All Quotes

"A recent study announced that 52 per cent of all teens who sign virginity pledges recant them within twelve months. If I'm on my game."

"MTV announced this week that the next season of The Real World will be shot in Detroit, as will several cast members."

"NBC announced this week that they will be producing a 3 hour TV movie based on the life of Rudolph Giuliani. To keep the movie real to life, the Giuliani character is really unlikeable until the last 15 minutes, when everyone loves him."

"In an interview, Paris Hilton said that of her and her sister, "People love to hate us. But when you know us, you love us. And if you really get to know us, you get gonorrhea.""

"Wafah Dufour bin Laden, niece of Osama bin Laden has signed a contract to star in a reality show...called Skating with the Nieces of Terrorists."

"Maxim magazine recently released its annual hot 100 list, with Eva Longoria at #1, followed by Jennifer Garner and Lindsay Lohan. While I, once again, was ranked between Bonnie Hunt and Joy Behar."

"At the upcoming Grammy Awards, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony will perform together as the first time, as man and wife. Hopefully music."

"If these two are tired of having stuff with each other, what hope is there for the rest of us?"

"Brokeback Mountain was released last weekend. Its notable for being the first Western where the good guys get it in the end."

"Question number one is from someone who calls himself "The Controvert." He says, "Hi, Tina, I love you in the show. In my humble opinion, when a show pushes the boundaries, you end up with a lot of passionate people on both sides. What do you think of the criticism the show gets?" I think that people who say they love the show and they think it's great and they write good reviews of it, are-are correct and that people who don't like the show for any reason are probably-they're just confusing it with Studio 60."

"This is, uh, from "RedSoxGirl02," um, so that person is four years old, I guess, 'cause their thing is "02.""

""I can't believe you recently had a baby. How do you do it?" [pause] The baby starts to come down...and once that happens you can't-it comes out. Whether you let it or not, the baby comes out. So that's how I did it."

""Do the NBC bigheads really pay attention to these message boards?" Um, I don't know if they read the message boards. I hope so, because I write fifty to a thousand fake posts a week, mostly, uh, saying that I'm really good and that no else is as good as me. So, I hope they listen to that because I'm trying to get a raise."

""So, Alec Baldwin; great actor or greatest actor?" I'm gonna say "greatest actor"; Greatest...living...American...actor...in...the Baldwin family...by a mile."

"They made a porn movie about Sarah Palin, and the same actress, Lisa Ann, played me in the porn version of 30 Rock. Weirdly, of the three of us, Lisa Ann knows the most about foreign policy."

"On Matthew McConaughey: "He was always taking his shirt off, he's like "Yeah, here's my deal, I'm hot." We had a meeting one day at like 11 o'clock, right before the show and he walks into the meeting shirtless wearing this like old musty sarong... He doesn't smell great, no.""

"On 30 Rock and Studio 60 and the Sunset Strip airing in the same year: "We’ll probably end up doing a terrible crossover, where the Matthew Perry character on the drama rapes my character on the comedy—and then the ‘Law & Order’ team solves the crime.""

"It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good."

"If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs."

"Having encountered many setbacks, Havel lived with a spirit of hope, which he defined as “the ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.” His peaceful resistance shook the foundations of an empire, exposed the emptiness of a repressive ideology, and proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon. He played a seminal role in the Velvet Revolution that won his people their freedom and inspired generations to reach for self-determination and dignity in all parts of the world."

"He will be remembered as a hero to the people of the Czech Republic and to lovers of freedom around the world."

"With the death of Vaclav Havel, the Czech republic has lost one of its great patriots, France has lost a friend, and Europe has lost one of its wise men."

"A great fighter for the freedom of nations and for democracy has died … His outstanding voice of wisdom will be missed in Europe, which is going through a serious crisis. I am praying for the peace of his soul."

"Havel … invokes … "higher law" when he claims that "human rights, human freedoms . . . and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world …while the state is a human creation, human beings are the creation of God." He seems to be saying that NATO forces were allowed to violate international law because they acted as direct instruments of the "higher law" of God — a clear-cut case of religious fundamentalism."

"I don't know of any pair of novels that have been as consistently misinterpreted as Card's Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. Even a reader with a rudimentary knowledge of twentieth century history might be expected to guess that the character of Ender Wiggin, the near messianic superhero, is based on that of Adolf Hitler. Card himself is the "Speaker for the Dead" who seeks to understand and forgive the genocidal dictator's behavior by demonstrating that his intentions were good. Because Hitler/Ender committed genocide to preserve the existence and dignity of what he defined as human, he is not a monster but a true Superman who willingly shouldered the heavy responsibility thrust upon him."

"For the reader who isn't convinced that writing a book (no matter how highly acclaimed) makes up for exterminating a race, Card offers an alternative, albeit rather contradictory, excuse for his genocide's actions -- genetic determinism. Although this "science" has been shown to represent such an oversimplification that it's a downright distortion, Card makes it the foundation of the biology of his universe. From the very beginning, authorities can breed geniuses more easily than you or I could establish a strain of purebred blue budgies, and never mind that breeding for color and size involves at most a few genes, while breeding for intelligence would require a total understanding of the complicated interactions between whole chromosomes. In Card's strange world, children can inherit advanced qualities like a talent for xenobiology -- a bizarre combination of genetic determinism and Lamarckianism since these characteristics were presumably artificially acquired at some point in the past. (Or does Card imagine that there is literally a gene for xenobiological talent that we can breed for? How could such a thing evolve? Surely our genes would have to be macroscopic to carry all the information he assumes they do.) In any case, his pseudo-science serves primarily as an excuse for ugly actions running the gamut from genocide to vivisection."

"In Ender's Game, the Nebula Award-winning 1985 novel by Orson Scott Card, a 6-year-old boy is taken from his family on Earth to an orbital military academy to be molded into a soldier for a looming extraterrestrial war. For Ender, a misfit genius among some of the world's scariest adolescent prodigies, surviving the other cadets is a violent affair in itself—from maiming fellow students in the shower to orchestrating zero-gravity battles."

"One doesn’t need Freud to work out why Card’s novel is popular. “Ender’s Game” tells the story of an infant prodigy, Andrew Wiggin (nicknamed Ender), who is torn from the bosom of his family at 6 to be trained in “Battle School.” Earth is under threat from aliens -- the Buggers. Future war is waged as a computer game. And who are the virtuosos of the game console? Kids. Who are the best de-Buggers? Not Donald Rumsfeld’s generation."

"Scientists are supposed to live in ivory towers. Their darkrooms and their vibration-proof benches are supposed to isolate their activities from the disturbances of common life. What they tell us is supposed to be for the ages, not for the next election. But the reality may be otherwise."

"Though sincerity and confidence have many points of resemblance, they have yet many points of difference. Sincerity is an openness of heart, which shows us what we are, a love of truth, a dislike to deception, a wish to compensate our faults and to lessen them by the merit of confessing them."

"Confidence always pleases those who receive it. It is a tribute we pay to their merit, a deposit we commit to their trust, a pledge which gives them a claim upon us, a kind of dependence to which we voluntarily submit. I do not wish from what I have said to depreciate confidence, so necessary to man."

"We should make it a rule never to have half confidences. They always embarrass those who give them, and dissatisfy those who receive them. They shed an uncertain light on what we want hidden, increase curiosity, entitling the recipients to know more, giving them leave to consider themselves free to talk of what they have guessed. It is far safer and more honest to tell nothing than to be silent when we have begun to tell."

"Although all the qualities of mind may be united in a great genius, yet there are some which are special and peculiar to him; his views are unlimited; he always acts uniformly and with the same activity; he sees distant objects as if present; he comprehends and grasps the greatest, sees and notices the smallest matters; his thoughts are elevated, broad, just and intelligible. Nothing escapes his observation, and he often finds truth in spite of the obscurity that hides her from others. A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable."

"Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much, yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirised can join in the satire. It is unfortunate to have a satirical turn without affecting to be pleased or without loving to jest."

"Raillery is a kind of mirth which takes possession of the imagination, and shows every object in an absurd light; wit combines more or less softness or harshness."

"There is a difference between an ardent and a brilliant mind, a fiery spirit travels further and faster, while a brilliant mind is sparkling, attractive, accurate."

"Though the gifts of the mind are infinite, they can, it seems to me, be thus classified. There are some so beautiful that everyone can see and feel their beauty. There are some lovely, it is true, but which are wearisome. There are some which are lovely, which all the world admire, but without knowing why. There are some so refined and delicate that few are capable even of remarking all their beauties. There are others which, though imperfect, yet are produced with such skill, and sustained and managed with such sense and grace, that they even deserve to be admired."

"Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d'autrui."

"Some have a species of instinct (the source of which they are ignorant of), and decide all questions that come before them by its aid, and always decide rightly. These follow their taste more than their intelligence, because they do not permit their temper and self-love to prevail over their natural discernment. All they do is in harmony, all is in the same spirit. This harmony makes them decide correctly on matters, and form a correct estimate of their value. But speaking generally there are few who have a taste fixed and independent of that of their friends, they follow example and fashion which generally form the standard of taste."

"The reason why so few persons are agreeable in conversation is that each thinks more of what he desires to say, than of what the others say, and that we make bad listeners when we want to speak. Yet it is necessary to listen to those who talk, we should give them the time they want, and let them say even senseless things; never contradict or interrupt them; on the contrary, we should enter into their mind and taste, illustrate their meaning, praise anything they say that deserves praise, and let them see we praise more from our choice than from agreement with them. To please others we should talk on subjects they like and that interest them, avoid disputes upon indifferent matters, seldom ask questions, and never let them see that we pretend to be better informed than they are."

"We should never say anything with an air of authority, nor show any superiority of mind. We should avoid far-fetched expressions, expressions hard or forced, and never let the words be grander than the matter."

"We are sure to displease when we speak too long and too often of one subject, and when we try to turn the conversation upon subjects that we think more instructive than others, we should enter indifferently upon every subject that is agreeable to others, stopping where they wish, and avoiding all they do not agree with."

"We should observe the place, the occasion, the temper in which we find the person who listens to us, for if there is much art in speaking to the purpose, there is no less in knowing when to be silent. There is an eloquent silence which serves to approve or to condemn, there is a silence of discretion and of respect. In a word, there is a tone, an air, a manner, which renders everything in conversation agreeable or disagreeable, refined or vulgar."

"There is an air which belongs to the figure and talents of each individual; we always lose it when we abandon it to assume another. We should try to find out what air is natural to us and never abandon it, but make it as perfect as we can. This is the reason that the majority of children please. It is because they are wrapt up in the air and manner nature has given them, and are ignorant of any other. They are changed and corrupted when they quit infancy, they think they should imitate what they see, and they are not altogether able to imitate it. In this imitation there is always something of falsity and uncertainty. They have nothing settled in their manner and opinions. Instead of being in reality what they want to appear, they seek to appear what they are not."

"All men want to be different, and to be greater than they are; they seek for an air other than their own, and a mind different from what they possess; they take their style and manner at chance. They make experiments upon themselves without considering that what suits one person will not suit everyone, that there is no universal rule for taste or manners, and that there are no good copies."

"Few men, nevertheless, can have unison in many matters without being a copy of each other, if each follow his natural turn of mind. But in general a person will not wholly follow it. He loves to imitate. We often imitate the same person without perceiving it, and we neglect our own good qualities for the good qualities of others, which generally do not suit us."

"But, yet acquired qualities should always have a certain agreement and a certain union with our own natural qualities, which they imperceptibly extend and increase."

"We should not speak of all subjects in one tone and in the same manner. We do not march at the head of a regiment as we walk on a promenade; and we should use the same style in which we should naturally speak of different things in the same way, with the same difference as we should walk, but always naturally, and as is suitable, either at the head of a regiment or on a promenade.="

"Thousands of people with good qualities are displeasing; thousands pleasing with far less abilities, and why? Because the first wish to appear to be what they are not, the second are what they appear. Some of the advantages or disadvantages that we have received from nature please in proportion as we know the air, the style, the manner, the sentiments that coincide with our condition and our appearance, and displease in the proportion they are removed from that point."

"Nos vertus ne sont, le plus souvent, que de vices déguisés."