776 Stupidest Things Ever Said (4 page)

The more killing and homicides you have, the more havoc it prevents.

Outside of the killings, [Washington] has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

When anyone is held up he shall immediately telephone the details to a telephone operator. She will plug in every phone in the city and relate the details of the holdup. Near every telephone a shotgun is to be kept hanging on the wall. When the story of the holdup is spread through the phones
every citizen will seize his shotgun and rush to the street. All whistles will blow and at this signal all traffic, including pedestrians, will halt. Anyone besides Law officers who moves will be shot.

That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass—and I’m just the one to do it.

It rolls off my back like a duck.

When there is duplicity in personnel, it must be eliminated. Teachers who are of retirement age should be urged to do so.

Sir Boyle Roche was born with his foot in his mouth—and he kept it there.

He was an Irish soldier, later an Irish member of the British Parliament, who was made a knight in 1776 and then a baronet. But Sir Boyle was much more than just another politician.

He was the spiritual grandfather of such masters as Yogi Berra and Sam Goldwyn, the true father of the verbal blunder and malapropism, called in his day and up through the early 1900s the “Irish bull.”

The term “bull” itself came from the blunderings of a certain Obadiah Bull, an Irish lawyer in London. Unfortunately most of his errors are lost to history, but Sir Boyle is still vigorously alive, thanks to such collectors as G. R. Neilson in 1898 and James C. Percy in 1915.

Sir Boyle Roche was a forceful personality with a vigorous, sometimes florid way of mixing metaphors and everything else. For example, in the middle of an impassioned speech to the House of Commons on the French Revolution, he said:

Needless to say, like Elvis, he became “a living legend in his own time,” and probably a good number of his blunders were not made by him, but merely attributed to him.

As Sir Boyle himself said:

“Half the lies our opponents tell about us are not true.”

• [They are] living from hand to mouth like the birds of the air.
  

  (describing the poverty of Irish farmers)
  

• Little children who could neither walk nor talk were running about in the streets cursing their Maker.
  

  (in a speech about the poor conditions of the times)
  

• All along the untrodden paths of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand.
  

• While I write this letter, I have a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other.
  

• The farmers of Ireland ought to dispense with the use of wooden gates, and put up cast-iron ones instead, as the latter would last forever and in the end could be utilized for making horseshoes.
  

• If you ever come within a mile of our house, will you stop there all night?
  

  (in a letter to a friend)
  

• Many thousands of them were destitute of even the goods they possessed.
  

• I answer in the affirmative with an emphatic “No.”
  

• Sir, I would anchor a frigate off each bank of the river, with strict
  orders not to stir; and so, by cruising up and down, put a stop to smuggling.
  

  (his suggestion for halting smuggling on the Shannon River)
  

• Anybody who wishes to diminish the brotherly affection of the two sister countries is an enemy to both nations.
  

  (speaking about the union between Britain and Ireland)
  

• Single misfortunes never come alone, and the greatest of all national calamities is generally followed by one greater.
  

• The cup of our trouble is running over, but, alas, is not yet full.
  

Senate Agriculture Chairman Jesse Helms:

Representative Paula Hawkins (R-Fla.):

[Personhole] is not an acceptable de-sexed word.

Before the Home Rule Bill is enforced, Asquith will have to walk over many dead bodies—his own included.

It is what we must all come to if we only live long enough.

My friends, I desire that you will make a post-mortem examination of me, and find out what ails me; for really I am dying to know what my disease is myself.

Your medical assistance is cancelled beginning 9/24/84 because of your death.

Beginning in February 1976 your assistance benefits will be discontinued…. Reason: it has been reported to our office that you expired on January 1, 1976.

Beware! To touch these wires is instant death. Anyone found doing so will be prosecuted.

Well, that kind of puts a damper on even a Yankee win.

We just lost a Pope, which is very sad, and now we lost to the Yankees, which is also very sad.

At the next election, we have got to give the third, and I hope the last, death blow to Home Rule.

When an Englishman wants to get married, to whom does he go? To the clergy. When he wants to get his child baptised, to whom does he go? To the clergy. When he wants to get buried, to whom does he go?

Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years, with time off for good behavior?

If you leave this question to us for three years, we will settle it tomorrow morning.

Democracy: A government of the masses…. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic—negating property rights…. Result is demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.

We found the term “killing” too broad.

We may, of course, define emotions as the autopoetic immune system of the autopoetic psychic system; but again: is this emotionally adequate?

[Exposure to dioxin is] usually not disabling but may be fatal.

Anything concerning the Ambassador’s swimming pool must be referred to as water storage tank not as
swimming pool
.

You know, your nose looks just like Danny Thomas’s.

Some of them have marvelous minds, those black people over there.

Why thresh old straw or beat an old bag of bones?

Look, I’m going to tell you something, hon. You’ve crossed and uncrossed your legs twice and one time you showed me something I shouldn’t see. Now am I going to complain that you’re loosey-goosey or you got no class?

This is a great day for France!

I didn’t know that guy was a nigger.

German President Heinrich Lubke, on the tarmac in his role as official greeter in 1962, trying to say “How are you?”:

President of India:

The only thing I regret is that your stay is not shorter.

If I never get to Mexico again, it wouldn’t bother me. I don’t like the food or the climate.

The treaty has to be concocted to satisfy all tastes. One prepares the seafood, the meat, the chicken, and the rice, but they are just an assortment of separate dishes until they are blended into perfect unity, and the result is paella—or a treaty for all.

Yogi Berra (on the phone to a lost Joe Garagiola):

Joe Garagiola:

Yogi Berra:

Separate together in a bunch. [And don’t] stand around so much in little bundles.

Everybody move helter … and skelter.

They always bite the hand that lays the golden egg.

This is the worst disaster in California since I was elected.

… the deceased had an impediment in his speech.