by Andy Rooney
49. If all the truth were known by everyone about everything, most people wouldn’t like it, though. If their future depends on logical decisions based on all the evidence, they’re nervous. They don’t think they’re smart enough to make the right decision. If, on the other hand, success and happiness depends on their astrological sign or on hoping and praying or on winning the lottery, then they feel better. They think their destiny is in better hands than their own.
50. In view of how many of them are regularly found out to be scoundrels, I have an unreasonable faith in and affection for doctors. In this regard, I am very suspicious of anyone who uses the title “doctor” who is not an M.D. There are some very good optometrists but I do not call them “doctors.”
51. People are too careful with books. If you like a book, you ought to mark it up with a pencil. Publishers put too much money in the flimsy paper dust jacket on books. The first thing I do with any book that doesn’t have my picture on the jacket is throw the jacket away.
52. I don’t like to lock anything or take precautions against having it stolen because every time I do, I get the feeling the bastards have beat me a little by making me do it.
53. It doesn’t make sense to be against abortion and for the death penalty.
54. It’s too bad we seem to need six or seven hours’ sleep. Someone’s going to invent a way for us to sleep faster.
55. It seems wrong for a state to take money from the poor and ignorant by selling them lottery tickets to collect money to help the state provide welfare and education to the poor and ignorant.
56. People talk as though they like the country better than the city but they move to the city.
57. Farmers have been quitting the farm and moving to the city for years but you never see any of them there.
58. There’s an acute shortage of well-known people in America. The same ones keep appearing on television talk shows. Of course, maybe what we need is not more well-known people but fewer talk shows.
59. Ronald Reagan wasn’t as successful reducing the size of government as Franklin Roosevelt was in increasing it.
60. No one wants to read a lot of good writing. There’s just so much good writing a reader can take.
61. If the reviews talk about how good the acting is in the movie, I don’t go see it. Like writing, there’s just so much good acting I can take. Acting and writing shouldn’t call attention to themselves.
62. It no longer makes any sense to bother to use an apostrophe between the n and t in words like dont and isnt.
63. Most evenings I have two drinks of bourbon before dinner even though I am uneasily aware that the practice is difficult to defend against the charge that drinking is no different from using drugs. Drinking also isn’t compatible with my belief that our best hope for happiness is clear thinking, but I try to have my thinking out of the way for the day by the time I have my first drink.
64. Journalists are more honest than other businesspeople because honesty is a hobby with them. They’re amused by it. They talk about honesty at lunch. They aren’t naturally any more honest, but it’s on their minds.
65. There are more beauty parlors than there are beauties.
65. It’s harder to avoid listening to something you don’t want to hear than it is to avoid seeing something you’d rather not see.
67. We’re all proud of admitting little mistakes. It gives us the feeling we don’t make any big ones.
68. I’m always surprised when a light bulb burns out.
69. It’s amazing that bees keep making honey, cows keep giving milk and hens keep laying eggs all their lives. There certainly isn’t much in it for them.
70. It’s too bad Jesus didn’t have a family.
71. Getting up early in the morning is a good way to gain respect without ever actually having to do anything.
72. It sounds funny in the house without the television set on.
73. I’d get a lot more reading done in bed if I read when I woke up in the morning instead of when I crawled in at night.
74. People who are wrong seem to talk louder than anyone else.
75. I don’t like any music I can’t hum.
76. Ice cream was just as good when they only had three flavors, vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.
77. The middle of the night seems longer than it used to.
78. I’m satisfied with the money I make until I read how much baseball players are making.
79 . No matter how big the umbrella you carry or how good your raincoat is, if it rains you get wet.
80. When the telephone rings in a store, the person behind the counter will spend five minutes explaining something to the caller while all the customers who have bothered to come to the store stand there waiting.
81. They keep talking about how low the rate of inflation is but I notice that when I buy something that cost me only $1.98 last year, it costs $2.42 now.
82. If I’d known how many problems I was going to run into before I finished, I can’t remember a single project I would have started.
83. Computers may save time but they sure waste a lot of paper. About 98 percent of everything printed out by a computer is garbage that no one ever reads.
84. Lawyers are more interested in winning than in justice.
85. There aren’t many times in your life when your body has absolutely nothing wrong with it.
86. Vacations aren’t necessarily better than other times, they’re just different.
87. When someone tells you, “It was my fault,” they don’t expect you to agree with them. When they say, “You’re the boss,” they don’t mean it.
88. No one who goes to prison ever admits he did it.
89. It gives you confidence in America to hear so many people talk who know how to run the country better than the President.
90. Doctors ought to think of some name for their outer office other than “waiting room.”
91. It’s lucky glass makes a loud noise when it breaks.
92. If dogs could talk, it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.
93. People aren’t called “the working class” much anymore unless they’re unemployed.
94. Most people don’t care where they’re going as long as they’re in something that gets them there in a hurry.
Dislikes 263
95 . Blue jeans cost less when they were called dungarees.
96. When I get sleepy driving, the only thing that really wakes me up is starting to fall asleep.
97. People in Florida talk more about the weather than people anywhere else in the world. I think it’s because weather is what they’re paying for and if it’s good they feel it justifies the expense. If it’s bad they like to think it isn’t as bad as it is some places.
98. Never trust the food in a restaurant on top of the tallest building in town that spends a lot of time folding the napkins.
99. After thinking something through as well and as completely as I am able, to be sure I’m right, it often turns out that I’m wrong.
Dislikes
Life is pleasant most of the time but there are some things it would be better without. I’ve made a partial list of things I dislike:
—Special or clever license plates with the owner’s nickname on them.
—Magazines that hide their index where you can’t find it. The index to magazine belongs inside the first page after the cover.
—Television commercials for hemorrhoid cures, toilet paper, sanitary pads or dental adhesives. Newspaper ads for these same products don’t bother me.
—Flip-top beer and soft drink cans.
—People who take up two parking spaces with one car.
—Anything stapled together.
—Announcements in the mail that I’m the potential winner of a million-dollar sweepstakes.
—A space that’s too small on a form where I’m supposed to put my signature. I scrawl when I write and if I have to put it in a little space, it isn’t really my signature.
—Telephone answering machines with messages at the beginning that are too long or too cute.
—Newspapers with sections that have different numbering systems from the main news sections. There may be no good way to handle this problem but that doesn’t stop me from disliking it.
—The middle seat in a crowded airplane.
—Trunks of cars that have to be opened with a key. Why can’t I leave the trunk of my car unlocked if I want to?
—Religious quacks on radio and television thinking up new ways to take money from ignorant listeners and incidentally from legitimate churches.
—Dirty magazines prominently displayed at a newsstand.
—A cart in the supermarket with a wobbly wheel.
—Waiting in line to pay for anything.
—Secretaries who say, “May I ask what this is in reference to?” when you call their boss.
—Admonitions from weathermen to “drive safely.” All I want to know from them is whether it’s going to rain or not. I’ll decide how to drive.
—Recipes in a bag of flour that you can’t remove without spilling flour all over.
—Hot-air hand dryers in public washrooms. I’d rather use my shirttail.
—People who play radios in public places.
—Baseball or basketball scores on the radio for teams I don’t care anything about.
—People who stand too close to my face when they’re talking to me. I think they’re cousins of the people who move you gradually over toward the buildings when you walk down the street with them.
—Screws with slots that aren’t deep enough so that they tear when you twist with the screwdriver.
Rules of Life 265
—Having to check a shopping bag when I go into a store. I know shoplifting is a problem but I don’t like the idea of being a suspect.
—Cars with too many red taillights.
Rules of Life
What follows are some rules of life:
—Don’t pin much hope on the mail, and when the phone rings, don’t
expect anything wonderful from that, either.
—If everyone knew the whole truth about everything, it would be a
better world.
—Any line you choose to stand in during your life will usually turn
out to be the one that moves the slowest.
—The best things in life are not free, they’re expensive. Good health
is an example.
—If you wonder what anyone thinks of you, consider what you think
of them.
—Don’t take a butcher’s advice on how to cook meat. If he knew, he’d
be a chef.
—Anything you look for in the Yellow Pages will not be listed in the
category you first try to find it under. Start with the second. Keep in
mind cars are under A for “automobiles.”
—Not everyone has a right to his own opinion. If he doesn’t know
the facts, his opinion doesn’t count.
—If you think you may possibly have forgotten something, there is
no doubt about it. You’ve forgotten something.
—Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what
happens.
—The model you own is the only one they ever had that trouble with. —Hoping and praying are easier but do not produce as good results
as hard work.
—Wherever you go for whatever reason, it will turn out you should
have been there last week.
—When you buy something, it’s always a seller’s market. When you
sell something, it’s always a buyer’s market.
—The same things keep happening to the same people. —Enthusiasm on the job gets you further than education or brains. —Money is not the root of all evil.
—Every so often you ought to do something dangerous. It doesn’t
have to be physical.
—Patience is a virtue. Impatience is a virtue, too.
—All men are not created equal but should be treated as though they
were under the law.
—The people who write poetry are no smarter than the rest of us,
and don’t let them make you think they are.
—Patriotism is only an admirable trait when the person who has a
lot of it lives in the same country you do.
—Apologizing for doing something wrong is nowhere near as good
as doing it right in the first place.
—If you want something you can’t have, it is usually best to change
what you want.
—The only way to live is as though there were an answer to every
problem—although there isn’t.
—New developments in science and new inventions in industry
don’t usually improve our lives much; the most we can hope is that
they’ll help us stay even.
—You may be wrong.
—You should be careful about when to go to all the trouble it takes to
be different.
—It is impossible to feel sorry for everyone who deserves being felt
sorry for.
—One of the best things about life is that we are happy more than
we are unhappy.
—Not many of us are able to change our lives on purpose; we are all
permanent victims of the way we are, but we should proceed as though
this were not true.
The Following Things are True
A great number of people are unsure of what’s true and what isn’t. From time to time, in an effort to help those who are confused, I present lists of things that are true. Herewith:
—More movies are too long than too short.
—In spite of any recession, prices always go up. They may not be going up as fast in hard times, but they still go up.
—If Beethoven was played as loud as rock music, I wouldn’t like that, either.
—People don’t think they really look like pictures of themselves.
—You don’t see as many parakeets or canaries in cages as you used to.
—Chinese food isn’t as popular as it was twenty years ago. Here, I mean. It’s just as popular as ever in China.
—Self-service hasn’t made gas any cheaper.
—A gas station attendant always screws the cap back on the tank tighter than I do.
—If there was no crime, local television news broadcasts would have to go out of business.
—Considering how poor they say they are in Russia these days, it’s surprising how many of them wear those mink hats.
—Imelda Marcos’ popularity in the Philippines is enough to shake your faith in democracy.
—Cough drops aren’t much help when you want to stop coughing.
—We’re all a little prejudiced about something.
—We make more friends than we have time to keep, but we make more enemies than we have time to fight, so it evens out.
—Believing there are differences in races doesn’t make anyone a racist.
—It’s surprising how convincingly someone who’s guilty can say he didn’t do it.
—There’s a delicate balance between the pleasure of being with people and the pleasure of being alone.
—Things are at their worst when you can’t sleep in the middle of the night.
—A lot of people spend too much time being careful.
—People who say that breakfast is their favorite meal don’t enjoy food much.
—Getting up and down off the floor is easier when you’re young.
—It doesn’t snow as much as it used to and, furthermore, it never did.
—If you have a vague feeling you may have forgotten something, it’s absolutely certain that you’ve forgotten something.
—The handicapped don’t use many of the parking spac
es set aside for them.
—We all assume we’re smarter than when we were younger—but probably not.
—Licking a stamp or an envelope is a disgusting thing to do.
—No matter where you stood, the war in Vietnam was one of the worst episodes in American history.
—You get so used to what everyone looks like in their clothes that you don’t think about what anyone looks like naked—and it’s a good thing.
—When checking a cookbook, look for the noun, not the adjective. For molasses cookies, don’t look for “molasses.” Look under “Cookies, molasses.”
—We’re lucky the Japanese don’t speak English.
—Generally speaking, shoes don’t fit very well. We just get used to where they hurt.
—Cheerleaders with short skirts and megaphones are out-of-date and have no effect whatsoever on the performance of the team they are exhorting.
—People use coffee tables a lot more to put junk and magazines on than they use them to put coffee on, but the name sticks anyway.
—A dining room table twenty-nine inches high is too tall to eat from comfortably, but that’s what most tables are. In some restaurants, the table is too high and the chair is too low.
—All television programs should be broadcast simultaneously on radio.
—Three-quarters of the homeowners in America never use their front door.
—Men’s undershirts aren’t long enough when you’re working around the house Saturday because they pull out at the waist when you bend over.
—I don’t drink beer from a bottle and I don’t see why anyone ever drinks it from a can. I don’t drink a beer very often and cannot imagine drinking two. When I drink a beer, it tastes best if I wet the glass and chill it in the freezer for a few minutes first. Two make me bilious.
—No one in prison for murder is guilty when they tell their story on television. I’ve never seen a guilty murderer.
—Two-door cars are a pain in the neck and I’m never buying another.
—They ought to play the second half of the Monday Night Football game first so we’d all know how it came out without staying up past midnight.
—It’s apparent to me how old I am when I read in the paper that they’re handing out condoms to kids in the New York City schools. I didn’t know what one was in high school and wouldn’t mention the word in mixed company to this day.
—The shades are always down in my office. If it’s a beautiful day outside, I don’t want to know.