Quotes about silly (388 quotes, page 4)

“threats like, "if you don't mind I will beat on your behind"
"slap you, slap you silly" made me say,
"o, what's the matter here?"”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, In My Tribe (1987), What's The Matter Here?

“What do you say? cried they; do you call it Entelechy or Endelechy? Truly, truly, sweet cousins, quoth Panurge, we are a silly sort of grout-headed lobcocks, an't please you; be so kind as to forgive us if we chance to knock words out of joint. As for anything else, we are downright honest fellows and true hearts.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 19 : How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy

Forgiveness , Chance , Heart

“What on earth has given opera its prestige in western civilisation — a prestige that has outlasted so many different fashions and ways of thought? Why are people prepared to sit silently for three hours listening to a performance of which they do not understand a word and of which they very seldom know the plot? Why do quite small towns all over Germany and Italy still devote a large portion of their budgets to this irrational entertainment? Partly, of course, because it is a display of skill, like a football match. But chiefly, I think, because it is irrational. "What is too silly to be said may be sung" — well, yes; but what is too subtle to be said, or too deeply felt, or too revealing or too mysterious — these things can also be sung and can only be sung.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 9: The Pursuit of Happiness; "What is too silly to be said may be sung" is a commonly used translation or paraphrase of lines from Act I, Scene ii of the play The Barber of Seville by Pierre de Beaumarchais, which was the basis of famous operas.

People , Way , Fashion , Understanding

“The band broke up because I couldn't bear Rotten anymore because he was an embarrassment with his silly hats and his, like, shabby, dirty, nasty looking appearance.”

Sid Vicious (1957–1979) English bassist and vocalist

On leaving the Sex Pistols; reported in Julien Temple, The Filth and the Fury: The Sex Pistols (2000), p. 207.

Appearance

“Perhaps it is a sign of civilizational progress that the very idea of threatening a nuclear first strike today seems borderline silly or morally obscene.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 5

Idea

“Pages full of unlikely words,
Handfuls of hot, bitter tears.
They call the author a silly fool,
For they know not what he means.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 4

Fools , Tear

“And I don't like doing silly things (except on purpose).”

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

Usenet postings, 1992

“… confess now- could you lie with the wife of your friend? could you debauch his sister? could you defraud a poor creditor? could you by gambling rejoice in the outwitting a novice of all his possessions?- No! why then thou art a silly fellow, incumbered with three abominable inmates; to wit- Conscience, Honesty, and Good-nature”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 43: 17 Oct 1779, to Mr M___ ).

Lie , Art , Nature , Sister

“Because of the security reasons for one thing and, second, my wife doesn't like to have her hair blown about. Have you got another silly question?”

John Prescott (1938) Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1997–2007)

Comment on ITN news when asked why he had taken a car 250 yards from his hotel to the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth, instead of walking (30 September 1999), as quoted in "Prescott walks it like he talks it " BBC News online (30 September 1999) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/461555.stm

Question

“The 'Women' [paintings] had to do with the female painted through all ages, all those idols, and maybe I was stuck to a certain extent; I couldn't go on. It did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light – all this silly talk about line, colour and form – because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

interview conducted by David Sylvester for the BBC, 1962; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 45.
1960's

Women , Age , Light , Painting

“[Describing the bazar held in Delhi near the Red Fort, Francois Bernier (seventeenth century) says that] “Hither, likewise, the astrologers resort, both Mahometan and Gentile. These wise doctors remain seated in the sun, on a dusty piece of carpet, handling some old mathematical instruments, and having open before them a large book which represents the sign of the Zodiac. In this way they attract the attention of the passenger… by whom they are considered as so many infallible oracles. They tell a poor person his fortune for a payssa… Silly women, wrapping themselves in a white cloth from head to foot, flock to the astrologers, whisper to them all the transaction of their lives, and disclose every secret with no more reserve than is practised by a penitent in the presence of her confessor. The ignorant and infatuated people really believe that the stars have an influence (on their lives) which the astrologers can control.””

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 1
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

Women , People , Secret , Books

“Complaints about the damage done to our "democracy" by outsiders are worse than silly. Such damage pales compared to what we Americans have done to a compact rooted in the consent of the governed and the drastically limited and delimited powers of those who govern.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Whodunit? Who Meddled With Out Democracy? http://www.wnd.com/2018/02/whodunit-who-meddled-with-our-democracy/" February 8, 2018, WND.com.
2010s, 2018

Democracy

“Now the drummers did not rush out to grab Chaney or shoot him but instead scattered like poultry while Chaney took my father's purse from his warm body and ripped open the trouser band and took the gold pieces too. I cannot say how he knew about them. When he finished his thieving he raced to the end of the street and struck the night watchman at the stock barn a fierce blow to the mouth with his rifle stock, knocking him silly. He put a bridle on Papa's horse Judy and rode out bareback. Darkness swallowed him up. He might have taken the time to saddle the horse or hitched up three spans of mules to a Concord stagecoach and smoked a pipe as it seems no one in that city was after him. He had mistaken the drummers for men.”

Charles Portis book True Grit

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 1, pp. 14-15 : thoughts of 'Mattie Ross'

Men , Time , Horse , Night

“There's only two paragraphs in there about George Washington … little or nothing about Martin Luther King, a whole section on slavery and how evil we are, a whole section on Japanese internment camps and how we slaughtered millions of Japanese with our bombs… I think most people when they finish that course, they'd be ready to go sign up for ISIS … We have got to stop this silliness crucifying ourselves.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "Fox News' Ben Carson Thinks New AP U.S. History Course Will Make Students Join ISIS" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/01/ben-carson-ap-us-history_n_5910982.html, The Huffington Post (January 10, 2014)

People , Thinking , Evil

“The pictures of me on the Internet were silly, inappropriate shots. I appreciate all the support of my fans, and hope they understand that along the way I am going to make mistakes and I am not perfect. I never intended for any of this to happen, and I am truly sorry if I have disappointed anyone. Most of all, I have let myself down. I will learn from my mistakes and trust my support team.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

MTV.com http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1586479/20080429/duff_hilary.jhtml (April 29, 2008)

Hope , Disappointment , Way , Understanding

“Last year a Dutch animal breeding centre sent me two chimpanzees as a gift. I killed one and cut its heart out. The other wept bitterly and was inconsolable. The sad chimp has long since happily mated again and lives with lots of other animals on a pleasant game farm near Villiersdorp. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures, but the memory of that weeping chimp has remained with me. It was taken for granted, of course, that he was weeping for his mate but I've since had some thoughts on the subject which made me wonder whether perhaps he was weeping for the human race. The idea is not as silly as it sounds. In our doings there is much to weep over and even a chimpanzee would never behave in some of the contradictory ways we think of as normal.”

Christiaan Barnard (1922–2001) South-African physician

The Best Medicine (Cape Town: Tafelberg Publishers, 1979), p. 38.

Sadness , Way , Game , Idea

“He had developed in the most wonderful way the distinctive silliness of man without losing one jot of the natural folly of a monkey.”

H. G. Wells book The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 21: The Reversion of the Beast Folk

Way , Nature

“Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story of Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Knowledge , Tree , Evil

“Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Journal entry (4 March 1906); as published in Souvenirs and Prophecies: the Young Wallace Stevens (1977) edited by Holly Stevens, Ch. 8

Spring

“I looked upon myself, in a sort of romantic and silly way, as like a laboratory.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

He tells Rolling Stone of his drug-taking past; reported in " In quotes: Keith Richards http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6526133.stm", BBC (April 4, 2007).

Way

“I yield to no one in my detestation of Bolshevism, and of the revolutionary violence which precedes it. … But my hatred of Bolshevism and Bolsheviks is not founded on their silly system of economics, or their absurd doctrine of an impossible equality. It arises from the bloody and devastating terrorism which they practice in every land into which they have broken, and by which alone their criminal regime can be maintained. … Governments who have seized upon power by violence and by usurpation have often resorted to terrorism in their desperate efforts to keep what they have stolen, but the august and venerable structure of the British Empire … does not need such aid. Such ideas are absolutely foreign to the British way of doing things.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons, July 8, 1920 "Amritsar" http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/churchill/am-text.htm
Early career years (1898–1929)

Way , Idea , Effort

“The world is full of vulgar Purists, who bring discredit on all selection by the silliness of their choice; and this the more, because the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative of some slight degree of weakness, readiness to be offended, or narrowness of understanding of the ends of things.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter VI, section 62.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

World , Understanding

“The supreme importance of tactics and the necessity of maintaining its class struggle character, is something the party has been well conscious of from the beginning. … We find that in all questions of tactics the thought was continually kept in the foreground that the party must be kept clean from all mixture with all other parties, every one of which, no matter how much they differed from each other or how furiously they fought among themselves, stood upon the ground of bourgeois society as a common basis. This separation of the Social Democracy from all other parties, this essential difference, which silly opponents take as a reason or pretext for declaring us political outlaws, is our pride and our strength.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Democracy , Question

“Life must not cease. That comes before everything. It is silly to say you do not care. You do care. It is that care that will prompt your imagination; inflame your desires; make your will irresistible; and create out of nothing.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The Serpent, in Pt. I, Act I
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

Life , Imagination

“A certain critic—for such men, I regret to say, do exist—made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained ‘all the old Wodehouse characters under different names’. He has probably now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled this man by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy. (From preface)”

P.G. Wodehouse book Summer Lightning

Summer Lightning (1929)

Men , Children , Feeling , Intelligence

“I don't have a social life right now. I try to -- it's something that I miss -- but David Foster told me: 'The golden microphone is in front of your mouth. You have to sing into it or it will get passed onto someone else.' It's very lonely, what I'm doing. Even though you have a lot of people around you, they're not experiencing it first-hand. It's hard to name more than five close friends. As much as people want to understand, it's hard when you don't see someone for five months at a time, and they're like, 'C'mon, make time.' But I don't have time. My days are gone. There are a lot of firsts for me. And I'm not going to toss it off. It would be silly to say, 'No, I'd rather go see a movie.”

Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor

I know there will be time for that later.
UK Sunday Times, 5/9/04

Life , People , Understanding , Singing

“Women gather together to wear silly hats, eat dainty food, and forget how unresponsive their husbands are. Men gather to talk sports, eat heavy food, and forget how demanding their wives are. Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

Women , Men , Children , Food

“As I was writing about Grace Marks, and about her interlude in the Asylum, I came to see her in context — the context of other people's opinions, both the popular images of madness and the scientific explanations for it available at the time. A lot of what was believed and said on the subject appears like sheer lunacy to us now. But we shouldn't be too arrogant — how many of our own theories will look silly when those who follow us have come up with something better? But whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of our nature fascinate people so much. The so-called mad person will always represent a possible future for every member of the audience — who knows when such a malady may strike? When "mad," at least in literature, you aren't yourself; you take on another self, a self that is either not you at all, or a truer, more elemental one than the person you're used to seeing in the mirror. You're in danger of becoming, in Shakespeare's works, a mere picture or beast, and in Susanna Moodie's words, a mere machine; or else you may become an inspired prophet, a truth-sayer, a shaman, one who oversteps the boundaries of the ordinarily visible and audible, and also, and especially, the ordinarily sayable. Portraying this process is deep power for the artist, partly because it's a little too close to the process of artistic creation itself, and partly because the prospect of losing our self and being taken over by another, unfamiliar self is one of our deepest human fears.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

People , Truth , Fear , Literature

“There is no doubt, and in this I agree with Milton Friedman, that once the Crash had occurred, the Federal Reserve System pursued a silly deflationary policy. I am not only against inflation but I am also against deflation! So, once again, a badly programmed monetary policy prolonged the depression! So, once again, a badly programmed monetary policy prolonged the depression. One consequence of this policy was, of course, the fact that confidence was destroyed.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1960s–1970s, A Conversation with Professor Friedrich A. Hayek (1979)

Confidence

“She recalled her absurd attempt to construct an example—an image that, because it was constructed of things it simply did not fit, reversed the idea into an idea silly by itself, ridiculous in application—a ridiculousness that could easily, she saw, have strayed into the pernicious, the odious, or the destructive, depending on how widely one had insisted on applying it.”

Samuel R. Delany book Tales of Nevèrÿon

Section 2 (p. 104)
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)

Idea , Dependency

“Mother brings a child late to contact by half-an-hour; father then requires an extra half-hour the next week. This is getting silly. If, in fact, the father does not see the child at all, of course he should see the child on another occasion, but there are fathers who actually add up the minutes and produce it and say "Now I should have so much more contact because I lost five minutes last week and ten minutes the week before."”

Elizabeth Butler-Sloss (1933) English judge

Testimony before the Constitutional Affairs Committee http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmconst/uc1247-i/uc124702.htm, November 9, 2004

“[Most people] are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. … Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull grey eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones.”

George Eliot book Scenes of Clerical Life

"The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton" Ch. 5
Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)

People , Soul , Lying , Fashion

“Property has always been the central consideration of the United States government, but it has become even more so over time. Between the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to provide just one obvious, and in some ways, silly, example (silly because all of the terms are seemingly obvious, yet in fact nearly impossible to adequately define) and the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution in 1868, the inalienable right with which men [sic] are self-evidently endowed by their Creator, and which may not be abridged by the State, changed from "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," to life, liberty, and property. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed during the KKK's maiden reign of terror, ostensibly to protect the rights of blacks from racist state governments, has been used far more often to protect the rights to property: Of the Fourteenth Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, only nineteen dealt with the rights of blacks, while two hundred and eighty-eight dealt with the rights of corporations.”

Derrick Jensen book The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 92

Life , Men , Way , Change

“Finally, law enforcement needs to increase the consequences for kids found intoxicated or in possession of drugs. The current slap on the wrist leaves kids with the idea "Cops are cool. When they take our drugs they are going to use them to get high. They are really helping us avoid the silly law.”

Virgil Miller Newton (1938) American priest

Miller Newton (1983). The Teenage Drug Epidemic, El Paso Physician, vol 6, pp. 5-6.
On Teenage Drug Use

Law , Idea , Help

“Come on, don't wait, come! Or don't you like to roll into the lush grass? I really would like to be completely a cow, to feel in that way the childish fun that such a beast gets when it is running about in the pasture and makes all that kind of silly jumps with its tail high in the air.”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) Toe kerel, laat je niet wachten, kom hier. Of heb je er geen behoefte aan eens te rollen in het welige gras? Wat zou ik graag eens helemaal koe wezen om zoo recht eens dat kinderlijke plezier te voelen, dat zoo'n beest heeft as het in de wei rondholt en met de staart in den hoogte allerlei malle sprongen doet..
In a letter to Willem Maris, c. 1860's; from: 'Brieven van Anton Mauve aan Willem Maris'- microfiche, RKD Mauve Archive, The Hague
1860's

Way , Feeling , Grass , Waiting

“You know what you can buy at the supermarket?” Laws inquired acidly. “I’ll tell you. Canned burnt offerings.”
“You know what you can buy at the hardware store?” Hamilton answered. “Scales to weigh your soul on.”
“That’s silly,” the blond said petulantly. “A soul doesn’t have any weight.”
“Then,” Hamilton reflected, “you could put one through the U. S. mail for nothing.”
“How many souls,” Laws conjectured ironically, “can be fitted into one stamped envelope? New religious question. Split mankind in half. Warring factions. Blood running in the gutters.”
“Ten,” Hamilton guessed.
“Fourteen,” Laws contradicted.
“Heretic. Baby-murdering monster.”
“Bestial drinker of unpurified blood.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

“Accursed spawn of filth-devouring evil.”
Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 6 (p. 75)

War , Law , Soul , Question

“You don't hear any more of, 'Hey, we did something creative and we turned a profit, how about that?' Everywhere we look, we want to make the most money possible. This is a dangerous, corrupt notion. That's where you see the advent of programming on the radio, and radio research, all these silly things. That has made pop music what it is today. Everything — morals, truth — is all going out the window in favor of profit.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Rolling Stone interview (2002)

Money , Truth , Music

“I have to find the right part of myself and put it into that character. I feel like everyone has a full deck of cards and I just have to pull the right card for that character. The more comedic roles come easier to me though because I see myself as a silly, easy-going person.”

Sara Paxton (1988) American actress, model and singer

Sara Paxton on The Innkeepers, Shark Night 3-D and Julia Roberts Marathons (June 23, 2011)

Feeling , Parting , Personality

“But what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, "the metropolis of the empire?"”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Cobbett's Weekly Political Register (5 January 1822).

Fate

“I consider that of all the dashed silly, drivelling ideas I ever heard in my puff this is the most blithering and futile. It won't work. Not a chance.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Idea , Chance

“There are some silly canards that die hard and some that should have been buried long ago such as 'Those that can, do; those as cannot, teach," or the definition of a Professor as a man whose job is to tell students how to solve the problem of life, which he himself has tried to avoid by becoming a Professor; or the more hurtful one that a Professor is a text book wired for sound.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Teachers & Education

Life , Books , Problem , Hurt

“I should be writing a third paper on the Nerves, but I cannot proceed without making some experiments, which are so unpleasant to make that I defer them. You may think me silly, but I cannot perfectly convince myself that I am authorised in nature, or religion, to do these cruelties—for what?—for anything else than a little egotism or self-aggrandisement; and yet, what are my experiments in comparison with those which are daily done? and are done daily for nothing. So my employment is, correcting the press of my new edition of the Anatomy, and writing notes for my Physiology, which I mean to make an additional volume to the Anatomy.”

Charles Bell (1774–1842) Scottish surgeon and artist (1774-1842)

Letter to his brother on 1 July 1822; in Letters of Sir Charles Bell, K.H., F.R.S.L. & E. Selected from his Correspondence with his Brother, George Joseph Bell, London: John Murray, 1870, pp. 275 https://books.google.it/books?id=UZ1cAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA275-276.

Religion , Nature , Thinking

“Once man was tossed about helplessly and incessantly by the wind that blew through him—now the toughest of all plants is more sensitive, more easily moved than he. In other words, death is better than life, nothing is better than anything. Nor is this a silly adolescent pessimism peculiar to Housman, as so many critics assure you. It is better to be dead than alive, best of all never to have been born—said a poet approvingly advertised as seeing life steadily and seeing it whole; and if I began an anthology of such quotations there it would take me a long time to finish. The attitude is obviously inadequate and just as obviously important.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Texts from Housman”, p. 27
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Life , Death , Time , Dead

“And the thing is woman do have to do all kinds of things themselves. And they lie about it 'cause of all the pressure. Woman go and get their hair made bullet-proof and get the implants. The silly clothes and the stupid shoes everybody wears now. You know these… And they say: "Oh, l enjoy. l did it for me, you know. l like the fact that it takes me 45 minutes to get in or out of a chair." l've always wanted to look like a prawn who's being airlifted. lt's a total lie. That's not the kind of thing a person does for themselves. You know what l did for me? I had an eclair inside an eclair. That's the kind of thing you do for yourself.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Yeah, Yeah (2011)

Lie , Stupidity , Shoe , Personality

“Charles: Anything interesting in The Times?
Ruth: Don't be silly, Charles.”

Noel Coward Blithe Spirit

Blithe Spirit (1941).

Time

“What a silly god, he makes everybody born bad to go to burning hell. Why so mad? All his fault!”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 4.

God , Hell , Madness

“I refuse any kind of support coming from supremacist groups. I recommend that, for coherence, they support the leftist candidate, who loves segregating society. Exploring that to influence an election in Brazil is a big silliness. That's ignorance about the Brazilian people, which is mixed.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

On 16 October 2018, about the support by the American white supremacist David Duke. 'Ele soa como nós': David Duke, ex-líder da Ku Klux Klan, elogia Bolsonaro, mas critica proximidade com Israel https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-45874344. BBC Brasil (16 October 2018).

Love , People , Support

“A silly society is a youth-obsessed society: To the Chinese, who appreciate the value of experience, the greater the ratio in a team of grey ‘hairs and no-hairs’ to ‘black hairs’—the faster and better a task will be completed. The opposite assumption obtains in the youth-obsessed U. S.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Hollywood: The No-Good, The Bad And The Beastly" http://www.quarterly-review.org/?p=2432 Quarterly Review, March 16, 2014.
2010s, 2014

Youth

“I want some red roses for a blue lady.
Mister Florist, take my order please.
We had a silly quarrel the other day;
I hope these pretty flowers chase her blues away.”

Sid Tepper (1918–2015) American songwriter

Song Red Roses for a Blue Lady

Hope , Flowers

“We are willing to worship a God only if God makes us safe. Thus you get the silly question, How does a good God let bad things happen to good people? Of course, it was a rabbi who raised that question, but Christians took it up as their own. Have you read the Psalms lately? We're seeing a much more complex God than that question gives credit for.”

Stanley Hauerwas (1940) American theologian

From the Chronicle for Higher Education, The Chronicle Review, "A Complex God" September 28, 2001 The Chronicle Review Page: B6

God , People , Question , Reading

“Slap me silly, Sidney!”

Mike Lange (1948) Canadian sportscaster

Sometimes said when Sidney Crosby scores a goal.
As noted on Sports Center's Top 10 Mike Lange Signature calls http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIHPd3vERUw (undated)

“Don't you think that it's amazing that I'm singing into this silly camera with the desk lamp, and it's going through all these wires and everything else, and these computers, and you still feel what I'm feeling, and you still get what I'm trying to do?”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"This Just In!" (30 January 2007)
Context: Don't you think that it's amazing that I'm singing into this silly camera with the desk lamp, and it's going through all these wires and everything else, and these computers, and you still feel what I'm feeling, and you still get what I'm trying to do? Yeah. I think its amazing. And I think it's so nice in a period when we're very isolated people, and kind of emotionless people, I think it's great that we can still touch one another and we can still feel what we're feeling, and we can still have fun, and we can be sad, and we can be happy, and to know that someone cares about you — because I really do. I really do.
And I can't believe that I have over 10,000 subscribers. What is wrong with you people?

Feeling , Thinking , Singing

“Men could not be contented to take the Oracle just as it came piping hot from the Mouth of their God. But perhaps, when they had come a great way for it, they thought it would look silly to carry home an Oracle in Prose.”

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment

The History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests (1688)
Context: So that at length the Priests of Delphos being quite baffled with the railleries of those learned Wits, renounced all Verses, at least as to the speaking them from the Tripos; for there were still some Poets maintain'd in the Temple, who at leisure turned into Verse, what the Divine fury had inspired the Pythian Priestess withal in Prose. It was very pretty, that Men could not be contented to take the Oracle just as it came piping hot from the Mouth of their God. But perhaps, when they had come a great way for it, they thought it would look silly to carry home an Oracle in Prose.<!--pp. 221-222

Men , God , Way , Home

“Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Nature and the Greeks (1954)
Context: I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.

Question , Science

“The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious—he is so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith.
He wants that everything should be subject to inexorable laws. He is equal opposed to the capitalists who t'ink their silly money-grabbing is a system, and to liberals who t'ink man is not a fighting animal; he takes both the American booster and the European aristocrat, and he ignores all their blithering. Ignores it! All of it! He hates the preachers who talk their fables, but he iss not too kindly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make guesses, yet they have the nerf to call themselves scientists! Oh, yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured people should naturally hate!”

Sinclair Lewis book Arrowsmith

Arrowsmith (1925)
Context: Perhaps I am a crank, Martin. There are many who hate me. There are plots against me—oh, you t'ink I imagine it, but you shall see! I make many mistakes. But one thing I keep always pure: the religion of a scientist.
To be a scientist—it is not just a different job, so that a man should choose between being a scientist and being an explorer or a bond-salesman or a physician or a king or a farmer. It is a tangle of ver-y obscure emotions, like mysticism, or wanting to write poetry; it makes its victim all different from the good normal man. The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious—he is so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith.
He wants that everything should be subject to inexorable laws. He is equal opposed to the capitalists who t'ink their silly money-grabbing is a system, and to liberals who t'ink man is not a fighting animal; he takes both the American booster and the European aristocrat, and he ignores all their blithering. Ignores it! All of it! He hates the preachers who talk their fables, but he iss not too kindly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make guesses, yet they have the nerf to call themselves scientists! Oh, yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured people should naturally hate! ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 26

Love , Money , Hate , People

“There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

The American Mercury (March, 1930); first printed, in part, in the Baltimore Evening Sun (9 December 1929)
1920s
Context: The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. Its evil effects must be plain enough to everyone. All it accomplishes is (a) to throw a veil of sanctity about ideas that violate every intellectual decency, and (b) to make every theologian a sort of chartered libertine. No doubt it is mainly to blame for the appalling slowness with which really sound notions make their way in the world. The minute a new one is launched, in whatever field, some imbecile of a theologian is certain to fall upon it, seeking to put it down. The most effective way to defend it, of course, would be to fall upon the theologian, for the only really workable defense, in polemics as in war, is a vigorous offensive. But the convention that I have mentioned frowns upon that device as indecent, and so theologians continue their assault upon sense without much resistance, and the enlightenment is unpleasantly delayed.
There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly. If you doubt it, then ask any pious fellow of your acquaintance to put what he believes into the form of an affidavit, and see how it reads…. “I, John Doe, being duly sworn, do say that I believe that, at death, I shall turn into a vertebrate without substance, having neither weight, extent nor mass, but with all the intellectual powers and bodily sensations of an ordinary mammal;... and that, for the high crime and misdemeanor of having kissed my sister-in-law behind the door, with evil intent, I shall be boiled in molten sulphur for one billion calendar years.” Or, “I, Mary Roe, having the fear of Hell before me, do solemnly affirm and declare that I believe it was right, just, lawful and decent for the Lord God Jehovah, seeing certain little children of Beth-el laugh at Elisha’s bald head, to send a she-bear from the wood, and to instruct, incite, induce and command it to tear forty-two of them to pieces.” Or, “I, the Right Rev. _____ _________, Bishop of _________, D. D., LL. D., do honestly, faithfully and on my honor as a man and a priest, declare that I believe that Jonah swallowed the whale,” or vice versa, as the case may be. No, there is nothing notably dignified about religious ideas. They run, rather, to a peculiarly puerile and tedious kind of nonsense. At their best, they are borrowed from metaphysicians, which is to say, from men who devote their lives to proving that twice two is not always or necessarily four. At their worst, they smell of spiritualism and fortune telling. Nor is there any visible virtue in the men who merchant them professionally. Few theologians know anything that is worth knowing, even about theology, and not many of them are honest. One may forgive a Communist or a Single Taxer on the ground that there is something the matter with his ductless glands, and that a Winter in the south of France would relieve him. But the average theologian is a hearty, red-faced, well-fed fellow with no discernible excuse in pathology. He disseminates his blather, not innocently, like a philosopher, but maliciously, like a politician. In a well-organized world he would be on the stone-pile. But in the world as it exists we are asked to listen to him, not only politely, but even reverently, and with our mouths open.

“The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so also can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.”

Eric Temple Bell book Men of Mathematics

Men of Mathematics (1937)
Context: The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so also can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.<!--1986 ed., p. 488

“I think that, like in my writing, reality is always a soap bubble, Silly Putty thing anyway.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Interview, Science Fiction Review (August 1976)
Context: I think that, like in my writing, reality is always a soap bubble, Silly Putty thing anyway. In the universe people are in, people put their hands through the walls, and it turns out they're living in another century entirely. … I often have the feeling — and it does show up in my books — that this is all just a stage.

Thinking , Reality

“Silly doctrinaire theories which regard the state as a parasitic excrescence on society cannot explain its centuries-long persistence, its ongoing encroachment upon what was previously market terrain, or its acceptance by the overwhelming majority of people including its demonstrable victims.”

Bob Black (1951) American anarchist

The Libertarian as Conservative (1984)
Context: My (unfriendly) approach to modern society is to regard it as an integrated totality. Silly doctrinaire theories which regard the state as a parasitic excrescence on society cannot explain its centuries-long persistence, its ongoing encroachment upon what was previously market terrain, or its acceptance by the overwhelming majority of people including its demonstrable victims.

People

“The American political system is like a gigantic Mexican Christmas fiesta. Each political party is a huge piñata — a papier-mâché donkey, for example. The donkey is filled with full employment, low interest rates, affordable housing, comprehensive medical benefits, a balanced budget and other goodies. The American voter is blindfolded and given a stick. The voter then swings the stick wildly in every direction, trying to hit a political candidate on the head and knock some sense into the silly bastard.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Parliament of Whores

Parliament of Whores (1991)

Sense , Christmas , Housing

“You're dealing with a lot of silly people in the marketplace”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

On being dispassionate and patient in investments, in an interview in Forbes magazine (1 November 1974); he is contrasting soft-drinks to intoxicating beverages in this example; Buffet eventually became a major investor in Coca-Cola.
Context: You're dealing with a lot of silly people in the marketplace; it's like a great big casino and everyone else is boozing. If you can stick with Pepsi, you should be O. K.

People

“I get guilty when I spend money on silly things like clothes and stuff”

Katie Melua (1984) British singer-songwriter

Context: I get guilty when I spend money on silly things like clothes and stuff... Having experienced a completely different extreme of wealth, and I don't mean me being poor or rich, I mean knowing that 40 quid that gets spent on a pair of shoes could go a long way for a family in Georgia for a week or even a month, having experienced that, you're a bit more [guilty].

Money , Clothes

“I want to be in a position where I can function as a human being. Even more so now where you've got this sort of truly silly preoccupation with celebrities. Just because somebody's been in an ad on TV, so what? Who gives a toss?”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

MOJO interview (2005)
Context: For the last 12 years, I've felt really privileged to be living such a normal life. It's so a part of who I am. It's so important to me to do the washing, do the Hoovering. Friends of mine in the business don't know how dishwashers work. For me, that's frightening. I want to be in a position where I can function as a human being. Even more so now where you've got this sort of truly silly preoccupation with celebrities. Just because somebody's been in an ad on TV, so what? Who gives a toss?

“It’s silly to think that Presidents are born, because very few people are 35 years old at birth, and those who are won’t admit it.”

Gracie Allen (1902–1964) American actress and comedienne

Source: How to Become President (1940), Ch. 2 : Others make good, why not you?
Context: Presidents are made, not born. That’s a good thing to remember. It’s silly to think that Presidents are born, because very few people are 35 years old at birth, and those who are won’t admit it. So if you’re only 16 don’t be discouraged, because it’s only a phase and there’s nothing wrong with you that you won’t outgrow.

People , Birth , Thinking

“When it has become silly to suppose that the role of our government should be to "seek balance," then count me with the silly, for that means that this has become quite serious indeed.”

Lawrence Lessig book Free Culture

Free Culture (2004)
Context: When it has become silly to suppose that the role of our government should be to "seek balance," then count me with the silly, for that means that this has become quite serious indeed. If it should be obvious to everyone that the government does not seek balance, that the government is simply the tool of the most powerful lobbyists, that the idea of holding the government to a different standard is absurd, that the idea of demanding of the government that it speak truth and not lies is just naïve, then who have we, the most powerful democracy in the world, become?

“I resent your calling this a silly myth. I made the myth and it is not silly; charming rather.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 6
Context: I am Aeaea. To my notion there is no other lady anywhere. And I resent your calling this a silly myth. I made the myth and it is not silly; charming rather. Well, come along, come along! You are my things now, and you will come when I call you.

“Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Ultima Ratio Regum"
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: Consider his life which was valueless
In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.
Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?

Death , World , Lying , Tree

“The Son of God was crucified: I am not ashamed--because it is shameful. The Son of God died: it is immediately credible--because it is silly. He was buried, and rose again: it is certain--because it is impossible. (Evans translation). z Tertullianus - De carne Christi”
Crucifixus est dei filius; non pudet, quia pudendum est. Et mortuus est dei filius; credibile prorsus est, quia ineptum est. Et sepultus resurrexit; certum est, quia impossibile.

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

God

“I never taught of book burning, no matter how they were silly, mendacious or propaganda-like because I guide myself by the principle that every book burning was just an introduction to burning (of people) at the stake.”

Ivica Šola (1968) Croatian theologian, communication scientist, columnist and university professor.

Quoted in column "O Bleiburgu i Titu očito može i bez fusnota: pa nećemo se valjda zamarati tamo nekim izvorima" https://www.slobodnadalmacija.hr/misljenja/agora/clanak/id/597177/o-bleiburgu-i-titu-ocito-moze-i-bez-fusnota-pa-necemo-se-valjda-zamarati-tamo-nekim-izvorima in Slobodna Dalmacija, 4th April 2019.

Books , People

“Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn’t the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it. Touched them every one. Changed and altered them. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Beloved (1987)

Sleep , Question , Water , Way

“The doctrine of anthropocentricism has now vanished from intelligent minds, and is in the act of vanishing from unintelligent minds. It is destined to continue to fade until there is not a particle of it left. It is rank imposture. It is too silly and childish even for simpletons. Man is not a being apart. He is not a favorite of the gods, nor the subject of celestial anxiety. Nothing revolves about him or exists for him. Like all the other inhabitants of this world, he is a mere by-product of the play of cosmic forces—forces which grind on without eyes, without anxiety, and without end.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Ethics and Education (1912), The World to Be, p. 143

World , God , Intelligence

“Around the time that I recorded the first Foo Fighters tape, I was reading a lot of books on UFO’s. … So, since I had recorded the first record by myself, playing all the instruments, but I wanted people to think that it was a group, I figured that FOO FIGHTERS - WW2 term for UFO’s - might lead people to believe that it was more than just one guy. Silly, huh? Had I actually considered this to be a career, I probably would have called it something else, because it’s the stupidest fucking band name in the world.”

Dave Grohl (1969) American rock musician, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter

Quoted in Clash Music, "Foo Fighters on Their Band Name" http://www.clashmusic.com/news/foo-fighters-on-their-band-name Clash Music (2010-01-11)

Time , Reading , People , Thinking

“To be sure, some humans were always doing silly things—but at what point had prime damfoolishness become commonplace? When for example, had the zombie-like professional models become accepted ideals of American womanhood?”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Year of the Jackpot

The Year of the Jackpot (p. 628)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“Let those who labor to live understand that this monster cannot be tamed, nor be made harmless or useful to man; let them learn to know that there is but one means of safety: unrelenting, pitiless, thorough war of extermination! Gentle overtures are for naught; scorn and derision will be the result, if by petitions, elections, and like silly attempts the proletariat hopes to command the respect of its sworn enemies.”

Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator

The Beast of Property (1884)

War , Understanding , Hope , Learning

“Silliness, in fact, is where Henson shone. It kept the feel-/do-good-ism from ever succumbing to the piety of political correctness.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

About, "The Gospel According to Jim Henson" by David Zahl

Feeling

“I know you want it to stay pleasant around here, but — there are so many things … that are so much better. Like silly, or sexy, or dangerous … or brief.”

Gary Ross (1956) American film director

And every one of those things is in you all the time, if you just have the guts to look for them.
David Wagner/Bud Parker
Pleasantville (1998)

“One minute she is a sweet old silly, knitting herself a set of syringe covers and talking about her favourite flowers, and the very next moment she has told you and your friends she has a ring supporting the back of her vagina.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Absolute Magic - A Model for Powerful Close-Up Performance (2003) second edition

Support , Flowers

“Silly ass. The land would be much more valuable today.”

Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930–2002) younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

On being told that George III had given the Crown lands to Parliament in 1761 in return for a fixed allowance. As quoted in Andrew Duncan, The Reality of Monarchy, p. 181

“Contemporary slang reflects this animal state: children are "mice," "rabbits," "kittens," women are called "chicks," in England "birds," "hens," "dumb clucks," "silly geese," "old mares," "bitches."”

Shulamith Firestone book The Dialectic of Sex

Similar terminology is used about males as a defamation of character, or more broadly only about pressed males males: stud, wold, cat, stag, jack - and then it is used much more rarely, and often with a specifically sexual connotation.

Chapter Four
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Bitch , Children , Animals , Bird

“You're dealing with a lot of silly people in the marketplace; it's like a great big casino and everyone else is boozing. If you can stick with Pepsi, you should be O.K.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

On being dispassionate and patient in investments, in an interview in Forbes magazine (1 November 1974); he is contrasting soft-drinks to intoxicating beverages in this example; Buffett eventually became a major investor in Coca-Cola.

People