Quotes about whack (31 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life , Death , Money , People

“A plaque and platinum status iIs whack if I’m not the baddest.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Till I Collapse"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

“Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One
Context: Well, I'll take these pages and move on. Things are happening elsewhere. Things are always happening. It seems wherever I go there is drama. People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death.

Death , People , World , Failure

“I'm sick of this. Call me what you like, say I'm without honor, I don't care. I'm not getting on any more horses to whack you people with a stick.”

Tamora Pierce Squire

Source: Squire

People , Horse

“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.”

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

Time

“When asked what the difference between a karate punch and a kung-fu punch was during his first U. S. screen test in 1965, Bruce Lee replied, “Well, a karate punch is like being hit by an iron bar—whack! A kung-fu punch is like being hit by an iron ball swung on an iron chain with an iron ball attached to the end—it goes WHANG!—and it hurts inside.” Then he stood up and showed exactly what that might look like in a flurry of hands and feet moving so fast they blurred.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Attributed

Hurt

“The problem with aging is not that it’s one damn thing after another—it’s every damn thing, all at once, all the time.
You can’t stop aging. Gene therapies and replacement organs and plastic surgery give it a good fight. But it catches up with you anyway. Get a new lung, and your heart blows a valve. Get a new heart, and your liver swells up to the size of an inflatable kiddie pool. Change out your liver, a stroke gives you a whack. That’s aging’s trump card; they still can’t replace brains.”

John Scalzi (1969) American science fiction writer

Source: Old Man’s War (2005), Chapter 1 (p. 14)

Age , Problem , Change , Time

“I love my fans, but no one ever puts a grasp on the fact I've sacrificed everything I have. I never dreamt I'd get to the level that I'm at. This is whack, this is more than I ever coulda asked. Everywhere I go, a hat, a sweater hood or mask, what about math, how come I wasn't ever good at that? It's like the boy in the bubble who never could adapt. I'm trapped, if I could go back, I never would've rapped.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Say Goodbye Hollywood"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

Love , Boy

“Incidentally, there's a balanced position that all of America's presidential candidates could take on the controversial abortion issue. If they want votes they shouldn't campaign to make abortion illegal or legal. They should campaign to make it retroactive. If a kid reaches 25 and he or she is still jobless, feckless, and sitting around Starbucks acting like a — no offense — European, then whack.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

"Letter to Our European Friends" (4 February 2008)

“It was too late to take risks now. I asked Tenzing to belay me strongly, and I started cutting a cautious line of steps up the ridge. Peering from side to side and thrusting with my ice axe, I tried to discover a possible cornice, but everything seemed solid and firm. I waved Tenzing up to me. A few more whacks of the ice–ax, a few very weary steps, and we were on the summit of Everest.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

"Adventure's End" in The Norton Book of Sports (1992) edited by George Plimpton, p. 85
Context: It was too late to take risks now. I asked Tenzing to belay me strongly, and I started cutting a cautious line of steps up the ridge. Peering from side to side and thrusting with my ice axe, I tried to discover a possible cornice, but everything seemed solid and firm. I waved Tenzing up to me. A few more whacks of the ice–ax, a few very weary steps, and we were on the summit of Everest.
It was 11:30 AM. My first sensation was one of relief — relief that the long grind was over, that the summit had been reached before our oxygen supplies had dropped to a critical level; and relief that in the end the mountain had been kind to us in having a pleasantly rounded cone for its summit instead of a fearsome and unapproachable cornice. But mixed with the relief was a vague sense of astonishment that I should have been the lucky one to attain the ambition of so many brave and determined climbers. I seemed difficult to grasp that we'd got there. I was too tired and too conscious of the long way down to safety really to feel any great elation. But as the fact of our success thrust itself more clearly into my mind, I felt a quiet glow of satisfaction spread through my body — a satisfaction less vociferous but more powerful than I had ever felt on a mountain top before. I turned and looked at Tenzing. Even beneath his oxygen mask and the icicles hanging form his hair, I could see his infectious grin of sheer delight. I held out my hand, and in silence we shook in good Anglo-Saxon fashion. But this was not enough for Tenzing, and impulsively he threw his arm around my shoulders and we thumped each other on the back in mutual congratulations.

“Nights were the worst. I'd try to get some sleep, only to be thrown out of bed and dragged out into the compound for another game of "Let's whack Bobby in the dark!" - Bobby Pendragon, RoZ”

D.J. MacHale book The Rivers of Zadaa

Source: The Rivers of Zadaa

Game , Sleep , Night

“They took a baseball bat
and whacked open his head.
Mummy Boy fell to the ground;
he finally was dead.
Inside of his head
were no candy or prizes,
just a few stray beetles
of various sizes.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Source: The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories

Boy , Dead

“Anyway, whacking a surly bartender ain't much of a crime.”

Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove

Source: Lonesome Dove

“I was starting to see that what looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Variant: What looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe ittake a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.
Source: Handle with Care

Life , Art

“I don't take stuff seriously. I saw 'Hellraiser 3' the other day at Cannes; it's OK, it's a good film, I didn't hate it or anything. I thought it was quite good, but it was all just so serious. Some guy walking round with pins sticking out of his face. I just can't sit there and think,'this is really scary.' If I made a 'Hellraiser' film, I'd like Pinhead to be whacked against a wall and have all the pins flattened into his face.”

Peter Jackson (1961) New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter

Trash City Interview http://members.tripod.com/hc_faq/5.2.1.1.htm (1992)

Hate , Guy , Thinking

“In science fiction, we dream. In order to colonize in space, to rebuild our cities, which are so far out of whack, to tackle any number of problems, we must imagine the future, including the new technologies that are required.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Playboy interview (1996)

Dreams , Imagination , Problem , Science

“Donald Trump is treating the press corps like it's a puppy that you whack on the nose with a newspaper when it pees on the floor.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

2010s

“If you're in a Gay Mafia and you get whacked, is that good or bad? [gay voice] Say hello to my little friend.”

Larry the Cable Guy (1963) American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist

Morning Constitutions (2007)

“Well, what that means is that it doesn’t happen very often. Now it’s happened to one small group of people—us—twice in a short time. That would seem to indicate that,” he ticked a finger, “something’s seriously out of whack in general, or,” he ticked the next finger, “someone’s out to get us in particular; which I feel is quite unlikely. At times in my paranoid past I would have assumed that the Universe is teaming up to get me, but now I’m more objective and I don’t believe that. I think it, but I don’t believe it.”

Michael Kurland book The Unicorn Girl

Source: The Unicorn Girl (1969), Chapter 4 (p. 40)

People , Feeling , Thinking , Universe

“What kind of bank gives back 65 percent-often less-of what you deposit? Indeed, when you compare the services of a bank and an insurance company, common sense suggests something is out of whack.”

Andrew Tobias (1947) American journalist

Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 1, The Biggest Game In The World, p. 15.

Sense

“At one point we got some German sausages for dinner, and my girl Anna was working the communal tomato sauce pump and she whacked it and it all squirted over my pants, and suddenly there was silence, and I realised that Muse had stopped playing, and the entire 20 odd thousand punters were looking at me, and suddenly I just threw my hands up and said ‘anyone for sauce?’ and everyone just burst into laughter and suddenly Peaches was there and she said ‘you’re alright kid’ and we high fived and then I crowd surfed all the way onto stage and Muse let me play the guitar solo for one of their songs and even though I’d never heard it I just winged it and it was awesome.”

Justin Heazlewood (1980) Australian musician and comedian

online Laptopping http://www.bedroomphilosopher.com/2007/02/20/laptopping-things-oclock/, Bedroom Philosopher (February 20, 2007).

Way , Girl , Communication , Laughter

“If anyone was questioning whether or not Peter Schiff was truly a Republican, he's certainly made it clear today. After eight years of the Bush Administration's lax regulation and market-first mentality, the last thing we need is to further reduce regulation and allow Wall Street to run the show. Chris Dodd is leading the way to put a balance back into a system that for years has been too far out of whack and ensure that consumers are protected first and foremost.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

2010 Senate Campaign, Quotes made by Connecticut Democratic Party spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan

Way , Question

“Compassion is something individual and voluntary. You cannot compel somebody to be compassionate; nor can you be vicariously compassionate by compelling somebody else. The Good Samaritan would have lost all merit if a Roman soldier were standing by the road with a drawn sword, telling him to get on with it and look after the injured stranger. Because there can be no such thing as compulsory compassion or vicarious compassion, therefore it is a humbugging abuse of language, intended to deceive, to talk about a 'compassionate Government' or a 'compassionate party'—or even a 'compassionate society', unless one simply means by that a society which happens to contain a lot of compassionate individuals. Nor let anyone protest: 'Oh, but when I vote for a party which will "make provision on an unprecedented scale for those in need of help", it means I too shall have to pay my whack and so I am being compassionate after all.'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Nonsense! The purpose of your vote is not to make yourself subscribe—that you can freely do at any time—but to compel others.
Speech to the Harborough Division Conservative Association Gala, Leicester (27 September 1969), from Still to Decide (Elliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 22-23
1960s

Time , Help

“Charles Laughton is superbly vulgar in this whack at the backside of Victorianism. He makes a great vaudeville turn out of the role of an egocentric scoundrel, the prosperous bootmaker who doesn't want to part with his three marriageable daughters because they are too useful as unpaid labor. As the oldest daughter, the spinster in spite of herself, Brenda de Banzie is so "right" that when she marries her father's best workman and puts belching, drunken old Dad out of business, one feels the good old-fashioned impulse to applaud.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"Hobson's Choice," pp. 335-336.
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982)

Marriage , Feeling , Fashion , Business

“Sometimes we do not really become adults until we suffer a good whacking loss, and our lives in a sense catch up with us and wash over us like a wave and everything goes.”

Richard Ford The Sportswriter

Source: The Sportswriter (1986), p. 7

Sense , Suffering , Loss

“I guess I got whacked hard in the mystery department when I was little. I found the world completely and totally fascinating then — it was like a dream. They say that people who think they had a happy childhood are blocking something out, but I think I really had one. Of course I had the usual fears, like going to school — I knew there was some sort of problem there. But every other person sensed that problem too, so my fears were pretty normal.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

McKenna interview (1992)

People , World , Fear , School

“White House is open to a compromise on extending these Bush tax cuts. He is not open to it, he has to. What changed? The election, that's what changed. Not only with all those Republicans winning and causes near and dear to the president he knows he is losing. Like whacking fat cats. Fat chance… Folks are rising up and saying enough of this class warfare… we're not at war with each other, we're at war with the government…”

Neil Cavuto (1958) American television presenter

"Cavuto: 'Folks are rising up' against 'class warfare crap', we're 'at war against the government, not each other'" http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201011040031, mediamatters.org, (November 4, 2010).

War , Cats , Change , Chance

“If something knocks you five degrees out of whack, the journey of a thousand miles that begins with a single step ends up thousands of miles away from its intended destination.”

Dave Sim (1956) Canadian cartoonist, creator of Cerebus

http://cerebusfangirl.com/artists/0805talk.php

“If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

As quoted in "Author Isn't Just a Cat in the Hat" by Miles Corwin in The Los Angeles Times (27 November 1983); also in Dr. Seuss: American Icon (2004) by Philip Nel, p. 38
Context: Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It's more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.

“As long as you want to keep playing whack-a-mole from hell, it is my solemn promise that I will keep picking up the metaphorical hammer to slam you back down and remind you that you have not yet done anything to earn our forgiveness. So take your millions of dollars and pay a therapist to care about how tough it’s been to get caught being an abuser because honestly, I don’t give a shit.”

Samantha Bee (1969) Canadian comedic actress and author

Full Frontal, May 9, 2018, as quoted in "Samantha Bee Checks in With #MeToo, This Time With Zero F***s Left to Give for These Men" https://www.themarysue.com/samantha-bee-schneiderman-eff-off/, by Vivian Kane, The Mary Sue, May 10th, 2018

Forgiveness , Hell

“…You can’t separate race from police shooting cases, but you also can’t say that’s the whole story. There’s something out of whack with the way we’ve structured relationships—not just between police officers and civilians, but between strangers of all kinds.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: On police shootings in “Oprah Talks to Revisionist History's Malcolm Gladwell” https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/a28568751/oprah-talks-to-malcolm-gladwell/ in O Magzzine (2019 Aug 7)

Way