Quotes about mail

A collection of quotes on the topic of mail, mailing, likeness, e-mail.

Quotes about mail

Chris Cornell photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo

“I eagerly await tomorrow's mail to have news of Russia and Poland. For now, I have to content myself with a few vague rumors which float around. I have heard about new, bloody skirmishes in Poland between the people and troops; I was told that, even in Russia, there was a conspiracy against the czar and the whole royal family.
I am equally passionate about the struggle between the North and the Southern American states. Of course, my heart goes out to the North. But alas! It is the South who acted with the most force, wisdom, and solidarity, which makes them worthy of the triumph they have received in every encounter so far. It is true that the South has been preparing for war for three years now, while the North has been forced to improvise. The surprising success of the ventures of the American people, for the most part happy; the banality of the material well being, where the heart is absent; and the national vanity, altogether infantile and sustained with very little cost; all seem to have helped deprave these people, and perhaps this stubborn struggle will be beneficial to them in so much as it helps the nation regain its lost soul. This is my first impression; but it could very well be that I will change my mind upon seeing things up close. The only thing is, I will not have enough time to examine really closely.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Letter http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bakunin/letters/toherzenandogareff.html to Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen and Ogareff from San Francisco (3 October 1861); published in Correspondance de Michel Bakounine (1896) edited by Michel Dragmanov

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, yet less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems; we have more gadgets but less satisfaction; more medicine, yet less wellness; we take more vitamins but see fewer results. We drink too much; smoke too much; spend too recklessly; laugh too little; drive too fast; get too angry; stay up too late; get up too tired; read too seldom; watch TV too much and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values; we fly in faster planes to arrive there quicker, to do less and return sooner; we sign more contracts only to realize fewer profits; we talk too much; love too seldom and lie too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things; we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice; we write more, but learn less; plan more, but accomplish less; we make faster planes, but longer lines; we learned to rush, but not to wait; we have more weapons, but less peace; higher incomes, but lower morals; more parties, but less fun; more food, but less appeasement; more acquaintances, but fewer friends; more effort, but less success. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; drive smaller cars that have bigger problems; build larger factories that produce less. We've become long on quantity, but short on quality.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, but short character; steep in profits, but shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure and less fun; higher postage, but slower mail; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorces; these quick trips, disposable diapers, cartridge living, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies and pills that do everything from cheer, to prevent, quiet or kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stock room.”

"The Paradox of Our Age"; these statements were used in World Wide Web hoaxes which attributed them to various authors including George Carlin, a teen who had witnessed the Columbine High School massacre, the Dalai Lama and Anonymous; they are quoted in "The Paradox of Our Time" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp
Words Aptly Spoken (1995)

George Carlin photo

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, that we've enjoyed some good times this evening, and enjoyed some laughter together, I feel it is my obligation to remind you of some of the negative, depressing, dangerous, life-threatening things that life is really all about; things you have not been thinking about tonight, but which will be waiting for you as soon as you leave the theater or as soon as you turn off your television sets. Anal rape, quicksand, body lice, evil spirits, gridlock, acid rain, continental drift, labor violence, flash floods, rabies, torture, bad luck, calcium deficiency, falling rocks, cattle stampedes, bank failure, evil neighbors, killer bees, organ rejection, lynching, toxic waste, unstable dynamite, religious fanatics, prickly heat, price fixing, moral decay, hotel fires, loss of face, stink bombs, bubonic plague, neo-Nazis, friction, cereal weevils, failure of will, chain reaction, soil erosion, mail fraud, dry rot, voodoo curse, broken glass, snake bite, parasites, white slavery, public ridicule, faithless friends, random violence, breach of contract, family scandals, charlatans, transverse myelitis, structural defects, race riots, sunspots, rogue elephants, wax buildup, killer frost, jealous coworkers, root canals, metal fatigue, corporal punishment, sneak attacks, peer pressure, vigilantes, birth defects, false advertising, ungrateful children, financial ruin, mildew, loss of privileges, bad drugs, ill-fitting shoes, widespread chaos, Lou Gehrig's disease, stray bullets, runaway trains, chemical spills, locusts, airline food, shipwrecks, prowlers, bathtub accidents, faulty merchandise, terrorism, discrimination, wrongful cremation, carbon deposits, beef tapeworm, taxation without representation, escaped maniacs, sunburn, abandonment, threatening letters, entropy, nine-mile fever, poor workmanship, absentee landlords, solitary confinement, depletion of the ozone layer, unworthiness, intestinal bleeding, defrocked priests, loss of equilibrium, disgruntled employees, global warming, card sharks, poisoned meat, nuclear accidents, broken promises, contamination of the water supply, obscene phone calls, nuclear winter, wayward girls, mutual assured destruction, rampaging moose, the greenhouse effect, cluster headaches, social isolation, Dutch elm disease, the contraction of the universe, paper cuts, eternal damnation, the wrath of God, and PARANOIAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Playing With Your Head (1986)

Justin Bieber photo

“I try to read all of my fan mail. A lot of them send me candy, which I'm not allowed to eat 'cause my mom says it might be poisonous.”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Interview with TIME, as quoted by SugarScape http://www.sugarscape.com/main-topics/lads/506576/justin-biebers-mum-thinks-fans-are-trying-poison-him, May 2010

Nikola Tesla photo
Rush Limbaugh photo
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry photo

“Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures — in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator

Ch III : The Tool
Terre des Hommes (1939)
Context: Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures — in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together. Do our dreamers hold that the invention of writing, of printing, of the sailing ship, degraded the human spirit?
It seems to me that those who complain of man's progress confuse ends with means. True, that man who struggles in the unique hope of material gain will harvest nothing worth while. But how can anyone conceive that the machine is an end? It is a tool. As much a tool as is the plough. The microscope is a tool. What disservice do we do the life of the spirit when we analyze the universe through a tool created by the science of optics, or seek to bring together those who love one another and are parted in space?

George Stephenson photo
Zelda Fitzgerald photo
Janet Fitch photo

“I hated labels anyway. People didn’t fit in slots—prostitute, housewife, saint—like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.”

Variant: I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.
Source: White Oleander

Elizabeth Kostova photo
Brandon Mull photo
Rick Riordan photo

“I’m having a hard time writing about Sunday. Getting the long hollow feeling of Sundays. No mail and faraway lawn mowers, the hopelessness.”

Lucia Berlin (1936–2004) American writer

Source: A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

Jennifer Egan photo
Scott Adams photo
Meg Cabot photo
James Patterson photo
Sophie Kinsella photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Janet Evanovich photo
Sue Monk Kidd photo
Richard Nixon photo

“Well, then, some of you will say, and rightly, "Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator? Why did you have to have it?" Let me tell you in just a word how a Senate office operates. First of all, a Senator gets $15,000 a year in salary. He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year, a round trip, that is, for himself, and his family between his home and Washington, DC. And then he gets an allowance to handle the people that work in his office to handle his mail. And the allowance for my State of California, is enough to hire 13 people. And let me say, incidentally, that that allowance is not paid to the Senator. It is paid directly to the individuals that the Senator puts on his payroll. But all of these people and all of these allowances are for strictly official business; business, for example, when a constituent writes in and wants you to go down to the Veteran's Administration and get some information about his GI policy — items of that type, for example. But there are other expenses that are not covered by the Government. And I think I can best discuss those expenses by asking you some questions.Do you think that when I or any other senator makes a political speech, has it printed, should charge the printing of that speech and the mailing of that speech to the taxpayers? Do you think, for example, when I or any other Senator makes a trip to his home State to make a purely political speech that the cost of that trip should be charged to the taxpayers? Do you think when a Senator makes political broadcasts or political television broadcasts, radio or television, that the expense of those broadcasts should be charged to the taxpayers? Well I know what your answer is. It's the same answer that audiences give me whenever I discuss this particular problem: The answer is no. The taxpayers shouldn't be required to finance items which are not official business but which are primarily political business.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1950s, Checkers speech (1952)

Eliot Spitzer photo

“Never talk when you can nod and never nod when you can wink and never write an e-mail, because it's death. You're giving prosecutors all the evidence we need.”

Eliot Spitzer (1959) 54th Governor of New York

Warning to criminals.
Pressure Mounts on Spitzer to Resign Over Sex Scandal, PBS NewsHour, March 11, 2008, 2012-10-15 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june08/spitzer_03-11.html,

Ian Hislop photo
Larry Wall photo

“tt>if (rsfp = mypopen('/bin/mail root','w')) { /* heh, heh */

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

Source code, <code>perl.c</code>

Cassandra Clare photo
Omid Djalili photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Tony Snow photo

“Look, I hate to tell you, but it's not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill and there have been other scandals as you know that have been more than simply naughty e-mails.”

Tony Snow (1955–2008) American White House Press Secretary

Quoted on CNN http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN, concerning sexually explicit e-mails and instant messages sent by Congressman Mark Foley to congressional pages that were underage. (2006-10-02).

Sarah Chang photo
Robert Fisk photo
Richard Stallman photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
Eliza Dushku photo
Antonin Scalia photo

“The outcome of today's case will doubtless be heralded as a triumph of judicial statesmanship. It is not that, unless it is statesmanlike needlessly to prolong this Court's self-awarded sovereignty over a field where it has little proper business, since the answers to most of the cruel questions posed are political, and not juridical -- a sovereignty which therefore quite properly, but to the great damage of the Court, makes it the object of the sort of organized public pressure that political institutions in a democracy ought to receive. […] Ordinarily, speaking no more broadly than is absolutely required avoids throwing settled law into confusion; doing so today preserves a chaos that is evident to anyone who can read and count. Alone sufficient to justify a broad holding is the fact that our retaining control, through Roe, of what I believe to be, and many of our citizens recognize to be, a political issue, continuously distorts the public perception of the role of this Court. We can now look forward to at least another Term with carts full of mail from the public, and streets full of demonstrators, urging us -- their unelected and life-tenured judges who have been awarded those extraordinary, undemocratic characteristics precisely in order that we might follow the law despite the popular will -- to follow the popular will. Indeed, I expect we can look forward to even more of that than before, given our indecisive decision today. […] It was an arguable question today whether [Section] 188.029 of the Missouri law contravened this Court’s understanding of Roe v. Wade, and I would have examined Roe rather than examining the contravention. […] Of the four courses we might have chosen today -- to reaffirm Roe, to overrule it explicitly, to overrule it sub silentio, or to avoid the question -- the last is the least responsible. On the question of the constitutionality of [Section] 188.029, I concur in the judgment of the Court and strongly dissent from the manner in which it has been reached.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment), 492 U.S. 490 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/492/490#writing-USSC_CR_0492_0490_ZC1, No. 88-605 ; decided July 3, 1989
1980s

Daniel J. Bernstein photo
Michael Chabon photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo
Christopher Titus photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Phil Brooks photo
Gabrielle Giffords photo

“Our office corner has really become an area where the Tea party movement congregates and the rhetoric is really heated. Not just the calls but the e-mails, the slurs.”

Gabrielle Giffords (1970) American politician

Comment following a window being smashed at her congressional office in Arizona &mdash National Post, Shooting could subdue overheated U.S. political rhetoric, Richard Cowan, Reuters, January 9, 2011, 2011-01-10 http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Shooting+could+subdue+overheated+political+rhetoric/4082898/story.html, alternate link http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7083G120110110

Joe Satriani photo

“I assume most guitar players are like me. They're playing, having fun; then they get a magazine in the mail that says "Shred Is Dead" and they say, "What the Hell?"”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

They throw it away and keep on playing.
As quoted in "Shred on Arrival" in Guitar World (November 1993).

Neal Stephenson photo

“I doubt we would support the guy, based on what we’ve seen. You’ve seen the e-mails, right? So what makes you think I would support him? It’s absolutely incompatible with anything we stand for. You saw the e-mails, right? Pornographic, racist, e-mails? How do you think that we would ever support something like that? Why would you even ask that question?”

Mark Williams American conservative activist, radio talk show host and author

Discussing New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, who was recruited by local Tea Party activists and was accused of forwarding racially insensitive and pornographic e-mails, at an April 12 Tea Party Express bus stop in Buffalo, New York
Source: http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/24840/tea-party-leader-have-you-seen-the-e-mails/

Theo de Raadt photo
Seba Johnson photo

“I've talked to him on the phone, received notes through the mail, but I've never seen him face to face. I sent him my last LP and I understand that he turned his head away as he took the disc out, saying, "I don't want to see what he looks like. I have this image and I don't want to destroy it." So there's a certain amount of mystery involved. I suppose if he knew I were a gray-haired, older guy with a big paunch, he might say, "Oh, that ruins it."”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

On his working relationship with Prince, as quoted in "He Arranges, Composes, Performs: Fischer: A Renaissance Man Of Music" http://articles.latimes.com/1987-05-14/entertainment/ca-8949_1_clare-fischer by Zan Stewart, in The Los Angeles Times (May 14, 1987)

Ricou Browning photo

“I get fan mail almost every day, and lots of calls from people who say, "We’re having a party. Could you bring your rubber suit over and jump in the pool and scare everybody?."”

Ricou Browning (1930) American film actor and director

Wet and Wild http://people.com/archive/wet-and-wild-vol-41-no-12/ (April 4, 1994)

Hakim Bey photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“Avoid conducting official Department business from your personal e-mail accounts.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (June 28, 2011) Securing Personal E-mail Accounts, United States Department of State, cable, to: All Diplomatic and Consular Posts.
Secretary of State (2009–2013)

Dave Barry photo

“In sports, the U. S. Open is not actually held because it's more efficient just to mail the check to Tiger Woods.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far) (2007)

Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Rudy Giuliani photo

“Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman, and the only thing she’s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her e-mails.”

Rudy Giuliani (1944–2001) American businessperson and politician, former mayor of New York City

October 2, 2016, on ABC's This Week
Source: 'This Week' Transcript: Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Bernie Sanders" http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-rudy-giuliani-sen-bernie-sanders/story?id=42496702. ABC News. 2016-10-02. Retrieved 2016-10-02.

Charles Bukowski photo
Bill Gates photo

“Does the e-mail say it's about 'enlargement' — that might be spam.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

BBC News (24 January 2004) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3426367.stm
2000s

Bill Engvall photo
Peter Wentz photo

“Q: Will Fall Out Boy ever become Fall Out Man?
A: The chest hair is in the mail. So hopefully we will in four to six weeks. depending on shipping.”

Peter Wentz (1979) American musician

http://www.falloutboyrock.com/falloutboy/blog_detail.php?uf_system_id=3 Fall Out Boy Rock Q&A section. Question from April 13, 2007.
FallOutBoyRock.com

Oscar Levant photo
Frank Klepacki photo
Margaret Cho photo

“Whenever I get hate mail, the verbal assault is always racial.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, RACISM AND CIVIL RIGHTS