All Quotes

"So I say live and let live. That's my motto. Live and let live. Anyone who can't go along with that, take him outside and shoot the motherfucker. It's a simple philosophy, but it's always worked in our family."

"Reminds me of something my grandfather would say. He'd say, "I'm goin' upstairs and fuck your grandmother." Well he was an honest guy ya know, he wasn't gonna bullshit a 4-year-old."

"Help me find some shoes I really like. Help me also to find a nymphomaniac coke connection who owns a Ferrari dealership."

"Let me arrive safely back at my hotel room. Don't let me be attacked by a maniac wearing a french tickler and a space helmet. Don't let my beard become entangled in the gears of a transcontinental bus. And don't let me be hit by a flying turd."

"Let's go for a drive OK? Well I'll go for a drive, you'll go for a ride. The person who drives the car they go for a drive, the other people they go for a ride. People don't know that, tell them when they're in your car. Say "you assholes are goin' for a ride!""

"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"

"Have you noticed that there are some people, who when they lose something, their first reaction is that it had to be stolen? First thing- "Hey! It was stolen!" It's an ego defense. They can't stand the fact that they might have been stupid enough to have lost something. And even if it's something that anyone would really want that much. "Hey! Who stole my collection of used bandages?! And they also got away with my nude pictures of Ernest Borgnine!""

"There are battered husbands. Apparently this happens when the woman is real big, the man is very small, and they each drink a quart of whiskey a day."

"I never fucked a 10, but one night I fucked 5 twos!"

"To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies — the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said — there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident."

"I really haven't seen this many people in one place since they took the group photographs of all the criminals and lawbreakers in the Ronald Reagan Administration. Two-hundred and twenty-five of 'em, so far! 225 different people in the Ronald Reagan administration have either quit, been fired, arrested, indicted or convicted of either breaking the law or violating the ethics code! These are the same people who were elected with the help of the moral majority. Elected with the help of the moral majority and the Teamsters union. That's a good combination! Organized religion and organized crime working together to help build a better America."

"I'm the first one to say it's a great country, but it's a strange culture. We got a strange culture. This has got to be the only country in the world that could ever come up with a disease like bulimia; gotta be the only country in the world where some people have no food at all, and other people eat a nourishing meal and puke it up intentionally. This is a country where tobacco kills four hundred thousand people a year, so they ban artificial sweeteners! Because a rat died! You know what I mean? This is a place where gun store owners are given a list of stolen credit cards, but not a list of criminals and maniacs! And now, they're thinking about banning toy guns – and they're gonna keep the fucking real ones!"

"Next time you're at a wishing well. Doesn't happen often. Next time you're at a wishing well ask to see the manager! Tell him you've been coming there for 10 years and none of your wishes have come true. Either you gimme my money back—or I'm shittin' in the well!"

"It's the old American Double Standard, ya know: Say one thing, do somethin' different. And of course this country is founded on the double standard, that's our history! We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free! So they killed a lot of white English people, in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out of the rest of the red Indian people, so they move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know what the motto of this country ought to be? "You give us a color, we'll wipe it out!""

"So about 80 years after the Constitution is ratified, the slaves are freed. Not so you'd really notice it of course; just kinda on paper. And that of course was at the end of the Civil War. Now there is another phrase I dearly love. That is a true oxymoron if I've ever heard one — civil war. D'you think anybody in this country could ever really have a civil war? "Say, pardon me...*machinegun sounds*...I'm awfully sorry! Awfully sorry." Now of course the Civil War has been over for about 120 years. But...not so you'd really notice it. Because you see we have these people called "Civil War buffs"...in fact some of these people actually get dressed up once a year and then go out and re-fight these battles. D'you know what I say to these people? USE LIVE AMMUNITION ASSHOLES, WOULD YA PLEASE?! You might just raise the intelligence level of the American gene pool!"

"These people call themselves "right to lifers." Don't you love that phrase? And don't you love the way these kind of people pervert the English language? You realize that most of the right-to-lifers are in favor of the DEATH penalty? And they support the South American DEATH squads. And they're against gun control and they're against nuclear weapons control. When they say "right to life," they're talking about THEIR right to decide which people should live or die. Doesn't it strike you as mildly ironic that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?"

"Some people try to get out of jury duty by lying. You don't have to lie. Tell the judge the truth. Tell him you'd make a terrific juror because you can spot guilty people [snaps fingers] just like that!"

"The public...demands certainties...But there are no certainties."

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

"…in the first place, self decapitation is an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt; and, in the second, it’s suicide, and suicide is a capital offence."

"Roll on, thou ball, roll on Through pathless realms of space, Roll on!"

"No, Frederic, it cannot be. I don’t think much of our profession, but, contrasted with respectability, it is comparatively honest."

"Against our wills, papa—against our wills!"

"Exactly – you said "often" ('frequently') only once."

"Oh, dry the glistening tear That dews that martial cheek; Thy loving children hear, In them thy comfort seek. With sympathetic care Their arms around thee creep, For oh, they cannot bear To see their father weep!"

"Yes, but you don't go!"

"If you want a receipt for that popular mystery, Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon - Take all the remarkable people in history, Rattle them off to a popular tune!"

"Art stopped short at the cultivated court of the Empress Josephine."

"Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen, An attachment à la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean! Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band, If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand."

"Yes, I am the Apostle of Simplicity. I am called Archibald the All-Right, for I am infallible."

"Archibald: To understand this, it is not necessary to think of anything at all. Saphir: Let us think of nothing at all!"

"I know what love is. There was a happy time when I didn't, but bitter experience has taught me."

"A pallid and thin young man, A haggard and lank young man, A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, Foot-in-the-grave young man!"

"The Law is the true embodiment Of everything that’s excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw, And I, my Lords, embody the Law."

"The House of Peers, thoughout the war Did nothing in particular And did it very well."

"Never, never, never, Faint heart never won fair lady! Nothing venture, nothing win – Blood is thick, but water’s thin – In for a penny, in for a pound – It's Love that makes the world go round!"

"I can tell a woman's age in half a minute — and I do!"

"...Darwinian Man, though well-behav’d, At best is only a monkey shav’d!"

"Man is nature's sole mistake."

"Ah pray, make no mistake, we are not shy; We're very wide awake, The moon and I!"

"I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering."

"No money, no grovel! (Actually an ad-lib introduced by Rutland Barrington when playing the rôle of Pooh-Bah, to the annoyance of Gilbert.)"

"Pooh Bah: This professional conscientiousness is highly creditable to you, but it places us in a very awkward position. Koko: My good sir, the awkwardness of your position is grace itself compared with that of a man engaged in the act of cutting off his own head."

"To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock, Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!"

"[Koko is negotiating the terms by which he can behead Nanki-Poo in his place, and they involve letting the latter be married to his fiance until he is executed] Koko: But my position during the next month will be most unpleasant, most unpleasant! Nanki-Poo: Not nearly so unpleasant as mine at the end of it."

"I have a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist."

"Ko-Ko: Well, a nice mess you've got us into, with your nodding head and the deference due to a man of pedigree! Pooh-Ba: Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."

"...but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances."

"The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this and every country but his own."

"As someday it may happen that a victim must be found I've got a little list, I've got a little list Of society offenders who might well be underground, And who never would be missed—who never would be missed!"