776 Stupidest Things Ever Said (17 page)
Read 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said Online
Authors: Ross Petras
former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, after seeing a blood and guts military movie
, The Package
You can observe a lot by watching.
Yogi Berra
What was Watergate? A little bugging!
Richard Nixon
I’m not going to comment from the White House on a third-rate burglary attempt.
Ron Ziegler, Nixon press secretary
I applaud President Nixon’s comprehensive statement which clearly demonstrates again that the President was not involved with the Watergate matter.
George Bush, prior to President Nixon’s realization that maybe he was involved after all
Fortunately, the rebels had no guns except pistols, cutlasses and pikes….
Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth-century M.P. from Tralee, in a letter to a friend
I will ignore all ideas for new works on engines of war, the invention of which has reached its limits and for whose improvements I see no further hope.
Sextus Julius Frontinus, first century a.d. Roman engineer
Man, it was tough. The wind was blowing about 100 degrees.
Mickey Rivers, Texas Rangers designated hitter, on the weather during a game
There is some possibility of showers tonight, according to Col. H. B. Hersey, government meteorologist, although it is probable there will be no rain.
weather report in the
L.A. Express
We are in a pretty mess; can get nothing to eat, and no wine to drink, except whiskey.
Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth-century M.P. from Tralee, and preeminent word mangier, in a letter to a friend about the poor state of Ireland
Bobby Knight told me, “There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.” In other words, a good offense wins.
Vice-President Dan Quayle, speaking extemporaneously to an audience at the City Club of Chicago
The secret to keeping winning streaks going is to maximize the victories while at the same time minimizing the defeats.
John Lowenstein, Baltimore Orioles outfielder
This is no time to pull the rug out in the middle of the stream.
Representative Silvio Conte, of Massachusetts, during a heated House debate
That’s the most unheard-of thing I ever heard of.
Senator Joseph McCarthy, talking about a witness’s testimony
I do not feel that we should allow a shortage of funds to prevent cities from financing needed projects.
Hubert Humphrey, Minnesota senator and former Vice-President
I think that the free-enterprise system is absolutely too important to be left to the voluntary action of the marketplace.
Congressman Richard Kelly (R-Fla.)
There are instances where it is in the best interests of the nation not to vote the will of the people.
ex-Speaker of the House Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill, Jr., on why Congress gave itself a pay raise without voting on the record for the raise
I am ignorant of the Government’s reasons, but I disapprove of them.
James C. Percy, citing an English Member of Parliament during a heated parliamentary debate circa 1910
I am glad to say that the first man to knock him down for doing such a thing was his own wife.
a political campaign manager, talking about a man who didn’t support his candidate
The faithful watchdog or the good wife standing at the door to welcome the home-coming master with honest bark …
small-town newspaper editor in Wisconsin, mid-1800s, infamous for word mangling
Nobody can influence me. Nobody at all. And a woman still less.
the ex-Shah of Iran
I consider that women who are authors, lawyers, and politicians are monsters.
Pierre Auguste Renoir, French Impressionist painter and sculptor
Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as her accomplishment and recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be less eager for celebrity.
Robert Southey to Charlotte Bronte, famed novelist
There has been no exclusion. We have simply excluded all the women.
Nicolas Romanoff, descendant of last Czar of Russia Nicholas II, explaining why no women were invited to a meeting to form a family foundation, as reported in
Fortune
magazine
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Rev. William A. Spooner
My family worked for everything we had. We even have a deed from the King of England for property in South Carolina. Now these jerks come along and try to give it to the Communists.
Martha Mitchell, wife of Attorney General John Mitchell
This is the best biography by me I have ever read.
orchestra leader Lawrence Welk, looking at his book on display at an American Booksellers Association convention
I’m astounded by people who take eighteen years to write something. That’s how long it took that guy to write Madame Bovary, and was that ever on the best-seller list?
Sylvester Stallone, actor
You can’t do it that way. You spoil the anticlimax.
Michael Curtiz, film director, to a writer rewriting a scene
… Writing, a reality not independent of human activity, is historically saturated and organized, embedded within the domain of productivity, and the word is “the ideological phenomenon par excellence.” …
Myriam Diaz-Diocaretz, University of Utrecht, in her essay “Sieving the matriheritage of the sociotext,” in
The Difference Within,
edited by E. Meese and Alice Parker
Caesar did never wrong save with just cause.
William Shakespeare, in
Julius Caesar,
as noted in
The Handybook of Literary Curiosities,
by W. Walsh, 1871
On Yes-Men and -Women
The President doesn’t want any yes-men and yes-women around him. When he says no, we all say no.
Elizabeth Dole, then assistant for public liaison to President Reagan, later Secretary of Labor under President Bush
Ross and Kathryn Petras are writers and media junkies. When not collecting other people’s stupidities, they collect their own in a computer file slugged “Hall of Shame.”
A previous edition of this book was published in 1993 by Doubleday. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday.
The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said.
Copyright © 1993 by Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address: Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.
BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Visit our website at
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First Broadway Books trade paperback edition published 2001.
The Library of Congress has cataloged previous editions of this book as follows:
Petras, Kathryn.
The 776 stupidest things ever said / Ross and Kathryn Petras.
p. cm.
1. Quotations, English. 2. Wit and humor. I. Petras, Ross.
II. Title. III. Title: Seven hundred seventy-six stupidest things ever said.
PN6081.P45 1993
082—dc20 92-31131
eISBN: 978-0-307-76462-1
v3.0
