A.A. Milne quote: “What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.”

“You seem a decent fellow," Inigo said. "I hate to kill you."
You seem a decent fellow," answered the man in black. "I hate to die.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

“He don't look the sort of fellow I like; but he's got money and he comes here, and he's good looking, — and therefore he'll be a success.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 20

“The same qualities that make a decent boy make a decent man. They have different manifestations, but fundamentally they are the same. If a boy has not got pluck and honesty and common-sense he is a pretty poor creature; and he is a worse creature if he is a man and lacks any one of those three traits.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)
Context: I want to speak to you first of all as regards your duties as boys; and in the next place as regards your duties as men; and the two things hang together. The same qualities that make a decent boy make a decent man. They have different manifestations, but fundamentally they are the same. If a boy has not got pluck and honesty and common-sense he is a pretty poor creature; and he is a worse creature if he is a man and lacks any one of those three traits.

“This is what my friend said to me; he said "You know what I like? Mashed potatoes." It's like, "Dude. you gotta give me time to guess. If you're gonna quiz me, you must insert a pause in there."”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Strategic Grill Locations

“When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not take three paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head—the other man's head, I mean—then that proved that his—the first fellow's—girl was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke his head—not his own, you know, but the other fellow's—the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who—well, if he broke his head, then his girl—not the other fellow's, but the fellow who was the—Look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girl was a pretty girl; but if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a pretty girl, but B's girl was. That was their method of conducting art criticism.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

“If a man says a thing often enough, he is very likely to acquire some sort of faith in it sooner or later.”

Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) American writer

"The Second-Story Angel" (published in Black Mask, 15 November 1923)
Short Stories

“In effect, the grocer asks, "Williams, you're demanding that your fellow man, as ranchers and brewers, serve you; what did you do in turn to serve your fellow man?" I say, "I mowed my fellow man’s lawn." The grocer says, "Prove it!" That's when I hand over my certificates of performance -- the $30”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

Markets, Governments, and the Common Good, speech at Hillsdale College (27 September 2007)
2000s
Context: Say that you hire me to mow your lawn and afterwards you pay me $30. What I have earned might be thought of as certificates of performance, i. e. proof that I served you. With these certificates of performance in hand, I visit my grocer and demand 3 pounds of steak and a six-pack of beer that my fellow man produced. In effect, the grocer asks, "Williams, you're demanding that your fellow man, as ranchers and brewers, serve you; what did you do in turn to serve your fellow man?" I say, "I mowed my fellow man’s lawn." The grocer says, "Prove it!" That's when I hand over my certificates of performance -- the $30.

“I am not religious, but I am a pious man… A religious man has a definite religion. He says "God is there" or "God is there," "God is there." "Your god is not my god, and that's all." But the pious man, he just looks out with awe, and says, "where is God?" And "well, I don't understand it and I would like to know what this creation really means." That is a pious man, who is really touched by the greatness of nature and of the creation.”

Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893–1986) Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937

In a television interview, ca. 1980. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi discusses religion http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/WGBBMF, National Library of Medicine.

“The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth.”

William Golding (1911–1993) British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Interview with Frank Kermode, BBC Third Programme (28 April 1959)

“It’s odd to look out there and see a bunch of Mini-Mes,” says Williams. “You’re wondering what possessed them to do such a thing... It sort of does a reverse psychology on you. You’d think you’d be like `Hey, all these people want to look like me. I feel pretty cool.’ But actually it makes you feel more self aware and I’m not really fond of that.”

Hayley Williams (1988) American singer-songwriter and musician

About the Fayley's during the tour with the band No Doubt http://everythingintime.com/tag/hayley-williams

“What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.”

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