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Clever jabs

277 quotes from 161 people

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Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist either.
John Irvingborn 1942Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews (1988)
- Writing
I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands.
Alan Watts1915–1973Audio lecture “Individual and Society”
- America
Criticism didn’t really stop us and it shouldn’t ever stop anyone, because critics are only the people who can’t get a record deal themselves.
Paul McCartneyborn 1942The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 96
- Music
Crikey, mate. You’re far safer dealing with crocodiles and western diamondback rattlesnakes than the executives and the producers and all those sharks in the big MGM building.
Steve Irwin1962–2006from “Enough Rope With Andrew Denton” on ABC, 2004
- Movies
You don’t have to be smart to act — look at the outgoing president of the United States.
Cherborn 1946Remark (December 1988), reported in Brewer’s Cinema (1995)
- Acting
- Presidency
So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.
Winston Churchill1874–1965Speech in the House of Commons, November 12, 1936 “Debate on the Address”, criticizing Stanley Baldwin’s record on rearmament against Hitler.
- Government
Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784In James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), entry for 21 July 1763
- Truth & Lies
It is incomprehensible to me that any thinker can calmly call himself a modernist; he might as well call himself a Thursdayite.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936All Things Considered (1908)
Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples.
Alexander Pope1688–1744Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
- Age
O you miserable scoundrel, what I shit is better than anything you ever thought.
Ludwig van Beethoven1770–1827Written in the margin of Gottfried Weber’s negative review of Wellington’s Victory in Beethoven’s copy of Cäcilia (August 1825)
Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like all other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation.
Eugene V. Debs1855–1926What’s the matter with Chicago? (1902)
- Economics
If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you.
Lindsey Graham1955–2026Washington Press Club Foundation Congressional Dinner (25 February 2016)
- Politics
You know how to make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to Hell.
Lindsey Graham1955–2026“Graham: Trump is a ‘race-baiting, xenophobic’ bigot (2015)” CNN (December 8, 2015)
- Politics
I’d move to Los Angeles if New Zealand and Australia were swallowed up by a tidal wave, if there was a bubonic plague in England and if the continent of Africa disappeared from some Martian attack.
Russell Croweborn 1964New York Daily News (2000)
If you can’t think because you can’t chew, try a banana.
Lee Kuan Yew1923–2015Responding to a BBC reporter who suggested that Singapore’s draconian laws (including the ban on chewing gum) could stifle the people’s creativity (2000).
- Thinking