Quotes about talking
page 33

“The best part of Nintendo was the codes. We had codes that got us to the end of the game immediately. Why can’t we have that in real life? Just for once I’d like to be on a date with a chick and when she starts talking about her cats, and she’s like “And this cat likes corn, and this one has diarrhea, and this one can fight crime,” I can be like, “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, select start, and I’m in bed with her, and no more cats.””

Kyle Cease (1977) American actor

citation needed

Life, Game, Cats, Fight

“Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man — war, poverty, and tyranny — and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois (26 July 1952)

Pain, War, People, Truth

“You talk like a fellow with some education, like someone who knows how to use his head. If you wanted to lead a decent and proper life, there are all sorts of things you could do. Why do you choose to steal?"
"Sir, I know this is a perilous occupation, and I am familiar with many a way to earn an honest bit of money. But the world wouldn't let me live in peace, so that's why I naturally turned to crime."
"What a strange way to talk!"
"That is so, sir, but it's true. I went to live with people, but they didn't take care of me. I learned to do things, and people gave me no chance to do them. Every family I met treated me badly. People weren't nice to me, so I became an enemy of the people. Now I force people to give me what I need in my life.”

Nguyễn Công Hoan (1903–1977)

Abandonment (1937), as quoted in Understanding Vietnam by Neil L. Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), ISBN 978-0520916586, pp. 158–159

Life, Money, People, World

“Most government and corporate leaders would have trouble getting people to follow them out of a burning building. One way you can tell the worst of them is that they talk about leadership a lot. I doubt Winston Churchill ever used the word. Or, for that matter, Attila the Hun.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 5 (p. 38)

People, Way

“The one thing we can say is that if Socrates really expected to get a definitive answer to his question, 'What is justice?' when talking to his friends on their way back to the Piraeus, he has been disappointed. It remains a contentious and disputed subject.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

Justice (1993)

Justice, Disappointment, Way, Question

“So remember, if you're feeling bitter — or sorry for yourself about what you've done, and how much good you've accomplished — or if you find yourself more than anyone else talking about the good you've done, you're doing it for the wrong reasons, because it should be the default.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Doing Good — for the right reasons!" (13 March 2008)

Feeling

“But dinner is dinner, a meal at which not so much to eat — it becomes difficult to eat much at it as you grow older — as to drink, to talk, to flirt, to discuss, to rejoice "at the closing of the day". I do not think anything serious should be done after it, as nothing should before breakfast.”

George Saintsbury (1845–1933) British literary critic

A Scrap Book (London: Macmillan, 1922) p. 31

Drink, Thinking

“O’Hara was in his most non-stop way of talking, saying that the pictures put him in mind of Tiepolo [Spanish wall-painter, c. 1750]. Certain cupola frescoes. Suddenly I was working in an ancient building, a warehouse facing the Giudecca. The loft over the firehouse was transformed. It was filled with light reflected from the canal. [quote in 1955]”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Guston's quote; as cited in 'Ferguson', 1999, p. 18
1950 - 1960

Way, Quotes, Light

“My country tis of thee,
To take swings at each other on talk-show TV.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Tis of Thee
Song lyrics

Country

“When our sailors were captured last week, I said that's one of the saddest things that I have seen when those young people were on their hands and knees in a begging position with their hands up and thugs behind them with guns, and then we talk like it's OK. It's not OK. It's lack of respect. We can't let that happen to this country. It's lack of respect.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, January, Speech at (18 January 2016)

People, Country

“People were soon talking only of my bons mots, and they esteemed my wit so highly that the clergy was forced to publish a decree that forbade anyone to believe I was capable of reason, and it expressly commanded everyone of all ranks to believe — no matter how intelligently I might act — that I was guided by instinct.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

People, Intelligence

“Contact with like-minded painters – a group means a great deal to me: nothing comes in isolation. We have worked out our ideas largely by talking them through. Shutting myself away in the country, for instance, would do nothing for me. One depends on one's surroundings. And so the exchange with other artists – and especially the collaboration with Lueg and Polke – matters a lot to me: it is part of the input that I need.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Notes, 1964; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6 1960's

Idea, Parting, Dependency, Country

“What it talks about is stuff that I've gone through, like, in the past year, which is, you know, a lot, and some of it's good, and some of it's bad, and a lot of it's, like, a big learning experience. And I got to write a lot about that with people that I've worked with before, so I felt completely comfortable.”

Hilary Duff (1987) American actress and singer

"Hilary Duff Says New Album Is More Personal" http://launch.yahoo.com/read/story/12065060. Yahoo! Music. September 27 2004. Retrieved October 25 2006. On the album Hilary Duff (2004).

People, Learning, Past

“When you talk about Fred Astaire, you talk about heaven. What more can I say?”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Johnny Green to Mike Steen in Steen, Mike. Hollywood Speaks! An Oral History, G.P. Putnam's, New York, 1974.

““When you talk about being an ‘anticipator,’ of having a pretty good idea of when something’s going to happen—or how, or who will be there—isn’t that a kind of divination?”
“No. I think it’s more a kind of subconscious knack for dealing with statistics, against a fairly well-known field of actions.””

Roger Zelazny book A Night in the Lonesome October

October 23 (p. 173)
A Night in the Lonesome October (1993)

Idea, Thinking

“The only reason that a rabble of feminists and queers and Jews and Blacks and mestizos and liberals and Clinton supporters are running America into the ground today is that decent people are sitting on their hands. If the decent people in America would get off their hands and accept personal responsibility for what is being done to their world, and if they would make a commitment and begin working together, we could sweep the whole Clinton coalition into the dustbin of history. It doesn't matter that the Clinton rabble outnumber us. We will whip them in a minute. We will have the media bosses jumping into the ocean all along the East Coast and swimming toward Israel as fast as they can go. But first we must be willing to accept personal responsibility. And so my message today to every decent person who is listening is this: Don't be a shirker. Don't try to be a smart guy by continuing to cheer from the sidelines but refusing to join the team and get out on the field. Stand up and become a participant in life. Make of your life a model that people will remember and talk about long after you're gone.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Thoughts on Accepting Responsibility, 1999
1990s, 1990
Source: [Pierce, 1976-2002, 672]

Life, People, World, Guy

“Read nothing from the past one hundred years; eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over forty.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 25

Drink, Water, Wine, Reading

“Now and then I'll be a little brief with some of my band members. I won't talk or I'll refrain from talking to my band while we're rehearsing. But basically I am friendly with people. … I'll go on cold streaks. I'll work with a collaborator then I'll stop calling the collaborator for a couple weeks. I'll say I need a break from you for a couple weeks. But they're "OK, fine, fine, I'll see you in two weeks."”

Brian Wilson (1942) American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer

CNN interview (2004)

People

“Publishers and lawyers like to describe copyright as “intellectual property” — a term also applied to patents, trademarks, and other more obscure areas of law. These laws have so little in common, and differ so much, that it is ill-advised to generalize about them. It is best to talk specifically about “copyright,” or about “patents,” or about “trademarks.”
The term “intellectual property” carries a hidden assumption—that the way to think about all these disparate issues is based on an analogy with physical objects, and our conception of them as physical property.
When it comes to copying, this analogy disregards the crucial difference between material objects and information: information can be copied and shared almost effortlessly, while material objects can't be.
To avoid spreading unnecessary bias and confusion, it is best to adopt a firm policy not to speak or even think in terms of “intellectual property”.
The hypocrisy of calling these powers “rights” is starting to make the World “Intellectual Property” Organization embarrassed.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing (1996)
1990s

World, Law, Way, Thinking

“I quite like talking myself, but when Peter was in the room there wasn't much point, you just had to listen. He was unimaginably, overwhelmingly gifted. You had to imagine a cross between Dr. Johnson, Isaiah Berlin, Peter Sellers and don't forget Charlie Chaplin — because Peter was a great mime too. … He was inexhaustible. It was like talking to Europe, talking to history.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

On Peter Ustinov (BBC News, March 29, 2004)
Essays and reviews

Imagination, History, Forgetting

“Most often, our messing around and meddling in the affairs of other countries have unintended consequences. Sometimes just over in those countries that we mess with. We might support one faction, and it doesn't work, and it's used against us. But there's the blowback effect, that the CIA talks about, that it comes back to haunt us later on. For instance, a good example of this is what happened in 1953 when our government overthrew the Mossadegh government and we installed the Shah, in Iran. And for 25 years we had an authoritarian friend over there, and the people hated him, they finally overthrew him, and they've resented us ever since. That had a lot to do with the taking of the hostages in 1979, and for us to ignore that is to ignore history… Also we've antagonized the Iranians by supporting Saddam Hussein, encouraging him to invade Iran. Why wouldn't they be angry at us? But the on again off again thing is what bothers me the most. First we're an ally with Osama bin Laden, then he's our archenemy. Our CIA set up the madrasah schools, and paid money, to train radical Islamists, in Saudi Arabia, to fight communism… But now they've turned on us… Muslims and Arabs have long memories, Americans, unfortunately, have very short memories, and they don't remember our foreign policy that may have antagonized… The founders were absolutely right: stay out of the internal affairs of foreign nations, mind our own business, bring our troops home, and have a strong defense. I think our defense is weaker now than ever.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Laura Knoy on NHPR, June 5, 2007 http://info.nhpr.org/node/13016 2000s, 2006-2009

Money, Hate, People, School

“Careers are not often as chosen as people think they are. People talk to me about my choices. I don't make choices, hardly. Things happen, and you say yes or no - usually 'yes', because it's always better to do something. What's the choice? Somebody will say, 'Don't do that part, you don't need to do that part.' And I'll say, 'Why not? What am I going to do? Sit around the house? I'd much rather go to work, and see actors, and have fun.”

Christopher Walken (1943) American actor

William Leith (January 25, 2003) "Dancing in the Dark: He was a baby when he got his first showbiz break in the 1940s, and then firmly schooled in the song-and-dance tradition. So how did Christopher Walken end up as a master of evil?", The Guardian.

People, Thinking, Parting, Housing

“Many people will tell you of his wonderful qualities and his many accomplishments, but what makes him special to me, the truth many people don't want you to remember, is that Dr. king was a great activist, fighting for radical social change with radical methods.
While other people talked about change, Dr. King used direct action to challenge the system. He welcomed it, and used it wisely.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

Lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1990)

People, Truth, Change, Fight

“The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.”

Fran Lebowitz book Social Studies

"People".
Social Studies (1981)

Waiting

“Don't be visionary', shouted trade and the spiritual blindness which is absurdly called practical common sense, 'morals have nothing to do with politics'. 'Don't talk of injustice. In this world we must compromise. Compromise is the very essence of government'. So it is, if you do not attempt to compromise moral principle. 'All government', says Edmund Burke, 'is founded upon compromise and barter'. 'But in all fair dealings the thing bought must bear some proportion to the purchase paid. None will barter away the immediate jewel of the soul'. And what is and always has been the immediate jewel of our national soul if it be not the equal rights of men? Compromise equal rights in the United States? Whittle a crowbar? How do we like it, as the boys say, as far as we have got? You may compromise questions of cotton and com, but you cannot long compromise a point of conscience. Moral principles are absolute and eternal. You may stretch an inch of India rubber to cover your hat; you cannot stretch a diamond the shadow of a hair.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Men, World, Soul, Boy

“Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 10 (p. 85)

People, Truth, Search

“After September 11th I had tons of interviews everywhere, except the United States of course, and often it was national radio and TV. A couple of times it turned out to be Irish television and BBC back to back, and the difference in reaction was startling. If I said this much on Irish TV, OK, discussion over, everyone understands what I'm talking about. You try to say it on BBC, you have to go on for like about an hour to explain to them what you mean. The Irish sea is a chasm, and it just depends who's been holding the whip for 800 years and who's been under it for 800 years.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

In Noam Chomsky - Rebel Without a Pause, 2003 http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/05/1614027.php Quotes 2000s, 2003

Understanding, Time, Dependency, Sea

“Football is a machismo sport, which is great, but everything can't be machismo. On the field and at practice, yes, you can be machismo, but when it comes to diet, you need to have compassion for your body. … My food is my medication now. … I get a lot of success talking to older guys because they're like 30 years old and have children. I tell them, 'You might want to change the way that you eat because you want to be around longer and see your family and your daughter graduate.”

David Carter (1987) Player of American Football

"NFL veganism? David Carter, Griff Whalen have broken the mold" http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000711369/article/nfl-veganism-david-carter-griff-whalen-have-broken-the-mold, interview with NFL.com (28 September 2016).

Children, Family, Food, Way

“To talk about sensemaking is to talk about reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when people make retrospective sense of the situations in which they find themselves and their creations. There is a strong reflexive quality to this process. People make sense of things by seeing a world on which they already imposed what they believe. In other words, people discover their own inventions. This is why sensemaking can be understood as invention and interpretations understood as discovery. These are complementary ideas. If sensemaking is viewed as an act of invention, then it is also possible to argue that the artifacts it produces include language games and texts.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 15

People, World, Game, Idea

“We cannot define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, "You don't know what you are talking about!". The second one says, "What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking?”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

What do you mean by you?"
volume I; lecture 8, "Motion"; section 8-1, "Description of motion"; p. 8-2
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

“Bye bye. Look, see? He's smiling. See, he's having a good time. Oh, I love the old days, you know? You know what I hate? There's a guy, totally disruptive, throwing punches, we're not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks. You know, I love our police, and I really respect our police, and they're not getting enough. They're not. Honestly, I hate to see that. Here's a guy, throwing punches, nasty as hell, screaming at everything else when we're talking, and he's walking out, and we're not allowed -- you know, the guards are very gentle with him, he's walking out, like, big high fives, smiling, laughing -- I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

At a rally in Las Vegas http://www.weeklystandard.com/protester-would-be-carried-out-on-a-stretcher-in-the-old-days-trump-reminisces/article/2001211 (22 February 2016) 2010s, 2016, February

Love, Hate, Smile, Guy

“Sometimes you don't know what is better: to talk with the governments of some States or directly with their American patrons and sponsors.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

6 December 2014, Владимир Путин @ facebook. com

“There was even talk at one point of getting Del Shannon to produce our first album.”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

NME (1980)

“I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, May 30, 2008, "Carbon Chastity: The First Commandment of the Church of the Environment" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer053008.php3 at jewishworldreview.com. Krauthammer’s column of February 20, 2014, published in The Washington Post under the title “The Myth of ‘Settled Science” http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-myth-of-settled-science/2014/02/20/c1f8d994-9a75-11e3-b931-0204122c514b_story.html, begins with almost the same words. 2000s, 2008

“It so happens that I never talk about race. I do not know what race is.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The Guardian (6 June 1970).
1970s

“The matter, says Mardonios, has gone too far,
the talk it has aroused must be stopped at all cost. —
So Julian goes to the church at Nicomedia,
a lector again, and there
with deep reverence he reads out loud
passages from the Holy Scriptures,
and everyone marvels at his Christian piety.”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

Julian in Nicomedia
Collected Poems (1992)

Reading

“Let me tell you about what we call our field trips. It may surprise you to know, that I have personally visited, with many of my associates, practically every city in the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to Mexico. If any of you has done this, you realize what big a country it is. It has taken me weeks and weeks of the hardest kind of work and continual travel to accomplish this. I which that my duties were such that I could do more of it; and I am trying to arrange my affairs so that I can. On these trips I visit from five to ten dealers a day. I meet them in their own places of business, talk with them across their own desks and solicit from them suggestions and criticisms as to their relations with the Corporation; the character of the product; the Corporation's policies; the trend of consumer demand; their viewpoint as to the future, and many other things that such contact makes possible. I solicit criticism of anything and everything.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 343

Travel, Business, Future, Personality

“An’ I don’t want much outa life,
I never wanted a mansion in the south.
I just-a want to find someone sincere
Who’d treat me like he talks,
One good man.”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

One Good Man (1969)

Life, Sincerity

“David Dimbleby: You couldn't - you couldn't set our minds at rest on the vexed question of what the Sunday Times did actually pay you for the book?
Harold Wilson: No, I don't think it's a matter of interest to the BBC or to anybody else.
Dimbleby: But why..
Wilson: If you're interested in these things, you'd better find out how people buy yachts. Do you ask that question? Did you ask him how he was able to pay for a yacht?
Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed …
Wilson: Have you asked him that question?
Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed him.
Wilson: Well, has the BBC ever asked that question?
Dimbleby: I don't know …
Wilson: Well, what's it got to do with you, then?
Dimbleby: I imagine they have..
Wilson: Why you ask these question, I mean why, if people can afford to buy £25,000 yachts, do the BBC not regard that as a matter for public interest? Why do you insult me with these questions here?
Dimbleby: It's only that it's been a matter of..
Wilson: All I'm saying, all I'm saying..
Dimbleby: … public speculation, and I was giving you an opportunity if you wanted to, to say something about it.
Wilson: It was not a matter of speculation, it was just repeating press gossip. You will not put this question to Mr. Heath. When you have got an answer to him, come and put the question to me. And this last question and answer are not to be recorded. Is this question being recorded?
Dimbleby: Well it is, because we're running film.
Wilson: Well, will you cut it out or not? All right, we stop now. No, I'm sorry, I'm really not having this. I'm really not having this. The press may take this view, that they wouldn't put this question to Heath but they put it to me; if the BBC put this question to me, without putting it to Heath, the interview is off, and the whole programme is off. I think it's a ridiculous question to put. Yes, and I mean it cut off, I don't want to read in the Times Diary or miscellany that I asked for it to be cut out. [pause]
Dimbleby: All right, are we still running? Can I ask you this, then, which I mean, I.. let me put this question, I mean if you find this question offensive then..
Wilson: Coming to ask if your curiosity can be satisfied, I think it's disgraceful. Never had such a question in an interview in my life before.
Dimbleby: I.. [gasps]
Joe Haines (Wilson's Press Secretary): Well, let's stop now, and we can talk about it, shall we?
Dimbleby: No, let's.. well, I mean, we'll keep going, I think, don't you?
Wilson: No, I think we'll have a new piece of film in and start all over again. But if this film is used, or this is leaked, then there's going to be a hell of a row. And this must be..
Dimbleby: Well, I certainly wouldn't leak it..
Wilson: You may not leak it but these things do leak. I've never been to Lime Grove without it leaking.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Exchange with BBC interviewer David Dimbleby recorded for a documentary called "Yesterday's Men" broadcast on 16 June 1971. The BBC did agree not to show this portion of the interview, but Wilson's fears of a leak were justified as a transcript was published on page 1 of The Times on June 18, 1971. A fuller transcript appeared in Private Eye during 1972.
Leader of the Opposition

Life, People, Books, Imagination

“I agree. When I hear a player talking about how he "needs" to know about all the other details, I hear a player who is being adversarial to the GM and simply not trusting him to "get it right." Players like that make baby seals die and cause cancer with prolonged exposure. I don't write books for them.”

Sean Punch (1967) Canadian editor

Steve Jackson Games Forums http://forums.sjgames.com

Books, Baby

“Our country's really in bad, big trouble. We have a lot of trouble. A lot of problems. And one of the big problems, I talk about, divisiveness. I think that a lot of people will appreciate … I'm not doing it for that reason. I'm doing it because it's time to go in a different direction.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

People, Problem, Thinking, Time

“When I went to Spain, right after the Pulitzer I encountered Spanish journalists who are very different from American journalists. One way is that they are all very political. They want their writers to be very political. The first journalist that I met when I was there asked "Are you going to use your prize for political purposes?" I said, "Good Lord, no, I wouldn’t trade on it—I’m a professional liar. I tell stories. I make things up." They were appalled. They made it very clear to me that that was the wrong answer and that it was further evidence of what was wrong with American authors and Americans, in general, was that we were insular. Which we are. And that we were not bearing our responsibilities in the world. And that fame that is ours has been wasted on people like us because we won’t use it for good purposes. American writers are probably far more insular than we should be, nevertheless I am very much of the other persuasion. That people should not talk about what they don’t know.”

Richard Russo (1949) American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter

People, World, Way

“GAVRAS: So let’s talk a little bit about being a fashion icon. Do you think, for example, that Saddam Hussein was a fashion icon?”

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

Sourced quotes, Interview with Romain Gavras for Interview (2010)

Fashion, Thinking

“Mantle played ball almost under a shroud of depression, because he always thought he was going to die an early death. But Mays probably thinks he's going to live forever. Mantle acted like a man who was doomed. Mays never did, even though he played long beyond his ability. I talked to Willie after the 1973 World Series, in which he looked terrible. I said, "What were you doing out there, Willie?" "Oh, I was having fun!" he told me. Mantle never had fun. Mays, on the other hand, seemed to be inoculated from all the pressure. He simply went beyond the usual frames of reference. If I were writing this, I'd say that he went beyond the usual frames of reverence. That's the way we all felt, and I think it was true for not only the press, but also for managers and other players. And this bled into the other pages of the newspaper.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

As quoted in "In Willie's time, he was No. 1" http://static.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/neyer_rob/1191263.html Sports-related

Death, World, Way, Thinking

“When they talk about drugs, they don't talk about all of them. They never mention coffee. The low end of the speed spectrum, I grant you, but there are coffee freaks. And they're walking around, nobody worrying about it.”

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

FM & AM (1972)

Coffee, Speed

“I never used to miss the chance to climb up on his knee
And listen to the many tales of life upon the sea.
We'd go sailing back on Barkentines we'd talk of things he did
Tomorrow just a day away, for the Captain and the kid.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

The Captain and the Kid
Song lyrics, Down to Earth (1970)

Life, Chance, Sea

“We have a whole valley full of people talking UNIX versus MS-DOS. What do you need any of that for? Just throw it all out; get rid of all that nonsense. Maybe you need it for computer scientists, but for people who want to get something done, no. Do you need an operating system? No.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

Programmers At Work (1986)

People

“I suspect S. F. has an individualistic, antiauthoritarian trend to it not least because so many of the people who read and write it (not all by any means, but quite a few) are innerdirected introverts who make neither good leaders nor good followers. Am I talking about myself? Well, now that you mention it, yes. But I ain’t the only one, not even close.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Tor's Worlds Without Death or Taxes (December 2008) http://www.reason.com/news/show/129996.html

People, Reading

“It’s premature to talk about working alongside General Musharraf at this stage, although in the past we have worked jointly on certain issues such as the Women’s Bill.
At the same time, I want you to know that we are also partners with Mr Nawaz Sharif in something called the charter for the restoration of democracy, so we are talking about a new democratic process in which the people of Pakistan are allowed to choose their leader and put together a coalition. And for that we are calling for a robust international monitoring team to ensure that these elections are fair and free because obviously if they’re not, the ruling party will still be in the driver’s seat and the creeping Talebanisation of Pakistan will continue.”

Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007) 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan

Destiny’s daughter (2007)

Women, People, Democracy, Time

“Talk to him of Jacob's ladder, and he would ask the number of the steps.”

Douglas William Jerrold (1803–1857) English dramatist and writer

A matter-of-fact Man, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Nowadays children look at everyone in the magazines and they want to be a basketball star or on a television show, but there is only so many people who can do those things and not that you shouldn’t aim or dream for these things, but there are so many other fantastic jobs. So it’s good to talk about how to get there and how difficult it is to get there.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Quoted by Hollie McKay for Fox News, 30 September 2009.

Children, People, Dreams, Star

“Avoid all controversy in preaching, talking, or writing; preach nothing down but the devil, and nothing up but Jesus Christ.”

John Berridge (1716–1793) British priest

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 480.

Christ

“In our first pilot study we talked with clerical and production workers as well as professional and managerial people. We discovered that the professional and managerial groups were more verbal, showed a quicker grasp of the technique, and gave more and better delineated sequences of events than the clerical and production groups.
The second pilot study was restricted to managerial and professional people. On the basis of our experiences in this work, we decided to concentrate in the major sample on engineers and accountants. It was apparent in the results of this second pilot that engineers were able to give exceptionally vivid accounts of their work experiences. Since our study was still in the nature of an exploratory project, it was vital to us that we mine where the metal was richest.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 32

People, Nature, Study

“The police and I have a deal. I don't talk to them and they don't listen to me.”

Walter Mosley (1952) American writer

Walking the Line (2005)

“Right now, [the Israel lobby] has become a subject that you can barely talk about without people immediately trying to silence you, immediately trying to discredit you in various ways, such that no American politicians will touch this, which is quite remarkable when you consider how much Americans argue about every other controversial political issue. To me, this is a national security priority for us, and we ought to be having an open debate on it, not one where only one side is being heard from.”

Stephen M. Walt (1955) American political scientist

Ferment Over 'The Israel Lobby' http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060515/weiss Philip Weiss, The Nation, April 27, 2006

People, Way, Silence

“It’s past talking time. The time to say: ‘We’ll pray, and we’ll be fine’ is long over.”

Abby Stein (1991) Trans activist, speaker, and educator

Interview with The Jewish Chronicle (UK), March 2, 2017 https://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/features/sex-change-rabbi-abby-stein-my-trans-agenda-1.433585/ 2017

Time, Past

“Purely mathematical symbols have no meaning by themselves; it is the privilege of pure mathematicians, to quote Bertrand Russell, not to know what they are talking about. …It is the physicist, and not the mathematician, who must know what he is talking about.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932)

Quotes, Mathematics

“Teas,
Where small talk dies in agonies.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Peter Bell the Third (1819), Pt. III, st. 12

Tea

“The children reached manhood without knowing religion, and with the certainty that dogma, metaphysics, and abstract philosophy were not worth knowing. So one-sided an education could have been possible in no other country or time, but it became, almost of necessity, the more literary and political. As the children grew up, they exaggerated the literary and the political interests. They joined in the dinner-table discussions and from childhood the boys were accustomed to hear, almost every day, table-talk as good as they were ever likely to hear again. The eldest child, Louisa, was one of the most sparkling creatures her brother met in a long and varied experience of bright women.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Women, Children, Education, Religion

“This, then, is the new illiteracy, the illiteracy of those who can read but don't. […] This new illiteracy is more pernicious than the old, because unlike the old illiteracy it does not debar its victims from power and influence, although like the old illiteracy it disqualifies them for it. Those long-dead men and women who learned to read so that they might read the Bible and John Bunyan would tell us that pride is the greatest of all sins, the father of sin. And the victims of the new illiteracy are proud of it. If you don't believe me, talk to them and see with what pride they trumpet their utter ignorance of any book you care to name.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"From a house on the Borderland", Horrorstruck (1987), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Women, Men, Books, Learning

“The leading Nazis were divided as a rule between the three normal German points of view in regard to external policy. Some wanted an accommodation with France, some wanted to come to terms with Great Britain at the expense of France, and the third and most active group were trying to get an alliance with Soviet Russia against the whole of the West. I knew that [Eric] Koch was the chief advocate of this last policy. He took pains to keep in personal touch with Russian emissaries. He wanted to go to Russia himself. Assuming that I had Hitler's ear on questions of eastern policy, he repeatedly asked me to put forward his ideas in talking to Hitler.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: Men in Chaos (1942), p. 247

Pain, Idea, Question, Personality

“The PC police are out in force at all times. … We've reached the point where people are afraid to actually talk about what they want to say.”

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

Introduction
One Nation (2014)

People, Time

“Roger: Yeah! There's one that we'll be supposedly filming when we get back from Europe. Not really sure exactly what's going to happen or anything in the video 'cause Vinnie and I had like a great idea for the video and they basically said that they would have to spend way too much money on it so.. there you go. They don't want to pay for the special effects that we were talking about. It's a bummer though. It would have been good.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

laughs

Money, Way, Idea

“Martha Raddatz: …you, Secretary Clinton, purportedly say you need both a public and private position on certain issues….
Clinton: As I recall, that was something I said about Abraham Lincoln after having seen the wonderful Steven Spielberg movie …
Trump: Now she's blaming the lie on the late, great Abraham Lincoln. That's one that I haven't… OK, Honest Abe, Honest Abe never lied. That's the good thing. That's the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you. That's a big, big difference. We're talking about some difference.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, October, Second presidential debate (October 9, 2016)

Lie

“In so far as words are not used obviously to calculate technically relevant probabilities or for other practical purposes, … they are in danger of being suspect as sales talk of some kind.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 22.

“Nothing gets me more nervous than white people who talk black……. I mean, it's fun on "Ricki Lake", but in real life……”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Allegedly (2004)

Life, People

“Gorymikine: Surely, he must be aware that Russia is facing a revolt!
Rachovsky: Perhaps…but let us hope, my dear Gorymikine that the Tsar will stand firm in his governance!
Gorymikine: No, my dear Rachkovsky he’ll follow whatever advice is easiest.
Rachikovsky: Well, I hear that Witte is talking him into “modernizing” Russia with a liberal bias!
Gorymikine: It will bring Russia down providing fuel to the fire. We must stop him at all costs!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp.23-24

Hope

“"Death before dishonour." I always used to wonder, Hey, exactly how much dishonour are we talking about here? 'Cause I could handle quite a lot. I would, for instance, fellate a Smurf before I picked death. I'd cook him a little Smurf omelette as I was doing it, you know, I'd be perfectly happy doing that. Seasoning it with thyme, you know, listening to his happy satisfied Smurf lip smacks. But every man thinks about Smurfs. They don't say it, but they do. That's why I'm here—to be honest. Just once, you know, what would it be like? Nobody needs to know, you go away for the weekend. Just once, to have the blue salty bulb lolling on your tongue… if I don't say it, nobody else will."”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On regimental mottos.
Monster (2004)

Death, Happiness, Thinking, Cooking

“Multiculturalism is a false euphemism. The real word is "multiracialism", but the word "race" has been recently erased from French legislature, because supposedly there are no races. Here we can observe a new illogicality of the System. There are supposedly no races, but the media are increasingly talking about the rise of racism. How then racists can exist, if there are no races? Nevertheless, we have all too much empirical data showing precisely that multi-ethnic and multicultural countries are prone to ethnic and racial conflicts. What former Yugoslavia went through is in store for the EU - of course, in a different form. One of the additional reasons I left American academia is that I could no longer tolerate giving undeserved passing grades to my American students of African and Hispanic origin, whose IQ and speed of symbolic reasoning were much lower than that of my white American students. It is a form of tyranny of political correctness, much like the former Soviet Union.”

Tomislav Sunić (1953) Croatian-American writer, translator and professor

Interview for hkv.hr https://www.hkv.hr/razgovori/16742-dr-tomislav-sunic-osnovni-problem-hrvatske-je-ostavstina-jugoslavenstva-i-komunizma.html, 15 January 2014

Speed, Falseness, Country

“Sandinistas are a democratically elected government which originally led a popular revolution to overthrow a dictatorship based on slavery…
US foreign policy could be best defined as follows: kiss my arse or I'll kick your head in. It is as simple and as crude as that. It can hardly be said to be a complicated foreign policy. What is interesting about it is that it is so incredibly successful. It possesses the structures of disinformation, use of rhetoric, distortion of language, which are very persuasive, but are actually a pack of lies. It is very successful propaganda. They have the money, they have the technology, they have all the means to get away with it, and they do. I find the ignorance in this country, Britain, and certainly the US, really quite deep. It is not only the Republican Party and government in the US which are responsible for this state of affairs, but I see the Democrats as only differing by degrees. While they say "no more military aid to the Contras"… they are still referring to an innate and deeply embedded assumption that they are talking about a Marxist-Leninist totalitarian dictatorship; gangsters, thugs, instructed from Moscow.”

Harold Pinter (1930–2008) playwright from England

Quoted in an interview http://www.haroldpinter.org/politics/politics_america.shtml, conducted by Andrew Graham-Yooll, South Magazine (May 1988)

Money, Kiss, Success, Country

““It is the principle of Business, which is more fundamental than the law of gravity. Wherever you go in the galaxy, you can find a food business, a housebuilding business, a war business, a peace business, a governing business, and so forth. And, of course, a God business, which is called ‘religion,’ and which is a particularly reprehensible line of endeavor. I could talk for a year on the perverse and nasty notions that the religions sell, but I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. But I’ll just mention one matter, which seems to underlie everything the religions preach, and which seems to me almost exquisitely perverse.”
“What’s that?” Carmody asked.
“It’s the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is free. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what do the religions do with this? They say, ‘Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us.’ The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the face of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him.”
“I think I see what you mean,” Carmody said.
“I’ve made it too complicated,” Maudsley said. “There’s a much simpler reason for avoiding religion.”
“What’s that?”
“Just consider its style—bombastic, hortatory, sickly-sweet, patronizing, artificial, inapropos, boring, filled with dreary images or peppy slogans—fit subject matter for senile old women and unweaned babies, but for no one else. I cannot believe that the God I met here would ever enter a church; he had too much taste and ferocity, too much anger and pride. I can’t believe it, and for me that ends the matter. Why should I go to a place that a God would not enter?””

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 13 (pp. 88-89)

Women, God, War, Peace

“I associated much of Christian doctrine with children's stories because I grew up in church. My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity.”

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

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

God, Children, School, Teachers

“Fifteen years ago, there was this country called the Soviet Union that had over 10,000 nuclear warheads pointed at us… they're not there anymore. That's a good thing. And when people talk about how the world is more dangerous now than it was because we had these terrorists running around, my reply is, you know, a terrorist is like a buzzing mosquito. About 15 years ago, there was a great, big vampire bat; that's several orders of magnitude different from a mosquito. So the world is much safer — a lot safer than it was. It's not perfectly safe, but it's a heck of a lot safer than it was.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, Larry King Live (2000)

People, World, Country

“Times like this, with the wind moving the grass and curling around her like a huge cool hand, Tess felt the world as a second presence, as another person, as if the wind and the grass had voices of their own and she could hear them talking.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Blind Lake

Source: Blind Lake (2003), Chapter 2 (p. 23)

World, Grass, Time, Personality

“As for the White House, all the boy's family had lived there, and, barring the eight years of Andrew Jackson's reign, had been more or less at home there ever since it was built. The boy half thought he owned it, and took for granted that he should some day live in it. He felt no sensation whatever before Presidents. A President was a matter of course in every respectable family; he had two in his own; three, if he counted old Nathaniel Gorham, who, was the oldest and first in distinction. Revolutionary patriots, or perhaps a Colonial Governor, might be worth talking about, but any one could be President, and some very shady characters were likely to be. Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, and such things were swarming in every street.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Family, Home, Boy, Housing

“I found everyone talking nervously and feverishly of the weather and the war in South Africa, except Reginald, who was reclining in a comfortable chair with the dreamy, far-away look that a volcano might wear just after it had desolated entire villages.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald"
Reginald (1904)

War, Weather

“Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.”

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

According to Churchill's assistant, Anthony Montague-Browne, Churchill had not coined this phrase, but wished he had. Resembles an ironic aphorism cited by Langworth from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as 19th-century English naval tradition, “Ashore it’s wine, women and song; aboard it’s rum, bum and concertina” or variously “... rum, bum and bacca [tobacco]”. Misattributed Source: This Day in Quotes, Robert Deis, Churchill’s alleged quip about British naval tradition http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2010/08/rum-sodomy-and-lash-winston-churchills.html, Source: [Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations, Richard Langworth, 1586489577, https://books.google.com/books/about/Churchill_by_Himself.html?id=vbsU21fEhLAC, 577, In dinner conversation ca. 1955, private secretary Anthony Montague Browne confronted WSC with this quotation. 'I never said it. I wish I had,' responded Churchill. (AMB to the editor.) 'Compare “Rum, bum, and bacca” and “Ashore it's wine women and song, aboard it's rum, bum and concertina”, naval catchphrases dating from the nineteenth century' -- Oxford Dictionary of Quotations]

“They always have big mouths. They always talk a lot. It's happened before, so it's gonna happen again. I don't really worry about that.”

Martina Hingis (1980) Swiss tennis player

About Serena and Venus Williams, U.S. OPEN; Serena Williams Wins Match, Then Takes a Shot at Hingis http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E4D8153AF930A3575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

“Necessity resides in the way we talk about things, not in the things we talk about.”

Willard van Orman Quine (1908–2000) American philosopher and logician

Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (1976), p. 174
1970s

Way

“People talk vaguely about the innocence of a little child, but they take mighty good care not to let it out of their sight for twenty minutes.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"The Innocence of Reginald"
Reginald (1904)

People

“You can only talk rubbish if you're aware of knowledge.”

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

Podcast Series 2 Episode 6
On Sayings

Knowledge

“The Jews talk about "never again."… You cannot say "Never again" to God because when he puts you in the oven, you're in one indeed!… "Never again" don't mean a damn thing when God get ready for you!”

Louis Farrakhan (1933) leader of the Nation of Islam

"People Organized and Working for Economic Rebirth," sermon at Madison Square Garden (7 October 1985)

God

“William I’m sorry I let my brother hoist you up the mast in that crappy jury-rigged bosun’s chair while everybody laughed! William I’m sorry I could build better fires than you could! I’m sorry my stack of Christmas cards was always bigger than yours! … William I’m sorry I invented bop jogging which you couldn’t do! I’m sorry I loved Antigua! I’m sorry my mind wandered when you talked about the army! I’m sorry I was superior in argument! I’m sorry you slit open my bicycle tires looking for incriminating letters that you didn’t find! You’ll never find them! … William! I’m sorry I looked at Sam but he was so handsome, so handsome, who could not! I’m sorry I slept with Sam! I’m sorry about the library books! I’m sorry about Pete! I’m sorry I never played the guitar you gave me! I’m sorry I married you and I’ll never so it again!”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The Apology”.
Great Days (1979)

Love, Books, Christmas

“We have propounded our beliefs in various ways, and according to various doctrines. Often we have aroused the passions of men to murder and war. This was perfectly proper, since it brought the problems of morality and religion to their highest and most exquisite pitch, and gave many complicated matters for us theologians to talk about.
We argued always, and we published our various dissenting opinions. But we argued like lawyers in a court, and nobody in his right mind listens to a lawyer. Those were the days of our pride, and we never noticed that men had ceased to pay attention to us.”

Robert Sheckley book Journey Beyond Tomorrow

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 6 “Joenes and the Three Truck Drivers” (p. 50)

Men, War, Religion, Way

“There are the goods; if you want them, you can have them. If you do not want them, they would almost rather that you did not come and talk about them.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Three Men on the Bummel

Three Men on the Bummel (1900).

“At 20, reflecting on Cus D'Amato: "Cus was my father but he was more than a father. You can have a father and what does it mean?—it doesn't really mean anything. Cus was my backbone…. He did everything for my best interest…. We'd spend all our time together, talk about things that, later on, would come back to me. Like about character, and courage. Like the hero and the coward: that the hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.usfca.edu/~southerr/boxing/tyson.html On his family

Fear, Feeling, Courage, Time

“Words are such thin shavings of the fractal fruit,
tiny scraping of the skin that holds
these joyously determined swirls of history
inside their juicy turbulence.
Talking itself westward after the day's feast,
each little word with its meaning strapped to its back
falls down the swell of tomorrow
like a hiker with hopeful new shoes.”

Karen Press (1956) South African poet

Purposefully peeling footsteps (Home, 2000)

Hope, Shoe, History

“He Robert Rauschenberg was a kind of enfant terrible at the time [around 1960] and I thought of him as an accomplished professional. He’d already had a number of shows, knew everybody, had been to Black Mountain College in South Carolina, working with all those avant-garde people.... Rauschenberg focused very much on working. I was prepared to do that, too. He was also involved with Merce Cunningham dance group and totally unconcerned with his success, in the cliché term. All of the activity had a lively quality, quite separate from any commercial situation.... [Rauschenberg moved into a loft in Jaser John's building and they very closely worked together for a couple of years]. You get a lot by doing. It's very important for a young artist to see how things are done. The kind of exchange we had was stronger than talking. If you do something then I do something then you do something, it means more than what you say.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Once Established, says Jasper Johns...,Grace Glueck, New York Times, 16 October 1977, sec. 2 pp. 1-31
1970s

People, Mountain, Time, Success

“Returning home on leave following my second year at West Point, I called on a great-uncle who had joined the Confederate Army at the age of sixteen and had fought in a number of major Civil War battles, including Gettysburg, and had been with Robert E. Lee at Appamatox. My Uncle White was the younger brother of my grandfather. He hated Yankees and Republicans, not necessarily in that order, and talked derisively about both. When I visited, he was seated in a wheel chair, in grudging acquiescence to the infirmities of age. Tobacco juice decorated his shirt and stains around a spittoon on the floor testified to the inaccuracy of his aim. Flies buzzed through screenless windows. "What are you doing with yourself, son?" Uncle White asked. I answered the old veteran with trepidation. "I'm going to that same school that Grant and Sherman went to, the Military Academy at West Point, New York."”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Uncle White was silent for what seemed like a long time. "That's all right, son," he said at last. "Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson went there too."
Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 12.

Hate, War, Age, School

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property were just what Aristotle did not talk about. They are the conditions of happiness; but the essence of happiness, according to Aristotle, is virtue. So the moderns decided to deal with the conditions and to let happiness take care of itself.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 284.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Life, Happiness