776 Stupidest Things Ever Said (11 page)
Read 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said Online
Authors: Ross Petras
Thomas Carlyle, Victorian essayist, historian, critic, and social commentator, in the opening of his famous
Oliver Cromwell
I told you to make one longer than another, and instead you have made one shorter than the other—the opposite.
Sir Boyle Roche, British statesman and father of the verbal blunder
Sit down and go out.
the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, to an unruly council member
I suppose [we could have one], but the actual writing of a statute might be a little difficult.
CIA Director William Colby, on congressional suggestions for a law barring political assassinations
I happen to be a Republican President, ah, the Vice-President.
Dan Quayle while stumping for Republican candidates
Heaven is a place large enough to accommodate 299,900,000,000,000 souls with a mansion of 100 rooms each, 16 × 16 × 16.
Rev. Dr. W. Graham Walker, speaking at the Highland Street Christian Church, Memphis, Tennessee, 1926
Folks, this is perfect weather for today’s game. Not a breath of air.
Curt Gowdy, network sports announcer, on air
On the Pentagon, $999.50 Pliers Bought for:
They’re multipurpose. Not only do they put the clips on, but they take them off.
Pratt & Whitney spokesperson explaining why the company charged the Air Force nearly $1,000 for a pair of pliers
What you’re not recognizing is that the original proposal was significantly higher.
U. S. Air Force major general, defending the purchase of a tool kit which included $1,496 pliers. Boeing’s original asking price was $5,096.
To hell with the public! I’m here to represent the people!
New Jersey state senator
The 37 fellows (of the Royal University) are divided into 29 fellows and 8 medical fellows. Half of these 29 fellows are attached to the University College…. The other half of the 29 fellows are distributed over the country.
Michael McCarthy, in his book
Priests and People
It could permanently hurt a batter for a long time.
Pete Rose, Cincinnati Red, speaking about a brushback pitch
It’s never happened in a World Series competition, and it still hasn’t.
Yogi Berra, talking about pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect World Series game
It won’t be long before customers should be able to complete most of their banking transactions without any personal contact. This will enable banks to offer more personal contact.
Credit and Financial Management Magazine, 1976, predicting the future of banking
One problem that we’ve had even in the best of times … is the people who are sleeping on the grates. The homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.
President Ronald Reagan, on “Good Morning America,” January 31, 1984
Some quiet guys are inwardly outgoing.
Ralph Kiner, Mets broadcaster
Nothing could be more personal than a tape.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower
Sure, it’s going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway.
Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board, on chlordane
Beauty is love made real, and the spirit of love is God. And the state of beauty, love and God is happiness. A transcendent state of beauty, love and God is peace. Peace and love is a state of beauty, love and God. One is an active state of happiness and the other is a transcendent state. That’s peace.
Imelda Marcos, campaigning for her husband, Ferdinand Marcos, then Philippine President
That picture was taken out of context.
Jeff Innis, New York Mets pitcher, on a bad picture taken of him
In no way is it possible for a person to be in two places at the same time, especially if there is a great distance in between.
Judge Amado Guerrero, Mexican Tenth District Federal Court, on a defendant’s alibi
We find ourselves in this pickle because you bought that jar and filled it not with pickles but with water, and now you’re trying to jam it in the public’s face.
Albert Blumenthal, Democratic leader in New York State Assembly, replying to Republican charge that the Democrats had put the state in a pickle, as quoted in Edwin Newman’s
Strictly Speaking
Mr. John Burns held a pistol at their heads, but now it had come home to roost.
overheard during English parliamentary debate
If you put the honorable member on an uninhabited island they would not be there twenty-four hours before they had their hands in the pockets of the naked savages.
unnamed politician, overheard during a debate
The style is clitoral, as far as I’m concerned.
Professor Paula Bennett, of the Department of Humanities and Social Science, Seattle Central Community College
Get the thing straight once and for all. The policeman isn’t there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder.
Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago
We move to Camp David and hide. They can’t get in there.
H. R. Haldeman, White House Chief of Staff, on the Watergate tapes, suggesting how they could avoid subpoenas
… let’s assume that … a disaster should occur. Let’s assume that an airplane drops out of—or under—both of the people we’re talking about, both Ford and Reagan. Let’s assume that, if you want to assume a macabre situation, then I might do it.
John Connally, ex-Republican presidential candidate in the 1980 campaign, explaining to Barbara Walters what it would take for him to reenter the race
Walter Mondale (Democratic candidate):
George Bush doesn’t have the manhood to apologize.
George Bush (Republican candidate):
Well, on the manhood thing, I’ll put mine up against his any time.
By golly, what do you suppose is behind that?
Ronald Reagan, when told about an attack on Iraq by Israeli fighters
I hope I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, anti-racism. This is what drives me.
George Bush in 1988 when aides accused of anti-Semitism resigned from his campaign
The honourable member is a disgrace to the colours he is flying under.
Irish parliamentary member, in a 1914 debate
We are in favor of a law which absolutely prohibits the sale of liquor on Sunday, but we are against its enforcement.
1920s Democratic platform in Syracuse (as a result of being caught between the saloon and antisaloon forces)
When you get married that closely to something, you get very unhappy when it does not grow up to be an All-American. This thing is poohing out, and we do not like it.
Representative Daniel Flood, Pennsylvania, questioning the Secretary of the Navy about certain missiles
Politics makes strange bedclothes.
Rosalind Russell, 1940s and ’50s movie star
Politics is very partisan.
Pierre Rinfret, New York gubernatorial candidate
Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.
President Ronald Reagan
I’ve always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.
Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, explaining why we should export toxic wastes to Third World countries
America’s lands may be ravaged as a result of the actions of the environmentalists.
James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Reagan
Sometimes [they] don’t smell too good, so love can have no nose.
evangelist wife Tammy Faye Bakker, preaching about the poor
Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.
Yogi Berra, explaining why he didn’t want to go to dinner at a particular restaurant
I note the tremendous progress of this city…. You have had practically a doubling of population. Where has that progress come from? That progress has not come primarily from government, but it has come from the activities of hundreds of thousands of individual Mississippians given an opportunity to develop their own lives.
Richard Nixon, Republican presidential candidate running against JFK, during a campaign speech on private enterprise
Mail from El Paso to Middletown, Tex., will not travel 1,794 miles as alleged. In fact it will travel no further than it does not.
a U. S. Postal Service statement, quoted in the
New York Times
I don’t see, Mr. Speaker, why we should put ourselves out of the way to serve posterity. What has posterity ever done for us?
Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth-century M.P. from Tralee and famous word mangier, speaking in Parliament
By posterity, sir, I do not mean our ancestors, but those who are to come immediately after them.
Sir Boyle Roche, correcting himself
The crime bill passed by the Senate would reinstate the Federal death penalty for certain violent crimes: assassinating the President; hijacking an airliner, and murdering a Government poultry inspector.
Knight Ridder News Service dispatch
The poor don’t need gas because they’re not working.
California Senator S. I. Hayakawa, explaining why we shouldn’t worry about the effect on the poor if gas prices rose several dollars a gallon
The elderly eat less.
California Senator S. I. Hayakawa, explaining why the elderly don’t need a special exemption on food stamp eligibility
He’s living beyond his means, but he can afford it.
movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn
Mr. Thornton Burke gave a terrible picture of life in the East End of London, where he said there were thousands of people grinding their faces in the dust of poverty and trying at the same time to keep their heads above water.
from a brochure by an antipoverty group in London
Low earnings seem to be the key reason why someone who usually works full time is a member of a poor family.
U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: conclusions of a study detailing poverty in America
May the word of the Lord be as a nail driven in a sure place, sending its roots downwards and its branches upwards.
prayer by a clergyman in a small English town
You are standing on the edge of a precipice that will be a weight on your necks all the rest of your life.
statement by member of Dublin Corporation
There will be a procession next Sunday afternoon in the grounds of the Monastery; but if it rains in the afternoon, the procession will take place in the morning.
from a statement read to a church congregation
They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist—
General John Sedgwick, Union commander in the Civil War, speaking his last words as he was watching enemy troops during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House
Once we have got a Republic it is for you and me to have such a party formed in Ireland that we may take the machinery in our hands, and making the road level go forward uphill to make the new horizon.
Dublin labor leader, late nineteenth century
We’re not going to be any three-clouds-and-a-yard-of-dust team.
ex-Houston Oiler and Florida State coach Bill Peterson
I’m impressed by the continuity of his physical presence.
