Quotes

[ After a person in the crowd yelled “I can’t hear you” :] I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?

What is a ship but a prison?

Now, some say it is unfair to hold disadvantaged children to rigorous standards. I say it is discrimination to require anything less—the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Hinc quam sit calamus saevior ense patet .

Why doth one man’s yawning make another yawn?

[ On the younger William Pitt’s maiden speech in Parliament, Feb. 1781 :] Not merely a chip of the old “block,” but the old block itself.

His locked, lettered, braw brass collar,

Manners are of more importance than laws. . . . Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives.

To innovate is not to reform . The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to reform anything, and they left nothing, no, nothing at all, unchanged .

It is said that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True, if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic.

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants.

I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against an whole people.

This study [of law] renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defense, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

He was bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences; a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding, than all the other kinds of learning put together; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion.

[ Of the American colonies :] In no country, perhaps, in the world is the law so general a study.

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.

Here this extraordinary man [Charles Townsend], then Chancellor of the Exchequer, found himself in great straits. To please universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. However he attempted it.

But, gentlemen, enough of words. Actions speak louder than. Action now.

I was cured all right.

In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves For a bright manhood, there is no such word As— fail .

Then I looked at its top sheet, and there was the name—A CLOCKWORK ORANGE . . . “—The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen—.”

[ Opening line of book :] It was a dark and stormy night.

In other countries poverty is a misfortune—with us it is a crime.

I’d be a bum on the street with a tin cup if the markets were always efficient.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.

[ On his drug addiction :] I’ll die young but it’s like kissing God.

He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns, not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.

Well, less is more, Lucrezia.

People should be taught what is, not what should be. All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing in the breadline—right back of J. Edgar Hoover.

Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

She had

She thanked men,—good! but thanked

What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river?

Then owls and bats

[ King Louis XVI, played by Mel Brooks, speaking :] It’s good to be the king.

Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.

[ Lili von Shtupp, played by Madeline Kahn, speaking to black cowboy Bart, played by Cleavon Little :] Is it true how zey say zat you people are . . . gifted? Oh! It’s twue! It’s twue!

[ The Waco Kid, played by Gene Wilder, speaking :] You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the New West. You know—morons.

[ Jury foreman, played by Bill Macy, returning verdict on Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, played by Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder :] We find the defendants incredibly guilty.

[ Governor William J. Le Petomane, played by Mel Brooks, addressing his secretary’s breasts :] Hello, boys . . . Have a good night’s rest? . . . I missed you.

[ Roger De Bris, played by Christopher Hewett, speaking :] Will the dancing Hitlers please wait in the wings, we are only seeing singing Hitlers.

[ Franz Liebkind, played by Kenneth Mars, speaking :] Hitler was better looking than Churchill, he was a better dresser than Churchill, he had more hair, he told funnier jokes, and he could dance the pants off of Churchill.

[ Leo Bloom, played by Gene Wilder, speaking :] It’s simply a matter of creative accounting. Let’s assume for a moment that you are a dishonest man. . . . It’s very easy. You simply raise more money than you really need.

[ Max Bialystock, played by Zero Mostel, speaking :] That’s it, baby! When you got it, flaunt it!