by Ross Petras
Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, D.C.
On Jumping the Gun:
I am in control here. As of now, I am in control here in the White House.
Alexander Haig, then Secretary of State, after President Reagan was shot, forgetting that in actuality he was fourth in line of succession
On Justice:
If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.
then Attorney General Edwin Meese explaining to the American Bar Association why the Miranda decision enabling those arrested to be advised of their rights was not necessary anymore
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On Keeping Quiet at Meetings:
A little less quiet, please, Mr. Blackbird.
New York Athletic Commissioner General John J. Phelan, to boxer Joe Louis’s trainer, “Chappie” Blackburn
On Kiddie Shows, Great Lines from:
I want you to take your balls in your hands and bounce them on the floor and then throw them as high as you can. Now, have you all got your balls in your hands?
announcer of children’s radio show “Life with Mother,” to her little audience, as reported by Geoffrey Moorhouse
On Killing, Putting an End to:
WISH—TO END ALL THE KILLING IN THE WORLD HOBBIES—HUNTING AND FISHING
from personal statistics of California Angel Bryan Harvey, flashed on the scoreboard at Anaheim Stadium, 1989
On Knee Surgery:
I’ve never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.
Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward
On Knowledge:
The President is aware of what is going on. That’s not to say there is something going on.
Ron Ziegler, press secretary to President Richard Nixon, on a rumor that allied forces were attacking across the Laotian border
On Knowledge:
Gaylord Perry and Willie McCovey should know each other like a book. They’ve been ex-teammates for years now.
Jerry Coleman, San Diego Padres announcer
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On Ladies, Fat, and Dutch Queens:
[The commotion] has something to do with a fat lady.
Dizzy Dean, baseball great turned sports announcer, explaining why there was a hubbub in the stands during a St. Louis Browns game he was covering
I’ve just been informed that the fat lady is the Queen of Holland.
Dizzy Dean, on air a few minutes later, after a studio executive quietly told him that the “fat lady” was actually the Queen of the Netherlands
On Language:
I’m no linguist, but I have been told that in the Russian language there isn’t even a word for freedom.
President Ronald Reagan on why Russia was still—and presumably always would be—Communist, overlooking the word svoboda, or freedom
On Language and Meaning:
A written sign is proffered in the absence of the receiver. How to style this absence? One could say that at the moment when I am writing, the receiver may be absent from my field of present perception. But is not this absence merely a distant presence, one which is delayed or which, in one form or another, is idealized in its representation? This does not seem to be the case, or at least in this distance, divergence, delay, this deferral must be capable of being carried to a certain absoluteness of absence if the structure of writing, assuming that writing exists, is to constitute itself. It is at that point that the difference as writing could no longer [be] an [ontological] modification of presence.
Jacques Derrida, French deconstructionist, “Signature Event Context,” Limited Inc.
On Languages:
Every monumental inscription should be in Latin; for that being a dead language it will ever live.
Samuel Johnson, eighteenth-century English writer, in a blunder noted by his contemporaries
On the Law, Great Rhetoric on:
There has been much talk here this afternoon about the law of the land. We are makers of the law of the land and makers of the law of the land ought to understand and respect the law of the land.
Senator Roger W. Jepsen, Republican from Iowa, during a congressional debate
On Leader, Following the:
Let the first contingent go ahead and I will send a man after you to lead the way.
J. C. Percy, bicycle club leader, addressing the group
On Leadership, What Ted Kennedy Thinks About:
Well, it’s um, you know, you have to come to grips with the different issues that, ah … that, ah, we’re facing, I mean we have … we have to deal with each of the various questions that we’re talking about whether it’s a question of the economy, whether it’s in the area of energy.
Senator Edward Kennedy, during a November 4, 1979, on-air interview with Roger Mudd, explaining why he would be different than then President Jimmy Carter
On Legal Defenses, Great Moments in:
Did you get a good look at my face when I took your purse?
accused thief who undertook his own defense at his trial, to his alleged victim, as reported in the National Review. He got ten years.
On Legal Definitions, Important:
Buttocks: The area at the rear of the human body (sometimes referred to as the glutaeus maximus) which lies between two imaginary lines running parallel to the ground when a person is standing, the first or top of such line being one-half inch below the top of the vertical cleavage of the nates (i.e., the prominence formed by the muscles running from the back of the hip to the back of the leg) and the second or bottom line being one-half inch above the lowest point of curvature of the fleshy protuberance (sometimes referred to as the gluteal fold), and between two imaginary lines, one on each side of the body (the “outside lines”), which outside lines are perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines described above and which perpendicular outside lines pass through the outermost point(s) at which each nate meets the outer side of each leg….
part of a St. Augustine, Florida, ordinance drafted by city commissioners to regulate nudity on the beach and in restaurants
On Legal Ordinances, Questionable:
Section 4: Licenses shall be issued only to persons of good moral turpitude.
Clearwater, Florida, city ordinance on liquor licenses
On Letting It All (Almost) Hang Out:
President Richard Nixon:
Do you think we want to go this route now? Let it hang out, so to speak?
John Dean:
Well, it isn’t really that.
H. R. Haldeman:
It’s a limited hang-out.
John Ehrlichman:
It’s a modified, limited, hang-out.
from the Nixon tapes
On Lies:
If I tell a lie it’s only because I think I’m telling the truth.
Phil Gaglardi, Minister of Highways in British Columbia, Canada
On Lies:
I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.
Richard Nixon, discussing Watergate in a 1978 interview
On Lies, the Effect of:
Thus, the black lie, issuing from his base throat, becomes a boomerang to his hand, and he is hoist by his own petard, and finds himself a marked man.
small-town newspaper editor in Wisconsin
On Life, the True Value of:
It’s not a matter of life and death. It’s more important than that.
Lou Duva, on the upcoming fight of his protégé against boxer Mike Tyson
On Life After Death:
If Lincoln were alive today, he’d roll over in his grave.
President Gerald Ford
On Life After Death:
Yogi Berra (during a 20 Questions game):
Is he living?
Teammate:
Yes.
Yogi:
Is he living now?
On Life After Death:
If Cal Coolidge were alive today to witness this scene, he’d roll over in his grave.
representat
ive in Massachusetts House
On Life and Death:
Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.
Brooke Shields, said to demonstrate why she should become spokesperson for a federal antismoking campaign
On Life Insurance. Reasons for Buying:
I’ll get it when I die.
Yogi Berra, explaining why he bought a large life insurance policy
On Light, and Darkness, or Both or Neither:
The light which the Lord Chancellor had thrown upon the matter was darkness.
Lord Ribblesdale, British aristocrat and Master of the Buckhounds in the 1890s, called “the Ancestor” because of his patrician good looks
On Abraham Lincoln, Little-Known Accomplishments of:
It is indeed fitting that we gather here today to pay tribute to Abraham Lincoln, who was born in a log cabin that he built with his own hands.
an unnamed politician in a speech honoring Lincoln, as reported by Senator Morris K. (“Mo”) Udall
On Linkages, Unclear:
I love California. I grew up in Phoenix.
Vice-President Dan Quayle
On Locker Rooms, coverage of Athletes In:
I think we probably expose our players to the media as well as anybody.
George Perles, Michigan State football coach, on allowing women reporters in the locker room
On Logic, Impeccable:
I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor.
George III of England
On Longevity:
A lot of people my age are dead at the present time.
Casey Stengel, baseball great, Yankees and Mets manager
On Love Scenes, How to Do:
Could you get a little closer apart?
Michael Curtiz, Hollywood director, to two stars
On Lying:
[It is] not fair to say that I have misinformed Congress or other Cabinet officers. I haven’t testified to that. I’ve testified that I withheld information from Congress. And with regard to the Cabinet officers, I didn’t withhold anything from them that they didn’t want withheld from them.
Rear Admiral John Poindexter, in his testimony to a congressional hearing looking into the Iran-Contra affair
On Lying:
The President misspoke himself.
attributed to Ron Ziegler, Nixon’s press secretary
On Lying:
I apologize for lying to you…. I promise I won’t deceive you except in matters of this sort.
Spiro T. Agnew, Vice-President under Nixon, speaking to reporters about his assertions that he wouldn’t be going to Cambodia. He made this apology on the plane headed to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
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On Machismo and Pestilence:
In the early sixties, we were strong, we were virulent….
John Connally, Secretary of Treasury under Richard Nixon, in an early seventies speech, as reported in a contemporary American Scholar
On Man in Space, Early Predictions of:
The United States is at peace with all the world, and sustains friendly relations with the rest of mankind.
President Benjamin Harrison in a speech to Congress
On Manure, Problems with:
… when floors are wet and slippery with manure, you can have a bad fall.
from the U. S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s booklet, “Safety with Beef Cattle,” 1976
On Mardi Gras:
Even if they had it in the streets, I wouldn’t go.
attributed to movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn
On Mayors, Responsibilities of:
I am not the leader of Washington. I am not the business leader of Washington. I am not the spiritual leader of Washington. I am not the civic leader of Washington. I am not the social leader of Washington. I am the political leader of Washington. That’s where my responsibility ends.
Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, D. C., defending himself against critics who held his lack of leadership partly responsible for the high murder rate in D.C.
On Meat Eating, Greatness and:
In the whole history of the world, whenever a meat-eating race has gone to war against a non-meat-eating race, the meat eaters won. It produces superior people. We have the books of history.
Senator Carl Curtis (R-Neb.) during a debate on banning DES as a food additive for livestock, 1975
On Mediocrity:
Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. Don’t they deserve some representation on the court?
Senator Roman Hruska (R-Neb.), defending Judge Harold Carswell, the first Nixon nominee for the Supreme Court, against charges that he was mediocre
On Mental Illness:
My boy friend is a split personality—a kind of Jekyll of all trades.
Dorothy Stickney’s (theater and film actress from the thirties through the fifties) manicurist
On Metaphors, Mixed:
Since the Government has let the cat out of the bag there is nothing to do but take the bull by the horns.
Jeremiah MacVeagh, Member of Parliament
On Metaphors, Strange:
When shall the lion of autocracy walk hand in hand with the floodgates of democracy?
James Sexton, Member of Parliament, in a speech
On Metaphors, Strange:
The apple of discord is now fairly in our midst, and if not nipped in the bud it will burst forth in a conflagration which will deluge society in an earthquake of bloody apprehension.
a Nebraska newspaper editorial, circa 1870, reporting on legislative turmoil
On Metaphors, Strange:
The gutless, no-good 100th Congress … will write off freedom in Nicaragua, throw them to the alligators, and hope the alligators will eat someone else and eat us last and they can peel off a slice of that salami and they will not bother us for now. Do not rock the boat.
Senator Steve Symms (R-Idaho)
On Metaphors, Strange:
It is no use for the honorable member to shake his head in the teeth of his own words.
William E. Gladstone, leader of the Liberal Party of England and Prime Minister, in a speech
On Metaphors, Strange:
As we debate this bill, that sword of Damocles is hanging over Pandora’s box.
from New York City Council debates, quoted by Molly Ivins, New York Times Magazine
On Metaphors, Strange:
[This item is] a mere fleabite in the ocean of our expenditure.
Lord Randolph Churchill, father of Winston, during a Parliament debate
On Method Acting, Overdoing:
… the greatest villain that ever lived, a man worse than Hitler or Stalin. I am speaking of Sigmund Freud.
Telly Savalas, actor, discussing a role he was going to play
On the Mideast Crisis:
Why can’t the Jews and the Arabs just sit down together and settle this like good Christians?
overheard during a congressional debate; also attributed to Arthur Balfour, British statesman, Prime Minister, and Foreign Secretary
On the Mid-Term, Necessity for:
As a compensating measure, the focus of shorter-and longer-term analyses would be extended to include the mid-term. Although this approach will in some measure reduce the comprehensive nature of the intended analysis, the compromise will provide adequate data for meaningful progress toward integrative policy development.
Department of Energy’s revolutionary decision to include all the stuff in the middle, from the 1981 Budget Revision Report
On Military Intelligence, Our British Allies and:
It is necessary for technical reasons that these warheads should be stored with the top at the bottom, and the bottom at the top. In order that there may be no doubt as to which is the top and which is the bottom, for storage purposes, it will be seen that the bottom of each head has been labeled with the word TOP.
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sp; British Admiralty instruction dealing with the storage of warheads and torpedoes (quoted in Outrageous Quotations)
On Military Preparedness:
We have permitted our naval capability to deteriorate. At the same time we are better than we were a few years ago.
Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense, on the ups and downs of the U. S. Navy in 1982
On Military Spending and Procurement, Utter Lack of Any Use of Influence in:
I think there are very few indeed who try to take advantage of their former positions in the military to sell us defense products…. Most officers are not salesmen. A friend of mine who retired told me, “The idea of going back and trying to peddle products on the basis of my military friendships is so repulsive that I would rather starve to death.”
U. S. Army General Earle Wheeler, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1969
On Minds, the Importance of:
What a waste it is to lose one’s mind—or not to have a mind. How true that is.