Quotes about banana (81 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Pushing people forward simply because of their colour, irrespective of merit, would be most unfortunate and would of course lead to disaster. It would mean that Rhodesia would then develop into a kind of banana republic where the country would in no time be bankrupt.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

BBC News 'On this day' http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/1/newsid_2492000/2492915.stm, June 1.
On the end of white minority rule in 1979.

People , Time , Country

“Nanny Ogg knew how to start spelling 'banana', but didn't know how you stopped.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

“Soon to come in licorice, orange, cinnamon, and banana, but not strawberry, because I hate strawberries.”

Terry Pratchett book Going Postal

Source: Going Postal

Hate

“If you try to to take my bananas from me, I will reclaim them from your cold dead hands.”

Terry Pratchett book Unseen Academicals

Source: Unseen Academicals

Dead

“What is magic?
There is the wizard's explanation… wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes and the importance of having at least four good meals every day.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

Star

“Apes had it worked out. No ape would philosophize, "The mountain is, and is not." They would think, "The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another banana.”

Terry Pratchett book Unseen Academicals

Source: Unseen Academicals

Mountain , Thinking

“As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Palm Sunday

The People One Knows
Palm Sunday (1981)

Rage , Personality

“Yes, I was a funny guy for a long time. When I started out, I just wanted to write humor. I wrote humor for kids. My very first book was called How to be Funny. It was about how to get big laughs at the dinner table and how to get laughs in school. Parents hated this book. I wrote joke books, like A Hundred and One Monster Jokes, and other joke books for years. I did maybe a hundred of them. I had a great time, and I did this humor magazine called Bananas for ten years. It was sort of Mad Magazine, but it was all in color, and it was great. That was all I ever wanted to do. I couldn't believe it. When that ended, I figured I would just coast for the rest of my career. That was it. I'd already done what I wanted to do. I had no idea what was coming up.”

R.L. Stine (1943) American writer and producer

Reading Rockets interview http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/stine/transcript hi you know it’s me cardi B

Hate , Books , School , Color

“… If you can't think because you can't chew, try a banana”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

2000. Lee was responding to a BBC reporter who suggested that Singapore's draconian laws (including the ban on chewing gum) could stifle the people's creativity. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/820234.stm
2000s

Thinking

“My wife is on a new diet. Coconuts and bananas. She hasn't lost weight, but can she climb a tree.”

Henny Youngman (1906–1998) American comedian

"The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America" (2001)

Tree

“I'm the Gap like Banana Republic and Old Navy”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Last Call
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

“For example, I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Woodburn Harris (25 February-1 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 288-289
Non-Fiction, Letters
Context: About my own attitude toward ethics—I thought I made it plain that I object only to (a) grotesquely disproportionate indignations and enthusiasms, (b) illogical extremes involving a reductio ad absurdum, and (c) the nonsensical notion that "right" and "wrong" involve any principles more mystical and universal than those of immediate expedience (with the individual's own comfort as a criterion) on the other hand. I believe I was careful to specify that I do not advocate vice and crime, but that on the other hand I have a marked distaste for immoral and unlawful acts which contravene the harmonious traditions and standards of beautiful living developed by a culture during its long history. This, however, is not ethics but aesthetics—a distinction which you are almost alone in considering negligible. … So far as I am concerned—I am an aesthete devoted to harmony, and to the extraction of the maximum possible pleasure from life. I find by experience that my chief pleasure is in symbolic identification with the landscape and tradition-stream to which I belong—hence I follow the ancient, simple New England ways of living, and observe the principles of honour expected of a descendant of English gentlemen. It is pride and beauty-sense, plus the automatic instincts of generations trained in certain conduct-patterns, which determine my conduct from day to day. But this is not ethics, because the same compulsions and preferences apply, with me, to things wholly outside the ethical zone. For example, I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either. I would as soon do the one as the other sort of thing—it is all a matter of harmony and good taste—whereas the ethical or "righteous" man would be horrified by dishonesty yet tolerant of course personal ways. If I were farming in your district I certainly would assist my neighbours—both as a means of promoting my standing in the community, and because it is good taste to be generous and accommodating. Likewise with the matter of treating the pupils in a school class. But this would not be through any sense of inner compulsion based on principles dissociated from my personal welfare and from the principle of beauty. It would be for the same reason that I would not dress eccentrically or use vulgar language. Pure aesthetics, aside from the personal-benefit element; and concerned with emotions of pleasure versus disgust rather than of approval versus indignation.

Cheating

“I could carve a better man out of a banana. ”

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

“During the Vietnam War, Abbie Hoffman announced that the new high was banana peels taken rectally. So then FBI scientists stuffed banana peels up their asses to find out if this was true or not.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

War

“Mrs. Daugherty was keeping my bowl of cream of wheat hot, and she had a special treat with it, she said. It was bananas.

In the whole story of the world, bananas have never once been a special treat.”

Gary D. Schmidt book Okay for Now

Source: Okay for Now

World

“I knew there was a reason I didnt turn you into a banana slug."
Leonid'd eyes widened. "No banana slug! Please!"
"It was a compliement, silly. Forbidden is good! Sadie likes forbidden!”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“Danger's over, Banana Breakfast is saved.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Source: Gravity's Rainbow

“That's the van? It looks like a rotting banana."
This was undeniable - Eric had painted the van a neon shade of yellow, and it was blotched with dings and rust like splotches of decay.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Painting

“How to defend yourself against a banana”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

“When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your laugh.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

People

“I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

“A monkey glances up and sees a banana, and that's as far as he looks. A visionary looks up and sees the moon.”

Eoin Colfer book Airman

Source: Airman

“I bet you can't eat ten bananas!"
"I bet you're right.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.”

David Sedaris book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Source: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Art , Boy

“I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Angels , Question

“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

No known citation to Marx. First appears unattributed in mid-1960s logic/computing texts as an example of the difficulty of machine parsing of ambiguous statements. Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?client=firefox-a&lr=&as_brr=0&q=%22fruit-flies%22+%22time+flies%22+banana&btnG=Search+Books&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=1900&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=1970. The Yale Book of Quotations dates the attribution to Marx to a 9 July 1982 net.jokes post on Usenet.
Misattributed

Birthday , Time

“It's like a banana farm for guns!”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

“What a shame it is for a nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Beauty , Sense

“Electrical banana
Is gonna be a sudden craze
Electrical banana
Is bound to be the very next phase…”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Mellow Yellow (1966)

“I don't have counsel, I have more idioms as: Don't come to monkey mother with green bananas.”

Patricia Conde (1979) Spanish actress

No soy de consejos, soy más de frases hechas como: A mamá mono no le vengas con bananas verdes.
blog oficial Patricia Conde

“You said the war would pay for itself in fruit baskets. You said that our soldiers would march in the streets of Havana and people would shower them with bananas and cigars. That didn’t happen. Would you like to look into the camera and apologize to the American people?”

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

One of his questions to President Theodore Roosevelt in his series <i>Better Know A President</i> on <i>The Colbert Report</i> http://www.nofactzone.net/?p=1788 (17 May 2006)

War , People

“Believe it or not, bananas do contain a small quantity of Musa Sapientum bananadine, which is a mild, short-lasting psychedelic.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

The fictitious bananadine recipe, from chapter one, "Drugs".
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)

“Kelly, there are people in Somalia who would die for a banana.”

Jack Osbourne (1985) Son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne

The Osbournes television show.

People

“What kind of bananas do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

Replying to a fan criticising the poor seats a reviewer of a concert received. "Ask Al" Q&As for September 6, 2004 http://www.weirdal.com/aaarchive.htm#090604.

“Sometimes when you feed on another’s word you must eat it like a banana – you peel it first.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

“If this is justice, I am a banana.”

Ian Hislop (1960) Satirical comedian, Editor, Television and radio presenter

Statement to the press outside court, following losing a libel action brought by Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of Peter Sutcliffe, the "Yorkshire Ripper", on 24 May 1989, quoted in UPI article http://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/06/05/If-this-is-justice-I-am-a-banana/2768613022400/ and Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rjLTsncFKCgC&pg=PA154

Justice

“I wrote "Eat It" because I wanted to buy a banana boat for Christmas. It worked.”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

I Love the 80's 3D, VH1, 1985.

Christmas

“Can one imagine that The Bomb could ever be used "in a good cause"? Do not such means instantly, of themselves, corrupt any cause? The bomb is the natural product of the kind of society we have created. It is as easy, normal, and unforced an expression of the American way of Life as electric ice-boxes, banana splits, and hydro-matic drive automobiles.”

Dwight Macdonald (1906–1982) journalist

"Politics" magazine, (August, 1945).

Life , Way , Imagination , Nature

“I want to mention the British Government's attitude to poorer countries in relation to 1992 and the EEC. There was a delegation here recently led by Mr. Julian Hunte from St. Lucia concerning the implications of the Single European Act for the survival of the Windward Islands. There is a problem because of the likelihood of the closure of markets for bananas and some of the smaller eastern Caribbean countries and the low price that the producers receive for them. It is necessary for the British Government to do something to protect the markets that those islands have traditionally enjoyed. If not, they will become seriously impoverished and further indebted. They will lose out because of Britain's obsession with moving deeper into the Common Market and accepting the Common Market's single economy rather than protecting those who have traditionally supplied goods to this country.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/mar/17/overseas-development in the House of Commons (17 March 1989).
1980s

Problem , Country

“Here, we have a dog, a wolf, a coyote and a banana. Which one is not like the others?”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

100 Reasons Evolution is So Stupid! (2001)

Dogs , Wolf

“He was a young driver,
just out on his second job.
And he was carrying the next day's pasty fruits
for everyone in that coal-scarred city
where children play without despair
in backyard slag-piles and folks manage to eat each day
about thirty thousand pounds of bananas…”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

30,000 Pounds of Bananas
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Children , Despair

“Europe is to be turned into a banana republic by taxing labor – not finance, insurance or real estate (FIRE). Governments are to impose heavier employment and sales taxes while cutting back pensions and other public spending. … The financial privatization and credit-creation monopoly that governments have relinquished to banks is now to really pay off – at the price of breaking up Europe. … The unelected members of the European Central Bank have taken over planning power from elected governments. Beholden to its financial constituency, the ECB has convinced the EU commission to back the new oligarchic power grab. … In sum, the Neoliberal Revolution seeks to achieve in Europe what the United States has achieved since real wages stopped rising in 1979: doubling the share of wealth enjoyed by the richest 1%. This involves reducing the middle class to poverty, breaking union power, and destroying the internal market as a precondition.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

Who Wins? http://michael-hudson.com/2010/10/who-wins/ (October 3, 2010)
Michael-Hudson.com, 1998-

Wealth

“This textbook says "All the many forms of life on Earth today are descended from a common ancestor." What? You mean the birds and the bananas have a common ancestor?!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

100 Reasons Evolution is So Stupid! (2001)

Life , Bird

“[Harry listening to car radio] …he resents being made to realise, this late, that the songs of his life were as moronic as the rock the brainless kids now feed on, or the Sixties and Seventies stuff that Nelson gobbled up – all of it designed for empty heads and overheated hormones, an ocean white with foam, and listening to it now is like trying to eat a double banana split the way he used to. It's all disposable, cooked up to turn a quick profit. They lead us down the garden path, the music manufacturers, then turn around and lead the next generation down with a slightly different flavour of glop.
Rabbit feels betrayed. He was reared in a world where war was not strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it. He knows when the bottom fell out. When they closed down Kroll's, Kroll's that had stood in the centre of Brewer all those years, bigger than a church, older than a courthouse, right at the head of Weiser Square there,… […] So when the system just upped one summer and decided to close Kroll's down, just because shoppers had stopped coming in because the downtown had become frightening to white people, Rabbit realised the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible. If Kroll's could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they could close down God himself.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Life , Money , God , War

“Honest and peace-loving people shun the Courts and are prepared to suffer loss rather than fall into a Lawyer's clutches. However, the vagaries and inconsistencies of human nature are such that people are unwillingly dragged in and the experiences they undergo leave an indelible and nauseating impression. One of these is the flagrant and plausible manner in which clients are fleeced, and snowed under a series of documents and forms which not only puzzle them, but which are always accompanied with demands for payment. There is, of course, the Lawyer's fee, but this is accompanied with the fees of his clerk (real or imaginary), then typing charges, copying charges and numerous other innumerable heads and sub-heads. In this context it is refreshing to recall that eminent legal luminary, the late Pt. Motilal Nehru was paid Rs. 5/- as his first fee and the remuneration of Dr. John Mathai was a bunch of bananas. These latter have increased immeasurably in value and are good foreign exchange getters and it is not so easy now to slip on a banana peel!”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Lawyers

Love , People , Peace , Nature

“In fact, my art generally nauseated me. Often, when I wanted to set down a poem on an uncontaminated piece of paper, I′d start feeling sick and I did actually throw up in front of many drawings. I tremble all over in front of each picture-poem and before every action I would swallow a jar of pressed vine vermin. Time and again I strove for a kind of non-art, and time and again I failed, like a chimpanzee wanting to throw away a banana without peeling it. My disgust at producing art naturally atracted collectors, and ocassionaly photographers.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 238 (2002)

Art , Feeling , Nature , Time

“You see fourteen kinds of birds, and you conclude that birds and bananas are related? That's stupid! You should conclude that those fourteen kinds of birds had a common ancestor, but that's as far it ever goes, okay? I don't know a kinder way to say it, Charley, but that's stupid. We don't ever see a bird produce a non-bird.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

100 Reasons Evolution is So Stupid! (2001)

Stupidity , Way , Bird

“Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, "I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection". I have dubbed this kind of fallacy "the Argument from Personal Incredulity". Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

River out of Eden (1995)

Time , Personality

“Some people would rather give the appearance of feeling well by having a face-lift, exercising violently, or dieting severely—but they don't solve the problem; they only disguise it. If they ate properly, they wouldn't have to strain to seem fit; they would be fit. The simplest and most natural way usually turns out to be the easiest. Consider nursing, for instance. It's obviously the most natural way to nourish a baby, but it's also the easiest; you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night and fix bottles. If you're a vegetarian, you don't have to cook food in a smelly, greasy kitchen, or clean a lot of pots and pans with the rancid grease on them. Ugh! Though it may seem easier to take a slab of dead flesh and toss it in a broiler, it's much more interesting to do something creative with vegetables. So that my children don't have to snack on sweets or bowls of cereal—it's no better than sawdust, you know—I set out platters of avocadoes, pineapples, papayas, bananas, almonds, dried figs and prunes. … I serve organic apple juice in place of milk. I have the most beautiful golden honey for the herb tea—and so, you see, no one need feel deprived on a vegetarian diet.”

Cloris Leachman (1926) American actress

Interview in The Vegetarians https://books.google.it/books?id=vK_uAAAAMAAJ by Rynn Berry (Autumn Press, 1979), p. 20.

Children , People , Food , Beauty

“When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion. It's a very difficult and unhappy business. And so most of the time you're rather unhappy, actually, with this confusion. You can't penetrate this thing. Now, is the confusion's because we're all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid working against this, trying to figure out [how] to put the two sticks together to reach the banana and we can't quite make it, the idea? And I get this feeling all the time that I'm an ape trying to put two sticks together, so I always feel stupid. Once in a while, though, the sticks go together on me and I reach the banana.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Video interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lytxafTXg6c dated 1963

Stupidity , Feeling , Idea , Understanding

“So you're sayin that it's easy to send somat up to space, but you don't believe there's a little banana machine?”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 1 Episode 1
On Monkeys

“Being called close-minded by religious people is a bit like being called yellow by a bunch of bananas.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Take your God and shove him..." (21 August 2008) http://youtube.com/watch?v=M114bK4qaiM
2008

People

“The United States of America will become the United States of Banana. And Puerto Rico will be the first half-and-half banana republic state incorporated that will secede from the union. Then will come Liberty Island, then Mississippi Burning, Texas BBQ, Kentucky Fried Chicken—all of them—New York Yankees, Jersey Devils—you name it—will want to break apart—and demand a separation—a divorce. Things will not go well for the banana republic when the shackles and chains of democracy break loose and unleash the dogs of war. Separation—divorce—disintegration of subject matters that don’t matter anymore—only verbs—actions. Americans will walk like chickens with their heads cut off.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

War , Dogs , Democracy

“He was picking speed as the city spread its twinkling lights below him.
But he paid no heed as the shivering thoughts of the nights
delights went through him.
His foot nudged the brakes to slow him down.
But the pedal floored easy without a sound.
He said "Christ!"
It was funny how he had named the only man who could save him now.
He was trapped inside a dead-end hellslide,
riding on his fear-hunched back
was every one of those yellow green
I'm telling you thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, there were thirty thousand pounds of bananas.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

30,000 Pounds of Bananas
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Fear , Light , Christ , Speed

“Of obvious appeal to the humourless is the writer who comes on stage in a clown outfit or King Kong suit, with party hat and harem slippers, with banana skins and custard pies… It remains a sound rule that funny journalism can only flourish as the offshoot or sideline of something larger. No funny journalist who is that and nothing more will ever write anything lastingly funny.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of The Best of Modern Humour edited by Mordecai Richler, p. 364
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

“If this Government cannot get the adjustment, get manufacturing going again, and keep moderate wage outcomes and a sensible economic policy, then Australia is basically done for. We will end up being a third rate economy…a banana republic.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Speaking to John Laws on Radio 2GB, May 14, 1986.

“Those who say that without the monarchy Britain would be a banana republic are closing their eyes to the banana republic features which the cult of monarchy necessitates. Dazzled by the show, moreover, they may be missing other long-run tendencies towards banana-dom which it is the partial function of monarchy to obscure.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

“The common view that internal freedom makes for humane and moral international behavior is supported neither by evidence nor by reason. The United States has a long history of imposing oppressive terrorist regimes in regions of the world within the reach of its power, such as the Caribbean and Central American sugar and banana republics […]. Since World War II, with the great extension of U. S. power, it has borne a heavy responsibility for the spread of a plague of neofascism, state terrorism, torture and repression through large parts of the undeveloped world. The United States has globalized the “banana republic.” This has occurred despite some modest ideological strain because the developments serve the needs of powerful and dominant interests, state and private, within the United States itself.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 1.

War , World , Behavior , History

“villas with columns in different styles [in Louisiana, America] painted white, in gardens of magnolias, orange trees, banana trees, negroes in old clothes like characters from La Belle Jardiniere.... rosy white children in black [negro] arms.... a brilliant light which streams my eyes.... the Negresses of all shades, holding in their arms little white babies, so white, against white houses with columns of fluted wood and in gardens of orange trees.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

quote on his journey through America during 1872
Quote from his letter, Louisiana, America 1872; as cited in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 113-114
1855 - 1875

Children , Quotes , Tree , Light

“Yes, a private investigator like my Wilbraham Rice. The public have taken very strongly to Wilbraham Rice. He bites his nails and eats a lot of bananas. I don’t know why I made him bite his nails to start with — it’s really rather disgusting — but there it is. He started by biting his nails, and now he has to do it in every single book. So monotonous.”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Death in the Clouds (1935)

Books

“In my early 20s, I didn't know who I was or what I wanted. And if you're just getting to know yourself while you're in a serious relationship—well, it's almost like when you go through clothing phases where it's all Banana Republic all the time, and then it's something else. It's like you're trying on different personalities to see what fits, but there is that real you in there somewhere.”

Katherine Heigl (1978) American actress and film producer

InStyle magazine (2009)

Time , Personality , Clothes

“On a traffic light green means 'go' and yellow means 'yield', but on a banana it's just the opposite. Green means 'hold on,' yellow means 'go ahead,' and red means, 'where the hell did you get that banana at?”

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

Strategic Grill Locations

Hell , Light

“The crime is how we deliberately keep out of touch,
Pretending it has nothing to do with us…

How familiar the metaphors, we think, suspecting our
House servants of having killed & eaten our pet cats!

At the University, expatriate lecturers gesticulate,
Finger the leaves of Marx to a batch of yawning students,
Nervously trying to define something or other…

Colonies of storks in flamboyant trees look down on
The valley dust and the last of the sweet bananas.”

Jack Mapanje (1944) Malawian poet

"When the Shire Valley Dries Up Patiently"
The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993)

Cats , Thinking , Tree , Universe

“What else will you have? Nice banana and bacon sandwich?”

Agatha Christie book The Pale Horse

The Pale Horse (1961)

“I think the first thing is to warn INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) to be careful. It is in their interest to be good neighbors to Nigerians and prove that the country was not a banana republic as the ruling party is making us believe.”

Chuba Okadigbo (1941–2003) Nigerian politician

Interview with Charles Onyekamuo, This Day, 2003-04-13

Thinking , Country

“You know the man who told me about it on the bus,
as it went up the hill out of Scranton, Pennsylvania,
he shrugged his shoulders, he shook his head,
and he said (and this is exactly what he said)
"Boy that sure must've been something.
Just imagine thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, there were thirty thousand pounds of mashed bananas.
Of bananas. Just bananas. Thirty thousand pounds.
of Bananas—not no driver now. Just bananas!"”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

30,000 Pounds of Bananas
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Imagination , Boy

“While my companion is busily engaged in getting copy for a special article about the Market, I step nimbly out of the way of a swarthy gentleman from Calabria, who with his two-wheeled barrow is the last link in the immense chain of transportation connecting the farmer in the distant tropics and the cockney pedestrian who halts on the sidewalk and purchases a banana for a couple of pennies.”

William McFee (1881–1966) American writer

The Market

Way , Distant

“We could have waited for a banana to appear, but we believe in the spirit of cheese-development and confidence. We are not so poor that we are unable to carry out this project.”

Benjamin Mkapa (1938) Tanzanian politician and former president

On construction of the Unity Bridge, January 2005 http://www.eastandard.net/archives/cl/hm_news/news.php?articleid=10287
2005

Confidence , Appearance , Waiting

“(17.2. 1914) Beyond some bars, out of arm's reach, lies an objective [a banana]; on this side, in the background of the experiment room, is placed a sawn-off castor-oil bush, whose branches can be easily broken off. It is impossible to squeeze the tree through the railings, on account of its awkward shape; besides, only one of the bigger apes could drag it as far as the bars. Sultan is let in, does not immediately see the objective, and, looking about him indifferently, sucks one of the branches of the tree. But, his attention having been drawn to the objective, he approaches the bars, glances outside, the next moment turns round, goes straight to the tree, seizes a thin slender branch, breaks it off with a sharp jerk, runs back to the bars, and attains the objective. From the turning round upon the tree up to the grasping of the fruit with the broken-off branch, is one single quick chain of action, without the least 'hiatus', and without the slightest movement that does not, objectively considered, fit into the solution described.”

Wolfgang Köhler book The Mentality of Apes

Source: The Mentality of Apes, 1925, p. 94; As cited in: Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, 1964, p. 103

Jerk , Tree , Indifference

“My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana, I said "No, but I want a regular banana later, so … yeah."”

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

Strategic Grill Locations

“Frankly, I could carve a better opposition party out of a banana than the Tories.”

Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist

2009-05-14
Question Time
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/may/14/peter-hitchens-interview

“The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more… Consider Uganda, pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. … the British planted coffee and cotton and tobacco, and they were broadly right… If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain. You never saw a place so abounding in bananas: great green barrel-sized bunches, off to be turned into matooke. Though this dish (basically fried banana) was greatly relished by Idi Amin, the colonists correctly saw that the export market was limited… The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Discussing his views on Africans and "Instant Carbohydrate Gratification" The Spectator 2 February 2002
2000s, 2002

Fate , Feeling , Coffee , Understanding

“I was walking down the street the other day when this guy asked if I wanted a frozen banana…I said 'no' but then thought I might want a regular banana later, so…yeah.”

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

Just For Laughs: On The Edge - 2002

Guy

“Were God to give us, at last, the cable, or patch-cord that links the Sun to the Climate System it would have on the solar end a banana plug, and on the other, where it hooks into the Earth—in ways we don’t yet know—a Hydra-like tangle of multiple 24-pin parallel computer connectors. It is surely at this end of the problem where the greatest challenges lie.”

John A. Eddy (1931–2009) American astronomer

Source: NASA EOS Project Science Office: The Earth Observer January/February 2004, Vol. 16, No. 1 http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/eos_observ/pdf/Jan-Feb04.pdf, Page 4

God , Lie , Way , Problem

“Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

The Wall Street Journal (December 29, 2011).
Attributed

Business , Life

“Behold, the atheists' nightmare. Now if you study a well-made banana, you'll find, on the far side, there are three ridges. On the close side, two ridges. If you get your hand ready to grip a banana, you'll find on the far side there are three grooves, on the close side, two grooves. The banana and the hand are perfectly made, one for the other. You'll find the maker of the banana, Almighty God, has made it with a non-slip surface. It has outward indicators of inward contents — green: too early; yellow: just right; black: too late. Now if you go to the top of the banana, you'll find, as with the soda can makers have placed a tab at the top, so God has placed a tab at the top. When you pull the tab, the contents don't squirt in your face. You'll find a wrapper which is biodegradable, has perforations. Notice how gracefully it sits over the human hand. Notice it has a point at the top for ease of entry. It's just the right shape for the human mouth. It's chewy, easy to digest and its even curved toward the face to make the whole process so much easier. Seriously, Kirk, the whole of creation testifies to the genius of God's creation.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God , Study

“… have a banana!”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)

“Any ape can reach for a banana, but only a human can reach for the stars or even know what that means.”

V.S. Ramachandran (1951) Neuroscientist

"VS Ramachandran: The Sherlock Holmes Of Neuroscience," (Swarajaya, April 4, 2017) https://swarajyamag.com/magazine/any-ape-can-reach-for-a-banana-but-only-a-human-can-reach-for-the-stars

Star

“These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Close The Gaps: Disparities That Threaten America https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/close-the-gaps-disparities-that-threaten-america, Valley News, 5 August 2011
2010s

Dreams

“I say, those who cry ‘patriotism, patriotism’ around cricket, if all of them for one day did not drop banana skin on the streets or did not spit on the streets or obeyed traffic rules, the country would have changed. This huge energy was not wasted after cricket and was used to do one’s work honestly even for a day, that would be showing patriotism. I do not understand the definition of patriotism of these people.”

Mashrafe Mortaza (1983) Bangladeshi international cricketer and politician

https://newshour.online/2017/06/20/mashrafe-mortaza-says-dont-understand-patriotism-around-cricket/

Understanding , Country , People , Cry

“I do hope that karma is the keystone of the universe—even if I have to come back as a banana slug myself.”

Glen Cook (1944) American fiction writer

Source: Short Fiction, Bone Eaters (2015), p. 230

Universe , Hope