Quotes about alcohol

A collection of quotes on the topic of coffee, wine, water, beer.

Best quotes about alcohol

“Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

“Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

What the Germans lack, 2; also in The Antichrist, Sec. 60, and Gay Science, Sec. 147
Twilight of the Idols (1888)

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“And kissing him is like sucking on alcohol-soaked feet.”

Kristin Cast book Marked

Source: Marked

“Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

“Should alcoholics go to liquor stores?”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

“Note to self-give serious thought to becoming an alcoholic.”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: Get A Clue

“Nothing uses up alcohol faster than political argument.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

“Nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

"Feel Good Hit of the Summer", Rated R (2000)
Lyrics, Queens of the Stone Age

Quotes about alcohol

“Life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life, so let's all get wasted and have the time of our lives.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Life, Time

“Straight edge means I'm drug free, alcohol free, and better than you.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Catchphrases
Source: Straight Edge significa che sono libero da droghe, libero dall'alcol e migliore di voi]

“Avoid using cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs as alternatives to being an interesting person.”

Marilyn vos Savant (1946) US American magazine columnist, author and lecturer

Personality

“I want to live my next life backwards: You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in a nursing home feeling better every day. Then you get kicked out for being too healthy. Enjoy your retirement and collect your pension. Then when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work 40 years until you're too young to work. You get ready for High School: drink alcohol, party, and you're generally promiscuous. Then you go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, and you have no responsibilities. Then you become a baby, and then… You spend your last 9 months floating peacefully in luxury, in spa-like conditions – central heating, room service on tap, and then… You finish off as an orgasm.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Variations of this piece have also been misattributed to Andy Rooney and Woody Allen. The original source is a variation on a piece by Sean Morey. ( "snopes.com: Andy Rooney on Everything", Snopes.com, 2012-09-09 http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/rooney3.asp, ) <br class="br">Misattributed

Life, School, Way, Feeling

“In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.”

George Best (1946–2005) British footballer

Reported in Ned Sherrin, Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (2008), p. 153.

Life, Women

“I am strong. I lived through a divorce, separation from my family. I never let it break me down. I’m not an alcoholic. I’ve never smoked, I’ve never done drugs. I’ve floated through the disaster of my past clean. I arrived here undamaged.”

Tina Turner (1939) singer, dancer, actress, and author

Tina Turner is a soul survivor http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/music/141823/Tina-Turner-is-a-soul-survivor, Daily Express, 22th of November 2009

Family, Strong, Past

“When we are uncomfortable or anything unpleasant happens, we look to take refuge in something. Usually, we turn to food, alcohol, sex, drugs, money, power, or relationships. But none of these things give us the lasting protection or satisfaction you're looking for. When you understand you can't find lasting happiness in Samsara, then the desire to find true refuge becomes strong. In Buddhism, we take refuge in the three jewels — the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The Buddha is like the doctor who understands your disease and knows how to treat it; the Dharma, his teachings, is the medicine he prescribes; and the Sangha is the spiritual community that helps you to take the medicine. To take refuge is to finally seek protection from suffering in a way that can really help you. When we think about the ultimate nature of reality and what causes us to suffer — this is the true meaning of refuge.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Source: Discovering Buddhism, 2004 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=226w04QMPzQ

Communication, Understanding, Nature, Thinking

“The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts and feelings. They are pain killers; pure and simple. They are absolutely contraindicated for creative work, and I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizers — the whole spectrum of sedative drugs.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

Quoted in interview, The Paris Review (Fall 1965), in response to "The visions of drugs and the visions of art don't mix?"

Pain, Feeling

“This homeless guy asked me for money the other day. I was about to give it to him and then I thought he was going to use it on drugs or alcohol. And then I thought, that's what I'm going to use it on. Why am I judging this poor bastard?”

Greg Giraldo (1965–2010) American comedian

Just For Laughs

Money, Guy

“I was a depressive and self-destructive alcoholic, but I was lucky enough to meet the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and be rescued by it 15 years ago.”

José José (1948–2019) Mexican singer

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/560409.html

“I had a bad PCP [angel dust] experience when I was 14 and I got panic disorder. And of course, I wasn’t telling anyone the truth. It’s not like you go to your dad or your doctor and say, “Yeah, I smoked PCP and I’m having a bad time.” So I became more or less agoraphobic because I’d have flashbacks. From 14 to 16, I didn’t have any friends. I stayed home most of the time. Up till then life was pretty great. The world was big and I felt I could do anything I wanted. Suddenly, I felt like I couldn’t do anything. But in the isolation, my imagination really had time to run. I never did any drugs until my late 20s. Unfortunately, being a child of two alcoholics, I started drinking a lot, and that’s what eventually got me back into drugs. You often hear that pot leads to harder drugs. But I think alcohol is what leads you to everything, because it takes away the fear. The worst drug experimentation I ever did was because I was drunk and didn’t care.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Talking about drugs, quoted in **
Audioslave Era

Life, Truth, World, Fear

“Alcohol is like love," he said. "The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1954)

Love, Girl, Kiss, Clothes

“There’s lots of people will help you with alcohol business, but there’s no one out there arranging little meetings where you can stand up and say, ‘My name is Sam Vimes and I’m a really suspicious bastard.”

Terry Pratchett book Feet of Clay

Source: Feet of Clay

People, Business, Help

“I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol and wild women. The other half I wasted.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Women, Money

“Death: "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT."
Albert: "Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Death, World

“The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.”

Ludwig von Mises book Liberalism

Source: Liberalism

Life, Behavior, Personality

“Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Drink

“Maybe some folks are alcoholics and others are just voluntary drunks. Maybe some folks drink due to body chemistry and others due to their lazy characters. Maybe some have drinking problems, while others have problems enough to drink.”

George Jones (1931–2013) American musician, singer and songwriter

Source: I Lived to Tell It All (1996, ebook 2014), Page 205.

Drink, Problem

“Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“I suppose if I gave myself the chance I could be an alcoholic.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Chance

“One time they said it was terrorism, another time they said it was acting against the constitution, another time they said it was alcohol.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

Decca Aitkenhead (1 April 2012). " Dictatorship is coming back to the Maldives and democracy is slipping away http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/01/dictatorship-maldives-democracy?newsfeed=true". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 April 2012: Nasheed about the official charges against him in the Maldives.

Time

“For in truth all our justice, morality, all our thoughts and feelings, derive from three or four primordial necessities, whereof the principal one is food. The least modification of one of these necessities would entail a marked change in our moral existence. Were the belief one day to become general that man could dispense with animal food, there would ensue not only a great economic revolution--for a bullock, to produce one pound of meat, consumes more than a hundred of provender--but a moral improvement as well, not less important and certainly more sincere and more lasting than might follow a second appearance on the earth of the Envoy of the Father, come to remedy the errors and omissions of his former pilgrimage. For we find that the man who abandons the regimen of meat abandons alcohol also; and to do this is to renounce most of the coarser and more degraded pleasures of life. And it is in the passionate craving for these pleasures, in their glamour, and the prejudice they create, that the most formidable obstacle is found to the harmonious development of the race.”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Source: The Buried Temple (1902), Ch. III: "The Kingdom of Matter", § 5

Life, Pleasure, Truth, Justice

“I have this theory about why men kill each other and break things. … Never mind. It's a dumb theory. I was going to say it was all sexual … but everything is sexual … but alcohol.”

Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

"Mildred"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)

Men

“I am a raging alcoholic, but I don't want my kids to do the same.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

The Osbournes television show.
Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/ozzy-osbourne-maddest-moments-10-1837387

Rage

“My flow is in the pocket like Wallace
I got the bounce like hydraulics
I can't call it
I got the swerve like alcoholics”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Get Em High
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

“Welcome baby,
It's your turn to live,
They lie in wait for you, chicken pox, whooping cough, smallpox,
Malaria, TB, heart disease, cancer, and so on.
Unemployment, hunger, and so on.
Train wrecks, bus accidents, plane crashes, work accidents,
Earthquakes, floods, droughts, and so on.
Heartbreak, alcoholism, and so on.
Nightsticks, prison doors, and so on.
They lie in wait for you, the atom bomb, and so on.
Welcome baby,
It's your turn to live.
They lie in wait for you, socialism, communism, and so on.”

Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963) Turkish poet

From Welcome (10 September 1961)

Hunger, Lie, Disease, Communication

“Alcohol make you drunk, man. It don't make you meditate, it just make you drunk. Herb is more a consciousness.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

As recorded in filmed interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsfYAJ3dQyY&feature=player_embedded (1979) with Dylan Taite in Aotearoa, New Zealand <br class="br">The people who are trying to make this world worse aren't taking a day off. How can I?

“When I was an atheist it was because I rejected authority, and why not reject the supreme authority of God, particularly that boring fucker on Songs of Praise. I could reject him with the unsentimental dispatch of a clipped toenail. When I got clean from drugs and alcohol, I saw that the way I’d always seen the world was limited. It will always be limited. By yielding authority to a benign power, I found a key to transcend previous limitations. Modest limitations, like being unable to survive without the use of drugs and alcohol. Until the time when I got clean, I’d had little experience of loving, powerful authority. Authority had only been corrupt or inefficient in my experience.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Love, God, World, Way

“She was an alcoholic. I didn't blame myself for that. The worst problem in the life of any alcoholic is alcohol.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

Life, Problem

“Tocqueville predicted that in democratic countries the public would demand larger and larger doses of excitement and increasingly stronger stimulants from its writers. He probably did not expect that public to dramatize itself so extensively, to make the world scene everybody's theatre, or, in the developed countries, to take to alcohol and drugs in order to get relief from the horrors of ceaseless intensity, the torment of thrills and distractions. A great many writers have done little more than meet the mounting demand for thrills. I think that this demand has, in the language of marketing, peaked.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"The Distracted Public" (1990)
It All Adds Up (1994)

World, Thinking, Country

“I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone. I get drunk, and I drive my wife away with a breath like mustard gas and roses. And then, speaking gravely and elegantly into the telephone, I ask the telephone operators to connect me with this friend or that one, from whom I have not heard in years.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

Disease, Night

“People are broad-minded. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, there's something wrong with him.”

Art Buchwald (1925–2007) journalist, humorist, United States Marine

Have I Ever Lied to You? (1968).

People, Personality

“Addictions come from shortages in infancy. People try to compensate this way. Alcoholism is generally produced from a shortage in mother's milk. And heroin addiction is usually due to a lack of being, the absence of recognition; the drug fills the emptiness of not being loved.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Love, People, Way

“Oh, the alcoholic afternoons
when we sat in your room
they meant more to me
than any, than any living thing on earth”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From the song "These Things Take Time"
From songs

“When I was a practicing alcoholic, I was unbelievable. One side effect was immense suspicion: I'd come off tour like Inspector Clouseau on acid. 'Where's this cornflake come from? It wasn't here before.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

The Osbournes television show

“There are many great masters and very great realized beings in India and there have been many great realized beings in Tibet also, but they are not saying, “I'm realized, therefore I can do anything; I can eat meat and drink alcohol.” It's nothing like that. It should not be like that. According to the Kagyupa school, we have to see what the great masters of the past, the past lamas of Kagyupas, did and said about eating meat. The Drikung Shakpa [sp? ], master of Drikungpa, said like this, “My students, whomever are eating or using meat and calling it tsokhor or tsok, then these people are completely deserting me and going against the dharma.” I can't explain each of these things, but he said that anybody that is using meat and saying it is something good, this is completely against the dharma and against me and they completely have nothing to do with dharma. He said it very, very strongly. Other great masters also said this.”

Ogyen Trinley Dorje (1985) Tibetan Lama

"Talk on Vegetarianism", as translated simultaneously by Ringu Tulku Rinpoche during the 24th annual Great Kagyu Monlam, Bodhgaya, India (3 January 2007), in Shabkar.org http://www.shabkar.org/download/pdf/Talk_on_Vegetarianism.pdf.

People, School, Drink, Past

“This ideal is evidently still very imaginary, and may seem of but little importance; and infinite time must elapse, as in all other cases, before the certitude of those who are convinced that the race so far has erred in the choice of its aliment (assuming the truth of this statement to be borne out by experience) shall reach the confused masses, and bring them enlightenment and comfort. But may this not be the expedient Nature holds in reserve for the time when the struggle for life shall have become too hopelessly unbearable--the struggle for life that today means the fight for meat and for alcohol, double source of injustice and waste whence all the others are fed, double symbol of a happiness and necessity whereof neither is human?”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Source: The Buried Temple (1902), Ch. III: "The Kingdom of Matter", § 5

Life, Truth, Nature, Time

“Whereas logic and objectivity are usually the predominant features of a man's outer attitude, or are at least regarded as ideals, in the case of a woman it is feeling. But in the soul it is the other way round: inwardly it is the man who feels, and the woman who reflects. Hence a man's greater liability to total despair, while a woman can always find comfort and hope; accordingly a man is more likely to put an end to himself than a woman. However much a victim of social circumstances a woman may be, as a prostitute for instance, a man is no less a victim of impulses from the unconscious, taking the form of alcoholism and other vices.”

C.G. Jung book Psychological Types

Psychological Types (1921). CW 6. P.805

Hope, Way, Feeling, Soul

“Why so many of us a million years ago purposely knocked out major chunks of our brains with alcohol from time to time remains an interesting mystery. It may be we were trying to give evolution a shove in the right direction — in the direction of smaller brains.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Galápagos

Galápagos (1985)

Time

“Somebody said to me this morning, 'To what do you attribute your longevity?' I don't know. I mean, I couldn't have planned my life out better. By all accounts I should be dead! The abuse I put my body through: the drugs, the alcohol, the lifestyle I've lived the last 30 years! Now, some rare fly will fly over me, crap on my shoulder, and I'll drop dead, you know? My life story is a real-life story.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Launch.com, October 30, 1998

Life, Flying, Dead

“When I was a child the atmosphere in the house was one of puritan piety and austerity. There were family prayers at eight o'clock every morning. Although there were eight servants, food was always of Spartan simplicity, and even what there was, if it was at all nice, was considered too good for children. For instance, if there was apple tart and rice pudding, I was only allowed the rice pudding. Cold baths all the year round were insisted upon, and I had to practice the piano from seven-thirty to eight every morning although the fires were not yet lit. My grandmother never allowed herself to sit in an armchair until the evening. Alcohol and tobacco were viewed with disfavor although stern convention compelled them to serve a little wine to guests. Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 9

Children, Health, Family, Food

“You're going to tell me that poverty's nothing to be ashamed of. It's not true, though. If you can't hide it, then it is something to be ashamed of. There's nothing you can do, you're ashamed just the same, the way you're ashamed when you leave a spot on somebody's table. No matter if it's deserved or not, honorable or not, poverty stinks. Yes, stinks, stinks like a ground-floor room off an airshaft, or clothes that need changing. You smell it yourself, as though you were made of sewage. It can't be wiped away. It doesn't help to put on a new hat, any more than rinsing your mouth helps when you're belching your guts out. It's around you and on you and everyone who brushes up against you or looks at you knows it. I know the way women look down on you when you're down at heels. I know it's embarrassing for other people, but the hell with that, it's a lot more embarrassing when it's you. You can't get out of it, you can't get past it, the best thing to do is get plastered, and here" (he reached for his glass and drained it in a deliberately uncouth gulp) "here's the great social problem, here's why the 'lower classes' indulge in alcohol so much more - that problem that countesses and matrons in women's groups rack their brains over at tea. For those few minutes, those few hours, you forget you're an affront to other and to yourself. It's no great distinction to be seen in the company of someone dressed lie this, I know, but it's no fun for me either.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Women, People, Lie, Way

“I want to live my next life backwards: You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in a nursing home feeling better every day. Then you get kicked out for being too healthy. Enjoy your retirement and collect your pension. Then when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work 40 years until you're too young to work. You get ready for High School: drink alcohol, party, and you're generally promiscuous. Then you go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, and you have no responsibilities. Then you become a baby, and then… You spend your last 9 months floating peacefully in luxury, in spa-like conditions - central heating, room service on tap, and then… You finish off as an orgasm.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

Variations of this piece have been misattributed to Andy Rooney, George Carlin, and Woody Allen. The original source is a variation on a piece by Sean Morey. ( "snopes.com: Andy Rooney on Everything", Snopes.com, 2012-09-09 http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/rooney3.asp, ) <br class="br">Misattributed

Life, School, Way, Feeling

“I can honestly say, all the bad things that ever happened to me were directly, directly attributed to drugs and alcohol. I mean, I would never piss on a piece of stone at the fucking Alamo at nine o'clock in the morning dressed in a woman's evening dress sober. I mean I know I'm a fucking crazy-ass but still.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

MTV News Online, 1992.

Bad luck

“I think the warning labels on alcoholic beverages are too bland. They should be more vivid. Here is one I would suggest: "Alcohol will turn you into the same asshole your father was.”

George Carlin When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

Source: When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

Thinking

“I don't do alcohol. Or other people's boyfriends. And don't you forget it.”

Meg Cabot book Airhead

Source: Airhead

People, Forgetting

“And in my mind, this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne, and am therefore not an alcoholic.”

Augusten Burroughs book Dry

Source: Dry

Drink

“A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar.”

Carolyn G. Heilbrun (1926–2003) Academic, novelist

“I don't like the word 'alcoholic'. I like to think of myself as an advanced drinker.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Source: My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

Thinking

“How is it that everyone on this train has so much alcohol?"
"We always head to Canada at the beginning of the season," she says taking her seat again. "Their laws are much more civilized. Cheers.”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

Law, Training, Season

“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Women's dieting has become what Yale psychologist Judith Rodin calls a 'normative obsession,' a never-ending passion play given international coverage out of all proportion to the health risks associated with obesity, and using emotive language that does not figure even in discussions of alcohol or tobacco abuse. […] Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 6 : 'Hunger', p. 187

Women, Health, Beauty, History

“The story is even Bill Wilson, a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, couldn't overcome the sex monkey on his back, and spent his sober life cheating on his wife and filled with guilt.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Life, Sex, Cheating

“Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

No. 97
Apophthegms (1624)
Context: Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things — old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Age, Drink, Appearance, Wine

“There is a terrible sameness to the euphoria of alcohol and the euphoria of metaphor.”

John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer

“The alcohol smell is on my fingers, cold and remote, piercing like a steel pin going in. It smells like white enamel basins. When I look up at the stars in the nighttime, cold and white and sharp, I think they must smell like that.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Star, Thinking

“It’s hard to understand other people, to know what’s hidden in their hearts, and without the assistance of alcohol it might never be done at all.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

Source: Submission

People, Understanding, Heart

“Friends are the fruitcake of life - some nutty, some soaked in alcohol, some sweet.”

Jon Ronson (1967) British journalist, documentary filmmaker, radio presenter and nonfiction author

Life

“I thought Alchemists avoided alcohol the same way they do primary colors.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Color, Way

“Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Women, Laughter, Water, Wine

“No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book, or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

Books, Music, Painting

“Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise. For some people, it's love. Others, money or alcohol. Mine was even worse: calculus.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Love, Money, People, Effort

“I changed my mind. I don’t want to be an inveshtigative journalist anymore. I want to be a professional rum drinker.”

“There are people who do that,” Duff said. He’d barely sipped his rum.

“Really? What do you call them?”

“Alcoholics.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

People, Change

“An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Drink, Funny

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Hate

“I will not fall for any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, people with girlfriends or wives, misogynists, megalomanics, chauvists, emotional fuckwits or freeloaders, perverts.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

People

“Rationally speaking, blaming one's behavior on alcohol or drugs is like blaming the ladder by which you descended into a pit, or the staircase that took you down to a cellar, for what you found there.”

Graham Joyce book Some Kind of Fairy Tale

Source: Some Kind of Fairy Tale

Behavior

“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

Drink

“Because 'You're perfect just the way you are,' is what your guidance counselor says. And she's an alcoholic.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

Way, Perfection

“Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn't matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Source: American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

Disease, Suffering

“A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

Drink

“Alcohol is the river we sit on the banks of, contemplating. Sometimes we watch ourselves float past, sometimes we watch ourselves sink.”

Nick Flynn book Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

Source: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

Past

“Put something in your stomach to absorb the alcohol before you spontaneously combust from the fumes. (Nykyrian)
Yeah, it’d be a damn shame to blow my internal organs all over your new shirt.(Syn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

“It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Inimitable Jeeves

The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)

Food

“It did occur to me that the effect of good literature may be as dizzying as that of alcohol.”

Pamela Dean (1953) author

Literature

“The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Disease, Affliction

“Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde is a metaphor for alcoholism. He drinks a potion, becomes a monster. I know exactly how he feels.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Feeling, Drink

“Scientists have invented a new strain of cannabis without the high. They celebrated with non-alcoholic beer and furious dry-humping.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Beer

“You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 25

Women

“But in college, we can wear our alcohol abuse as proudly as our university sweatshirts; the two concepts are virtually synonymous.”

Koren Zailckas (1980) American writer

Source: Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Universe

“You can be a depressive and be happy, just as you can be a sober alcoholic.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

Happiness

“No child is born a delinquent. They only became that way if nobody loved them when they were kids. Unloved children grow up to be serial murderers or alcoholics.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Love, Children, Way

“Is that vodka?" Margarita asked weakly.
The cat jumped up in his seat with indignation.
"I beg pardon, my queen," he rasped, "Would I ever allow myself to offer vodka to a lady? This is pure alcohol!”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Source: The Master and Margarita

Cats

“If they took all the drugs, nicotine, alcohol and caffeine
off the market for six days, they'd have to bring out the
tanks to control you.”

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

“When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.”

James Crumley book The Last Good Kiss

Source: The Last Good Kiss

Spring, Drink, Beer, Heart

“To alcohol! The cause of… and solution to… all of life's problems”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

Life, Problem

“I get no kick from champagne.
Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all,
So tell me why it should be true
That I get a kick out of you?”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"I Get a Kick Out of You"
Anything Goes (1934)
Source: The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter

“only a complete alcoholic can think life is funny… any life!…”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book North

Source: North

Life, Thinking

“I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

As cited in The Forbes Book of Business Quotations (2007), Ed. Goodwin, Black Dog Publishing, p. 49, ISBN 1579127215
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Variant: I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

“An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.”

David Sheff Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

Source: Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

Lie, Help

“Thegot its name when two Polynesian alcoholics got in a fight over some neckwear.”

George Carlin book Brain Droppings

Source: Brain Droppings

Fight

“As the alcohol overcomes my mind, I hear the glass bottle shatter on the floor. This seems appropriate since I have obviously lost my grip on everything.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“I try to convince myself that it's the alcohol talking. But alcohol can't talk. It just sits there. It can't even get itself out of the bottle.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“That’s what I do: I make coffee and occasionally succumb to suicidal nihilism. But you shouldn’t worry — poetry is still first. Cigarettes and alcohol follow”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Coffee, Suicide

“[In Ethiopia, ] Abeh enrolled all three of us in school, which was taught in Amharic. We spoke only Somali and Arabic, so everything was completely foreign again for a little while. It wasn't until I could communicate that I came to a startling realization: the little girls in school with me were not Muslims. They said they were Kiristaan, Christian, which in Saudi Arabia had been a hideous playground insult, meaning impure. I went bewildered to my mother, who confirmed it. Ethiopians were kufr, the very sound of the word was scornful. They drank alcohol and they didn't wash properly. They were despicable.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 4: Weeping Orphans and Widowed Wives

School, Girl, Communication

“I have the right to do whatever I wish with my property. If I own a pile of wood, I can set fire to it even if it is currently nailed together in the shape of a barn. Cigarettes may not be healthy for me in the long run, but I have the freedom to smoke them anyway. Drinking alcohol may or may not have negative side effects, but even if it does, the government has no authority to prohibit you from consuming it, even if it is "in your own best interest." Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? (For that matter, what does Congress know about the Constitution?) If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest."”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland."
Source: Good to be King (2004)

Food, Hell, Drink, Freedom