Quotes about button (180 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“When you have empathy toward your opponents, it helps you destroy them quicker. Because you understand exactly who they are. You understand what buttons to push. You understand if they're insecure, if they fear embarrassment. And you can really hit those buttons to strike a nerve.”

Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player

Fear , Help , Understanding

“Don't be cautious, don't be kind
You committed, I'm your crime
Push my button anytime
You got your finger on the trigger, but your trigger finger's mine”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

"Copycat"
Dont Smile At Me (2017)

“Our parents, our children, our spouses, and our friends will continue to press every button we have, until we realize what it is that we don't want to know about ourselves, yet. They will point us to our freedom every time.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Source: Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

Children , Parent , Freedom , Time

“Revolutions are not push button affairs; rather, they evolve only if there exists a reservoir of hope and grievance that can be galvanized into popular action.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

1 POLITICS AND ISSUES, Making The World Safe For Hypocrisy, p. 64
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

Hope

“Cause the registration of firearms so that you can eventually confiscate them. Gun control, Communist idea. Lenin said, "One person with a gun can control a hundred people without one." Imagine this scene. You're standing in a bank trying to cash a check. Somebody runs in there, pulls out a gun, and says, "Everybody lay on the floor!" So everybody lies on the floor. Now imagine this scene. Every citizen is armed. The guy runs in the bank, "Lay on the floor!" Everybody else pulls out their guns. You lay on the floor while they all stomp on your head. Every dictator throughout history has wanted gun control. It's just a normal thing. You have to control the guns. Every dictator has wanted that. Gun control isn't about guns, it's about control. Somebody sent me this button as a joke, "Proudly Unarmed". Would you wear this? What does this say to a criminal? "Rob me!"”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Isn't that what it says?
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

People , Guy , Imagination , History

“We can at last describe his tie, an Easter gift from a dressy butcher, his brother in law in Onhava: imitation silk, colour chocolate brown barred with red, the end tucked into the shirt between the second and third buttons - a Zemblan fashion of the nineteen thirties.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Pale Fire (1962)

Law , Fashion

“We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Silence , Clothes

“You may turn into an archangel, a fool, or a criminal—no one will see it. But when a button is missing—everyone sees that.”

Erich Maria Remarque (1898–1970) German novelist

Fools

“Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street… Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Secret , Soul , Star , Flowers

“Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything.

Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

Money , People , Imagination

“Arthur Dent: What happens if I press this button?
Ford Prefect: I wouldn't-
Arthur Dent: Oh.
Ford Prefect: What happened?
Arthur Dent: A sign lit up, saying 'Please do not press this button again.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Source: The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts

“The first time I came here, I got the chance to meet some people, and they said, "You know what, Gabriel, have you ever been here, have you ever been to Chicago?" I'm like, "No, it's my first time." They said, "Well, you know, we'd like to take you out eat if you're down." And I'm like, "Well, hello!" [Audience laughs] "I'm very down!" They took me to a restaurant called Portillo's." [Audience cheers] You've heard of it? So, we get there, and it was, it was very, very good. The hot dogs were delicious, I had a chicken chopped salad, it was amazing. I had a beef dip, really really good. But it wasn't until the meal was almost over that these new friends of mine said, "We'd like for you to try something you've might not have ever had before." And I'm like, "That's not likely." I said, "So, what is it you want me to try?" And they said, "Well, they sell a thing here at Portillo's called a Chocolate Cake Shake." [Audience cheers] I said, "You had me at 'Chocolate'." They said, "Well, you gotta go to the special window and you gotta order it from the lady." I go, "Okay, cool." So, I get up and walk to the lady, and she's like, "Can I help you?" I said, "Yes, my friends are telling me that I need to try this thing, called a 'Chocolate Cake Shake'." "Okay, what size would you like?" "How good is it?" "You'll want a large." [Audience laughs] "Alright, can I please have a large Chocolate Cake Shake?" "No problem." [Imitates her entering the order in on the cash register] And I pay, and she turns around and walks over to this little refrigerator that's on the counter, and she opens it up, and she pulls out a piece of chocolate cake. And I'm thinking to myself, "She must have misunderstood what I said. I didn't ask for a piece of chocolate cake, I asked for a Chocolate Cake Shake." She must've heard what I was thinking, because she's walking by and she's like, "It's gonna happen." She walks over to the blender, she takes the freaking lid off, she just looks at me and does this. [Mimes the cashier turning her hand over, dropping the chocolate cake in the blender] And I was like, "NO!" And she's like, "Oh, yeah." [Mimes the lady pushing the button and the blender blending the cake] And she pours it, and she hands me this, like, 44-ounce chocolate shake, which is WAY more than anybody should be drinking. The straw was so thick, you could almost put your thumb in it, okay? So, I grab this shake, and I begin to attempt to drink it. So, I'm [Mimics him trying to suck the shake through the straw, making heavy "MMM" sounds], and I can see the shake coming up. [Still makes the "MMM" sounds, while using his finger to show how show the shake's coming up the straw] And it hit, and then, all of a sudden, [Mimics his nipples getting hard] "WOOOOO!"”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

I'm Sorry For What I Said When I Was Hungry (2016)

People , Dogs , Way , Drink

“A lot has changed, El Paso, a lot has changed. One thing's for sure, I'm still the fluffy guy. And I say "fluffy" because that is the politically correct term, for those of you who don't remember I used to say that there were Five Levels of Fatness. Reason why I say "Used to say" is because now there are six! Uh-huh, I met the new one in Las Cruces. The original five levels are Big, Healthy, Husky, Fluffy, and DAMN! People ask, "What could be bigger than DAMN!" The new level's called "OH HELL NO!" What's the difference? You're still willing to work with level five. Example, if you're on an elevator and you're with your friend and this really big guy gets on and you and your friend look at each other and you're like, "DAAAMN!" But you still let the big guy ride your elevator. That's the difference. Level six, you see walking towards your elevator, [Deep growling noise] [Pretends to be a shocked passenger and starts pushing the "close door" button. ] "OH HELL NO!" [Growl] "NO!!" [Growl] "NO!!" [Pretends to kick the fat man out] That's the difference. The guy that I met was six foot eight, six hundred and fourteen pounds. Uh-huh, OH HELL NO!! And he was offended at my show. Not by anything that I said, but because of the fact that now at the shows I started selling T-shirts and apparently, I didn't have his size. Keep in mind, I go all the way up to 5X on the T-shirts and he was like, [Deep growling voice] "You don't have my size." I was like, "Dude, I didn't know they MADE you! I have up to 5X, I don't have [Growl] X!"”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

A picture of a dinosaur on the back of the tag, you know?
I'm Not Fat, I'm Fluffy (2009)

People , Way , Guy , Hell

“Do not even flippantly badmouth anybody this week. Button it up.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

November 2, 2010.
Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote

“I have black-out shades in my apartment, I push a button, it’s totally dark. I think I’m a bit of a vampire in real life, and there are times when I just want to be myself. I wanna be alone.”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

As quoted in Aaliyah's Vibe cover story: "What Lies Beneath"

Life , Thinking , Time

“Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere — buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.”

E.M. Forster book The Machine Stops

Source: The Machine Stops (1909), Ch. 1

World , Food , Music , Communication

“I had a soul above buttons.”

George Colman the Younger (1762–1836) English dramatist and writer

Sylvester Daggerwood, or New Hay at the Old Market, Scene 1, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Soul

“If none of us believe in war
Then can you tell me what the weapon's for?
Listen to me everyone
If the button is pushed there'll be nowhere to run”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Killer of Giants, written by Robert John Daisley, Ozzy Osbourne, John Osbourne, Jake Williams, Robert Daisley
Song lyrics, The Ultimate Sin (1986)

War

“With the technological revolution in the military field and the enormous organizational reconstruction of the army and navy, and now that their prime shock force is made up of rocketry, voices may quite frequently be heard asserting that this is an era of "push-button warfare" where man plays nothing but an auxiliary role. This view is wrong. Without arguing the great importance of rocketry and nuclear weapons, it is a fact that regardless of the scale, nature or method of warfare, man always played, and will go on playing, a major role in it. War will still require the participation of large masses of manpower- in one case directly in the armed struggle, in another, in war production and the comprehensive material backing of armed struggle.”

Georgy Zhukov (1896–1974) Marshal of the Soviet Union

p. 692

War , Nature

“In many, many fields. I expected people in the social sciences-economics, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, politics, sociology, religion and numerous other areas to pick up on it. It's been somewhat of a mystery to me why even to this day, so few social scientists have discovered how useful it could be. Instead, Fuzzy Logic was first embraced by engineers and used in industrial process controls and in "smart" consumer products such as hand-held camcorders that cancel out jittering and microwaves that cook your food perfectly at the touch of a single button. I didn't expect it to play out this way back in 1965.”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Response to the question: "How did you think Fuzzy Logic would be used at first?"
1990s, Interview with Lotfi Zadeh, Creator of Fuzzy Logic (1994)

People , Religion , Food , Way

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

On Mac OS X's Aqua user interface, as quoted in Fortune magazine (24 January 2000)
2000s

“When irrational terror takes to itself the fiat of moral goodness somebody has to die. … No man lives who has not got a panic button, and when it is pressed by the clean white hand of moral duty, a certain murderous train is set in motion.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

"It Could Happen Here - And Did," http://books.google.com/books?id=SxkSdaCoHL8C&pg=PA295&dq=%22arthur+miller%22+%22panic+button%22&ei=E4VoR9-SMI34iwHf9LFo&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=f0iKJxpOGjd5_Zs83QcNtAWLpH0 New York Times (30 April 1967); also in The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller (1996)

Training

“Biographies are but clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Vol. I, p. 2
Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

Clothes

“These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice, as inaudible as the streams of sound conveyed by electric waves beyond the range of our hearing; and just as the touch of button on our stereo will fill the room with music, so by opening one of these volumes, one can call into range a voice far distant in time and space, and hear it speaking, mind to mind, heart to heart.”

Gilbert Highet (1906–1978) British academic

The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning (1976)

Time , Heart , Music , Distant

“She told me once that the year she went to England she painted her buttons yellow so she would remember what the sun felt like.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Sun , Painting

“People usually asked her if she had a belly button. Of course she had a belly button. She couldn't explain how. She didn't really want to know.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

People

“I'll never understand how a man can live his life
With his finger on the self-destruct button,
Holding it there day after day,
Blinded by an obsession to press it
But lacking the conviction to do even that.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Bruiser

Life , Understanding

“I want to push the fast-forward button until I get back to happy.”

Terry McMillan book Getting to Happy

Source: Getting to Happy

Happiness

“The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Thinking , Time

“Jewels, lies, slips of paper, dried flowers, memories of thing long past, useless quotations, idle hands, beads, buttons, and mischief.”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Flowers , Memory , Past

“They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Women

“It was calling me, that button," he offered as his excuse. "I couldn't resist." -MULCH DIGGUMS ON A HIGHLY PRESS-ABLE BUTTON-”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

“We lose weeks like buttons, like pencils.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“America: It's like Britain, only with buttons.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

“It's supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

Source: Stand on Zanzibar

“(to Foaly) Captain Short's life is in danger, so push the button before I climb that tower and push it with your face!”

Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl

Source: Artemis Fowl

Life

“To use an electronics analogy, closing a book on a bookmark is like pressing the Stop button, whereas when you leave the book facedown, you've only pressed Pause.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Source: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Books

“What is technology?" Cian pulled his brother inside, pushed the button for the next floor. "It's another god.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Morrigan's Cross

God

“Jeez, someone needs to push the reset button on this planet.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

“I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater

and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I’d
never been your lover”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Source: The Spice Box of Earth

Lovers , Kiss

“My heart was a little bit broken, but I still had to go to school. I buttoned my dress shirt over it and my winter coat, too. I hoped it didn't show too much.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Source: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

School , Hope , Winter , Heart

“The phone rang in the comm. center. Ian consulted the monitor. "It's Dan." He pressed a button. "Kabra here."
Dan's voice crackled through the attic. "Don't say it like that," he complained. "Your name still gives me heartburn.”

Gordon Korman book The Medusa Plot

Source: The Medusa Plot

“He was the kind of guy that made a woman want to rip his shirt open and watch the buttons scatter along with her inhibitions.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Guy

“I want to be sitting in front of my computer, where you can press a button to block out your junk mail.
These two are my junk mail.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

“He's a bully. I love bullies. They have such big, shiny red buttons to push.”

Carrie Vaughn (1973) American writer

Source: Kitty and the Silver Bullet

Love

“Life needed a fast forward button. Because there were days you just don't want to live through, not again, but they kept coming around and you were powerless to stop time or speed it up or do anything to keep from having to face it.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: Sweethearts

Life , Time , Speed

“The universe is not short on wake-up calls. We’re just quick to hit the snooze button.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Moving On , Universe

“Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

361
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

Life , Peace , Silence

“Okay, okay, okay. I understood that pushing the elevator button over and over again would not make the elevator appear sooner. But I couldn't help myself”

James Patterson book Sundays at Tiffany's

Source: Sundays at Tiffany's

Appearance , Help

“I shall weave a suit of leaves. At once. With acorns for buttons.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the up button.”

Sam Levenson (1911–1980) American journalist

Funny

“The door banged open, and Eve rushed out, flushed and mussed and still buttoning her shirt. 'It's not what you think,' she said. 'It was just—oh, okay, whatever, it was exactly what you think. Now,?”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Lord of Misrule

Thinking

“It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Lie , Feeling , Communication

“It's so quiet this high up, the feeling you get is that you're one of those space monkeys. You do the little job you're trained to do. Pull a lever. Push a button. You don't understand any of it, and then you just die.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Feeling , Understanding , Training

“Jordan followed, buttoning his jeans and muttering about how there was nothing strange about having a pattern of dancing penguins on your underwear.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Dance

“Sometimes I’ve even wished there was a human pause button, where you could choose some point in your life where you could stay always.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Story of Us

Life

“What plethora of material goods can possibly atone for a waking life so humanly belittling, if not degrading, as the push-button tasks left to human performers?”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

Source: The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970), p. 352

Life

“Eyes wide and blank as the buttons on a first Communion coat.”

Donald E. Westlake (1933–2008) American novelist

Ask the Parrot (2006), using the pseudonym Richard Stark

“Until recently, the question was 'Why can't a woman be more like a man?' It should have been changed to 'Why can't both sexes be more like the best parts of each other?' Instead, the pendulum swung to the 1960s feminist lapel button Adam Was a First Draft. True enough. So are we all.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 310.

Sex , Question , Change , Parting

“Mr. Hellfrick was an atheist, retired from the army, living on a meager pension, scarcely enough to pay his liquor bills, even though he purchased the cheapest gin on the market. He lived perpetually in a grey bathrobe without a cord or button, and though he made a pretense at modesty he really didn't care, so that his bathrobe was always open and you saw much hair and bones underneath.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

“Among a stream of visitors to the 9th Division in England, while it was preparing for D-Day in the early months of 1944, was Prime Minister Winston Churchill. When he arrived to address the assembled troops, he went at first not to the speaker's stand but behind a small outbuilding. He reappeared minutes later buttoning his fly, making sure no one missed the reason for the delay. The troops loved it.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 20.

Love , Flying

“It's no more daunting in there than in a Georgian drawing room. You sit on a supremely comfortable chair- it'd be even better if it were a wingback, I'm surprised it's not- overlooking acres of leather and wood. You're never tempted, as you are in a Maybach, to push a button just to find out what it does. And then having to spend the rest of the journey trying to find which button undoes whatever the first button did. This makes for a hugely relaxing drive. So relaxing, in fact, that you sometimes forget that you're in a car. I did.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Rolls-Royce, p. 25
I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Cars , Drawing , Forgetting

“SPAN ID=The_process_by>The process by means of which human beings can arbitrarily make certan things stand for other things may be called the symbolic process. Whenever two or more human beings can communicate with each other, they can, by agreement, make anything stand for anything. For example, here are two symbols:
X Y
We can agree to let X stand for buttons and Y for bows; then we can freely change our agreement and let X stand for […] North Korea, and Y for South Korea. We are, as human beings, uniquely free to manufacture and manipulate and assign values to our symbols as we please. Indeed, we can go further by making symbols that stand for symbols. […] This freedom to create symbols of any assigned value and to create symbols that stand for symbols is essential to what we call the symbolic process. </SPAN”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Symbolic Process, p. 24

Communication , Freedom , Change

“First
Let the rockets flash and the cannon thunder,
This child is a marvel, a matchless wonder.
A staggering child, a child astounding,
Dazzling, diaperless, dumfounding,
Stupendous, miraculous, unsurpassed,
A child to stagger and flabbergast,
Bright as a button, sharp as a thorn,
And the only perfect one ever born.
Second
Arrived this evening at half-past nine.
Everybody is doing fine.
Is it a boy, or quite the reverse?
You can call in the morning and ask the nurse.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"First Child . . . Second Child"
Versus (1949)

Boy , Past , Perfection

“When you write your own lyrics, you tend to be over-analytical. One second everything you do is brilliant, and the next, everything is garbage, and I want to be able to express personal things without being made to feel stupid. One of the first times I remember writing something personal was on tour. I was feeling really freaky and down, and I looked in the mirror and I was wearing a red T-shirt and some baggy tennis shorts. I remember thinking that as bummed as I felt, I looked like some beach kid. And then I came up with that line—’I’m looking California / And feeling Minnesota,’ from the song ‘Outshined’—and as soon as I wrote it down, I thought it was the dumbest thing. But after the record came out and we went on tour, everybody would be screaming along with that particular line when it came up in the song. The was a shock. How could anyone know that that was one of the most personally specific things I had ever written? It was just a tiny line. But somehow, maybe because it was personal, it just pushed that button.”

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

Interview with Details Magazine, December 1996 https://pitchfork.com/features/article/10081-chris-cornell-searching-for-solitude/,
Soundgarden Era

Stupidity , Feeling , Thinking , Time

“GTD supplies the reset button for all parts of life & work.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

19 May 2010 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/14255178696
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Life , Parting

“[on being condescended to by a flight attendant] Ma'am, when I got up this morning, I didn't wanna be a jackass…you just pushed my jackass button.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Blue Collar Comedy Tour: One For the Road (2006)

“You see the button with the picture of the guy with the tray, and you push it, AND HE ARRIVES WITH A SANDWICH! …And you think: "Yes! Yes! I control sandwich monkey! I live in magic land, magic land, magic land."”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On hotel room telephone.
Monster (2004)

Guy , Thinking

“If nothing were left of an extinct race but a single button, I would be able to infer, form the shape of that button, how these people dressed, built their houses, how they lived, what was their religion, their art, their mentality.”

Adolf Loos (1870–1933) Austrian/Czech architect

Quoted in Berel Lang, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Summer, 1978), pp. 715-739; see http://www.jstor.org/pss/1342952.

People , Religion , Art , Housing

“I think I can pinpoint the one moment when the American style of dressing first appeared. It was in an appalling 1933 movie called Dancing Lady during an otherwise forgettable dance number. It also just happened to be Fred Astaire's first on-camera dance. But don't look at the steps. Look at the outfit: Astaire is wearing a single-breasted, soft flannel suit with two-tone spectator shoes and a turtleneck. You wish you could look that stylish! Later that year, in Flying Down to Rio, we get the full Astaire impact. The muted plaid suit is not all that striking, but Fred is wearing it with a soft button-down shirt, a pale woven tie, silk pocket square, bright horizontally striped hose and white bucks. Whoa! Now that's different. This melange of the classic and the sporty was an American innovation. As we approach the impeccable Astaire's 100th birthday on May 10, it's worth remembering that he remains the greatest exemplar of that style.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

G. Bruce Boyer in "Shall We Dress?" Forbes, May 3rd, 1999.

Shoe , Birthday , Thinking , Appearance

“I was gonna get a candy bar; the button I was supposed to push was "HH", so I went to the side, I found the "H" button, I pushed it twice. Fuckin'…potato chips came out, man, because they had an "HH" button for Christ's sake! You need to let me know. I'm not familiar with the concept of "HH."”

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

I did not learn my AA-BB-CC's. God-god dammit-dammit.
Mitch All Together (2003)

God , Learning , Christ

“I bought a brand-new air-mobile
It custom-made, 'twas a Flight De Ville
With a pow'ful motor and some hideaway wings
Push in on the button and you can hear her sing
Now you can't catch me, baby you can't catch me
'Cause if you get too close, you know I'm gone like a cool breeze”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"You Can't Catch Me" (1956)
Song lyrics

Singing , Baby

“[As a painting teacher] I'm not flirting, playing around. I'm serious about it... If you don't want to be serious about playing [at art], do something of no account. Go into banking. Buy collar buttons at five cents a dozen and sell them for five cents a piece.”

John Sloan (1871–1951) American painter

Ibid. p. 8.
The Gist of Art (1939)

Art , Teachers , Painting

“We arrest our inner creativity with external compulsions and irrelevant anxieties, at the mercy of constant interruptions by telephone and radio and insistent print, timing our lives to the movement of a production belt we do not control. At the same time, we give authority to the stomach, the muscles, the genitals--to animal reflexes that produce obedient consumers, whip-wielding man-trainers, slavish political subjects, push-button automatons.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

CHALLENGE: Diagnosis of Our Times
The Conduct Of Life (1951)

Time , Animals

“Industry's high powered lobbying effort is actually about much more than just passing bills. A convenient side effect of this lobbying crusade is to apply corporate spin to maximize effect. The rhetoric surrounding the lobbying shapes the broader debate related to who is to blame for obesity and diet-related health problems. Because lawsuits are such a hot-button issue, industry can take full advantage of the popular scapegoating of trial lawyers, while at the same time invoke all-American values and shove the personal responsibility theory down the nation's collective throat.”

Michele Simon (1965) public health lawyer

Source: Appetite for Profit (2006), pp. 287-288

Health , Problem , Effort , Time

“Ever wish you could draw a few diagrams, press a button, and have a working software system that meets your needs? Sound like magic? Perhaps, but that’s a major part of the Executable UML vision. The basic idea is that you will use a CASE tool to develop detailed UML diagrams and then supplement them by specifications written in a formal language, presumably the OMG’s Object Constraint Language (OCL). The basic idea behind Executable UML is that systems can be modeled at a higher level of abstraction than source code, simulated to support validation of your efforts, and then translated into efficient code. This higher-level of abstraction should help to avoid premature design, enable you to change your system as your requirements evolve, and to delay implementation decisions until the last minute.”

Scott W. Ambler (1966) Canadian software engineer/consultant/author

Source: Agile Modeling: Effective Practices for eXtreme Programming and the Unified Process (2002), p. 172

Idea , Support , Decision , Effort

“Technology - and its relationship to organizational structures, processes, and outcomes - has long been of interest to organizational researchers. Over the years, different research perspectives on technology have developed in parallel with research perspectives on organizations - for example, contingency theory (Woodward 1965, Galbraith 1977, Carter 1984, Daft and Lengel 1986), strategic choice models (Child 1972, Buchanan and Boddy 1983, Davis and Taylor 1986, Zuboff 1988), Marxist studies (Braverman 1974, Edwards 1979, Shaiken 1985, Perrolle 1986), symbolic interactionist approaches (Kling 1991, Prasad 1993), transaction-cost economics (Malone et al. 1987, Ciborra 1993); network analyses (Barley 1990, Burkhardt and Brass 1990, Rice and Aydin 1991), practice theories (Suchman 1987, Button 1993, Hutchins 1995, Orr 1996), and structurational models”

Wanda Orlikowski American computer scientist

Barley 1986, Orlikowski 1992, DeSanctis and Poole 1994
Source: "Using technology and constituting structures", 2000, p. 404

Study

“Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you'd break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone, with nothing left of you but some vague memory in the mind of a fixture like Ratz, though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Neuromancer (1984)

Way , Memory , Heart , Night

“I have the most perfect belly button. When I stick my fingers in it, I feel a nerve in the center of my body shoot up my spine.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Confessions of a Madonna, SPIN, 1985-05-01 https://books.google.ru/books?id=9ugCQfxwym0C,

Feeling , Perfection

“I mean, after a certain age you figure out just because a button works doesn't mean you have to push it.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)

Age

“Privacy has currently become a hot button issue, but I recognized years ago that there was a problem with the government having access to too much information on the citizens without establishing probable cause before they gathered it. And I started pursuing that. There were 400 private and public institutions around this country that were trying to access drones for surveillance purposes. It was not to protect us from harm, it was not to protect us from terrorists. There was nothing in statute that described what drones could be used for, what kind of information they could gather, what they could with that information once they gathered it.”

Matt Rosendale (1960) Member of the Montana House of Representatives

An Exclusive Interview with Congressional Candidate Matt Rosendale http://www.freedomsdiscourse.com/2015/05/24/an-exclusive-interview-with-congressional-candidate-matt-rosendale/ (May 24, 2015)

Problem , Country

“He must be a born leader or misleader of men, or must have been sent into the world unfurnished with that modulating and restraining balance-wheel which we call a sense of humor, who, in old age, has as strong a confidence in his opinions and in the necessity of bringing the universe into conformity with them as he had in youth. In a world the very condition of whose being is that it should be in perpetual flux, where all seems mirage, and the one abiding thing is the effort to distinguish realities from appearances, the elderly man must be indeed of a singularly tough and valid fibre who is certain that he has any clarified residuum of experience, any assured verdict of reflection, that deserves to be called an opinion, or who, even if he had, feels that he is justified in holding mankind by the button while he is expounding it.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

On Democracy (6 October 1884)

Men , Youth , Age , World

“I like pressing that emergency button on bus doors to escape.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

6 Music Show

“An honest man, close-buttoned to the chin,
Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

"Epistle to Joseph Hill", line 62 (1785).

Heart

“And so it seems that I'm, sewing jeans. And, 1st and 15 is just a sewing machine. So I,
cut the pattern and I, sew in seams. And, button in this hustling then publically, I'm
Buddy Lee. There's no bustin' them and cuffin' them is like. Ushering in the regime, they want
me to make Prince pants. But I withstand, I ain't gotten into that. A little big (B. I. G.) in the
waist, two-pocket (Tupac-it) on the back. Call them Lu-vi's, O. G.'s covered in blue dye”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

Albums, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor (2006)

“He gave himself up to God and pressed the button.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 15 (p. 284)

God

“Punk: Wow, everybody, it's John Cena. He comes out here every Monday night, he's excitable, he throws his hat at somebody, everybody loves it. I am so impressed at how you do that. You get all these people to believe you're that friendly, smiling, everyday man, when I know the truth. And the truth, John Cena, is you're thoughtless, you're heartless, and above all else, you are dishonest. I'm sure there's millions of people worldwide, including yourself, that would love to believe this is over a spilled diet soda, but John, this goes way beyond my spilled diet soda. Yeah. John, you were fired from the WWE. You were gone. You gave a very tear-inducing speech in the middle of the ring about how you finally get to see your mom and hang out with your little brother, and you said you were gonna go away. You were gonna be a man of your way, but what happened? You came back later that night, and then you came back the next week, and then you came back the next week, showing all of these people who aren't intelligent to see through your facade what I have known all along—that your word is absolutely worthless. And then there's TLC, you have the man beaten. Wade Barrett, a very tough individual, and you have him beat in a chairs match, but that's not good enough for you. You don't take the high ground, you can't walk off into the sunset with your victory; you drag the man off to the side of the stage and you drop fifteen steel chairs on him, and I wanna know exactly why you think that's acceptable behavior. I wanna know why you think it's okay to show up the next night on Raw and humiliate the poor guy…
Cena: That is balderdash! Fifteen steel chairs? That's insane. It was 23 steel chairs. And in case you forgot, Wade Barrett and the Nexus gave me about five thousand beat-downs, made me their personal slave, and ended my career.
Punk: You wanna talk about ended careers, you hypocrite? This is exactly what I'm talking about. You ended the career of my good friend Dave Batista. John! John, look at me when I'm talking to you. This is a reoccurring pattern with you. Once again, you have the man beaten—last man standing, he verbally submits, how humiliating, the match is won. But, no, you AA him off a car through the very steel ramp that I'm sitting on, which facilitated the end of his career. Now we'll talk about Vickie Guerrero. I'm surprised the lovely Vickie Guerrero doesn't up and quit based on all the abuse you heap on her. It's not just the physical things to the Wade Barretts and the Dave Batistas, but it's the name-calling, it's the mental abuse to somebody as gorgeous and beautiful as Vickie Guerrero.
Cena: "It's the this… it's the that." Okay, CM Punk is gonna play Mr. Fingerpointer. Well…1.—Dave Batista broke my neck; 2.—He showed up on Raw the next night and quit on his own terms. And C—I didn't just single out Vickie Guerrero. In case you haven't been watching for the past… eight years, I talk about everybody. Uh… Michael Cole. Michael Cole has an anonymous fetish with Justin Bieber and has the word "The Miz" man-scaped right below his belly button. Me! Look at me. I look like the crazy sex child of the Incredible Hulk and Grimace. And then there's you.
Punk: Yeah, and then there's me, who happens to not be laughing. I don't know if you noticed that. You're not funny.”

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

December 27, 2010
WWE Raw

Love , People , Truth , Smile

“Experienced military and intelligence professionals know that torture, in addition to being illegal and immoral, is an unreliable means of extracting information from prisoners. Much is being made of former CIA official John Kiriakou's statement that waterboarding "broke" a high-value terrorist involved in the 9/11 plot. There are always those who, whether out of fear or inexperience, rush to push the panic button instead of relying on what we know works best and most reliably in these situations. I would caution those who would rely on this example. It is far from clear that the information obtained from this prisoner through illegal means could not have been obtained through lawful methods. The FBI was getting good intelligence from this prisoner before the CIA took over. And there are numerous examples of cases where relying on information obtained through torture has disastrous consequences. The reality is that use of torture produces inconsistent results that are an unreliable basis for action and policy. The overwhelming consensus of intelligence professionals is that torture produces unreliable information. And the overwhelming consensus of senior military leaders is that resort to torture is dishonorable. Use of such primitive methods actually puts our own troops and our nation at risk.”

Harry E. Soyster (1935) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

"Former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency: Torture Produces Unreliable Information" http://web.archive.org/web/20070629145037/http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/torture/2007/12/former-director-of-defense-intelligence.html, Human Rights First (2007-12-11)

Fear , Law , Intelligence , Reality

“She wondered how people would remember her. She had not made enough to spread her wealth around like Carnegie, to erase any sins that had attached to her name, she had failed, she had not reached the golden bough. The liberals would cheer her to death. They would light marijuana cigarettes and drive to their sushi restaurants and eat fresh food that had traveled eight thousand miles. They would spend all of supper complaining about people like her, and when they got home their houses would be cold and they’d press a button on a wall to get warm. The whole time complaining about big oil.”

Philipp Meyer (1974) American writer

Source: The Son (2013), p. 82

Death , People , Food , Travel

“I don't care. I'm Mr. Buttons.”

Bill Allred

Radio From Hell (April 17, 2006)

“See, my parents didn't go to college, but they were determined to give us that opportunity. My dad was a pump operator at the city water plant, diagnosed with MS in his early thirties. And every morning I watched him struggle to get out of bed and inch his way to his walker, and painstakingly button his uniform, but never once did I hear him complain. Not once. He just kept getting up, day after day, year after year, to do whatever he could to give our family a better shot at life.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Remarks at Bowie State University ceremony (17 May 2013) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/17/remarks-first-lady-bowie-state-university-commencement-ceremony
2010s

Life , Family , Way , Parent

“Management is not a matter of pressing a button, pulling a lever, issuing orders, scanning profit and loss statements, promulgating rules and regulations. Rather, management is the power to determine what shall happen to the personalities and to the happiness of entire peoples, the power to shape the destiny of a nation and of all the nations which make up the world. Executive work, therefore, is statesmanship and the techniques which the executive employs are only incidental to the forces which he sets in motion and helps to direct. It is no exaggeration, therefore, to say that the management of the nation's large institutions, both in business and in government, determines the fate of millions of individual lives as well as the lives of generations unborn.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: The Executive in Action, 1945, p. 3-4, as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 419

Fate , People , World , Business

“It is still hard to believe that a man who sends out the Ten Commandments every year for a Christmas card can be so easy buttoning and unbuttoning.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"An Interest in Life" (1959)

Christmas