BartBlog

Plenty of Pith, Punch and Pop for Potted Palookas, Peeved Prognosticators and Potent Portside Political Pundits

“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith

“I’ve gone into hundreds of [fortune teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her.”
– A New York City bunco detective. [And what about the winning lottery numbers?]

“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
– Ernest Hemingway [Bush reversed the formula, but it's still true today.]

“Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.”
– Sir Francis Bacon ["Paging Mr. Rove, paging Mr. Rove…"]

“Karl Rove deserves to be remembered as the man who thought Americans should have enough education to understand his fables but not enough to doubt them.”
– Eric Rauchway

“Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain’t that a big enough majority in any town?”
– Mark Twain in “Huckleberry Finn.”

“A supporter once called out, ‘Governor Stevenson, all thinking people are for you!’ And Adlai Stevenson answered, ‘That’s not enough. I need a majority.’”
– Scott Simon

“If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?”
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”
– Aldous Huxley

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance — it is the illusion of knowledge.”
– Daniel J. Boorstin

“Life is a sexually transmitted disease.”
– R. D. Laing

“Management works within the system. Leadership works on the system.”
– Author Unknown

“Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.”
– Alan Kay

“The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”
– Joseph Priestley

“We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.”
– Robert Wilensky

“A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.”
– Murphy’s Law of Computing

“When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: ‘Whose?’”
– Don Marquis

“Money doesn’t always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars.”
– Hobart Brown

“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
– Thomas Paine

“Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”
– Mark Twain

“It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.”
– David Brin

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
– Emma Goldman

“Once the game is over, the King and the Pawn go back in the same box.”
– Italian Proverb

“It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”
– Alfred Adler

“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.”
– Oscar Wilde

“The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.”
– Joe Ancis

“After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say I want to see the manager.”
– William S. Burroughs

“One dog barks at something; a hundred dogs bark at the sound.”
– Chinese Proverb

“The more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know — the less you know, the more you think you know.”
– David T. Freeman

“To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.”
– Abraham Maslow

“Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”
– Robert A. Heinlein

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him while the unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“Honorable, adj.: In legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, ‘the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.’”
– Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary.”

“I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me.”
– George Carlin

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
– George Carlin bonus quote.

“Conservatives say if you don’t give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they’ve lost all incentive because we’ve given them too much money.”
– George Carlin triple play.

“In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”
– H. L. Mencken

“I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.”
– Edith Sitwell

“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”
– Lily Tomlin