Quotes about sugar
page 2

Kathy Freston photo
Philippe Kahn photo

“We are less than a decade away from the medical lab the size of a sugar cube.”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

Founding speech for Fullpower, 2003, focusing in particular on the power of MEMS and Nanotechnology and its applications to life sciences.

“Doing the commodity business with China is like drinking coffee. We enjoyed three spoons of sugar per cup for a long time. Suddenly, when that’s cut to one and a half spoons, we feel bitter — because it used to be so sweet.”

Sukanto Tanoto (1949) Indonesian businessman

Interview, New York Times, Dec 1, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/business/international/indonesia-economy-interest-rates.html?_r=0
2015

Mary Kay Andrews photo
D. V. Gundappa photo

“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

Michelle Visage photo
Caldwell Esselstyn photo
Camille Paglia photo
John Ruskin photo

“We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that it divided; but the men: — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is — we should think that there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach at them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can only be met by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.”

Volume II, chapter VI, section 16.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

“My life's a cup of sugar I borrowed before time began and forgot to return.”

January 1979.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

Alan Sugar photo

“Syed, SHUT UP! (Lord Sugar speaking to Syed Ahmed).”

Alan Sugar (1947) British business magnate, media personality, and political advisor

The Apprentice, Series 2

William McDonough photo
John A. McDougall photo
Will Cuppy photo
Ani DiFranco photo
Josh Billings photo

“"Familiarity breeds kontempt." This only applies tew men, not tew hot bukwheat slapkakes, well buttered and sugared.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

John Bartholomew Gough photo
Horace Greeley photo

“VII. Let me call your attention to the recent tragedy in New Orleans, whereof the facts are obtained entirely through Pro-Slavery channels. A considerable body of resolute, able-bodied men, held in Slavery by two Rebel sugar-planters in defiance of the Confiscation Act which you have approved, left plantations thirty miles distant and made their way to the great mart of the South-West, which they knew to be the indisputed possession of the Union forces. They made their way safely and quietly through thirty miles of Rebel territory, expecting to find freedom under the protection of our flag. Whether they had or had not heard of the passage of the Confiscation Act, they reasoned logically that we could not kill them for deserting the service of their lifelong oppressors, who had through treason become our implacable enemies. They came to us for liberty and protection, for which they were willing render their best service: they met with hostility, captivity, and murder. The barking of the base curs of Slavery in this quarter deceives no one--not even themselves. They say, indeed, that the negroes had no right to appear in New Orleans armed (with their implements of daily labor in the cane-field); but no one doubts that they would gladly have laid these down if assured that they should be free. They were set upon and maimed, captured and killed, because they sought the benefit of that act of Congress which they may not specifically have heard of, but which was none the less the law of the land which they had a clear right to the benefit of--which it was somebody's duty to publish far and wide, in order that so many as possible should be impelled to desist from serving Rebels and the Rebellion and come over to the side of the Union, They sought their liberty in strict accordance with the law of the land--they were butchered or re-enslaved for so doing by the help of Union soldiers enlisted to fight against slaveholding Treason. It was somebody's fault that they were so murdered--if others shall hereafter stuffer in like manner, in default of explicit and public directions to your generals that they are to recognize and obey the Confiscation Act, the world will lay the blame on you. Whether you will choose to hear it through future History and 'at the bar of God, I will not judge. I can only hope.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

John Fante photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“892. Better eat Salt with Philosophers of Greece, than eat Sugar with Courtezans of Italy.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1740) : Thou hadst better eat salt with the Philosophers of Greece, than sugar with the Courtiers of Italy.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Charles Lamb photo
Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo
Nalo Hopkinson photo

“I don’t pay much mind to politricks. Never met a politician who wouldn’t try to convince you that salt was sugar.”

Nalo Hopkinson (1960) Jamaican Canadian writer

Source: The New Moon's Arms (2007), Chapter 1 (p. 40)

Douglas Coupland photo
Marvin Gaye photo

“Distant lover, ooo, sugar
How can you treat my heart so mean and cruel?
Didn't you know, sugar, that I dream
Of what I spent with you?
I treasure it like it was a precious jewel, oh baby.
Lord have mercy!”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

Distant Lover, co-written with Gwen Gordy and Sandra Greene.
Song lyrics, Let's Get It On (1973)

Daniel Suarez photo
Dave Matthews photo

“Move into kiss those sweet sugar lips, baby looks just like love.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Busted Stuff
Busted Stuff (2002)

David Graeber photo
Gautama Buddha photo

“… how can I permit my disciples, Mahāmati, to eat food consisting of flesh and blood, which is gratifying to the unwise but is abhorred by the wise, which brings many evils and keeps away many merits; and which was not offered to the Rishis and is altogether unsuitable?
Now, Mahāmati, the food I have permitted [my disciples to take] is gratifying to all wise people but is avoided by the unwise; it is productive of many merits, it keeps away many evils; and it has been prescribed by the ancient Rishis. It comprises rice, barley, wheat, kidney beans, beans, lentils, etc., clarified butter, oil, honey, molasses, treacle, sugar cane, coarse sugar, etc.; food prepared with these is proper food. Mahāmati, there may be some irrational people in the future who will discriminate and establish new rules of moral discipline, and who, under the influence of the habit-energy belonging to the carnivorous races, will greedily desire the taste [of meat]: it is not for these people that the above food is prescribed. Mahāmati, this is the food I urge for the Bodhisattva-Mahāsattvas who have made offerings to the previous Buddhas, who have planted roots of goodness, who are possessed of faith, devoid of discrimination, who are all men and women belonging to the Śākya family, who are sons and daughters of good family, who have no attachment to body, life, and property, who do not covet delicacies, are not at all greedy, who being compassionate desire to embrace all living beings as their own person, and who regard all beings with affection as if they were an only child.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Mahayana, Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Chapter Eight. On Meat-eating

“We're gonna have to sweeten some of these jokes. You know what sweeten means, right? That’s a showbiz term for "add sugar to."”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Mitch All Together (2003)

George Carlin photo

“Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. Irony is "a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result." For instance: a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck. He is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony. If a Kurd, after surviving bloody battle with Saddam Hussein's army and a long, difficult escape through the mountains, is crushed and killed by a parachute drop of humanitarian aid, that, my friend, is irony writ large. Darryl Stingley, the pro football player, was paralyzed after a brutal hit by Jack Tatum. Now Darryl Stingley's son plays football, and if the son should become paralyzed while playing, it will not be ironic. It will be coincidental. If Darryl Stingley's son paralyzes someone else, that will be closer to ironic. If he paralyzes Jack Tatum's son, that will be precisely ironic.”

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

Books, Brain Droppings (1997)

Anthony Trollope photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Lewis Black photo

“I don't believe pumpkin pie is even made from pumpkin. I mean, how can something that smells that shitty make a pie so sweet? There's not enough sugar in the universe.”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Nothing’s Sacred (2005)

Neal D. Barnard photo
Oliver Goldsmith photo

“Our Garrick's a salad; for in him we see
Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree!”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: Retaliation (1774), Line 11.

Louis Brownlow photo

“And what (else} did we discover? We discovered that it was exceedingly profitable to get garbage from large parts of the town; that garbage was rich in grease and in sugar. And we took it to the reduction plant and we turned that grease into a very acceptable and delightful non-odorous product which you a little later bought in the form of soap.
Another thing, it seems to me, is a by-product of this catholic curiosity, that is the ability to loaf. You can't be an administrator, a good successful administrator, and not know how to loaf. Because if you are industrious all the time and tend to your job, there is always more work than you can possibly do in a day, and if you tend to that job all the time you will be going right on in a routine, you will become more ans more specialized, you will become more and more analytical, you will become more and more interested in what you are particularly charged with doing, and progressively less and less generalized in your outlook, less and less interested in what the other fellow is doing. And the only way you can compensate for that, of course, is to loaf, to loaf whole-heartedly whenever and wherever possible, and with whomever, because the only way that you can find out what are the questions in the minds of these people you have got to loaf with them to find out the truth about how they feel.
Now, of course, you can't loaf with all the individuals, but you have to loaf with a great many of them, and you have to know how to do it, and you know you won't like to do it unless you have a catholic curiosity, not only about things that I've been talking about, but about persons.”

Louis Brownlow (1879–1963) American mayor

Source: "What Is an Administrator?" 1936, p. 12; As cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 658

Elton John photo
Bill Mollison photo
Joan Slonczewski photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Paul Harvey photo
Janusz Korwin-Mikke photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Dorothy Parker photo

“In short, there is everything about this season’s entertainment to make the Hippodrome what it always is—a Temple of the Arts to all those who hang pennants on their automobiles, use “Shake hands with my friend” as a formula for introduction, and sprinkle powdered sugar on their sliced tomatoes. p. 106”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919

Tom Baker photo
Robert Lynn Asprin photo
Norman Mailer photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Bob Dylan photo

“Well, it's sugar for sugar
And salt for salt
If you go down in the flood
It's gonna be your own fault”

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

Compare: "I give you sugar for sugar, but all you want is salt for salt/ Well if you can't get along with me, then it's your own fault." Richard Brown, James Alley Blues.
Song lyrics, The Basement Tapes (1975), Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood) (recorded 1967)

Charles Dickens photo
José Mourinho photo

“It’s not important how we play. If you have a Ferrari and I have a small car, to beat you in a race I have to break your wheel or put sugar in your tank.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ead01cae-4f03-11df-b8f4-00144feab49a.html#axzz35BKDKkBS
2010

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Bob Dylan photo

“I like to do just like the rest,
I like my sugar sweet, but guarding fumes and making haste,
it ain't my cup of meat.”

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

Song lyrics, Self Portrait (1970), Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)

Comte de Lautréamont photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“The work of Dr. Nares has filled us with astonishment similar to that which Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt when first he landed in Brobdingnag, and saw corn as high as the oaks in the New Forest, thimbles as large as buckets, and wrens of the bulk of turkeys. The whole book, and every component part of it, is on a gigantic scale. The title is as long as an ordinary preface: the prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary book; and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary library. We cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous mass of paper which lies before us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand closely printed quarto pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure, and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book might, before the deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpa and Shallum. But unhappily the life of man is now three-score years and ten; and we cannot but think it somewhat unfair in Dr. Nares to demand from us so large a portion of so short an existence. Compared with the labour of reading through these volumes, all other labour, the labour of thieves on the treadmill, of children in factories, of negroes in sugar plantations, is an agreeable recreation.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Review of a life of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley by Edward Nares, Edinburgh Review, 1832)
Attributed

Mike Huckabee photo
Lloyd Kaufman photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Lionel Richie photo

“We're all grossly ignorant about most things that we use and encounter in our daily lives, but each of us is knowledgeable about tiny, relatively inconsequential things. For example, a baker might be the best baker in town, but he's grossly ignorant about virtually all the inputs that allow him to be the best baker. What is he likely to know about what goes into the processing of the natural gas that fuels his oven? For that matter, what does he know about oven manufacture? Then, there are all the ingredients he uses -- flour, sugar, yeast, vanilla and milk. Is he likely to know how to grow wheat and sugar and how to protect the crop from diseases and pests? What is he likely to know about vanilla extraction and yeast production? Just as important is the question of how all the people who produce and deliver all these items know what he needs and when he needs them. There are literally millions of people cooperating with one another to ensure that the baker has all the necessary inputs. It's the miracle of the market and prices that gets the job done so efficiently. What's called the market is simply a collection of millions upon millions of independent decision makers not only in America but around the world. Who or what coordinates the activities all of these people? Rest assuredly it's not a bakery czar.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

1970s, Economics for the Citizen (1978)

Michele Simon photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“Daily news and sugar confuse our system in the same manner.”

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 127

Richard M. Sherman photo

“Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

Richard M. Sherman (1928) American songwriter

From Mary Poppins, 1964

Ulysses S. Grant photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
Emma Goldman photo
James Fenimore Cooper photo
Klaus Kinski photo
George Friedman photo

“I need caffeine. I need sugar. I need beef.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Interview with Matt Bai (2003)

Daniel Handler photo
Sarada Devi photo

“Give up this dry discussion, this hodge-podge of philosophy. Who has been able to know God by reasoning? Even sages like Suka and Vyasa are at best like big ants trying to carry away a few grains of sugar from a large hea”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 188-189]

Joseph Chamberlain photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Boris Johnson photo

“I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn't go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

"Londoner's Diary", Evening Standard, 17 October 2005, p. 15.
2000s, 2005

Vincent Gallo photo
Marvin Gaye photo

“Oh, If I should die tonight
Oh baby, though it be far before my time
I won't die blue, sugar yeah
'Cause I've known you.”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

If I Should Die Tonight, co-written with Ed Townsend.
Song lyrics, Let's Get It On (1973)

Noam Chomsky photo

“The Caribbean back in the 18th century was a soft drug producer: sugar, rum, tobacco, chocolate. And in order to do it, they had to enslave Africans, and it was done largely to pacify working people in England who were being driven into awful circumstances by the early industrial revolution. That's why so many wars took place around the Caribbean.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2002, Talk at the University of Houston, 2002
Context: There's one white powder which is by far the most lethal known. It's called sugar. If you look at the history of imperialism, a lot of it has to do with that. A lot of the imperial conquest, say in the Caribbean, set up a kind of a network... The Caribbean back in the 18th century was a soft drug producer: sugar, rum, tobacco, chocolate. And in order to do it, they had to enslave Africans, and it was done largely to pacify working people in England who were being driven into awful circumstances by the early industrial revolution. That's why so many wars took place around the Caribbean.

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“Cuba was developed as a sugar factory of the United States”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

The Cuban Economy (1964)
Context: The natural advantages of the cultivation of sugar in Cuba are obvious, but the predominant fact is that Cuba was developed as a sugar factory of the United States.

Ramakrishna photo

“The devotee of God wants to eat sugar, and not become sugar.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 132
Context: He who is called Brahman by the jnanis is known as Atman by the yogis and as Bhagavan by the bhaktas. The same brahmin is called priest, when worshipping in the temple, and cook, when preparing a meal in the kitchen. The jnani, following the path of knowledge, always reason about the Reality saying, "not this, not this." Brahman is neither "this" nor "that"; It is neither the universe nor its living beings. Reasoning in this way, the mind becomes steady. Finally it disappears and the aspirant goes into samadhi. This is the Knowledge of Brahman. It is the unwavering conviction of the jnani that Brahman alone is real and the world is illusory. All these names and forms are illusory, like a dream. What Brahman is cannot be described. One cannot even say that Brahman is a Person. This is the opinion of the jnanis, the followers of Vedanta. But the bhaktas accept all the states of consciousness. They take the waking state to be real also. They don't think the world to be illusory, like a dream. They say that the universe is a manifestation of the God's power and glory. God has created all these — sky, stars, moon, sun, mountains, ocean, men, animals. They constitute His glory. He is within us, in our hearts. Again, He is outside. The most advanced devotees say that He Himself has become all this — the 24 cosmic principles, the universe, and all living beings. The devotee of God wants to eat sugar, and not become sugar. (All laugh.) Do you know how a lover of God feels? His attitude is: "O God, Thou art the Master, and I am Thy servant. Thou art the Mother, and I Thy child." Or again: "Thou art my Father and Mother. Thou art the Whole, and I am a part." He does not like to say, "I am Brahman." They yogi seeks to realize the Paramatman, the Supreme Soul. His ideal is the union of the embodied soul and the Supreme Soul. He withdraws his mind from sense objects and tries to concentrate on the Paramatman. Therefore, during the first stage of his spiritual discipline, he retires into solitude and with undivided attention practices meditation in a fixed posture.
But the reality is one and the same; the difference is only in name. He who is Brahman is verily Atman, and again, He is the Bhagavan. He is Brahman to the followers of the path of knowledge, Paramatman to the yogis, and Bhagavan to the lovers of God.

James Branch Cabell photo

“I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons — with gestures and with three attitudes and with charming phrases; with tears and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Horvendile, in Ch. 13 : What a Boy Thought
The Way of Ecben (1929)
Context: I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons — with gestures and with three attitudes and with charming phrases; with tears and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart's desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the strength of my own folly.

Joseph Chamberlain photo

“Sugar has gone, silk has gone, iron is threatened, wool is threatened, cotton will go! How long are you going to stand it? At the present moment these industries, and the working men who depend upon them, are like sheep in a field.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech in Greenock (7 October 1903), quoted in Julian Amery, Joseph Chamberlain and the Tariff Reform Campaign (London: Macmillan, 1969), p. 471.
1900s
Context: Free imports have destroyed this industry, at all events for the time, and it is not easy to recover an industry when it has once been lost... They have destroyed agriculture... Agriculture as the greatest of all trades and industries of this country has been practically destroyed. Sugar has gone, silk has gone, iron is threatened, wool is threatened, cotton will go! How long are you going to stand it? At the present moment these industries, and the working men who depend upon them, are like sheep in a field. One by one they allow themselves to be led out to slaughter, and there is no combination, no apparent prevision of what is in store for the rest of them. Do you think, if you belong at present to a prosperous industry, that your industry will be allowed to continue? Do you think that the same causes which have destroyed some of our industries, and which are in the course of destroying others, will not be equally applicable to you when your turn comes?

Swami Sivananda photo
Simon Cowell photo
Yuval Noah Harari photo
Bhagawan Nityananda photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Douglas Coupland photo

“Just go and feed yourselves on a wide array of products containing high-fructose corn sugar. Zheesh.”

"That wasn't funny, Evil Mark. It sounded fake and hollow. You're terrible at being ironic, and you've been rehearsing that line, haven't you?"
JPod (2006)