Quotes about knock
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Ray Bradbury photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Maureen Johnson photo
Rachel Caine photo
Stephen King photo
Richelle Mead photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Janet Evanovich photo
John Steinbeck photo
George Bernard Shaw photo

“You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.”

O'Flaherty V.C. (1919)
1910s
Source: Heartbreak House

Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Frida Kahlo photo

“I have suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down… The other accident is Diego.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Quote in Imagen de Frida Kahlo by Gisèle Freund in Novedades (Mexico City) (10 June 1951)
1946 - 1953

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Milton Berle photo

“If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door”

Milton Berle (1908–2002) American comedian and actor

Variant: If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.

Neil deGrasse Tyson photo
Steven Wright photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Anne Sexton photo
Dan Brown photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Markus Zusak photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo

“Knock your bad self out.”

Source: Bullet

Ernest Hemingway photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Celeste Ng photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo

“You can knock on a deaf man's door forever.”

Source: Zorba the Greek

George W. Bush photo

“I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, I Can Hear You, the Rest of the World Hears You (September 2001)

Charles Bukowski photo

“I know what a park bench is and the landlord's knock. There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

Kelley Armstrong photo
Steven Wright photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Robin Jones Gunn photo

“When the devil comes knocking on your door simply say "Jesus, it's for you.”

Robin Jones Gunn (1955) American writer

Source: Sunsets

Eoin Colfer photo

“Knock yourself out… Or rather, don't.”

Source: Artemis Fowl

Thomas Hughes photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo

“Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards! This is your life and mine! I've spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I'm in charge, nobody is going to knock it down.”

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

Rally in 1980, related to the then-ongoing Singapore Airlines pilot strikes due to salary issue http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32012346
1980s

“The signs on Bell’s door read “J. Bell” and “M. Bell.” I knocked and was invited in by Bell. He looked about the same as he had the last time I saw him, a couple of years ago. He has long, neatly combed red hair and a pointed beard, which give him a somewhat Shavian figura. On one wall of the office is a photograph of Bell with something that looks like a halo behind his head, and his expression in the photograph is mischievous. Theoretical physicists’ offices run the gamut from chaotic clutter to obsessive neatness; the Bells’ is somewhere in between. Bell invited me to sit down after warning me that the “visitor’s chair” tilted backward at unexpected angles. When I had mastered it, and had a chance to look around, the first thing that struck me was the absence of Mary. “Mary,” said Bell, with a note of some disbelief in his voice, “has retired.” This, it turned out, had occurred not long before my visit. “She will not look at any mathematics now. I hope she comes back,” he went on almost plaintively; “I need her. We are doing several problems together.” In recent years, the Bells have been studying new quantum mechanical effects that will become relevant for the generation of particle accelerators that will perhaps succeed the LEP. Bell began his career as a professional physicist by designing accelerators, and Mary has spent her entire career in accelerator design. A couple of years ago Bell, like the rest of the members of CERN theory division, was asked to list his physics speciality. Among the more “conventional” entries in the division such as “super strings,” “weak interactions,” “cosmology,” and the like, Bell’s read “quantum engineering.””

Jeremy Bernstein (1929) American physicist

Quantum Profiles (1991), John Stewart Bell: Quantum Engineer

Thomas Watson, Jr. photo

“If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.”

Thomas Watson, Jr. (1914–1993) American businessman and diplomat

Watson, Jr. cited in: Joseph Mancuso (1975) Managing technology products. p. 160.

Stuart Merrill photo

“Incense smokes, and love takes care,
In her blue bed the virgin died;
The fire broods, the day falls,
The Angel, sisters, knocks on the door.”

Stuart Merrill (1863–1915) American poet, who wrote mostly in the French language

Fume l'encens, veille l'amour,
Dans son lit bleu la vierge est morte;
Couve le feu, tombe le jour,
L'Ange, mes soeurs, frappe à la porte.
"La Mystérieuse Chanson"

Billy Joel photo
Seneca the Younger photo

“Whether we believe the Greek poet, "it is sometimes even pleasant to be mad", or Plato, "he who is master of himself has knocked in vain at the doors of poetry"; or Aristotle, "no great genius was without a mixture of insanity"; the mind cannot express anything lofty and above the ordinary unless inspired. When it despises the common and the customary, and with sacred inspiration rises higher, then at length it sings something grander than that which can come from mortal lips. It cannot attain anything sublime and lofty so long as it is sane: it must depart from the customary, swing itself aloft, take the bit in its teeth, carry away its rider and bear him to a height whither he would have feared to ascend alone.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

In Latin, nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit (There is no great genius without some touch of madness). This passage by Seneca is the source most often cited in crediting Aristotle with this thought, but in Problemata xxx. 1, Aristotle says: 'Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholic?' The quote by Plato is from the Dialogue Phaedrus (245a).
On Tranquility of the Mind

Bob Dylan photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Horace Mann photo

“Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

James Burgh, in The Dignity of Human Nature, Or, A Brief Account of the Certain and Established Means for Attaining the True End of Our Existence (1754); this is very widely misattributed to Mann, appearing at least as early as the publication of Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1867) edited by Mary Mann.
Misattributed

Dara Shukoh photo
Cass Elliot photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Morrissey photo

“Jools Holland: "Knock Knock!"
Morrissey: "I'm not in!"
Jools: "Oh, come on."
Morrissey: "I refuse to open the door."”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

On Later With Jools Holland (21 May 2004)
About the Notre Dame fire, Odds & Ends

Steve Kilbey photo
Bob Dylan photo

“The first two lines, which rhymed 'kiddin' you' and 'didn't you,' just about knocked me out, and later on, when I got to the jugglers and the chrome horse and the princess on the steeple, it all just about got to be too much.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Discussing the song "Like a Rolling Stone" in Rolling Stone magazine (1988)

Victor Villaseñor photo
Al Gore photo
Oliver Goldsmith photo

“There is no arguing with Johnson: for if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

From James Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791), October 26, 1769.

John Fante photo
Mike Tyson photo

“1987: "I could have knocked him out in the third round but I wanted to do it slowly, so he would remember this night for a long time."”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.boxing-monthly.co.uk/content/0008/three.htm
On boxing

Prem Rawat photo
Victor Villaseñor photo

“It was from this day on that I began to notice a real difference between our vaqueros on the ranch from Mexico and the gringo cowboys. The American cowboys always seemed so ready to act rough and tough, wanting to “break” the horse, cow, or goat or anything else. Where, on the other hand, our vaqueros—who used the word “amanzar,” meaning to make “tame,” for dealing with horses—had a whole different attitude towards everything. To “break” a horse, for the cowboys, actually, really meant to take a green, untrained horse and rope him, knock him down, saddle him while he fought to get loose, then mount him as he got up on all four legs, and ride the living hell out of the horse until you tired him out, taught him who was boss, and “broke” his spirit. To “amanzar” a horse, on the other hand, was a whole other approach that took weeks of grooming, petting, and leading the green horse around in the afternoon with a couple of well-trained horses. Then, after about a month, you began to put a saddle on the horse and tie him up in shade in the afternoon for a couple of hours until, finally, the saddle felt like just a natural part of him. Then, and only then, did a person finally mount the horse, petting and sweet-talking him the whole time, and once more the green horse was taken on a walk between two well-trained horses.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Henry Moore photo

“And for me Michelangelo's greatest work is one that was in his studio partly finished, partly unfinished when he died 'The Rondanini Pietà'. I don't know of any other single work of art by anyone that is more poignant, more moving. It isn't the most powerful of Michelangelo's works – it's a mixture, in fact, of two styles…. the changing became so drastic that I think he knocked the head off the sculpture… So the figure must originally have been a good deal taller. And if we see also the proportion of the length of the body of Christ compared with the length of the legs, there's no doubt that the whole top of the original sculpture has been cut away. Now this to me is a great question. Why should I and other sculptors I know, my contemporaries – I think that Giacometti feels this, I know Marino Marini feels it – find this work one of the most moving and greatest works we know of when it's a work which has such disunity in it?… But that's so moving, so touching: the position of the heads, the whole tenderness of the top part of the sculpture, is in my opinion more what it is by being in contrast with the rather finished, tough, leathery, typical Michelangelo legs. The top part is Gothic and the lower part is sort of Renaissance.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote of Henri Moore in his interview with David Silvester, in 'The Sunday Times Magazine', 16 Febr. 1964, pp. 18, 20-22
1955 - 1970

Jonathan Swift photo

“You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

On a Dull Writer, reported in John Hawkesworth, The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin (1754), p. 265. Alternately attributed to Alexander Pope by Bartlett's Quotations, 10th Edition (1919). Compare: "His wit invites you by his looks to come, But when you knock, it never is at home", William Cowper, Conversation, line 303
Disputed

“Every week I watch Stuart Hall on It's A Knock-Out and realise with renewed despair that the most foolish thing I ever did was to turn in my double-0 licence and hand back that Walther PPK with the short silencer.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Eddie Waring Communicates'
Essays and reviews, Visions Before Midnight (1977)

David Lloyd George photo
Lee Evans photo

“I don't come out on film. I get the red eye. Blokes like that: [imitates knocking someone out] "You fuckin' will in a minute, ya twat!"”

Lee Evans (1964) English stand-up comedian and actor

The Different Planet Tour (1996)

Sugar Ray Leonard photo

“I used to carry a copy of Ulysses with me everywhere just in case I was knocked down by a bus. It seemed more important than having clean underwear.”

Craig Raine (1944) Poet

The Guardian, February 10, 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/feb/10/books.booksnews2

Toby Keith photo
Anthony Burgess photo
David Bowie photo
Henrik Ibsen photo

“The younger generation will come knocking at my door.”

Solness, Act I
The Master Builder (1892)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Wilfred Owen photo
Charles Dickens photo
Stanley Holloway photo

“Sam, Sam, pick oop tha' musket,'
The Sergeant exclaimed with a roar,
Sam said 'Tha' knocked it doon, reason tha'll pick it oop,
Or it stays where it is on't floor”

Stanley Holloway (1890–1982) English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist

Sam, Sam, Pick Oop Tha' Musket

Robert Baden-Powell photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Stanley Holloway photo

“Sam, Sam, pick oop tha' musket,'
Lieutenant exclaimed with some 'eat,
Sam said, 'he knocked it down, reason he picks it oop,
Or it stays where it is, at me feet”

Stanley Holloway (1890–1982) English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist

Sam, Sam, Pick Oop Tha' Musket