by Ross Petras
Congressman Albert Johnson of Washington, chairman of the House Committee on Immigration
On the Constitution:
We need to take a look at it and maybe from time to time we should curtail some of those rights.
LeRoy Martin, Chicago police superintendent
On Consumer Protection, the Flip Side to:
Honest businessmen should be protected from the unscrupulous consumer.
Lester Maddox, then governor of Georgia, on why Georgia should not create a consumer protection agency
On Contortions:
Why should Irishmen stand with their arms folded and their hands in their pockets when England called for aid?
Sir Thomas Myles, speaking at a meeting in Dublin in 1902, about the Boer War
On Contracts:
A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn
On Conviction, Political:
If Governor Fields is right, I am going to stand by him because he is right. If he is wrong, I am going to stand by him because he is a Democrat.
Senator Augustus Owsley Stanley (D-Ken.) during the 1920s
On Conviction, Political:
Young people, do not be led astray by the theory of voting for the man and not for the party. Vote the straight Republican ticket regardless of the qualifications of the candidate for office.
C. J. Travis, Supreme Court of Indiana in the 1920s
On Cooking:
The female teachers were instructed in cooking. They had, in fact, to go through the process of cooking themselves in turn.
in the annual report of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland
On Corporate Etiquette:
Avoid saying “hello.” This elsewhere pleasant and familiar greeting is out of place in the world of business.
instructions of Morgan Guaranty Trust Company to New York employees
On Counting:
I want to gain 1,500 or 2,000 yards, whichever comes first.
George Rogers, New Orleans Saints running back
On Counting, Higher Mathematical Versions Of:
The interests of the employers and the employed are the same nine times out of ten—I will even say ninety-nine times out of ten.
Lord Curzon, British statesman and Viceroy of India from 1898 to 1905, Oxford University Chancellor, Foreign Secretary from 1919 to 1924
On Covert Operations, as Defined by an Ex-Army Intelligence Officer:
The word is not covert, it’s overt. Covert means you’re out in the open. Overt is what I did. [Which means] I was under cover.
Chic Hecht, Nevada senator, talking about his eighteen years of participation in covert operations as an army intelligence officer
On Cover-Ups:
No one in the White House staff, no one in this administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident…. What really hurts in matters of this sort is not the fact that they occur, because overzealous people in campaigns do things that are wrong. What really hurts is if you try to cover it up.
President Richard Nixon, at the beginning of the Watergate affair
On Cover-Ups:
That is, because of, because of our, that is, we are attempting, the position is to withhold information and to cover up—this is totally true—you could say it is totally untrue.
President Richard Nixon, from 1973 White House transcripts, discussing whether or not to hide evidence concerning the Watergate break-in
On Cows:
A cow may be drained dry; and if the Chancellors of the Exchequer persist in meeting every deficiency that occurs by taxing the brewing and distilling industries, they will inevitably kill the cow that lays the golden milk.
Sir Frederick Milner, British Member of Parliament, c. 1900
On Cows, Passing:
The best way to pass a cow on the road when cycling is to keep behind it.
R. J. Mecredy, writer and publisher of cycling magazines in a column offering advice on country bicycling to novices
On Cramming, Reasons for U.S. Citizens to Begin:
We must have a nation of all-Americans. We must expel those who cannot recite the Constitution of the United States and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
ex-Iowa Governor William Harding
On Crime:
If crime went down 100%, it would still be fifty times higher than it should be.
Councilman John Bowman commenting on the high crime in Washington, D.C.
On Crime:
The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it’s only the people who make them unsafe.
Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia
On Crime:
The more killing and homicides you have, the more havoc it prevents.
Richard M. Daley, mayor of Chicago and son of former Mayor Daley, commenting on the rise of crime in his city
On Crime:
Outside of the killings, [Washington] has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C.
On Crime Prevention, Great Ideas in:
When anyone is held up he shall immediately telephone the details to a telephone operator. She will plug in every phone in the city and relate the details of the holdup. Near every telephone a shotgun is to be kept hanging on the wall. When the story of the holdup is spread through the phones every citizen will seize his shotgun and rush to the street. All whistles will blow and at this signal all traffic, including pedestrians, will halt. Anyone besides Law officers who moves will be shot.
Rev. George W. Durham, Quindaro Methodist Church of Kansas City, on how to stop crime in Kansas City, as quoted in the Kansas City Journal, 1925
On Criticism:
That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass—and I’m just the one to do it.
a congressional candidate in Texas, reported by Massachusetts State Senator John F. Parker
On Criticism:
It rolls off my back like a duck.
movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn
On Cutting the Budget:
When there is duplicity in personnel, it must be eliminated. Teachers who are of retirement age should be urged to do so.
Hoboken, New Jersey, city councilman in a political ad-letter
SPECIAL SECTION:
Sir Boyle Roche and “Irish Bulls”
Sir Boyle Roche was born with his foot in his mouth—and he kept it there.
He was an Irish soldier, later an Irish member of the British Parliament, who was made a knight in 1776 and then a baronet. But Sir Boyle was much more than just another politician.
He was the spiritual grandfather of such masters as Yogi Berra and Sam Goldwyn, the true father of the verbal blunder and malapropism, called in his day and up through the early 1900s the “Irish bull.”
The term “bull” itself came from the blunderings of a certain Obadiah Bull, an Irish lawyer in London. Unfortunately most of his errors are lost to history, but Sir Boyle is still vigorously alive, thanks to such collectors as G. R. Neilson in 1898 and James C. Percy in 1915.
Sir Boyle Roche was a forceful personality with a vigorous, sometimes florid way of mixing metaphors and everything else. For example, in the middle of an impassioned speech to the House of Commons on the French Revolution, he said:
“If those Gallican villains should invade us, sir … perhaps the murderous martial law men would break in, cut us into joints, and throw our bleeding heads on the table to stare us in the face.”
Needless to say, like Elvis, he became “a living legend in his own time,” and probably a good number of his blunders were not made by him, but merely attributed to him.
As Sir Boyle himself said:
“Half the lies our opponents tell about us are not true.”
A few of Sir Boyle’s best:
[They are] living from hand to mouth like the birds of the air.
(describing the poverty of Iris
h farmers)
Little children who could neither walk nor talk were running about in the streets cursing their Maker.
(in a speech about the poor conditions of the times)
All along the untrodden paths of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand.
While I write this letter, I have a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other.
The farmers of Ireland ought to dispense with the use of wooden gates, and put up cast-iron ones instead, as the latter would last forever and in the end could be utilized for making horseshoes.
If you ever come within a mile of our house, will you stop there all night?
(in a letter to a friend)
Many thousands of them were destitute of even the goods they possessed.
I answer in the affirmative with an emphatic “No.”
Sir, I would anchor a frigate off each bank of the river, with strict orders not to stir; and so, by cruising up and down, put a stop to smuggling.
(his suggestion for halting smuggling on the Shannon River)
Anybody who wishes to diminish the brotherly affection of the two sister countries is an enemy to both nations.
(speaking about the union between Britain and Ireland)
Single misfortunes never come alone, and the greatest of all national calamities is generally followed by one greater.
The cup of our trouble is running over, but, alas, is not yet full.
D
On De-Sexed Language:
Senate Agriculture Chairman Jesse Helms:
Attaboy, Senator! Atta, uh, girl … person … what are you anyway?
Representative Paula Hawkins (R-Fla.):
I’m not a person, I’m a lady!
On De-Sexed Words:
[Personhole] is not an acceptable de-sexed word.
Shirley Dean, councilperson from the Berkeley, California, City Council, explaining why the Council changed the wording in a sewer equipment request back to manhole cover
On Death:
Before the Home Rule Bill is enforced, Asquith will have to walk over many dead bodies—his own included.
from a 1914 letter written by an Ulster Unionist about Herbert Henry Asquith, British Prime Minister, who introduced a bill to grant Ireland self-rule
On Death:
It is what we must all come to if we only live long enough.
reported by David Garrick, eighteenth-century English actor, manager, and dramatist
On Death:
My friends, I desire that you will make a post-mortem examination of me, and find out what ails me; for really I am dying to know what my disease is myself.
James Smithson, benefactor of the Smithsonian Institution, on his deathbed
On Death, Government Ability to Communicate After:
Your medical assistance is cancelled beginning 9/24/84 because of your death.
letter from the Iowa Department of Human Services
On Death, Government Ability to Communicate After:
Beginning in February 1976 your assistance benefits will be discontinued…. Reason: it has been reported to our office that you expired on January 1, 1976.
Illinois Department of Public Aid
On Death, Life After:
Beware! To touch these wires is instant death. Anyone found doing so will be prosecuted.
on a sign at a railroad station
On Death, the Pope, and Baseball:
Well, that kind of puts a damper on even a Yankee win.
Yankee broadcaster Phil Rizzuto, during a game in which news reached him that Pope Paul had died
On Death, the Pope, and Baseball:
We just lost a Pope, which is very sad, and now we lost to the Yankees, which is also very sad.
Humberto Cardinal Medeiros, discussing the loss of the Boston Red Sox to the Yankees during playoffs
On Death, Staying in the State of:
At the next election, we have got to give the third, and I hope the last, death blow to Home Rule.
Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby, then leader of the Liberal Unionists in the House of Lords during the debate on Irish Home Rule
On Death, the Walking Variety:
When an Englishman wants to get married, to whom does he go? To the clergy. When he wants to get his child baptised, to whom does he go? To the clergy. When he wants to get buried, to whom does he go?
William E. Gladstone, leader of the Liberal Party of England and Prime Minister, in a speech extolling the clergy
On the Death Penalty, Thought-Provoking Questions About:
Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years, with time off for good behavior?
New York State Senator James H. Donovan on capital punishment
On Decision Making, Faster than Light:
If you leave this question to us for three years, we will settle it tomorrow morning.
Irish Member of Parliament during a nineteenth-century debate
On Definitions, Dubious Official:
Democracy: A government of the masses…. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic—negating property rights…. Result is demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
from the U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25, 1928
On Definitions, New Governmental:
We found the term “killing” too broad.
State Department spokesperson on why the word “killing” was replaced with “unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life” in its human rights reports for 1984-85
On Definitions, Obvious:
We may, of course, define emotions as the autopoetic immune system of the autopoetic psychic system; but again: is this emotionally adequate?
Niklas Luhman, in his article “The Individuality of the Individual,” in Reconstructing Individualism
On Dioxin, the Good Side and the Bad Side of:
[Exposure to dioxin is] usually not disabling but may be fatal.
Dow Chemical Company report, as quoted in The Progressive
On Diplomacy:
Anything concerning the Ambassador’s swimming pool must be referred to as water storage tank not as swimming pool.
internal State Department memo, U. S. Embassy, Vientiane, Laos
On Diplomacy, Great Moments in:
You know, your nose looks just like Danny Thomas’s.
President Ronald Reagan to the Lebanese Foreign Minister, during a briefing on the realities of the Middle East conflict
On Diplomacy, Great Moments in:
Some of them have marvelous minds, those black people over there.
Director of the United States Information Agency Charles Z. Wick, after a 1983 trip to Africa
On Diplomacy, Great Moments in:
Why thresh old straw or beat an old bag of bones?
Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, annoyed with attacks against Clare Boothe Luce and her nomination to be ambassador to Brazil, during a Senate debate. He quickly added that “old bag of bones” was not a reference to Luce.
On Diplomacy, Great Moments in:
Look, I’m going to tell you something, hon. You’ve crossed and uncrossed your legs twice and one time you showed me something I shouldn’t see. Now am I going to complain that you’re loosey-goosey or you got no class?
U.S. ambassador-nominee to Italy Pete Secchia to a female reporter from the Detroit News. He was later confirmed as ambassador to Italy.
On Diplomacy, Great Moments in:
This is a great day for France!
President Richard Nixon while attending Charles De Gaulle’s funeral
On Diplomacy, Great Moments in:
I didn’t know that guy was a nigger.
Senator James Eastland to his aide after welcoming Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, reported in New Times
On Diplomacy, Great Moments in:
German President Heinrich Lubke, on the tarmac in his role as official greeter in 1962, trying to say “How are you?”:
Who are y
ou?
President of India:
I am the President of India.
On Diplomacy, Great Moments in:
The only thing I regret is that your stay is not shorter.
Lord Aberdeen, trying to make a good impression while being visited by the colonial Premier to Ireland in the autumn of 1911
On Diplomacy, Great Moments in:
If I never get to Mexico again, it wouldn’t bother me. I don’t like the food or the climate.
Dan R. Eddy, Jr., member of the Texas Good Neighbor Commission, a state agency charged with promoting Texas-Mexico good relations
On Diplomatic Treaties, Similarities with Rice Dishes:
The treaty has to be concocted to satisfy all tastes. One prepares the seafood, the meat, the chicken, and the rice, but they are just an assortment of separate dishes until they are blended into perfect unity, and the result is paella—or a treaty for all.
