776 Stupidest Things Ever Said
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Vice-President Dan Quayle addressing a United Negro College Fund affair and garbling their slogan—“A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
On Mobil Oil, Durability of:
At this point, I would like to emphasize that our emergency planning [for a nuclear attack by the Soviets] is predicated on the idea that it is possible for our nation to survive, recover, and win and that our way of life, including free enterprise, the oil industry, and Socony Mobil Oil Company, can survive, recover, and win with it.
Maxwell S. McKnight, security adviser to Mobil, speaking in 1963
On Modern Art, Hitler’s Sensitivity to:
Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and pastures blue ought to be sterilized.
Adolf Hitler, painter of stiff, inhuman cityscapes and sponsor of the Aryan art movement which lost popularity after April 1945
On Modernity:
Let’s bring it up to date with some snappy nineteenth-century dialogue.
movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn
On Money:
In the prosecution of the present war, every man ought to be ready to give his last guinea to protect the remainder.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Parnell, in the Irish House of Commons, 1795, during a debate on the leather tax
On Money, Earning:
The directors’ fees have been hardly earned.
the chairman of a brewery trying (and failing) to defend his board of directors and a poor balance sheet
On Money, Finding a Million Dollars in the street:
I’d find the fellow who lost it, and if he was poor, I’d return it.
Yogi Berra, answering Casey Stengel’s question, “What would you do if you found a million dollars?”
On Money, Value of:
I’ll fight him for nothing if the price is right.
Marlon Starling, WBA welterweight, talking about fighting the titlest Lloyd Honeyghan
On Motherhood, Sanctity of:
That’s what [golf] really needs—some striking female to take over and become the next superstar. It would have been Nancy Lopez, but Nancy turned to motherhood and so has her body.
Frank Chirkinian, producer for CBS Sports
On Mouth-Watering Names for Soft Drinks:
Bite the wax tadpole.
Coca-Cola name as originally translated into Chinese. It was changed to mean “May the mouth rejoice.”
On Movie Stars:
He [Steve McQueen] must have made that before he died.
Yogi Berra about a Steve McQueen film
On Movies with Sound, Bad Predictions About:
Novelty is always welcome, but talking pictures are just a fad.
Irving Thalberg, MGM prodution head in the late 1920s
On Music:
Among the interrelated matters of a time and place, Muzak is a thing that fits in.
chairman of the board of scientific advisers of Muzak, as quoted in Edwin Newman’s Strictly Speaking
On Music:
Muzak promotes the sharing of meaning because it massifles symbolism in which not few, but all, can participate.
chairman of the board of scientific advisers of Muzak, as quoted in Edwin Newman’s Strictly Speaking
On Music:
[The U. S. Navy urgently] needs modern musicians.
Michael Dukakis, 1988 Democratic presidential candidate, during a campaign speech. He meant munitions.
SPECIAL SECTION:
Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn probably would have preferred to be remembered only as one of the founders of the Hollywood film industry. But Goldwyn’s mangled syntax has entered our language and culture, and along with The Best Years of Our Lives, for which he won an Oscar, Sam Goldwyn is remembered for such convolutions as his immortal:
Any man who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
Goldwyn was born in Poland but came to the United States early in his life, in time to help found the Hollywood film industry. Along with Jesse Lasky and Cecil B. De Mille, he organized the Jesse Lasky film company in 1916. Later he struck off on his own with the Goldwyn Production Company, which was then merged with Louis B. Mayer’s company to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, probably the most powerful Hollywood studio. Describing his own career, Goldwyn supposedly said:
I was always an independent, even when I had partners.
And so he went on to produce independently such classics as Wuthering Heights and Guys and Dolls.
Along the way, he became famous for his “Goldwynisms,” which delighted the Hollywood community and, as with anything else in Hollywood that becomes successful, spawned hundreds of imitations. The question with a Goldwynism, then, is did he actually say it or was it coined by some Hollywood flack or gossip columnist? Goldwyn himself toward the end of his life ended up denying he ever said many of his best—but by this time he was sick and tired of them.
Some are clearly false. “I can answer you in two words—im possible” is an old joke and was (probably) not said by Goldwyn at all. On the other hand, the famous “Gentlemen, include me out,” is most likely bona fide, and not apocryphal as long believed. But as with Yogi Berra and Sir Boyle Roche, it really doesn’t matter whether he said it or not. Like Boyle Roche and Yogi Berra, Goldwyn deserves much credit for exploring new linguistic territory. As he (supposedly) said:
I’ve gone where the hand of man has never set foot.
Some off Goldwyn’s best:
Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.
Why call him Joe? Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is called Joe.
I want you to cohabit with me.
(asking a female writer to collaborate on a story with him)
You’ve got to take the bull by the teeth.
I read part of it all the way through.
I love the ground I walk on.
I want to make a picture about the Russian secret police: the GOP.
You write with great warmth and charmth.
(apocryphal)
A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
I ran into George Kaufman last night. He was at my house for dinner.
I can’t make it, but I hope you’ll give me a raincoat.
(when asked to dinner)
I’m going out for some tea and trumpets.
When asked by his secretary if she could destroy some old files:
Go ahead. But make copies of them first.
When told a director was “too caustic”:
To hell with cost, pay him what he wants.
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On Napalm:
Well, it seems pretty ridiculous to me that people can be so emotional about how you kill people. What’s so bad about nape anyway?
pilot at Danang Air Force Base, 1970
On Natural Disasters:
It should have a big exciting finish—like an earthquake, a catechism of nature.
Harry Rapf, high-ranking MGM executive in the 1930s and ’40s
On Nature, Improving:
I happen to be one of those people who thinks the aesthetics of a place are improved by putting a nice transmission line through it.
Montana Power Company Chairman Jo McElwain, quoted in the Portland Oregonian
On Nature, Improving:
The wild animals love to traverse over packed-down snowmobile tracks, for these machines do just that, pack the snow and do no harm to the growth underneath. Snowmobiles actually make it possible for the animals to move through their habitat just a bit easier.
Al Donohue, chairman of the Montana Tourism Advisory Council, in the Great Falls Tribune
On Nature, Improving:
It’s unfair that it remain empty and unspoiled.
Hugh Stone, developer of a proposed subdivision, on delays in permits to begin construction
On Nature Lovers:
I have a great feeling for the soil. My brother is the leading conservational-ist in the world, and I just love sitting on my bulldozer and exper
iencing nature.
golfer Gary Player, quoted in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, on his plans to build new golf courses in Florida
On Nazism, Great Thoughts of:
Thorough mastication avoids needless waste and payment of unnecessary expenses to foreign countries.
from the Storm Trooper paper, Das Schwarze Korps
On Nixon Impersonators Taped in the Oval Office, Possible:
There are guys that can talk like Nixon and sound like him, and I don’t even believe the tapes are authentic.
Earl F. Landgrebe, former Indiana representative, discussing why it may not have been Nixon’s voice on the Nixon tapes
On Nonsequiturs:
Look, I want to give the high five symbol to high tech…. The truth is, it reminds a lot of people of the way I pitch horseshoes. Would you believe some of the people? Would you believe our dog?
George Bush in a speech given at a Ford Aerospace plant
On Novels and Poems (We Think), What They Are:
The writer’s verbal medium obtains a function that constitutes the work’s literariness, and in this event a “world-semantic component” serves to establish coherence in the correspondence between text-structure and world structure. In poetic discourse, the utterance is a textual resultant between the “self” existing in society and its new articulation in the represented world.
Myriam Diaz-Diocaretz, University of Utrecht, in a symposium book, The Difference Within
On Nuclear Attack, What to Do in a:
It would be a good thing to take your bankbook to the fallout shelter with you.
Federal Reserve System suggestion
On Nuclear Attacks, IRS Role In:
During state of national emergency resulting from enemy attack, the essential functions of the Service will be as follows: (1) assessing, collecting, and recording taxes….
Internal Revenue Service Handbook, 1976
On Nuclear Meltdown, Why Long Islanders Don’t Need to Worry About:
Actual meltdown takes three to five days, and that’s certainly enough time to evacuate Long Island.
George Koop, legislative candidate in Suffolk County, on New York’s Long Island, in support of a local nuclear power plant
On Nuclear Power:
Nuclear power is the cleanest, the most efficient, and the most economical energy source, with no environmental problems.
President Ronald Reagan, quoted in a 1980 Sierra magazine, before various nuclear disasters in the 1980s
On Nuclear War, Diet Advantages of:
The defense board standard for immediate postattack food consumption calls for an average daily caloric intake of 2,200 calories…. A daily intake of 2,200 calories would probably be adequate for a month or more, or perhaps even beneficial in view of the estimate that 20 per cent of all adults and 20 per cent of all children are obese.
A. F. Shinn, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, speaking of Department of Agriculture preparations for nuclear war
On Nuclear War, President Reagan Clarifying the Issue of:
Question:
Do you think there could be a battlefield exchange without having buttons pressed all the way up the line?
President Reagan:
Well, I would—if they realized that we—if we went back to that stalemate, only because our retaliatory power, our seconds, or our strike at them after their first strike would be so destructive that they couldn’t afford it, that would hold them off.
On Nuclear War, Television Shows:
Some programs have been theatrical masterpieces, but all we’re seeing is the negative side of nuclear war.
Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), discussing television shows about the nuclear war
On Nuclear War, Vital Questions Concerning Standard of Living After:
In fact, living standards within the first year following either attack (UNCLX or CIVLOG) could compare favorably with those enjoyed in this country in the late 1950s.
The net effect of the attack indicates a reduction in per capita value-added of approximately $660.
two economists speaking at a Fort Monroe, Virginia, seminar sponsored by Civil Defense in 1967. A UNCLX (300 megaton) attack would kill half the population of the United States.
On Nuclear War, Wealth Redistribution Advantages for:
It is also quite likely that the general public finds the thought of nuclear attack so horrible that the additional horror of a postattack policy for wealth distribution would be considered of marginal importance.
Henry Peskin, Office of Emergency Planning
On Nuclear Weapons:
This kind of weapon can’t help but have an effect on the population as a whole.
President Ronald Reagan
On Nuclear Weapons:
Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous.
Winston Churchill, in 1939
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On Odds:
The odds that we won’t win a game this season are 999 out of a hundred.
high school football coach to sports writer Phil Pepe
On Odds:
Every person now living in the United States has one chance out of fourteen of dying of tuberculosis and one chance in fifty of becoming affected with this disease.
Dr. Linsly R. Williams, then managing director of the National Tuberculosis Association, quoted in the Congressional Record
On Oil Pipelines:
The caribou love it. They rub against it and they have babies. There are more caribou in Alaska than you can shake a stick at.
George Bush, then Vice-President, on the Alaska pipeline
On Oil Rigs, Inoffensive Nature of:
It isn’t as if you were looking at the ocean through a little frame and now somebody put something in the way.
Ronald Reagan, on why offshore oil rigs shouldn’t bother anybody
On Old-Fashioned American Virtues, Congress and:
I’m one of those who sort of vacillates as we can afford to vacillate. My bend toward conservatism is purely and simply based on … economic circumstances…. It may be that, by the next campaign, circumstances would be somewhat better and it may be that I would be somewhat more liberal.
Congressman Ike Andrews (D-N.C.)
On Oliver North, the Irrepressible:
He had the love and respect of everyone who worked for or with him. He knew what he wanted and how to get it. He possessed great charm and wit and was, it is said, the first man to bring real humor and fun to the White House since Kennedy.
actor David Keith, on Oliver North, whom he played on a TV miniseries
On Omissions:
It will be noticed that some omissions will also appear in this edition.
Thomas Carlyle, Victorian essayist, historian, critic, and social commentator, in the opening of his famous Oliver Cromwell
On Opposites:
I told you to make one longer than another, and instead you have made one shorter than the other—the opposite.
Sir Boyle Roche, British statesman and father of the verbal blunder
On Orders:
Sit down and go out.
the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, to an unruly council member
On Outlawing Killing, Murder, Assassinations, CIA Enthusiasm for:
I suppose [we could have one], but the actual writing of a statute might be a little difficult.
CIA Director William Colby, on congressional suggestions for a law barring political assassinations
On Overeagerness:
I happen to be a Republican President, ah, the Vice-President.
Dan Quayle while stumping for Republican candidates
On Overpopulation, Why God Isn’t Worrying About:
Heaven is a place large enough to accommodate 299,900,000,000,000 souls with a mansion of 100 rooms each, 16 × 16 × 16.
Rev. Dr. W. Graham Walker, speaking at the Highland Street Christian Church, Memphis, Tennessee, 1926
On Oxygen:
Folks, this is perfect weather for today’s game. Not a breath of air.
Curt Gowdy, network sports announcer, on air
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On the Pentagon, $999.50 Pliers Bought for:
They’re multipurpose. Not only do they put the clips on, but they take them off.
Pratt & Whitney spokesperson explaining why the company charged the Air Force nearly $1,000 for a pair of pliers
On the Pentagon, $1,496 Pliers Bought for:
What you’re not recognizing is that the original proposal was significantly higher.
U. S. Air Force major general, defending the purchase of a tool kit which included $1,496 pliers. Boeing’s original asking price was $5,096.
On People:
To hell with the public! I’m here to represent the people!
New Jersey state senator
On People, Half:
The 37 fellows (of the Royal University) are divided into 29 fellows and 8 medical fellows. Half of these 29 fellows are attached to the University College…. The other half of the 29 fellows are distributed over the country.