“Let me count the ways” – Pros and Cons

FAMOUS LOVE QUOTE: “How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace.”        Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)        English poet        Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), no. 43

PRO-SELF LOVE QUOTE: “How do I masturbate — let me count the ways — with my finger, fingers, hand, hands, feet, dry, lubricated, my own lubrication lube from a tube...”        The Complete Guide to Safer Sex (1987)        Published by the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality

ANTI-TWILIGHT QUOTE: “Twilight sucks — let me count the ways.”        Freelance journalist Adi Jones        Commenting on the the vampire-lite Twilight book series        CalCoastNews.com, Nov. 24, 2009

ANTI-CONFUSION QUOTE: “Apparently the new James Bond was telling the Web site that he wants a gay scene in the next Bond film. Daniel Craig is quoted as saying, ‘Why not, I think in this day and age fans would accept it.’ Why not? Let me count the ways. What would Sean Connery say? How would the Bond girls process that? And straight guys everywhere. Well, they would be confused.”         Political talk show host, Bill O'Reilly        On his Fox News TV show, The O'Reilly Factor, Dec. 5, 2006

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“I Don’t Care” quotes – the Celebrity Edition

QUOTE:

“I don’t care what they say as long as they talk about me.”
       Actress Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968)
       Her oft-quoted version of the old Hollywood publicity axiom

 

  

COUNTERQUOTE:

“I don’t care what is written about me, so long as it isn’t true.”
       Actress Katherine Hepburn (1907-2003)
       The famous counterquote commonly attributed to her

 

 

    

BOXER QUOTE:

“The fact is, people don’t like me. But if you’re telling me, ‘Mike, you’re a crazy motherfucker, you’re an animal,’ I’ll crack you in your fucking face...I don’t care what they do as long as they respect me.”
       Boxer Mike Tyson (b. 1966)
       Playboy magazine interview, November 1998

 

RACER QUOTE:

“I don’t care what they call me as long as I get to the bank on Monday.”
       Race car driver Dale Earnhardt (1951-2001)
       Commenting on the negative nicknames other drivers have called him
       Quoted in the Sporting World of the Modern South (2002), by Patrick B. Miller

 

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“I Don’t Care” quotes – the Sexual Preferences Edition

FAMOUS QUOTE:

“I don’t care what they do, so long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”
       Mrs. Patrick Campbell (Beatrice Campbell; 1865-1940)
       British actress
       The legendary quotation about homosexuals commonly attributed to her

           

  

DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL COUNTERQUOTE:

“I don’t care if a soldier is ‘straight’, as long as he can shoot straight.”
       Attributed to Barry Goldwater (1909-1998)
       The common paraphrase of a remark Goldwater made in 1993 
       What he actually said: “You don’t need to be ‘straight’ to fight and die for your country.”

 

   

NUDGE NUDGE, WINK WINK QUOTE:

“I don’t care what they look like as long as they got big tits.”
       An anonymous cowboy character  
       In the novel The Carpetbaggers (1964), by Harold Robbins

 

 

 

STRIPPER QUOTE:

“I don’t care what they say or do to me as long as they pay.”
       An anonymous stripper
       Quoted in The Sexual Scene (1970), by John H. Gagnon

 

 

 

STRIP HER QUOTE:

“I don’t care what she has to say. She should just shut up and pose nude for Playboy.” 
       Comment posted by an anonymous reader on Steve Sailer’s iSteve Blog
       Regarding Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue (2009)

 

     

“Hearts and minds” – from the Bible, to the Revolution, to Vietnam, to Afghanistan…

QUOTE:

“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ.”
       The Epistle of St. Paul to the Philippians, c. 62 A.D.
       Famous Biblical quote from Philippians 4:7

 

 

 

REVOLUTIONARY WAR QUOTE:

“The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations...This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.”
       John Adams
       Founding Father and U.S. President
       Letter to to Hezekiah Niles, February 13, 1818

 

 

VIETNAM WAR QUOTE:

“We must be ready to fight in Vietnam, but the ultimate victory will depend upon the hearts and the minds of the people who actually live out there.”
       U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson
       His famous “Hearts and Minds” speech, May 4, 1965

 

VIETNAM WAR COUNTERQUOTE:

“If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
       U.S. Green Berets slogan during the Vietnam War

 

 

 

 

AFGHANISTAN WAR QUOTE:

“[General] Petraeus’s counterinsurgency manual, with all its talk of winning hearts and minds, is pure Vietnam. To most Americans, Vietnam taught one big lesson: ‘Don’t do it again!’ To today’s military, Vietnam has taught a host of little lessons, adding up to ‘Do it better!’”
       Columnist and author Jonathan Schell
       In the November 30, 2009 edition of The Nation
       Commenting on the war in Afghanistan

 

 

AFGHANISTAN WAR QUOTE II:

“The Karzai regime [in Afghanistan] is corrupt and ineffective. Americans would like to think we are fighting against the Islamic extremism embraced by the Taliban, but the Taliban is winning hearts and minds because they are standing up to what increasingly looks like an occupying force.” 
       Editor Rick Holmes
       The MetroWest Daily News 
       Editorial, November 15, 2009

Asses, atheists, elephants, donkeys and cows “come home to roost”

QUOTE:

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye...America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
       Rev. Jeremiah Wright (b. 1941)
       Commenting on the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.
       In a “sermon” he gave on September 16, 2001

 

 

COUNTERQUOTE:

“Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by [Jerry] Falwell and [Pat] Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content.”
       Christopher Hitchens (b. 1949)
       English-American author, journalist and advocate for atheism
       In his column in The Nation, October 8, 2001

 

 

 

GOP ELEPHANT QUOTE:

“All of this infusion of trillions of trillions of spending by this administration and this Congress comes home to roost...It roosts in the back pockets of small business owners in this country, which this [Obama] administration has done zip for.”
       Republican Party Chair Michael Steele (b. 1958)
       Commenting on recent GOP gubernatorial recent wins in Virginia and New Jersey
       Interview on ABC News, November 8, 2009

 

 

DEMOCRAT DONKEY QUOTE:

“Some people say don’t count your chickens before they're hatched. Well, the Republicans have already hatched their chicken in this campaign and George Bush is a dead duck.”
       Sen. Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy (1932-2009)
       Speech at the Democratic National Convention on July 19, 1988
       Incorrectly predicting that Democrat Michael Dukakis would beat George H.W. Bush in the
          1988 presidential election (though Bush’s goose was cooked by Bill Clinton in 1992)

 

 

NAKED COW QUOTE:

“Looks like the cows have come home to roost.”
       Leslie Nielsen (b. 1926) as Lt. Frank Drebin
       In the movie Naked Gun 2½ (1991)

“The chickens have come home to roost” – and, the chicks, cows and geese

QUOTE:

“President Kennedy never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon...Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they always made me glad.”
       Black Muslim leader Malcolm X (1925-1965)
       His infamous answer when asked how he felt about John F. Kennedy’s assassination
       Press conference, December 1, 1963

 

 

COUNTERQUOTE:

“It was, as I saw it, a case of ‘the chickens coming home to roost.’ I said that the hate in white men had not stopped with the killing of defenseless black people, but that hate, allowed to spread unchecked, had finally struck down this country’s Chief Magistrate.” 
       Malcolm X, trying to explain his infamous “chickens” quote
       In The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley (1964)

 

 

CHICK QUOTE:

“I heard somewhere that there are three times as many single women over forty as single men. That’s what we got from the women’s movement.  The chickens have come home to roost.”
       Actor Jack Nicholson 
       In Esquire magazine’s regular quotation feature “What I’ve Learned,” Jan. 2004

 

 

 

CASH COW QUOTE:

“People also have used their homes as ATMs, borrowing against the value. That cash cow has dried up with the slumping housing market and, as the saying goes, the chickens have come home to roost. Except now there's no roost.”
       Denver Post editor, Dan Haley
       Editorial, March 23, 2008

 

 

MOTHER GOOSE QUOTE:

“Bad news, Mr. Putin...The Chechens have come home to roost.”
       Mother Goose and Grimm cartoon strip, by Mike Peters
       November 2009

Do Republicans – or Democrats – still have “a big tent”?

QUOTE:

“Our party is a big tent. We can house many views on many issues.”
       Lee Atwater (1951-1991)
       Republican political strategist and “wedge issue” mastermind   
       Famous comment to reporters, Nov. 14, 1989

 

 

 

COUNTERQUOTE:

“The Democratic Party is a big tent. We are widely diversified.”
       Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill (1912-1994)
       Democratic House Majority Leader
       Comment to a reporter in June 1975

 

 

 

UPDATED QUOTE ABOUT THE GOP:

“As you know, if you're a minority or an interest group, the Democrats will hold a debate at your house. Whereas, Republicans take a slightly different approach. They have a big tent – you're just not allowed in it.”
       Jon Stewart (b. 1962)
       Host of The Daily Show
       Quip made on his show, Oct. 1, 2007

 

 

UPDATED QUOTE ABOUT THE DEMS:

“The ultra left-wing group MoveOn.org has announced that it will begin targeting Democrats who oppose health care reform...[and] plans to help bankroll primary challenges against senators who side with the GOP on the issue of health care. Now wait a minute, I thought the mainstream media said it was Republicans who no longer had the big tent party? I guess the media is wrong.”
       Sean Hannity (b. 1961)
       Conservative media pundit 
       Comment on his Fox News show, Nov. 12, 2009

“Land of the free, home of the brave” – the Commie Edition

QUOTE:

“Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?”
       Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)
       The Star-Spangled Banner (1814)

 

 

 

COUNTERQUOTE:

“This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.”
       Elmer Davis (1890-1958)
       CBS journalist who bravely opposed Joe McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts
       But We Were Born Free (1954)

 

 

 

KOOKY QUOTE #1:

“Land of the greed and home of the slave.”
       Rev. Jeremiah Wright (b. 1941)
       Referring to America in a videotaped speech, at an event commemorating
       the 60th anniversary of the socialist journal, National Guardian, Sept. 17 2009

 

 

 

KOOKY QUOTE #2:

“Land of the greed and home of the slave? President Obama IS Jeremiah Wright. Jeremiah Wright IS President Obama: happy to be called a socialist.”
       Rush Limbaugh
       Commenting on Rev. Wright’s quote on his radio show, Nov. 3, 2009

“Familiarity breeds contempt” — The Animal Quotes Edition

QUOTE:

“Familiarity breeds contempt.”
       From “The Fox and the Lion” story
       Aesop's Fables

 

 

 

COUNTERQUOTE:

“There is a sense in presidential politics that familiarity breeds contempt. There is a time and a place to pet the pigs and kiss the babies, but that comes a little bit later.” 
       Conservative political strategist Ralph Reed
       Quoted in The National Journal’s “Hotline,” July 27, 1999

 

 

 

GOAT QUOTE:

“Goats soon learn all there is to know about the other goats in their mutual captivity, becoming progressively bored and more curious about the possibility of other, substantially more interesting goats beyond the fence, or corral — a case of familiarity breeds curiosity.”
       Colorado Rancher J.C. Mattingly
       In The Fence Post blog

 

 

 

SWINE FLU QUOTE:

“The country seems to have its knickers in a knot about swine flu, while more serious illnesses and health risks seem to go unnoticed...Familiarity breeds contempt — we have become so accustomed to hearing about deaths in traffic accidents, we give the subject little thought unless we are personally affected.”
       Editorial, Desert Valley Times, Oct. 20, 2009