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"I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence."

~Brendan Francis Behan
playwright (1923—1964)

"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals, I am a vegetarian because I hate plants."

~A. Whitney Brown

"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life — so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."

~M. Cartmill

" 'We each of us have our own highway to hell,' the desperate woman intoned. 'Not me,' rejoined my dad, 'I'm a hitchhiker on someone else's highway to hell. Too much work paving my own.' "

~Lisa Carver

"My mother always did say I could get more with a kind word and a 2x4 than with just a kind word."

"Babylon 5"

"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."

to Dr. Franklin on "Babylon 5: A Late Delivery from Avalon"

~Marcus Cole

"The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue."

~Leonardo Da Vinci
(1452—1519)

"The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder."

during the infamous 1968 convention

~Daley Former Chicago mayor

"Insofar as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain. And insofar as they are certain, they do not apply to reality."

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

when asked to describe radio

~Albert Einstein
physicist (1879—1955)

"If I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything."

~William Faulkner

"Congratulations on your new career!"

Mephistopheles to Faust, "Faust"

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
poet, novelist, playwright, courtier, & natural philosopher (1749—1832)

"For refund, insert baby here."

on a condom machine

~Graffiti

"In elementary school, in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file line from smallest to tallest. What's the logic? Do tall people burn slower?"

~Warren Hutcherson

"At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted."

~Eric Idle

"It always strikes me as funny that medications say 'in case of accidental overdose seek professional help immediately or call poison control'. Do non-accidental overdoses not exist or just not count?"

~Kara

"Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams."

~Mary Ellen Kelly

"Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true. I have the heart of a young boy... in a jar... on my desk..."

~Stephen King
horror writer

"Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don't are ladies. This is, however, a rather archaic usage of the word. Should one of you boys happen upon a girl who doesn't put out, do not jump to the conclusion that you have found a lady. What you have probably found is a lesbian."

~Fran Lebowitz

"They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me."

on being consigned to a mental institution, ca. 17th cen.

~Nathaniel Lee

"Love is like racing across the frozen tundra on a snowmobile which flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice-weasels come."

~Marc Maron

"A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should at least have forgotten it."

~Brander Matthews

"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us someone may be looking."

~Henry L. Mencken
(1880—1956)

"te-Owl: I can't believe he's dead. I remember Adrian once telling me that the Egyptians regarded death as a voyage...

Rorschach: Hurn. Nice idea if you can afford to go first class, with pharaohs... but judging by our departures, most of us travel steerage."

"Watchmen", Issue #10, D.C. Comics, July 1987

~Alan Moore

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

~James D. Nicoll

"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on me?"

~Marilyn Pittman

"The hypothalamus controls the 'Four F's': fighting; fleeing; feeding; mating."

~a Professor in a neuropsychology course

"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes."

said during a radio microphone test (1984)

~Ronald Regan
(1911 (?)—2004)

"Just when you think life's a bitch, the bitch has puppies."

~Sara Rianna Sabbarese

"People who live in glass houses shouldn't cavort nude on top of the piano doing gorilla impersonations."

on BUS

~Shayd

"Are you familiar with the quip from "The Classic Reclassified"? 'Achilles pulled his sword from his thigh. A lesser man would have used a scabbard.' "

on Pyramid Discussion Boards

~Lisa J. Steele

"My mother always told me I wouldn't amount to anything because I procrastinate. I said, 'Just wait.' "

~Judy Tenuta

"Reality is the crutch for people who can't cope with drugs."

~Lily Tomlin

"Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use."

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

~Samuel Langhome Clemens aka Mark Twain
(1835—1910)

"The meek shall inherit the earth — they are too weak to refuse."

~Unknown

"Now, this is no time for making enemies."

on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan

"England has forty-two religions and only two sauces."

~François-Marie Arouet aka Voltaire
author & philosopher (1694—1778)

"Viet Nam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communist by dropping things on them from airplanes."

~Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
novelist

"I don't have a drinking problem except when I can't get a drink."

"Bad Liver and a Broken Heart"

~Tom Waits
musician

"Anyone who can't laugh at himself is not taking life seriously enough."

~Larry Wall
designer of Perl

"People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children."

~Bill Watterson

"As she lay there dozing next to me, one voice inside my head kept saying, 'Relax... you are not the first doctor to sleep with one of his patients,' but another kept reminding me, 'Howard, you are a veterinarian.' "

~Dick Wilson

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