Quotes about stuff
page 4

Patrick Stump photo
Samuel Johnson photo

“A man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1783, p. 501
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

David Allen photo

“Here's how I define "stuff": anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn't belong where it is, but for which you haven't yet determined the desired outcome and the next action step.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

Source: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (2001), Chapter 1

Klayton photo
Anastacia photo

“I'm just as fragile and broken as anyone else at times. We all have to get through our stuff as best we can. Some of us have strong armour, some of us don't. Sometimes my armour has been very strong and sometimes it's been very fragile.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Anastacia: I'm as fragile and as broken as anyone else http://metro.co.uk/2014/05/01/anastacia-im-as-fragile-and-as-broken-as-anyone-else-4714481/, Metro.co.uk, May 1, 2014.
General Quotes

Biz Stone photo

“Google was not a normal place at all. There was just all kinds of weird stuff going on. I would just walk around and check stuff out like the kid in Willy Wonka going around the chocolate factory.”

Biz Stone (1974) American blogger; co-founder of Twitter

“'Google was Not a Normal Place': Brin, Page, and Mayer on the Accidental Birth of the Company That Changed Everything” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/valley-of-genius-excerpt-google, in Vanity Fair (10 July 2018).

Neil Diamond photo
Fred Astaire photo
Ted Nugent photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me me.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 37 "Speech of a suicide composed shortly before the act."
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

“This is great stuff, but does it have to be so complicated?”

Elliott Organick (1925–1985) American computer scientist

Often remarked when hearing about new technological advances; quoted in Communications of the ACM http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=6325, pg. 231.

Tim Parks photo
Matt Dillon photo
Cory Doctorow photo

“Open platforms and experimental amateurs … eventually beat out the spendy, slick pros. … Relying on incumbents to produce your revolutions is not a good strategy. They're apt to take all the stuff that makes their products great and try to use technology to charge you extra for it, or prohibit it altogether.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

"Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't, either)" on BoingBoing (2 April 2010) http://boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-yo.html

Patrick Stump photo
Fred Rogers photo

“It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

Commencement Address at Middlebury College May, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20030906163501/http://www.middlebury.edu/offices/pubaff/general_info/addresses/Fred_Rogers_2001.htm

William Dalrymple photo
Johannes Grenzfurthner photo

“Long time ago I called the greasy stuff on touch displays "hackerfat"… but it's better to change that to "socialsmear."”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

Twitter message https://twitter.com/johannes_mono/status/751789343333908481

Boris Johnson photo

“We can all spend an awfully long time going over lots of stuff that I’ve written over the last 30 years… all of which in my view have been taken out of context, but never mind… I’m afraid that there is such a rich thesaurus now of things that I have said that have been one way or another, through what alchemy I do not know, somehow misconstrued that it would take me too long to engage in a full global itinerary of apology to all concerned.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

in his first meeting with the press during visit by US Secretary of state John Kerry in July 2016 "Theresa May dodges question about Boris Johnson's use of racial slurs" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/pmqs-theresa-may-boris-johnson-racist-slur-picanninies-party-kenyan-obama-dodges-question-uk-foreign-a7146126.html, Independent (July 20, 2016); "Kerry poker-faced as press takes Johnson to task for 'outright lies'" http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/20/politics/boris-johnson-john-kerry-presser/index.html, CNN (July 20, 2016)
2010s, 2016

Algis Budrys photo
Madonna photo
Carl Sagan photo
Stella Vine photo

“I’ve lived on my own since I was 13 and not been to school and brought a son up who’s now 18 and run theatre companies and bought a butcher’s shop, learnt guitar by myself, taught myself to sing and that sort of stuff.”

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 teaching herself to paint.

Roger Manganelli photo
Kent Hovind photo
David Mitchell photo

“Whoever opined "Money can't buy you happiness" obviously had far too much of the stuff.”

"Letters from Zedelghem", p. 78 (Nook Edition)
Cloud Atlas (2004)

George Bernard Shaw photo
Sania Mirza photo

“In life there's stuff you can control and stuff you can't. There's nothing you can do about it. No point getting angry and upset because it's beyond your control. As a professional athlete, you learn to roll with the punches.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Prajwal Hegde I am enjoying my partnership with Cara Black: Sania Mirza http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/tennis/top-stories/I-am-enjoying-my-partnership-with-Cara-Black-Sania-Mirza/articleshow/23377486.cms, The Times of India, 2 October 2013

Gore Vidal photo

“Apparently, "conspiracy stuff" is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"The Enemy Within" https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/EnemyWithin.html, The Observer (27 October 2002)
2000s

Sandra Bullock photo

“Women should do a lot more fighting. I don't think it's fair that we can't get into a good bar fight once in a while. We'd get out a lot of stuff we're supposed to repress.”

Sandra Bullock (1964) American actress and producer

As quoted in "Calling Her Own Shots" by Karen S. Schneider in People, Vol. 63, No. 13 (4 April 2005) http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20147269,00.html

Emil M. Cioran photo
Olly Blackburn photo

“I’ve directed a fair amount of stuff in the past, such as music videos, commercials and short films and I believe that the best way to learn in this industry – I mean, you can go to film school and that’s good – but ultimately, the only way you’re ever going to learn is through raw experience.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[IndieLondon, Donkey Punch - Olly Blackburn interview, http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Film-Review/donkey-punch-olly-blackburn-interview, www.indielondon.co.uk, 23 February 2012, 2008]

Natasha Lyonne photo
Bill Clinton photo
Sarah Chang photo
Bill O'Reilly photo

“This is the worst stuff on the Internet. There isn't anything worse than this.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2007-08-01
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShowByDate&date=20070801#5
on Daily Kos

Pauline Kael photo
Janeane Garofalo photo
John Updike photo

“… Cocaine. The stuff is everywhere.”

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Sarah Chang photo
Roger Manganelli photo
Thom Yorke photo
Stephen Fry photo
Glen Cook photo
Grover Norquist photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”

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

Clinton Knocks Obama's 'Don't Do Stupid Stuff' Foreign Policy Approach http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillary-clinton-obama-foreign-policy, talkingpointsmemo.com (10 August 2014)
Interim (2013–2015)

Eric Schmidt photo

“The current inclination of the company is to invest heavily … we test stuff and, when it works, we put a lot more emphasis on it. So, Google+ — all the signs are very positive, so now the whole company is ramping up on top of it.”

Eric Schmidt (1955) software engineer, businessman

With 'Millions' Of Users & Growing, Google+ Set To Power All Google Products http://searchengineland.com/with-millions-of-users-growing-google-set-to-power-all-google-products-85032 in Search Engine Land (9 July 2011).

Martin Amis photo
Babe Ruth photo

“Pitchers—real pitchers— know that their job isn't so much to keep opposing batsmen from hitting as it is to make them hit it at someone. The trouble with most kid pitchers is that they forget there are eight other men on the team to help them. They just blunder ahead, putting everything they have on every pitch and trying to carry the weight of the whole game on their shoulders. The result is that they tire out and go bad along in the middle of the game, and then the wise old heads have to hurry out and rescue them. I've seen a lot of young fellows come up, and they all had the same trouble. Take Lefty Grove over at Philadelphia, for instance. There isn't a pitcher in the league who has more speed or stuff than Lefty. He can do things with a baseball that make you dizzy. But when he first came into the league he seemed to think that he had to strike out every batter as he came up. The result was he'd go along great for five or six innings, and them blow. And he's just now learning to conserve his strength. In other words, he's learning that a little exercise of the noodle will save a lot of wear and tear on his arm.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

"Chapter III," Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (1928), pp. 32-33; reprinted as "Babe Ruth's Own Story — Chapter III: Pitching the Keynote of Defense; The Pitcher's Job; Why Young Hurlers Fail," https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r0sbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=J0sEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6011%2C3899916 in The Pittsburgh Press (December 23, 1928), p. 52

Al Gore photo
Bode Miller photo
Jason Biggs photo

“Things like kissing and sex scenes don't make me uncomfortable. What makes me uncomfortable is the emotional stuff where I have to really dig deep.”

Jason Biggs (1978) American actor

Interview with Larry Smith, basis for Bigg's character on the show Orange Is the New Black, interview excerpted in: — [December 4, 2014, http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/07/16/larry-smith-jason-biggs-orange-is-the-new-black/, Jason Biggs talks 'Orange is the New Black' with real-life Larry, Ariana Bacle, July 16, 2014, Entertainment Weekly]

Roger Manganelli photo
Alfred Kinsey photo
Louis C.K. photo
John Masefield photo
Glenn Beck photo
Merlin Mann photo
Russ Tice photo

“They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U. S. international–U. S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U. S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that–like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the technology that was going after this stuff.”

Russ Tice (1961) former intelligence analyst

As told to Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frog Post News, which is the website of Sibel Edmonds, a high-level FBI whistle-blower NSA Whistleblower: NSA Spying On – and Blackmailing – Top Government Officials and Military Officers, Fox News, 2013-06-20 http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/06/20/nsa-whistleblower-nsa-spying-%E2%80%93-and-blackmailing-%E2%80%93-top-government-officials-and-military,

Philip Roth photo

“Each year she taught him the names of the flowers in her language and in his, and from one year to the next he could not even remember the English. For nearly thirty years Sabbath had been exiled in these mountains, and still he could name hardly anything. They didn't have this stuff where he came from. All these things growing were beside the point there. He was from the shore. There was sand and ocean, horizon and sky, daytime and nighttime - the light, the dark, the tide, the stars, the boats, the sun, the mists, the gulls. There were the jetties, the piers, the boardwalk, the booming, silent, limitless sea. Where he grew up they had the Atlantic. You could touch with your toes where America began. They lived in a stucco bungalow two short streets from the edge of America. The house. The porch. The screens. The icebox. The tub. The linoleum. The broom. The pantry. The ants. The sofa. The radio. The garage. The outside shower with the slatted wooden floor Morty had built and the drain that always clogged. In summer, the salty sea breeze and the dazling light; in September, the hurricanes; in January, the storms. They had January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, November, December. And then January. And then again January, no end to the stockpile of Januaries, of Mays, of Marches. August, December, April - name a month, and they had it in spades. They'd had endlessness. He had grown up on endlessness and his mother - in the beginning they were the same thing. His mother, his mother, his mother, his mother, his mother… and then there was his mother, his father, Grandma, Morty, and the Atlantic at the end of the street. The ocean, the beach, the first two streets in America, then the house, and in the house a mother who never stopped whistlîg until December 1944. If Morty had come alive, if the endlessness had ended naturally instead of with the telegram, if after the war Morty had started doing electrical work and plumbing for people, had become a builder at the shore, gone into the construction business just as the boom in Monmouth County was beginning…Didn't matter. Take your pick. Get betrayed by the fantasy of endlessness or by the fact of finitude. No, Sabbath could only have wound up Sabbath, begging for what he was begging, bound to what he was bound, saying what he did not wish to stop himself from saying.”

Sabbath's Theater (1995)

Peter Jackson photo
Milo Ventimiglia photo
Roger Manganelli photo
Trinny Woodall photo

“If you want to make the best of yourself you don't necessarily need to diet — you need to wear the right stuff.”

Trinny Woodall (1964) English fashion advisor and designer, television presenter and author

As quoted in "These Girls Could Save Your Marriage" by Jessica Johnson in The Daily Express http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/20026/These-girls-could-save-your-marriage (24 September 2007)

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge photo

“We’re very lucky. You know, we have lots of things that we are very fortunate to have. You know, we have a house, you know? We have, you know, all these sort of nice things around us. And so, you know, we’re grateful for that because so many people don’t have that. We have, you know, relative stability and stuff like that. And, you know, lots of things that, you know, everyone would, you know, love to have.”

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (1982) a member of the British royal family

Response to the question "What’s the coolest thing about being a prince?" in an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC News, as quoted in FishbowlNY (15 June 2007) http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/whats-the-coolest-thing-about-being-a-prince_b5228

Mukesh Ambani photo
Margaret Cho photo

“Monogamy is so weird. Like when you know their name and stuff.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, Revolution Tour

Studs Terkel photo
Karl Pilkington photo

“We've invented most of the stuff that we need and now we're just messing about”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 1 Episode 1
On Technology

Anthony Weiner photo
Tom Higgenson photo
Tom Lehrer photo
Kathy Griffin photo
Hayley Jensen photo
Jimmy Carr photo

“I did quite a lot of TV shows over the latter half of 2004 - all those 100 Greatest and 100 Worst and all that kind of stuff. So I was a little bit overexposed. But I think you need to do that once in your career, and that's how you become famous. You get overexposed once, and then people know your name and you can relax a bit.”

Jimmy Carr (1972) British comedian and humourist

Peter Ross (August 14, 2005) "The Joker As the face of Channel 4 he's known for his sharp suits and sharper one-liners, but what has spurred Jimmy Carr on during his swift rise from anonymity to ubiquity?", The Sunday Herald.

Brendan Fraser photo
George A. Romero photo

“I don't like the new trends in horror. All this torture stuff seems really mean-spirited. People have forgotten how to laugh, and I don't see anybody who's using it as allegory. The guy I love right now is Guillermo del Toro. I'd love to make a film like Pan's Labyrinth.”

George A. Romero (1940–2017) American-Canadian film director, film producer, screenwriter and editor

As quoted in "10 Questions for George Romero", TIME, (June 07, 2010) http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1992390,00.html

Walter Wick photo
Joseph Heller photo

“Love is potent stuff, isn't it?”

God Knows (1984)

Philip K. Dick photo
Harry Chapin photo
Walter Benjamin photo

“Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. … For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form — it may be called fleeting or eternal — is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

A Berlin Chronicle (1932–, unfinished), in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings – vol. 2, pt. 2: 1931-1934, ed. Michael William Jennings, Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 612

Bill Fagerbakke photo
M.I.A. photo

“OK, let's go and explore the rest of the world, and how easy is it to put together music through found objects and stuff, and people, and ideas and certain electricity, certain environments.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Interview http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/m-i-a-s-global-party-the-futuristic-pop-star-on-her-decades-journey-20091229#ixzz1i1EWoIDV on Kala to Rolling Stone (2009)
Sourced quotes

“Lovers lie around in it
Broken glass is found in it
Grass
I like that stuff”

Adrian Mitchell (1932–2008) British writer

"Stufferation", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).
Other stanzas follow this pattern. Roger McGough wrote a version with the refrain "I like that stuff".

Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo