Garrison Keillor: Trending quotes (page 3)

“I want to resume the life of a shy person.”

Garrison Keillor

Announcing he was leaving the show, the first run ending in June 1987 (14 February 1987)
A Prairie Home Companion

Life , Personality

“Lake Wobegon, where smart doesn't count for so much. A minister has to be able to read a clock. At noon, it's time to go home and turn up the pot roast and get the peas out of the freezer.”

Garrison Keillor book Lake Wobegon Days

Lake Wobegon Days (1985), p. 355

Home , Time , Reading

“There is almost no marital problem that can't be helped enormously by taking off your clothes.”

Garrison Keillor

"The Old Scout" in The Writer's Almanac (4 October 2005)

Problem , Help , Clothes

“Cherish the Minnesota State Fair. Wherever you find beauty and simplicity and truth, know that there is a committee somewhere planning to improve it --- don't let them do it.”

Garrison Keillor

University of Minnesota Alumni Association (UMAA) Annual Meeting Keynote Speech (29 April 1992) UMAA 199204 to 199306 Meeting Minutes http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/48842/1/199204-199306.pdf

Truth , Beauty

“Minnesota is a state of public-spirited and polite people, where you can get a good cappucino and eat Thai food and find any book you want and yet live on a quiet tree-lined street with a backyard and send your kids to public school. When a state this good hits the jackpot, it can only be an inspiration to everybody.”

Garrison Keillor

"Minnesota's Sensible Plan, TIME (11 September 1995)

People , Books , School , Food

“The word “loser” is spoken with such contempt these days, a man might like to forget the losses in his own life that taught him something about good judgment. The money he invested in that casino in Atlantic City that went bust, the university course he enrolled in that promised to teach him the secrets of success but instead he wound up unemployed and 40 grand in debt, the candidate whose hat he wore who turned out to be tone-deaf and deluded — dumb, dumb, dumb, and yet his loved ones did not chortle and point and do the nyaa-nyaa. They put an arm around him and said, “This is how we learn.””

Garrison Keillor

And it is.
"Garrison Keillor: God help us. We’re in trouble down here." in The Washington Post (26 July 2016) https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/god-help-us-were-in-trouble-down-here/2016/07/26/989cde08-535d-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.html

Love , Life , Money , Secret

“It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.”

Garrison Keillor

As quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations‎ (1988) by James Beasley Simpson, p. 211

“Jesus said the meek would inherit the earth, but so far all we've gotten is Minnesota and North Dakota.”

Garrison Keillor

"When I'm 64" Salon.com (8 August 2006) http://www.salon.com/2006/08/09/keillor_52/

“If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States of America as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.”

Garrison Keillor

"Congress's Shameful Retreat From American Values" in The Chicago Tribune (4 October 2006)

Dreams

“To many Americans, whose only knowledge of the North Star State is that it is intensely cold and populated by Swedes and Holsteins, it will come as a surprise to wake up one morning in 2004 and read in the newspaper, "Half of U. S. Economy Now in Hands of Minnesota."”

Garrison Keillor

"Minnesota's Sensible Plan, TIME (11 September 1995) http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/features/deskofgk/950911_time.shtml

Star , Knowledge , Reading

“The funniest line in English is “Get it?” When you say that, everyone chortles.”

Garrison Keillor

We Are Still Married : Stories & Letters (1989), p. xvi

“The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk.”

Garrison Keillor

" "We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore" In These Times (26 August 2004) http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/979/

People , Faith , Boy , Evil

“Well, they're taking kids out of the country and sending them over there, National Guard kids and Army Reserve. They're sending kids who are barely prepared for this, and they're sending them over there to kill people, which is a serious thing. And to kill not terrorists, but to kill insurgents. I sort of find myself in agreement, uncomfortably, with Patrick Buchanan, who writes about this in his book, Where The Right Went Wrong. And writes that great powers, the way they skidded off the road, was getting involved in wars. That it's the role of great powers to stay out of wars.”

Garrison Keillor

Real Time with Bill Maher (15 October 2004)

War , People , Books , Way

“It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my home town, out on the edge of the prairie…”

Garrison Keillor

A Prairie Home Companion, News from Lake Wobegon

Home

“None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea.”

Garrison Keillor

Referring to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, in "Congress's Shameful Retreat From American Values" in The Chicago Tribune (4 October 2006) http://www.truthout.org/article/garrison-keillor-congresss-shameful-retreat-from-american-values

Women , Men , Law , Idea

“I think if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust, this would be a better world for all of us.”

Garrison Keillor book Lake Wobegon Days

Lake Wobegon Days (1986), p. 138

World , Thinking , Time

“Where I'm from we don't trust paper. Wealth is what's here on the premises. If I open a cupboard and see, say, thirty cans of tomato sauce and a five-pound bag of rice, I get a little thrill of well-being — much more so than if I take a look at the quarterly dividend report from my mutual fund.”

Garrison Keillor

As quoted in The Times Book of Quotations (2000), p. 384

Wealth

“One day Donald Trump discovers that he is owned, lock, stock, and roulette wheel, by Lutheran Brotherhood, and must renegotiate his debt load with a committee of silent Norwegians who don't understand why anyone would pay more than $120 for a suit.”

Garrison Keillor

"Minnesota's Sensible Plan, TIME (11 September 1995)