Quotes about paper
page 8

Edward Teller photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“Want to get on the front page of the paper? I have to make some vicious attack. I won't do that. I’m running an issue-oriented campaign.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Democratic debate (17 January 2016)
2010s

David Byrne photo

“I try to write about small things. Paper, animals, a house…love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

In the self-interview on Stop Making Sense

Calvin Coolidge photo
Gabriele Münter photo
John Banville photo
Richard Rumelt photo
Gillian Anderson photo
John Green photo
George Clinton photo

“What is soul? I don't know! Soul is a hamhock in your cornflakes… Soul is a joint rolled in toilet paper.”

George Clinton (1941) American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer

From "Funkadelic – What Is Soul," 1970; Cited in: Campbell Stevenson. " Top 10 songs about food http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,,617085,00.html," in: observer.guardian.co.uk, Sunday 9 December 2001

Kathy Griffin photo
Arlo Guthrie photo
Eddie Griffin photo
Mary Midgley photo
Why the lucky stiff photo
Kamal Haasan photo
Heath Ledger photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
Margaret Fuller photo
Stanley Baldwin photo

“I should like to make an observation to right honourable and honourable Gentlemen opposite. It is that I do not think they will help to produce the atmosphere in Europe which is so desirable by issuing papers that have been issued by the National Council of Labour, headed 'Hit Hitler.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons (11 March 1935); published in Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 299 cols. 50-1.
1935

Clement Attlee photo

“We are told in the White Paper that there is danger against which we have to guard ourselves. We do not think you can do it by national defence. We think you can only do it by moving forward to a new world – a world of law, the abolition of national armaments with a world force and a world economic system. I shall be told that that is quite impossible.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1935/mar/11/defence in the House of Commons (11 March 1935). Attlee's concluding observation was met by Conservative cries of "Hear, hear", with one MP shouting "Tell that to Hitler" according to The Times of 12 March 1935.
1930s

James Joyce photo

“Tis as human a little story as paper could well carry”

115.36
Finnegans Wake (1939)

Henry Hazlitt photo
Dashiell Hammett photo
Douglas Coupland photo
Wolfgang Pauli photo

“The setup of the book as far as printing and paper are concerned is splendid.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

Said regarding Elementare Quantenmechanik by Max Born and Pascual Jordan, as quoted in Quantum Dialogue (1999) by Mara Beller, p. 38

Will Eisner photo
Erik Naggum photo
Michael Collins (Irish leader) photo
Octavio Paz photo
Harry Chapin photo
Richard Rodríguez photo

“People are always dying in the Times who don't seem to die in other papers, and they die at greater length and maybe even with a little more grace.”

James Reston (1909–1995) Journalist, newspaper editor

New Leader (The New York Times (7 January 1963)

Charles Babbage photo
James Prescott Joule photo
Howard Scott photo
Upton Sinclair photo
Stella Vine photo

“No, it doesn’t mean anything, does it? People occasionally ask for your autograph or say, ‘I saw you in the paper’, but that doesn’t mean anything at all.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Billen, Andrew. "I Made More Money As A Stripper..." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article445303.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2, (2004-06-15)
On fame.

Joseph Strutt photo
Alan Rusbridger photo

“The papers should promote minority views as well as mainstream argument and should encourage dissent.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Alan Rusbridger (2008) on The Guardian priorities, cited in: Richard Lance Keeble, John Tulloch, Florian Zollmann (2010) Peace journalism, war and conflict resolution. p. 301.
2000s

A. Wayne Wymore photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
Osama bin Laden photo

“Radio From Hell: A great alternative to toilet paper.”

Radio From Hell (October 3, 2005)

Stanley Baldwin photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Wanda Orlikowski photo
John Ruskin photo
Charlotte Salomon photo
William Cobbett photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
John Hall photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“Where go the poet's lines?
Answer, ye evening tapers!
Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls,
Speak from your folded papers!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Poet's Lot; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Ron White photo

“She got convinced in her crazy head that I had sex with this girl in Columbus, Ohio…and I did, and I'll tell you why. When you enter into a monogamous relationship with somebody, you usually do it at a point in the relationship when you're having a lot of sex. So you're willing to sign the papers. "I'll only have sex with you, ever-ever-ever…ever." Well, if that person stops having sex altogether… why, you find yourself in quite a pickle. I'm a pretty good dog, but if you don't pet me every once in awhile, it's hard to keep me under the porch. I'm not as flexible as real dog. And I'll tell you what happened, too. I was in Columbus, Ohio, and I haven't been laid in three months. Three months! You can't go three months without having sex with me. I'll go have sex with somebody else. I know, I've seen me do it. I did a show one night. I came offstage, there's gorgeous woman, maybe 35, 40 years old, long black dress, slit up to her waist, GORGEOUS. Gimme a second. Just…And I walk off stage, she goes, "I thought you were hilarious. I wanna buy you a drink." I'm like, "I can't do that, I'm married." And she says, "I didn't ask if you wanna have sex, big boy. I asked if you wanna have a drink at my place."…Alright. Now, you know of that little guy that sits on your shoulder and reminds you of your prior commitments and your moral fortitude? I didn't hear a peep out of that guy. He hadn't been laid in 3 months either. He was speechless for like 20 minutes then he was like, "Suck her titty!"…"I was gonna!" I was having a 3-way with my conscience. Soon as the whole thing's over, he's back at his post, saying, "That was wrong, mister!" "Hey! 15 minutes ago, you were beating off on my shoulder, monkey boy!"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

I hate him. He smokes pot. He burned a hole in my other jacket.
They Call Me Tater Salad

Tao Yuanming photo

“White hair covers my temples,
I am wrinkled and gnarled beyond repair,
And though I have got five sons,
They all hate paper and brush.
A-shu is eighteen:
For laziness there is none like him.
A-hsuan does his best,
But really loathes the Fine Arts.
Yung and Tuan are thirteen,
But do not know "six" from "seven."
T'ung-tzu in his ninth year
Is only concerned with things to eat.
If Heaven treats me like this,
What can I do but fill my cup?”

Tao Yuanming (365–427) Chinese poet

白发被双鬓,
肌肤不复实/虽有五男儿,
总不好纸笔/阿舒已二八,
懒惰固无匹/阿宣行治学,
而不爱文术 /雍端年十三 ,
不识六与七/通子垂九龄,
但觅梨与栗/天运够如此,
且进杯中物
"Blaming Sons" (An apology for his own drunkenness, A.D. 406)
Translated by Yuanchong Xu, in Gems of Classical Chinese Poetry in Various English Translations (1988), p. 100
Variant translations:
White hair covers my temples—
My flesh is no longer firm,
And though I have five sons
Not one cares for brush and paper.
Ah-shu is sixteen years of age;
For laziness he surely has no equal.
Ah-hsuan tries his best to learn
But does not really love the arts.
Yung and Tuan at thirteen years
Can hardly distinguish six from seven;
T'ung-tzu with nine years behind him
Does nothing but hunt for pears and chestnuts.
If such was Heaven's decree
In spite of all that I could do,
Bring on, bring on
"the thing within the cup."
William Acker, T'ao the Hermit: Sixty Poems by T'ao Ch'ien (1952), p. 89
My temples are grey, my muscles no longer full.
Five sons have I, and none of them likes school.
Ah-shu is sixteen and as lazy as lazy can be.
Ah-hsuan is fifteen and no taste for reading has he.
Thirteen are Yung and Tuan, yet they can't tell six from seven.
A-tung wants only pears and chestnuts—in two years he'll be eleven.
Then, come! let me empty this cup, if such be the will of Heaven.
Lin Yutang, My Country and My People (1935), p. 68

John Bright photo

“The Corn Law is as great a robbery of the man who follows the plough as it is of him who minds the loom…If there be one view of the question which stimulates me to harder work in this cause than another, it is the fearful sufferings which I know to exist amongst the rural laborers in almost every part of this kingdom…And then a fat and sleek dean, a dignitary of the Church and a great philosopher, recommends for the consumption of the people—he did not read a paper about the supplies that were to be had in the great valley of the Mississippi—but he said that there were swede, turnip and mangel-wurzel; and the Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, if to out-Herod Herod himself, recommends hot water and a pinch of curry-powder. The people of England have not, even under thirty years of Corn Law influence, been sunk so low as to submit tamely to this insult and wrong. It is enough that a law should be passed to make your toil valueless, to make your skill and labor unavailing to procure for you a fair supply of the common necessaries of life—but when to this grievous iniquity they add the insult of telling you to go, like beasts that perish, to mangel-wurzel, or to something which even the beasts themselves cannot eat, then I believe the people of England will rise, and with one voice proclaim the downfall of this odious system.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech at an Anti-Corn Law League meeting (summer 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 93-94.
1840s

Anthony Watts photo
Arun Shourie photo

“The press is a ready example of their efforts, and of the skills they have acquired in this field. They have taken care to steer their members and sympathizers into journalism. And within journalism, they have paid attention to even marginal niches. Consider books. A book by one of them has but to reach a paper, and suggestions of names of persons who would be specially suitable for reviewing it follow. As I mentioned, the editor who demurs, and is inclined to send the book to a person of a different hue is made to feel guilty, to feel that he is deliberately ensuring a biased, negative review. That selecting a person from their list may be ensuring a biased acclamation is talked out. The pressures of prevailing opinion are such, and editors so eager to evade avoidable trouble, that they swiftly select one of the recommended names…
You have only to scan the books pages of newspapers and magazines over the past fifty years to see what a decisive effect even this simple stratagem has had. Their persons were in vital positions in the publishing houses: and so their kind of books were the ones that got published. They then reviewed, and prescribed each other’s books. On the basis of these publications and reviews they were able to get each other positions in universities and the like…. Even positions in institutions which most of us would not even suspect exist were put to intense use. How many among us would know of an agency of government which determines bulk purchases of books for government and other libraries. But they do! So that if you scan the kinds of books this organization has been ordering over the years, you will find them to be almost exclusively the shades of red and pink….
So, their books are selected for publication. They review each other’s books. Reputations are thereby built. Posts are thereby garnered. A new generation of students is weaned wearing the same pair of spectacles – and that means yet another generation of persons in the media, yet another generation of civil servants, of teachers in universities….”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Manu Chao photo

“Alone I go with my grief
Alone my curse goes
Running is my destiny
To get around the law
Lost in the heart
Of the big Babylon
They call me the clandestine
For not carrying papers

To a northern city
I went to work
I left my life
Between Ceuta and Gibraltar
I am a line in the sea
A ghost in the city
My life is forbidden
Says the authority”

Manu Chao (1961) French Spanish singer, guitarist and record producer

Solo voy con mi pena
Sola va mi condena
Correr es mi destino
Para burlar la ley
Perdido en el corazón
De la grande Babylon
Me dicen el clandestino
Por no llevar papel

Pa' una ciudad del norte
Yo me fui a trabajar
Mi vida la dejé
Entre Ceuta y Gibraltar
Soy una raya en el mar
Fantasma en la ciudad
Mi vida va prohibida
Dice la autoridad
Clandestino, song about the undocumented migrants.
Clandestino (1998)

David Davis photo

“There is a proper role for referendums in constitutional change, but only if done properly. If it is not done properly, it can be a dangerous tool. The Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, who is no longer in the Chamber, said that Clement Attlee—who is, I think, one of the Deputy Prime Minister's heroes—famously described the referendum as the device of demagogues and dictators. We may not always go as far as he did, but what is certain is that pre-legislative referendums of the type the Deputy Prime Minister is proposing are the worst type of all. ¶ Referendums should be held when the electorate are in the best possible position to make a judgment. They should be held when people can view all the arguments for and against and when those arguments have been rigorously tested. In short, referendums should be held when people know exactly what they are getting. So legislation should be debated by Members of Parliament on the Floor of the House, and then put to the electorate for the voters to judge. ¶ We should not ask people to vote on a blank sheet of paper and tell them to trust us to fill in the details afterwards. For referendums to be fair and compatible with our parliamentary process, we need the electors to be as well informed as possible and to know exactly what they are voting for. Referendums need to be treated as an addition to the parliamentary process, not as a substitute for it.”

David Davis (1948) British Conservative Party politician and former businessman

House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 26 November 2002, column 201 https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2002-11-26.201.7
On democracy and referendums

Gerhard Richter photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Perry Anderson photo

“Far from participating in a current literary scene agog with vogue and hyperbole, the LRB has kept what is widely perceived as a mandarin aloofness from it. Complicity with the institutions of literature, whether patrons or advertisers, is scarcely a charge that can be made against the paper.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Debts 1. "The London Review of Books" (1996; 2005)
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Perry Anderson / Quotes / Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005)
Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Debts 1. "The London Review of Books" (1996; 2005)

Judea Pearl photo
Daniel Handler photo
Andrew Dickson White photo
Hank Green photo

“So you go on and on, with this intellectual fly down, your underwear exposed, and toilette paper hanging out the back of your pants.”

Hank Green (1980) American vlogger

about "saying stuff wrong" Stop Embarrassing Yourself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIvrDsnKuQ8&feature=related
Youtube

Samuel Adams photo

“!-- A motion was made and seconded, that the report of the Committee made on Monday last, be amended, so far as to add the following to the first article therein mentioned, viz.: ' -->And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of time press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless when necessary for the defence of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Rejected resolution for a clause to add to the first article of the U.S. Constitution, in the debates of the Massachusetts Convention of 1788 (6 February 1788); this has often been attributed to Adams, but he is nowhere identified as the person making the resolution in Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Held in the year 1788 And which finally ratified the Constitution of the United States. (1856) p. 86. https://archive.org/details/debatesandproce00peirgoog<!-- Printed by the Resolves of the Legislature, 1856. Boston: William White, Printer of the Commonwealth.
Variant: The said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms...
As quoted in Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1850) edited by Peirce & Hale
Disputed

Thomas Kuhn photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Perry Anderson photo
Bill Hicks photo
Andy Warhol photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Akio Morita photo

“More people are interested in trying to shuffle paper assets around than building lasting assets by producing real goods.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Akio Morita (1989) in: Peter Krass ed. (2000) The Book of Management Wisdom: Classic Writings by Legendary Managers. p. 235.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot photo
Georg Cantor photo
Joseph Strutt photo
Peter Paul Rubens photo
Donald J. Trump photo
James Clerk Maxwell photo

“I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.”

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Scottish physicist

Letter to C. H. Cay, (Jan 5,1865) as quoted in American Journal of Physics, 44(8), page 470, 1976-08

Thomas Carlyle photo

“I purpose now, while the impression is more pure and clear within me, to mark down the main things I can recollect of my father. To myself, if I live to after-years, it may be instructive and interesting, as the past grows ever holier the farther we leave it. My mind is calm enough to do it deliberately, and to do it truly. The thought of that pale earnest face which even now lies stiffened into death in that bed at Scotsbrig, with the Infinite all of worlds looking down on it, will certainly impel me. It is good to know how a true spirit will vindicate itself with truth and freedom through what obstructions soever; how the acorn cast carelessly into the wilder-ness will make room for itself and grow to be an oak. This is one of the cases belonging to that class, "the lives of remarkable men," in which it has been said, "paper and ink should least of all be spared." I call a man remarkable who becomes a true workman in this vineyard of the Highest. Be his work that of palace-building and kingdom-founding, or only of delving and ditching, to me it is no matter, or next to none. All human work is transitory, small in itself, contemptible. Only the worker thereof, and the spirit that dwelt in him, is significant. I proceed without order, or almost any forethought, anxious only to save what I have left and mark it as it lies in me.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Lee Child photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Ken Livingstone photo

“Oliver Finegold: Mr Livingstone, Evening Standard. How did it…
Ken Livingstone: Oh, how awful for you.
Finegold: How did tonight go?
Livingstone: Have you thought of having treatment?
Finegold: How did tonight go?
Livingstone: Have you thought of having treatment?
Finegold: Was it a good party? What does it mean for you?
Livingstone: What did you do before? Were you a German war criminal?
Finegold: No, I'm Jewish. I wasn't a German war criminal.
Livingstone: Ah … right.
Finegold: I'm actually quite offended by that. So, how did tonight go?
Livingstone: Well you might be, but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard. You're just doing it 'cause you're paid to, aren't you?
Finegold: Great. I've you on record for that. So how did tonight go?
Livingstone: It's nothing to do with you because your paper is a load of scumbags.
Finegold: "How did tonight go?"
Livingstone: It's reactionary bigots…
Finegold: I'm a journalist. I'm doing my job.
Livingstone: … and who supported fascism.
Finegold: I'm only asking for a simple comment. I'm only asking for a comment.
Livingstone: Well, work for a paper that isn't…
Finegold: I'm only asking for a comment.
Livingstone: … that had a record of supporting fascism.
Finegold: You've accused me…”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Exchange with Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold (8 February 2005). These remarks led to an official investigation into Livingstone's conduct. Transcript from Guardian Unlimited http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gla/story/0,,1717652,00.html

Ron Paul photo