by Ross Petras
Michael McCarthy, in his book Priests and People
On Permanence:
It could permanently hurt a batter for a long time.
Pete Rose, Cincinnati Red, speaking about a brushback pitch
On Permanence:
It’s never happened in a World Series competition, and it still hasn’t.
Yogi Berra, talking about pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect World Series game
On Personal Banking:
It won’t be long before customers should be able to complete most of their banking transactions without any personal contact. This will enable banks to offer more personal contact.
Credit and Financial Management Magazine, 1976, predicting the future of banking
On Personal Choice:
One problem that we’ve had even in the best of times … is the people who are sleeping on the grates. The homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.
President Ronald Reagan, on “Good Morning America,” January 31, 1984
On Personality:
Some quiet guys are inwardly outgoing.
Ralph Kiner, Mets broadcaster
On the Personal Touch:
Nothing could be more personal than a tape.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower
On Pesticides:
Sure, it’s going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway.
Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board, on chlordane
On Philosophy:
Beauty is love made real, and the spirit of love is God. And the state of beauty, love and God is happiness. A transcendent state of beauty, love and God is peace. Peace and love is a state of beauty, love and God. One is an active state of happiness and the other is a transcendent state. That’s peace.
Imelda Marcos, campaigning for her husband, Ferdinand Marcos, then Philippine President
On Photographs, Bad:
That picture was taken out of context.
Jeff Innis, New York Mets pitcher, on a bad picture taken of him
On Physics, New Theories of:
In no way is it possible for a person to be in two places at the same time, especially if there is a great distance in between.
Judge Amado Guerrero, Mexican Tenth District Federal Court, on a defendant’s alibi
On Pickles, Political:
We find ourselves in this pickle because you bought that jar and filled it not with pickles but with water, and now you’re trying to jam it in the public’s face.
Albert Blumenthal, Democratic leader in New York State Assembly, replying to Republican charge that the Democrats had put the state in a pickle, as quoted in Edwin Newman’s Strictly Speaking
On Pistols, Plying Variety:
Mr. John Burns held a pistol at their heads, but now it had come home to roost.
overheard during English parliamentary debate
On Pockets, Where Found on Human Body:
If you put the honorable member on an uninhabited island they would not be there twenty-four hours before they had their hands in the pockets of the naked savages.
unnamed politician, overheard during a debate
On Poetry, the Meaning of Emily Dickinson’s:
The style is clitoral, as far as I’m concerned.
Professor Paula Bennett, of the Department of Humanities and Social Science, Seattle Central Community College
On Police:
Get the thing straight once and for all. The policeman isn’t there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder.
Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago
On Political Bravery:
We move to Camp David and hide. They can’t get in there.
H. R. Haldeman, White House Chief of Staff, on the Watergate tapes, suggesting how they could avoid subpoenas
On Political Campaigns, What It Would Take to Participate in:
… let’s assume that … a disaster should occur. Let’s assume that an airplane drops out of—or under—both of the people we’re talking about, both Ford and Reagan. Let’s assume that, if you want to assume a macabre situation, then I might do it.
John Connally, ex-Republican presidential candidate in the 1980 campaign, explaining to Barbara Walters what it would take for him to reenter the race
On Political Debates, Great Moments in:
Walter Mondale (Democratic candidate):
George Bush doesn’t have the manhood to apologize.
George Bush (Republican candidate):
Well, on the manhood thing, I’ll put mine up against his any time.
On Political Genius:
By golly, what do you suppose is behind that?
Ronald Reagan, when told about an attack on Iraq by Israeli fighters
On Political Stances:
I hope I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, anti-racism. This is what drives me.
George Bush in 1988 when aides accused of anti-Semitism resigned from his campaign
On Politicians, Plying:
The honourable member is a disgrace to the colours he is flying under.
Irish parliamentary member, in a 1914 debate
On Politics:
We are in favor of a law which absolutely prohibits the sale of liquor on Sunday, but we are against its enforcement.
1920s Democratic platform in Syracuse (as a result of being caught between the saloon and antisaloon forces)
On Politics:
When you get married that closely to something, you get very unhappy when it does not grow up to be an All-American. This thing is poohing out, and we do not like it.
Representative Daniel Flood, Pennsylvania, questioning the Secretary of the Navy about certain missiles
On Politics:
Politics makes strange bedclothes.
Rosalind Russell, 1940s and ’50s movie star
On Politics:
Politics is very partisan.
Pierre Rinfret, New York gubernatorial candidate
On Pollution:
Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.
President Ronald Reagan
On Pollution:
I’ve always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.
Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, explaining why we should export toxic wastes to Third World countries
On Pollution, Causes of:
America’s lands may be ravaged as a result of the actions of the environmentalists.
James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Reagan
On the Poor, Accepting and Loving:
Sometimes [they] don’t smell too good, so love can have no nose.
evangelist wife Tammy Faye Bakker, preaching about the poor
On Popularity:
Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.
Yogi Berra, explaining why he didn’t want to go to dinner at a particular restaurant
On Population Growth:
I note the tremendous progress of this city…. You have had practically a doubling of population. Where has that progress come from? That progress has not come primarily from government, but it has come from the activities of hundreds of thousands of individual Mississippians given an opportunity to develop their own lives.
Richard Nixon, Republican presidential candidate running against JFK, during a campaign speech on private enterprise
On the Postal Service:
Mail from El Paso to Middletown, Tex., will not travel 1,794 miles as alleged. In fact it will travel no further than it does not.
a U. S. Postal Service statement, quoted in the New York Times
On Posterity:
I don’t see, Mr. Speaker, why we should put ourselves out of the way to serve posterity. What has posterity ever done for us?
Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth-century M.P. from Tralee and famo
us word mangier, speaking in Parliament
On Posterity, at Amended:
By posterity, sir, I do not mean our ancestors, but those who are to come immediately after them.
Sir Boyle Roche, correcting himself
On Poultry Inspectors, Little-Known Importance of:
The crime bill passed by the Senate would reinstate the Federal death penalty for certain violent crimes: assassinating the President; hijacking an airliner, and murdering a Government poultry inspector.
Knight Ridder News Service dispatch
On Poverty:
The poor don’t need gas because they’re not working.
California Senator S. I. Hayakawa, explaining why we shouldn’t worry about the effect on the poor if gas prices rose several dollars a gallon
On Poverty:
The elderly eat less.
California Senator S. I. Hayakawa, explaining why the elderly don’t need a special exemption on food stamp eligibility
On Poverty:
He’s living beyond his means, but he can afford it.
movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn
On Poverty, Conditions of:
Mr. Thornton Burke gave a terrible picture of life in the East End of London, where he said there were thousands of people grinding their faces in the dust of poverty and trying at the same time to keep their heads above water.
from a brochure by an antipoverty group in London
On Poverty, Key Reasons for:
Low earnings seem to be the key reason why someone who usually works full time is a member of a poor family.
U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: conclusions of a study detailing poverty in America
On Prayers, Ineffective Ones:
May the word of the Lord be as a nail driven in a sure place, sending its roots downwards and its branches upwards.
prayer by a clergyman in a small English town
On Precipices and Cliffs, Where Pound:
You are standing on the edge of a precipice that will be a weight on your necks all the rest of your life.
statement by member of Dublin Corporation
On Precognition, Religious:
There will be a procession next Sunday afternoon in the grounds of the Monastery; but if it rains in the afternoon, the procession will take place in the morning.
from a statement read to a church congregation
On Predictions, Bad:
They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist—
General John Sedgwick, Union commander in the Civil War, speaking his last words as he was watching enemy troops during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House
On Predictions, Bad:
Once we have got a Republic it is for you and me to have such a party formed in Ireland that we may take the machinery in our hands, and making the road level go forward uphill to make the new horizon.
Dublin labor leader, late nineteenth century
On Predictions, Strange Sports:
We’re not going to be any three-clouds-and-a-yard-of-dust team.
ex-Houston Oiler and Florida State coach Bill Peterson
On Presence:
I’m impressed by the continuity of his physical presence.
Howard Cosell, sports commentator, commenting on a quarterback
On the Present:
Yesterday, you may remember, we made each other a promise. I now recall it, but you already sense all the trouble we will have in ordering all these presents, these past presents which consist of a promise, whose opening toward the present to come is not that of an expectation or an anticipation but that of a commitment.
Paul de Man, a noted scholar of the popular academic discipline of deconstructionism. From Memoires for Paul de Man; with translations and notes by Jonathan Culler.
On the Presidency:
The President is guilty of misdemeanors. It is inherent in the office.
Leonard Garment, special White House consultant, on then President Richard Nixon’s involvement in Watergate
On the Presidency:
Now I’m no cowboy. I pitch horseshoes for a living, but I don’t ride these broncos.
George Bush in Texas, explaining what his job as President entailed
On the Presidency:
I am now going over and sign, and as you can notice how cold it is, twelve pens there are too cold—they can only sign one letter, each pen. If my name came out to thirteen letters, I would have misspelled it.
President Ronald Reagan at the signing ceremony of a Social Security bill
On the Presidency:
I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the President of the United States, even though I might be in some kind of line of succession. It probably will never happen, but it’s nice to think about anyway.
Senator Warren Magnuson, upon becoming president pro tem of the Senate
On the Presidency, Reasons to Run:
Well, I’m—were I to make the announcement and to run, the reasons that I would run is because I have a great belief in this country, that it is—there’s more natural resources than any nation of the world, there’s the greatest educated population in the world, the greatest technology of any country in the world, and the greatest political system in the world….
Senator Edward Kennedy, during a November 4, 1979, on-air interview with Roger Mudd
On Press Agents, Good Advice From:
[You reporters] should have printed what he meant, not what he said.
Earl Bush, press aide to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Sr., scolding reporters
On Principles, Political:
I will talk to my stockbroker, and unless he gives me some good reason why I shouldn’t, I would be pleased to dispose of [my South African investments]. I am very much opposed to apartheid.
California State Senator Milton Marks, on his South African stockholdings; in the Los Angeles Times
On Priorities:
Here at the ministry we have other, more urgent, situations to deal with.
Jorge Luna of the Peruvian Labor Ministry after hearing that gold miners in the jungle were enslaving thousands of children
On Problems:
Everyone wants to jump into my throat!
Michael Curtiz, Hollywood director, complaining to his assistant
On Problems, Big:
This problem is a two-headed sword: it could grow like a mushing room.
Gib Lewis, Speaker of the Texas House, quoted by Molly Ivins in the New York Times Magazine
On Profits, How to Divide Equally:
The profits shall be equally divided and the residue goes to the governor.
Irish Bank Bill of 1808
On Promises:
I have not reneged on my promise. I have changed my mind.
New York gubernatorial candidate Pierre Rinfret, on why he released only one of the tax returns he had promised to show the public
On Publishing:
Send all the details. Never mind the facts.
telegram from the editor of the old New York World to his Washington correspondent
Q
On Qualifications:
After finding no qualified candidates for the position of principal, the school department is extremely pleased to announce the appointment of David Steele to the post.
Philip Streifer, superintendent of schools, Barrington, Rhode Island
On Qualifications for Holding Political Office:
Anyone can be elected governor. I’m proof of that.
Joe Frank Harris, two-term Georgia governor, talking about who might fill his shoes
On Questions:
If you ask me anything I don’t know, I’m not going to answer.
Yogi Berra to a radio broadcaster before an interview
On Questions:
Let me ask you a question, for your information.
attributed to Gregory Ratoff, 1930s and ’40s Hollywood director of films such as Intermezzo
On Questions, Answering:
In a general wa
y, we try to anticipate some of your questions so that I can respond “no comment” with some degree of knowledge.
William Baker, CIA spokesman, to the press
On Questions, Rhetorical:
Have we gone beyond the bounds of reasonable dishonesty?
CIA memo; introduced during the Westmoreland/CBS libel suit
On Quiet:
If you can’t keep quiet, shut up!
Gregory Ratoff, 1930s and ’40s Hollywood director of films such as Intermezzo, to his crew
On Quiet:
I want to hear it so quiet we can hear a mouse dropping.
Gregory Ratoff
On Quiet:
After being told the correct metaphor for quiet was a pin:
Exactly, like a mouse pin dropping.
Gregory Ratoff
On Quotes:
I really didn’t say everything I said.
