“I guess I’m just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation’s laws.”

"Captain Future, Block That Kick!," The New Yorker (20 January 1940) p. 23 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1940/01/20/captain-future-block-that-kick
Published in book form under the same title in The Most of S. J. Perelman (1992) p. 71

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I guess I’m just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a b…" by S.J. Perelman?
S.J. Perelman photo
S.J. Perelman 15
American humorist, author, and screenwriter 1904–1979

Related quotes

Patrick Rothfuss photo

“I’m just very careful with my words when I write. Obsessively careful. I’m the sort of person who worries about the difference between “slim” and “slender.””

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

Interview with Peter Hodges and Kate Baker http://www.peter-hodges.com/2008/03/21/author-qa-patrick-rothfuss/

José Maria Eça de Queiroz photo

“Over the sturdy nakedness of truth
the diaphanous veil of phantasy.”

A Relíquia (1887); The Relic, trans. Margaret Jull Costa (1994), epigraph.

Howard H. Aiken photo

“Originally one thought that if there were a half dozen large computers in this country, hidden away in research laboratories, this would take care of all requirements we had throughout the country.”

Howard H. Aiken (1900–1973) pioneer in computing, original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer

1952. Quoted in I. Bernard Cohen: Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. 1999. MIT Press. p. 292. And I. Bernard Cohen: IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 20.3 pp. 27–33. (1998)

Lewis Carroll photo
Maxime Bernier photo
Susan B. Anthony photo

“One half of the people of this Nation today are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write a new and just one.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Address given in towns of Ontario county, prior to her trial, quoted in "An account of the proceedings on the trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the charge of illegal voting, at the presidential election in Nov. 1872, and on the trial of Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh and William B. Hall, the inspectors of election by whom her vote was received." (1873) http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/naw:@field(DOCID+@lit(rbnawsan2152div13)); also quoted in Great American Trials: 201 Compelling Courtroom Dramas (1994) by Edward W. Knappman, p. 167
Context: We no longer petition legislature or Congress to give of the right to vote, but appeal to women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected "citizen's right" … We assert the province of government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution the constitutions of the several states … propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights. … One half of the people of this Nation today are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write a new and just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with this form of government, that enforces taxation without representation — that compels them to obey laws to which they have never given their consent — that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a jury of their peers — that robs them, in marriage of the custody of their own persons, wages, and children—are this half of the people left wholly at the mercy of the other half.

P. J. O'Rourke photo

Related topics