So here goes with this month’s assemblage of recently encountered quotes both interesting and amusing …
In a courtroom somewhere …
Lawyer: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
Doctor (Witness): No.
L: Did you check for blood pressure?
Dr: No.
L: Did you check for breathing?
Dr: No.
L: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
Dr: No.
L: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
Dr: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
L: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
Dr: It is possible that he could have been alive and practising law somewhere.
[unknown]
Metaphor is the currency of knowledge. I have spent my life learning incredible amounts of disparate, disconnected, obscure, useless pieces of knowledge, and they have turned out to be, almost all of them, extremely useful.
[Chandler Burr, The Emperor of Scent]
We will find it, we will bind it,
We will stick it with glue, glue, glue
We will stickle it
Every little bit of it
We will fix it like new, new, new…
[Firmin & Postgate; Bagpuss]
Happiness does not come ready made. It comes through your own actions.
[Dalai Lama]
Even the humble raven contains within its blackness a whole spectrum, a whole rainbow, a chord of black. The black can be sooty, soily, glazed, cindery, blackboard black, kohl black, coal black, noir, Schwarz. I don’t know how many words and phrases there are to describe black.
[Chris Skaife, aka. Ravenmaster]
Tourism is the great soporific. It’s a huge confidence trick, and gives people the dangerous idea that there’s something interesting in their lives. All the upgrades in existence lead to the same airports and resort hotels, the same pina colada bullshit … The tourists smile at their tans and their shiny teeth and think they’re happy. But the suntans hide who they really are – salary slaves, with heads full of American rubbish. Travel is the last fantasy the 20th century left us, the delusion that going somewhere helps you reinvent.
[JG Ballard]
Computers won’t achieve human-style intelligence until they become prone to boredom. A system that can sit stationary indefinitely lacks the dynamical motivation characteristic of life.
[Sean Carroll]
You shuffled around the room in what a contemporary wit called “a form of country walking slightly impeded by a member of the opposite sex” and you called it a foxtrot. You slid around a little faster and called it a one-step … eventually the foxtrot and the one-step merged into a uniform shuffle which presented no difficulty to anybody.
[CEM Joad, writing about the post-WWI craze for dancing]
From kindergarten onwards we need education to strengthen inner values not just pursue material goals. We need to introduce emotional hygiene, much as we teach physical hygiene. This way we can address the problems we face, in the hope of making this a century of non-violence.
[Dalai Lama]
The joy of dictionaries is that they provide you with dozens of answers you were never looking for.
[Susie Dent]
If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, designed or removed from production.
[Pete Seeger]
Government: You owe us money. It’s called taxes.
Me: How much do I owe?
Gov’t: You have to figure that out.
Me: I just pay what I want?
Gov’t: Oh no, we know exactly how much you owe. But you have to guess that number too.
Me: What if I get it wrong?
Gov’t: You go to prison.
[unknown]
If life was all about peace, quiet, and lack of risk, there would be few marriages, and no steeplejacks.
[David Collier on Facebook]
I’m not saying your perfume is too strong. I’m just saying the canary was alive before you got here.
[unknown]