776 Stupidest Things Ever Said (8 page)
Read 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said Online
Authors: Ross Petras
Today is Father’s Day, so everyone out there: Happy birthday!
Ralph Kiner, announcer for the New York Mets
He’s trying to take the decision out of the hands of twelve honest men and give it to 435 Congressmen!
Representative Charles Vanik of Ohio, when he heard that the indicted Spiro Agnew was asking to have his corruption case tried by the House instead of in a regular court
Bring on the empty horses!
director Michael Curtiz, telling film crew to bring on (riderless) horses for filming
Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (acting as Chairman):
Title IX of the recorded bill is now title X.
Rep. William L. Dickinson:
So there is no title IX. There is a title X and we have reopened title VIII, if I am correct.
Rostenkowski:
A new title IX was inserted by amendment, so there is now a title IX and a title X.
Dickinson:
There is a title VIII, there is a title IX, there is a title X, is that correct?
Rostenkowski:
Title X is the last title in the bill.
Dickinson:
So an amendment to either title VIII or title IX or title X would be in order at this time?
Rostenkowski:
Not title IX. Just title VIII and title X are open to amendment.
Dickinson:
Well, I had an amendment that I would like to offer. I thought it was to title IX if there is a title IX.
Rostenkowski:
If the gentleman’s amendment was drafted to title IX, it will be in order to title X.
Dickinson:
Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk which I would like to offer to title VIII.
a few moments of discussion on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1982, as reported by
The Washington Monthly
No one as yet had exhibited the structure of human kidneys, Vesalius having only examined them in dogs.
Henry Hallam, famous Oxford historian, in his monumental work,
A View of the ’State of Europe in the Middle Ages,
1818
The rights you have are the rights given to you by Committee. We will determine what rights you have and what rights you have not got.
J. Parnell Thomas, House Un-American Affairs Committee, to a witness
You hear about constitutional rights, free speech, and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, “That man is a Red, that man is a Communist!” You never hear a real American talk like that.
Mayor Frank Hague, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1938
There shouldn’t be hunger, at least hunger unnecessarily of the people who would want otherwise to be fed.
Robert Carleson, Office of Policy Development
John, if you weren’t the son of my beloved friend, Walter Huston, and if you weren’t a brilliant writer, a fine actor, and a magnificent director—you’d be nothing but a common drunk.
Gregory Ratoff, producer, to John Huston, after John Huston refused to make a film history of his life
On Ideas:
I had a great idea this morning, but I didn’t like it.
movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn to an aide
Due to a typing error, Gov. Dukakis was incorrectly identified in the third paragraph as Mike Tyson.
Fitchburg-Leominster (
Mass.
) Sentinel and Enterprise
correction
When I go to hotels in midtown for various conventions and awards ceremonies, I am continually served my food and drink by someone who not only isn’t black, but can’t even speak English. These people take home all excess food, including soda and in some cases wine.
Hazel Dukes, civil rights activist and New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation chief
This strategy represents our policy for all time. Until it’s changed.
Marlin Fitzwater, White House spokesperson under George Bush, on a just-released national security strategy
Inbreeding is how we get championship horses.
Carl Gunter, Louisiana state representative, explaining why he was fighting a proposed antiabortion bill that allowed abortion in cases of incest
India is the finest climate under the sun; but a lot of young fellows come out here, and they drink and they eat, and they drink and they die: and then they write home to their parents a pack of lies, and say it’s the climate that has killed them.
Sir Colin Campbell, British officer charged by British War Department to report on morale problems with the British Army in India
Benedict may not be hurt as much as he really is.
Jerry Coleman, announcer for the San Diego Padres, talking about a player’s injury during on-air game coverage
The doctors X-rayed my head and found nothing.
baseball great Dizzy Dean explaining how he felt after being hit on the head by a ball in the 1934 World Series
We’re launching this innovation for the first time.
New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker
I’m the football coach around here and don’t you remember it.
ex-Houston Oiler and Florida State coach Bill Peterson
Fans, don’t fail to miss tomorrow’s game.
Dizzy Dean
Grassley praised Senate colleagues “for making tough decisions to close tax loopholes which have led to abuses,” and said he was particularly
pleased at the Senate’s willingness to protect farmers through a special concession.
in a press release from the office of Senator Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, quoted in
The Washington Monthly
I suppose I felt my votes on these issues would carry me on the integrity image on all these other things I got careless on. I have come to the conclusion I have let my integrity become restricted to the issues too much, and not enough, perhaps, to every act and procedure of my office.
Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield, in a
Portland Oregonian
article, commenting on the gifts and free tuition for his son he was given by James Holderman, the (indicted) president of the University of South Carolina
The infiltration group was composed of ⅓ males, ⅓ females, and ⅓ party officials.
from a military intelligence document during the Vietnam War, quoted by ex-Army intelligence officer Bruce E. Jones
This unit had an estimated strength of about 2,000 men, of which 300 were women.
from a military intelligence document during the Vietnam War, quoted by ex-Army intelligence officer Bruce E. Jones
Don’t talk to me while I’m interrupting.
director Michael Curtiz
Keep quiet, you’re always interrupting me in the middle of my mistakes.
director Michael Curtiz
It is curious to observe the various substitutes for paper before its invention.
Isaac D’Israeli, noted author and father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, in his book,
Curiosities of Literature
Unseen powers, like the deities of Homer in the war of Troy, were seen to mingle at every step with the tide of sublimary affairs.
Sir Archibald Alison, famous nineteenth-century Scottish historian and lawyer, author of multi-volume histories of France, in his review of Guizot
I am giving you a chance to redeem your character, something you have irretrievably lost.
Serjeant Arabin, famous London justice, Advocate General in the Whig government of the late 1830
On Jail-Building:
Resolved, by this council, that we build a new jail.
Resolved, that the new jail be built out of the materials of the old jail.
Resolved, that the old jail be used until the new jail is finished.
resolution of Board of Councilmen, Canton, Mississippi, mid-1800s
There’s no textbook on judgment. I might make one or two other [mistakes], but it will certainly be with great forethought.
Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, D.C.
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
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
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
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
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
I’ve never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.
Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
