Say What?
Page 6
—Jared Allen, Vikings defensive end, about the possibility of a hostile schism growing in the locker room between teammates
“Anyone with knowledge of the slave trade and the NFL could say that these two parallel each other.”
—Rashard Mendenhall, Pittsburgh Steelers player, on Twitter
“We’re not attempting to circumcise the rules.”
—Bill Cowher, former NFL head coach
“Ancient gravity was much weaker...Gravity had to be weaker to make dinosaurs nimble.”
—Jose Canseco, MLB outfielder
“I love the tension. I love when everything’s going wrong...In the NBA, they don’t promote guys like me. They like guys who like Cheerios, good guys. But I find a way to promote myself.”
—Metta World Peace, NBA Defensive Player of the Year
“To win, I’d run over Joe’s mom, too.”
—Matt Millen, NFL linebacker, after Redskins lineman Joe Jacoby stated he’d “run over my own mother to win the Super Bowl”
“Joe Frazier is so ugly he should donate his face to the US Bureau of Wildlife.”
—Muhammad Ali
“Because she is too ugly to kiss goodbye.”
—Bum Phillips, NFL coach, on why he brings his wife on road trips
“Yeah, I’m cocky and I am arrogant. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a nice person.”
—Jeremy Roenick, NHL center
“What problems do you have, apart from being blind, unemployed and a moron?”
—John McEnroe, to a Wimbledon spectator
“When you say I committed adultery, are you stating before the marriage of 1996 or prior to?”
—Deion Sanders, Dallas Cowboys cornerback
“Saltwater taffy.”
—Caldwell Jones, NBA player, on his favorite seafood
“It’s a humbling thing being humble.”
—Maurice Clarett, Ohio’s Mr. Football 2001, after finding out his draft stock had dropped
Miscellaneous
Thinkers & Creative Types
“Let me be clear about this: I don’t have a drug problem, I have a police problem.”
—Keith Richards
“The supposed astronomical proofs of the theory [of relativity], as cited and claimed by Einstein, do not exist. He is a confusionist. The Einstein theory is a fallacy. The theory that ether does not exist, and that gravity is not a force but a property of space can only be described as a crazy vagary, a disgrace to our age.”
—Charles Lane Poor, American astronomer
“A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong.”
—Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA
“I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before.”
—English theologian William Buckland, who loved eating unusual meat. According to the writer Augustus Hare, he was once shown “the heart of a French King preserved at Nuneham in a silver casket. And, before anyone could hinder him, he had gobbled it up, and the precious relic was lost forever.”
“We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated...The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain.”
—Professor José Delgado, Yale University
“What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman.”
—Lord Byron
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
—Isaac Asimov
“Medical scientists are nice people, but you should not let them treat you.”
—August Karl Gustav Bier, German surgeon, the first to perform spinal anesthesia and intravenous regional anesthesia
“I hight don Quixote, I live on peyote, marijuana, morphine and cocaine. I never know sadness, but only a madness that burns at the heart and the brain. I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman, angelic, demonic, divine. Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon that brims with ambrosial wine.”
—Jack Parsons, rocket scientist
“The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another.”
“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”
“The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny.”
—Nikola Tesla, scientist and inventor
“My music is best understood by children and animals.”
—Igor Stravinsky
“What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.”
—Ludwig van Beethoven
“I may not be a first rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.”
—Richard Strauss
“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”
—Hector Berlioz
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility. There are so few of us left.”
—Oscar Levant
“If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.”
—Dan Poynter
“One can’t judge Wagner’s opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend hearing it a second time.”
—Gioachino Rossini, on Richard Wagner
“Listening to the fifth symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.”
—Aaron Copland, on Vaughan Williams
“She’s only pretty in that she has two small black eyes and a good figure.”
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, on his future wife, Constanze
“Write to me and don’t be so lazy. Otherwise I’ll have to give you a thrashing. What fun! I’ll break your head.”
—Mozart, to his sister
“He was a six and a half foot scowl.”
—Igor Stravinsky, on Sergei Rachmaninov
“All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.”
—Louis Armstrong
“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”
“Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.”
“Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk in order to provide articles for people who can’t read.”
—Frank Zappa
“I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.”
—Elvis Presley
“If I didn’t do this well, I just wouldn’t have anything to do…I can’t cook, and I’d be a terrible housewife.”
—Freddie Mercury, Queen
“I’m sick to death of people saying we’ve made 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we’ve made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.”
—Angus Young, AC/DC
“There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn’t give a damn what goes on in between.”
—Thomas Beecham
“There are two kinds of artists left: those who endorse Pepsi and those who simply won’t.”
—
Annie Lennox
“I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes.”
—Jimi Hendrix
“After I saw Jimmy [Hendrix] play, I just went home and wondered what the f*** I was going to do with my life.”
—Jeff Beck
“Actually I don’t remember being born, it must have happened during one of my blackouts.”
—Jim Morrison
“I don’t deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn’t deserve that, either. So I’ll keep it!”
—Quincy Jones
“I smash guitars because I like them.”
—Pete Townshend
“I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.”
—Duke Ellington
“Dogs smoke in France.”
—Ozzy Osbourne
“When I was a little boy, I told my dad, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a musician.’ My dad said: ‘You can’t do both, Son.’”
—Chet Atkins
“If you’re listening to a rock star to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are.”
—Alice Cooper
“To get your playing more forceful, hit the drums harder.”
—Keith Moon
“Sometimes we pee on each other before we go on stage.”
—Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails
“I think John would have liked Free As A Bird. In fact, I hope somebody does this to all my crap demos when I’m dead, making them into hit songs.”
—George Harrison
“In the end we’re all Jerry Springer Show guests, really, we just haven’t been on the show.”
—Marilyn Manson
“If I knew I had to play this song the rest of my life I probably woulda wrote something else….”
—Joe Walsh, on “Rocky Mountain Way”
“When an instrument fails on stage it mocks you and must be destroyed!”
—Trent Reznor
“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.”
—Igor Stravinsky
“I never practice my guitar…from time to time I just open the case and throw in a piece of raw meat.”
—Wes Montgomery
“Writer’s block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.”
—Steve Martin
“People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.”
—Stephen King
“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself.”
“If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.”
“The Bible. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.”
“Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.”
“Religion was invented when the first con-man met the first fool.”
“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”
—Mark Twain
Caustic, Crazy & Cutting
Criminals
“Sometimes I feel like God…when I order someone killed—they die the same day.”
—Pablo Escobar
“I punched my mother out once.”
—Charles Manson
“I like children, they are tasty.”
—Albert Fish, aka the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Moon Maniac, the Boogey Man. He boasted that he “had children in every state.”
“What’s one less person on the face of the earth, anyway?”
“We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.”
—Ted Bundy, serial killer
“I would cook it, and look at the pictures and masturbate.”
“I’ve got to start eating at home more.”
—Jeffrey Dahmer, aka the Milwaukee Cannibal, serial killer and sex offender
“I robbed them, and I killed them as cold as ice, and I would do it again, and I know I would kill another person because I’ve hated humans for a long time.”
—Aileen Wuornos, serial killer
“The only one that can do what I do is me. Lot of people had to die for me to be me. You wanna be me?”
—Frank Costello, crime boss
“She isn’t missing. She’s at the farm right now.”
—Ed Gein, murderer and grave robber
“Guns are neat little things, aren’t they? They can kill extraordinary people with very little effort.”
—John W. Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan
“I rob banks for a living, what do you do?”
“All my life I wanted to be a bank robber. Carry a gun and wear a mask. Now that it’s happened I guess I’m just about the best bank robber they ever had. And I sure am happy.”
“These few dollars you lose here today are going to buy you stories to tell your children and great-grandchildren. This could be one of the big moments in your life; don’t make it your last!”
—John Dillinger, gangster
“I will have you removed if you don’t stop. I have a little system of my own.”
—Charles Manson
“When I killed people I had a desire [to kill more]. This inspired me to kill more. I don’t care whether they deserve to live or not. It is none of my concern.”
—Yang Xinhai, serial killer, China
“I felt pleasure, even though when I had killed, the guilt came over me.”
—Luis Garavito, aka the Beast, Colombian rapist and serial killer
“It was only good if I could see her eyes.”
—Pedro Alonso Lopez, aka the Monster of the Andes
“You have to be like a lion and a fox. The fox is smart enough to recognize traps, and the lion is strong enough to scare away the wolves. Be like a lion and a fox, and no one will ever beat you.”
—Carlo “Don Carlo” Gambino, Italian-born American gangster
“There can only be one king.”
“I prefer to be in the grave in Colombia than in a jail cell in the United States.”
—Pablo Escobar, Colombian drug lord
“Weapons are an extension of my body. Like my arms. I learned that at training camp in the Bekaa Plain. I also learned that to kill, you have to act fast and aim straight at the nose.”
—Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, aka Carlos the Jackal, Venezuelan-born international terrorist
“I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks, and boats.”
—Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman
“You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”
“I got nothing against the honest cop on the beat, the kind you can’t buy. You just have to have them transferred someplace where they can’t do you any harm.”
“I’m a kind person, I’m kind to everyone, but if you are unkind to me, then kindness is not what you’ll remember me for.”
“Some call it bootlegging. Some call it racketeering. I call it a business.”
“We been on the road for 18 hours...I need a bath, some chow...and then you and me sit down, and we talk about who dies, eh?”
“Now I know why
tigers eat their young.”
—Al Capone, gangster
“There is nothing wrong with Mr. Kraft’s mind other than that he likes killing for sexual satisfaction.”
—Prosecution for Randy Kraft, serial killer
“What I did was not for sexual pleasure. Rather it brought me some peace of mind.”
—Andrei Chikatilo, aka the Maniac, Russian serial killer
“We love death. The US loves life. That is the difference between us two.”
“We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah.”
—Osama bin Laden
“My mother was cancer. She slowly destroyed everything around her. She produced two killers; me and my brother Joe.”
—Richard “Iceman” Kuklinski
“Gun control? It’s the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. I’m a bad guy; I’m alwaysgonna have a gun. Safety locks? You will pull the trigger with a lock on, and I’ll pull the trigger. We’ll see who wins.”
“Never open your mouth, unless you’re in the dentist chair.”
“I loved the Godfather. I thought that was the best interpretation of our life that I’ve ever seen. Godfather I and Godfather II—the other one stunk.”
—Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, former underboss of the Gambino crime family
“We took care of Kennedy.”
—Salvatore “Mooney Sam” Giancana, better known as Sam Giancana, Sicilian American mobster
“Assassin?...That sounds so exotic...I was just a murderer.”
—Richard “Iceman” Kuklinski, American contract killer, known for his method of freezing a victim to mask the time of death
“May your wife and children get raped, right in the ass.”
—Aileen Wuornos, serial killer, to the jurors who convicted her
“I was raised to be a rugged, strong-minded hustling type of woman so you can throw me in this concrete jungle with nothing and I’ll still come out fed with a lion on my back.”