For a brief period of my life (in the early 90s), I lived on the south side of Chicago. It was an interesting experience, to say the least.
I remember one day seeing a couple young men laughing at one of the local homeless guys. This particular individual was always stoned or drunk, or both. Often, when he approached me, he couldn’t even put the words together to ask for change; he just held his hand out. He was often in bad shape. At least once, I found him passed out on the street, with his own piss flowing out over the curb. This time at least he was up and moving with some purpose as he walked by the young men, both of whom were well dressed.
Laughing, one of the young men shouted back at him; “Hey do you remember me?”
“Yeah.”
“Really? Who am I?’
“You!”
I’m not sure this particular individual knew he won that exchange, but the two men mocking him sure did.
Philosophy buffs will already know about Sidney Morgenbesser, (September 22, 1921 – August 1, 2004). A Professor at Columbia University, Morgenbesser’s sharp wit has produced more than a few great stories. He is particularly known for a single moment of shear brilliance that outstrips the value of many published volumes. J.L. Austin, a prominent philosopher of language, had been giving a lecture, so the story begins. Austin claimed that two negatives could make a positive in many languages, but nowhere did two positives make a negative.
…Okay, I really do hate quote mining, at least when it masquerades as serious scholarship. But the collection of quotes on my Facebook page is not serious scholarship, or at least that’s not what I had I mind when I collected them. I just thought they were cool. So presenting (for your entertainment) a few of my favorite things:
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“It is not that humans have become any more greedy than in generations past. It is that the avenues to express greed had grown so enormously.”
– Alan Greenspan
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“The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.”
— Will Rogers
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“Tables, chairs, and open chests would have suited Jesus best. He’d have caused nobody harm. No-one alive.”
– Judas (Jesus Christ Superstar)
“Supporting Israel doesn’t mean you’re pro-Jewish. It just means you want all the Jews a half a world away to fulfill our Biblical prophecy.”
– “Reverend” Jim Osborne (of the Landover Baptist Church)
***
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
– Author Unknown
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“A great many things are dying very violently all the time. The best days for violent deaths are Tuesdays. They are the yellow paint days. Saturdays are second best, or worst. Saturdays are red paint days. The great death game is therefore a contest between red paint days and yellow paint days. So far yellow paint days are winning by 31 corpses to 29. Whatever the color, a violent death is always celebrated by a firework.”
– Smut, Drowning by Numbers
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“America! You’re an unfriendly waitress with bad cappuccino.”
– The Foremen
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“He said, that’d be the last thing I ever do is shoot mahself, …which it was.”
– Vernon Florida.
“right after daddy gets home from the bar
visits his bookie and steals a new car
he’ll drive to the strip club
and if daddy plays his cards right
he’ll bring home your new mommy tonight”
– Lullaby, Stephen Lynch
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“We’re raising up our standard, so you can lower yours.
We’ll see ya slashed and slandered and abandoned on the shores.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Bring on the media whores!”
– The Foremen
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“When you get in bed with ultimate evil, my friend, it always takes the covers.”
– The Tick
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“Neither party ever gains any insight or learns from these encounters. They never sit down and discuss their differences. Repeated defeats do not teach Bluto to honour Olive Oyl’s humanity, and repeated pummellings do not teach Popeye to swallow his spinach before the fight.”
– Walter Wink, Facing the Myth of Redemptive Violence
***
“”Jesus… ah, son, let me tell you about Jesus. You see, son, Jesus is a man, but sometimes, he’s also an idea – kind of like Salvadore Dali painting. You ever see a Dali painting, son? You ever see that melting clock face picture? Jesus is like that. Like a bunch of clocks, melting against various wood finishes. Jesus is like… well, it’s kind of like this, son. Picture an apple covered in a layer of smooth butter, and lacquered with sweet syrup. Now picture this candied apple resting upon a melted clock – you know, like that one in the Dali painting. Now picture the melted clock spinning, and slowly turning, and in the background, the Moscow Red Army Choir is performing Ave Maria.
“You see, son, Jesus, well, Jesus is kind of like that. Now you go and reflect.”
“I’ll fold you into my wallet and spend you on a whore.”
– The Terror
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“Every time a child gets health care, an angel loses its virginity in a rather inventive manner.”
– Mrs. Betty Bowers
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“And if I want to eat your soul, I’ll just throw it on the griddle. Don’t need to make a deal. I don’t need to tell a riddle. And fuck Charlie Daniels! I don’t care if he can fiddle. I’m Satan.”
– Stephen Lynch
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“There’s a mackerel of a cornflake for you.”
– Line cut from A Clockwork Orange
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“The position that private action, however deplorable, is not a fit subject for government action puts libertarians in the position of repeating simultaneously all the things that are wrong with the world and their resolute determination to do nothing about them.”
– Andrew Sabl
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“You could call us Aaron Burr from the way we’re dropping Hamiltons!”
– Lazy Sunday
“In the Beginning there was nothing, not even time. No planets, no stars, no hip-hop, no rhyme. Then there was a bang like the sound of my gat. The universe began and the shit was phat.”
“Shout-out to the girl who wanted the Japanese kanji for “luck” to represent her Irish heritage.”
– S.K. Williams (employee at a tattoo shop)
***
“A bit more violent than Brahms, but it’s pretty good.”
– Lemmy
***
“Vilmar, a traveling salesman, whose 10.4 year old Opel became stuck in a 3 meter deep snow bank during blizzard in rural Schleswig-Holstein. It took Vilmar several hours to trudge through the deep snow drifts to the nearest farm house with a light on. Frozen half to death, Vilmar finally reached the front door and knocked on it. When Berke, a grizzled old farmer, answered the door, Vilmar pleaded for a place to spend the night. “Sure, young man, I can give you a place to sleep,” said the hospitable old man. “But, I have no daughter for you to sleep with.”
– Dingfod from Freethought Forums
