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Clever jabs

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The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
- Politics
Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956Baltimore Evening Sun (4 April 1927)
- Theology
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself.
John Milton1608–1674Often credited to Henry Kissinger
People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.
Montesquieu1689–1755Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721), No. 46. (Usbek writing to Rhedi)
- Religion
They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest the laws, and, therefore, they think it is much better that every man should plead his own cause
Thomas More1478–1535Utopia (1516), Book II (3 of 4)In context
- Laws
Faced with the alternative of saying goodbye to the gold standard, and therefore to his own employment, and goodbye to other people’s employment, Mr. Churchill characteristically selected the latter course.
Oswald Mosley1896–1980Winston Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, had returned Britain to the gold standard and Mosley believed this would lead to unemployment, quoted in Robert Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley (Papermacs, 1981), p. 143.
- Economics
Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.
Vladimir Nabokov1899–1977Strong Opinions (1973), p. 66 (On the ideas of Sigmund Freud)
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
Jack Nicholsonborn 1937
It was subtle of God to learn Greek when he wished to become an author – and not to learn it better.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Chapter IV, aphorism 121
- God
Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches⁠—he has made music sick.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Der Fall Wagner (1888)
- Music
Congratulations, Dave, you’ve just constructed a straw man so large you could burn it in the desert and hold an annoying festival around it.
John Oliverborn 1977Last Week Tonight—Immigration, Stephen Hawking & Football (ff. 0:16:15) (15 June 2014)
- Debate
Britain is basically Pompeii if Pompeii had voted for the volcano.
John Oliverborn 1977Last Week Tonight (2014–present), On Brexit.
- Politics
- Voting
The more you know, the less you are impressed by Foucault.
Camille Pagliaborn 1947Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 174
- Philosophy
Foucault, like David Letterman, made smirking glibness an art form.
Camille Pagliaborn 1947Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 187
The elevation of Foucault to guru status by American and British academics is a tale that belongs to the history of cults.
Camille Pagliaborn 1947Sex, Art and American Culture: New Essays (1992), “Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf”, p. 174