Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Mike had called me and said he could offer me less, and I said, "You're on!" Because I was really excited with what Mike Kelly was doing, and now what Cullen Murphy is doing with Atlantic. It's a really cool magazine.
When I started off, I always used to do parodies and impressions, mimicking people... and then institutions. You become aware that some institutions have their own language. You almost define yourself by how you speak.
Capote, of course, addressed very similar themes to Good Night and Good Luck. Both films are about determined journalists defying obstacles in a relentless pursuit of the truth. Needless to say, both are period pieces.
I know that my job is to perform, it wouldn't be a very interesting show if I just came out one day and said, "I'm going to sit here in a ball and rock back and forth. And won't you join me for a half hour of sadness."
Bush advisers have long been worried that a lagging economy could hamper the president's re-election chances. They hope that the Cabinet shake-up will provide a needed jolt. If that doesn't work, North Korea has to go.
People are always angry at America. They're absolutely certain that America either caused their problems or is deliberately not fixing their problems. But the anger is always directed at America and never at Americans.
You have to do your First Penance before your First Holy Communion. You're really young. What do you know? You've got nothing to confess. All I knew was that I was an evil human whose sins caused the death of our Lord.
We have Internet now and people are not stupid. But it seems that some people are trying to push the same agenda of the Cold War of conspiracy theories and amazing achievements that are very easily traced and validated.
One of the things that I do think government counts on is that people are busy. And it's very difficult to mobilize a busy and relatively affluent country, unless it's over really crucial- you know, foundational issues.
In the Third World, honk your horn only under the following circumstances: 1. When anything blocks the road. 2. When anything doesn't. 3. When anything might. 4. At red lights. 5. At green lights. 6. At all other times.
Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.
There is a fine line in the Third World between half a dozen customs officials waiting for you to offer them a bribe and half a dozen customs officials waiting for you to offer them a bribe so they can throw you in jail.
Leaving religious texts open too interpretation is the downfall of religion itself. If it is truly the word of God then there is no room for interpretation; you either take all of it or none. There is no selective belief
If Obama can force you to get health insurance just by calling it a tax, than there is nothing to stop him from making you gay marry an illegal immigrant wearing a condom on a hydroponic pot farm powered by solar energy.
I think by the time I left Egypt, there was about like 400 accusations against me in the drawer of the public persecutor office. It's a way for them to exhaust you, to push you, to put you under pressure, to distract you.
The importance of satire is bringing more people to the table. There are a lot of average citizens who aren't interested in politics and would be more interested if it's brought to them in a comedic, funny, satirical way.
I'm also interviewing a guy who's just written a book about his experience living in Iraq, faced with the type of violence as he said, an unimaginable scale. And I think that the combination of that is very hard to shake.
Typically, when you're with your friends, premises are coming up left and right. But when you're on stage, you must create the premise. So you have to create the premise, paint the picture and then deliver the punch line.
Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade.
The Greenpeace booth at all the rock and roll shows nowadays are akin to the old sorcerers who used to stand in the middle of villages warning of danger, 'When night wolf swallows mother moon, there will be great famine.'
The Lampoon started in 1970, and I began writing freelance for them around the end of 1971, and then all through '72. They hired me in '73, and I left early in '81. I did everything from low puns to being editor-in-chief.
Northwest Ohio is flat. There isn't much up. The land is so flat that a child from Toledo is under the impression that the direction hills go is down. Sledding is done down from street level into creek beds and road cuts.
We have the British motor industry as a role model for what happens when you try to save an industrial dinosaur. Britain was the first country to industrialise and the first to de-industrialise. We should learn from this.
Attorney General John Ashcroft bid farewell to the Justice Department with a goodbye address. The voluntary resignation came as a bit of a disappointment to the attorney general, who had hoped to be raptured out of office.
The Department of Homeland Security recommends a three-day supply of water consisting of one bottle per day for each person in your home. Plus one extra bottle to give you all something to kill each other over on day four.
The anti-individualist enemies that Ayn Rand battled are still the enemy, but they've shifted their line of attack. Political collectivists are no longer much interested in taking things away from the wealthy and creative.
The job of the president of the United States is to talk to the public, is to explain to them. Now, some presidents talk too much, like Bill Clinton. Some presidents try to talk but don't know how, like George Bush senior.
I grew up going to public school, and they were huge public schools. I went to a school that had 3,200 kids, and I had grade school classes with 40-some kids. Discipline was rigid. Most of the learning was rote. It worked.
Sorry, but retirement offends me. You don’t just stop fighting in the middle of a war because your legs hurt. So why do you get to stop working in the middle of your life just because your prostate hurts? That’s desertion.
I'm disappointed that my own Catholic Church has decided that capital punishment is wrong. Which is pretty hypocritical if you think about it, because they wouldn't even have a religion if it wasn't for capital punishment.
People don't understand that we're not warriors in their cause. We're a group of people that really feel that they want to write jokes about the absurdity that we see in government and the world and all that, and that's it.
No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
As a nation, Kuwait has been, arguably, free of freedom itself. Claimed in turn by Constantinople, Riyadh, and Baghdad, Kuwait has survived by playing Turks off Persians, Arabs off one another, and the English off everyone.
Pete Seeger is a modest, unassuming, cheerful, and kind-natured man. He's a good folk singer, if you can stand folk singing. And he's such an excellent banjo player that you almost don't wish you had a pair of wire cutters.
I understand Twitter has become popular among politicians. This technology allows them to stay in perpetual contact with their constituents. The electorate now has instant information about what politicians have been up to.
In Iraq, the U.S. military's whack-a-mole approach to killing Saddam Hussein may have finally paid off. The bombs destroyed the area and left behind a 60-foot crater, or as coalition forces prefer to call it: a freedom hole.
In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.
Affirmative action makes employers think, 'Black woman nuclear physicist? Hah! Probably let her into Harvard 'cause they were looking for a twofer. Bet she got C's in high school practical math. Give her a job in personnel.'
The minute somebody joins a committee... they immediately suffer from committee brain. They become wildly over-enthusiastic, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic. Committees turn people into idiots, and politics is a committee.
The Supreme Court ruled that disabled golfer Casey Martin has a legal right to ride in a golf cart between shots at PGA Tour events. Man, the next thing you know, they're going to have some guy carry his clubs around for him.
During the mid-1980s dairy farmers decided there was too much cheap milk at the supermarket. So the government bought and slaughtered 1.6 million dairy cows. How come the government never does anything like this with lawyers?
Whatever the occasion, do not neglect alcohol. No other refreshment will do. Yes, alcohol kills brain cells, but it's very selective. It only kills the brain cells that contain good sense, shame, embarrassment, and restraint.
I've only been to New Zealand once, about 1989. It was incredibly beautiful, kind of like the ideal of where I live in New England - all that and then some - but I can't say I was there long enough to get any very clear idea.
They create these rules and argue about things we don't even understand. It is like watching soccer. You sit there and you're sort of amused, but most of the time you're thinking, pick up the ball! That's what you're thinking.
There's no such thing as a race and barely such a thing as an ethnic group. If we were dogs, we'd be the same breed.... Trouble doesn't come from Slopes, Kikes, Niggers, Spics or White Capitalist Pigs; it comes from the heart.
You've gotta understand what Putin's strategy is. He really doesn't like democracy. He thinks it's an inconvenient, messy process. And he doesn't like us, and he wants to destabilize our country; sow doubt about our democracy.
A cocktail party is what you call it when you invite everyone you know to come over to your house at six p.m., put cigarettes out on your rug, and leave at eight to go somewhere more interesting for dinner without inviting you.
Some jobs are worse than actual wives. Ad agency vs. Matrimony, for instance: Even the most capricious and demanding spouse is not going to divorce you for refusing to spend forty hours a week making up lies about toilet paper.
You have the establishment and then you have the hippies revolting against the establishment, and what you end up getting are like accountants with long hair. And that's kind of what happened with the youth movement in the '70s.
The poor of the world cannot be made rich by the redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape.