, via St. Paul of Westerburg, 1987
"I could give you memories to rival Berlin in the Thirties."
br> Jonathan
Richman, 1972br>
"People all over the world ain't bad.
But if they keep on chickenin' out,
They'll never get what they wish they had
And that's affection"
"It's so good to see stars;
I thought we'd lost them."
Ibid.
"Roadrunner once,
Roadrunner twice,
I'm in love with rock and roll,
And I'll be out all night!"
Ibid.
"Someday we could be dignified and old
Together."
Ibid., 1973.
"How in the world did they make that sound
Velvet Underground?
Like this!"
Ibid., 1992.
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 4 March 1933
"At one time I promoted five men for gallantry on the field of battle. Afterward in making some inquiries about them I found that two of them were Protestants, two Catholic, and one a Jew. One Protestant came from Germany and one was born in Ireland. I did not promote them because of their religion. It just happened that way. If all five of them had been Jews I would have promoted them, or if all five of them had been Protestants I would have promoted them; or if they had been Catholics. In that regiment I had a man born in Italy who distinguished himself by gallantry; there was another young fellow, a son of Polish parents, and another who came here when he was a child from Bohemia, who likewise distinguished themselves; and friends, I assure you, that I was incapable of considering any question whatever, but the worth of each individual as a fighting man. If he was a good fighting man, then I saw that Uncle Sam got the benefit of it. That is all."
Former President Theodore Roosevelt, 14 October 1912
"Give me World War III
We can live again."
Johnny Rotten
"Now I've got a reason to be waiting
The Berlin Wall!"
Ibid.
"Be a man! Kill someone! Kill yourself! Be a man! Be someone! Kill someone!
Be a man! Kill yourself!"
Ibid., at the Sex Pistols' final concert
"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
Ibid., a few minutes later
"The last breath was drawn at 21 minutes and 55 seconds past 7 A.M. and the last heart beat flickered at 22 minutes and 10 seconds past the hour on Saturday, April 15, 1865. Dr. Barnes's finger was over the carotid artery, Dr. Leale's finger was on the right wrist pulse, and Dr. Taft's hand was over the cardium when the great heart made its final contraction."
"The Pale Horse had come."
"To a deep river, to a far country, to a by-and-by whence no man returns, had gone the child of Nancy Hanks and Tom Lincoln, the wilderness boy who found far lights and tall rainbows to live by, whose name even before he died had become a legend inwoven with men's struggle for freedom the world over."
Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Volume IV, 1936
"Evergreen carpeted the stone floor of the vault. On the coffin set in a receptacle of black walnut they arranged flowers carefully and precisely, they poured flowers as symbols, they lavished heaps of fresh flowers as though there could never be enough to tell either their hearts or his."
"And the night came with great quiet."
"And there was rest."
"The prairie years, the war years, were over."
Ibid.
"All the world's a stage."
William Shakespeare
"Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous."
Ibid.
I sock 'em everwere that I sing
I knocked 'em deadin Dallas
And I didn't pay my dues
Yeah, I knocked 'em dead in Dallas
They didn't known we were Jews."
Adny Shernoff
"You see, Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk."
William Tecumseh Sherman
"Buenos noches, mein Fuhrer!"
The Simpsons, episode 2F13 ("Bart vs. Australia")
"To alcohol!
The cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
"
Homer J. Simpson
"Whatever you say, Mister Billboard!"
Ibid.
"Television! Teacher! Mother! . . .Secret lover."
Ibid
"I can see the musick!"
Lisa J. Simpson
"Style it takes."
Songs for Drella (John Cale & Lou Reed)
"Print is dead."
Dr. Egon Spengler, in Ghostbusters
"The message MAD had in general is: 'The media is lying to you, and we are part of the media.' It was basically . . . 'Think for yourselves, kids.'"
Art Spiegelman
"I believe in one thing only -- the power of human will."
Joseph Stalin
"The writer is an engineer of the human soul."
Ibid.
"Cross the streams . . ."
Dr. Raymond Stantz, in Ghostbusters
"It's not true
that life is one damn thing after another -- life is
one damn thing over and over."
Edna St. Vincent Millay
"Of cawse he's Jewish!
Little Old Lady at Niagara Falls, in Superman II
"And everything I had to know
I heard it on my radio."
Roger Taylor, 1984
"Nothing contemporary is as extreme or as strongly stated as what the Sex
Pistols were able to do in their time."
Julien Temple, 2001
"'21 . . . what you know is the truth."
The Who, Tommy
"We are honoured to be here!"
Ibid., at the Concert For New York.
"There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Are now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight . . ."
Ibid.
"Gosh darn that fiendish LSD!"
Hunter S. Thompson
"TRANSFORMERS! MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE . . ."
teevee announcement, circa 1984.
"History does not necessarily repeat itself, but it does often rhyme."
Mark Twain
"Einstein did his best stuff while he was working as a patent clerk."
Dr. Peter Venkman, in Ghostbusters
"If you buy the flag it's yours to burn."
Governor Jesse Ventura
"Love is the universal expression."
Joseph Mendel Waldman
"But Balso had only blundered again. 'Sirrah!' the guide cried in an enormous voice. 'I am a Jew! and whenever anything Jewish is mentioned, I find it necessary to say that I am a Jew. I'm a Jew! A Jew!'"
"'Oh, you mistake me,' Balso said. 'I have nothing against the Jews. I admire the Jews; they are a thrifty race. Some of my best friends are Jews.'"
Nathanael West, The Dream Life of Balso Snell, 1931
"The great poems, Shakespeare included, are poisonous to the idea of the
pride and dignity of the common people, the life-blood of democracy . . . Did
you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and
for a party name?"
Walt Whitman
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
Ibid.
"Anyone can make history. Only a great man can write it."
Oscar Wilde
"I can believe anything provided it is incredible."
Ibid.
"Only the shallow know themselves."
Ibid.
"That's it! I'm happy!."
Gene Wilder, in The Producers
"Laughing has always seemed to me to be more Jewish than praying."
Rabbi Sherwin Wine (1928 - 2007)
"Sometimes the kindest thing you can say about God is that he doesn�t exist."
Ibid.
"You have to fight gravity."
Ibid.
"When you believe in things
That you don't understand
Then you
suffer.
Superstition ain't the
way!"
Stevie Wonder
Q: "Is there a specific reason why you tilt your head in photos?"
A: "The left side of my brain is much heavier than my right side."
"Weird Al" Yankovic, July 1999