“In the midst of all this, there was Bernie Madoff. An embezzler named "made off." Hmm. Was the name not a clue? Did he have to be with the accounting firm of Dewey, Fuckyou, and Howe?”

—  Robin Williams

Weapons of Self Destruction (2010)

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 "In the midst of all this, there was Bernie Madoff. An embezzler named "made off." Hmm. Was the name not a clue? Did he …" by Robin Williams?
Robin Williams photo
Robin Williams 52
American actor and stand-up comedian 1951–2014

Related quotes

“The sound of my name in his voice stopped me in midturn. I don't know how the hell he did it, but whenever he said my name, it cut through all other distractions and made me pause, as if he'd clenched me to him and kissed me.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

“The Grave, dread thing!
Men shiver when thou 'rt named: Nature, appall'd,
Shakes off her wonted firmness.”

Robert Blair The Grave

Part I, line 9.
The Grave (1743)

Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough photo

“Persons in trade had better be very cautious how they add a fictitious name to their firm, for the purpose of gaining credit.”

Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough (1750–1818) Lord Chief Justice of England

Guidon v. Robson (1809), 2 Camp. 304.

Oscar Wilde photo

“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Hillel the Elder photo

“A name made great is a name destroyed. He who does not increase his knowledge decreases it.”

Hillel the Elder (-112–9 BC) Mishnah rabbi

1:13
Pirkei Avot

Bertrand Russell photo

“Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.”

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

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 50
Context: My first advice (on how not to grow old) would be to choose you ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth, at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.

“He had made one mistake in an otherwise flawless performance: he hadn't told me his name. Have you ever exchanged three words with an American without being told his name?”

Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928–1985) British art dealer

Source: The Mortdecai Trilogy, Don't Point That Thing At Me (1972), Ch. 8.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu photo

“O my Lord! Your holy name alone can render all benedictions upon the living being, and therefore You have hundreds and millions of names, like Krishna, Govinda, etc. In these transcendental names, You have invested all Your transcendental energies, and there is no hard and fast rule for chanting these holy names. O my Lord! You have so kindly made approach to You easy by Your holy names…”

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534) Indian saint

Teachings of Lord Chaitanya - Prabhupada, (1968)

Cormac McCarthy photo

“The world has no name, he said. The names of the cerros and the sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them so that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. That they cannot find for us the way again.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

The Crossing (1994)

Pope Benedict XVI photo

“Dear young people: What will you leave to the next generation? Are you building your lives on firm foundations? Are you living in a way that opens a space for the Spirit in the midst of a world that wants to forget God, or even rejects him in the name of a falsely-conceived freedom? How are you using the gifts you have been given, the 'power' that the Holy Spirit is even now prepared to release within you?”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2008, Closing Mass (19 July 2008)

Related topics