June 29, 2010

“I am not an animal!”


FAMOUS MOVIE QUOTE:

“I am not an animal!  I am a human being!”
       John Hurt as John Merrick, “The Elephant Man”
       In the film version of The Elephant Man (1980)
       Based on the 1977 play by Bernard Pomerance


THE PENGUIN’S COUNTERQUOTE:

Danny DeVito (as The Penguin): “I am not a human being. I am an animal!”
       In the movie Batman Returns (1992)


NIETZCHE’S VERSION:

“I am not a human being. I am dynamite.”
       German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
       Ecce Homo (written in 1888, published in 1908)


THE PRODUCERS’ VERSION:

Gene Wilder (as Leo Bloom): “Actors are not animals. They’re human beings.”
Zero Mostel (as Max Bialystock): “They are? Have you ever eaten with one?” 
       In Mel Brooks’ movie The Producers (1968)


MST3K VARIATION:

Tom Servo: “I am not an animal. I am a rubber model!”
       One of the quips Tom made on Mystery Science Theater 3000 while watching a stop-motion dinosaur in the 1951 movie, Lost Continent

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Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on my quotations Facebook group.

June 19, 2010

“Those who cannot remember the past...”


FAMOUS ORIGINAL QUOTE:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
       George Santayana (1863-1952)
       Spanish-American philosopher, poet and novelist 
       In his book The Life of Reason, Volume I (1905) 
       This line was used by Walter Shirer as the epigraph of his book Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959)
       Often misquoted with the ending “doomed to repeat it.”


STOP MISQUOTES COUNTERQUOTE:

“A deliberately incorrect Google search (with search terms Santayana, ‘remember history’ and ‘doomed to repeat’), yielded 269 Web pages misquoting Santayana (‘Those who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it.’). Those who cannot remember quotations are condemned to paraphrase them.”
       A reference librarian who blogs as “denseatoms”
       On the NowPublic.com site


JANE ACE COUNTERQUOTE:

“Those who cannot forget the past are doomed to remember it.”
       Jane Ace (1897-1974)
       American comedienne, wife and comic partner of Goodman Ace
       One of her famous malaprops on the couple’s Easy Aces radio show (1930-1945)


BUFFY’S VARIATION:

“You know what they say. Those of us who fail history, doomed to repeat it in summer school.”
       Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar)
       In the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer 
       From the episode "After Life" (Season 6, Ep. 3), first aired Oct. 9, 2001


BUFFY FAN VARIATION:

“Those who cannot forget the past are doomed to watch it — endlessly — in syndication.”
       Article on the fall TV season in TV Guide, 1985
       (Image by Chicago artist Stacia Yeapanis)


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Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on my Famous Quotations Facebook group.

Read some books about misquotations (so you don’t repeat them)…

June 15, 2010

“The right tool for the right job.”


FAMOUS ADVERTISING SLOGAN:

“The right tool for the right job.”
       Ad slogan used for True Temper tools since at least 1907 
       This may not have been the first use of the saying, but it did help popularize it in America.


THE SEXY VERSION:

“When it come to lovin’
Honey, mama,
I’m the one you want
Well, I may not be the best lookin’
But I’m the right tool for the job.”

       David Lee Roth
       American rock music vocalist
       In his song “Right Tool for the Job,” on the DLR Band album (1998) 


THE UNSEXY VERSION:

“Even if one’s intentions are good, the wrong tool for the wrong task is the wrong tool for the wrong task. Sex in an incorrect circumstance is not useful, no matter how good it feels.”
       Joshua Miller
       The Heart of Love (2009) 


CRIMINOLOGY VARIATION:

“The criminal justice system is a tool – one of several – for promoting national security, for protecting our country against terrorism. Sometimes it's the right tool; sometimes it’s the wrong tool.”
       U.S. Assistant Attorney General David Kris
       Speech at the Brookings Institution, June 2010


THEOLOGY VARIATION:

“Perhaps it is time for atheists and anti-theists to take a break from the God arguments. In a way, by continuing the debates, they also continue to reinforce belief in God by theists, because the more they argue against it, the more their opponents lash back with their vehement responses for it. Why? Because they are using the right tool for the wrong job, like using cold reason to sympathize with a person in duress.”
       Kris Hartung
       Post on the Project Reason website, July 24, 2009

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Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on my Famous Quotations Facebook group.




Recommended book about proverbial sayings…

Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings

Compiled by Gregory Titelman

June 12, 2010

“Nothing can be created from nothing.”


FAMOUS QUOTE ABOUT NOTHING:

“Nothing can be created from nothing.” (“Nil posse creare de nilo.”)
       Lucretius (c. 99-55 B.C.)
       Roman philosopher and poet
       De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)


CELEBRITY FAME COUNTERQUOTE:

“Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.”
       Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)
       British clergyman and historian
       The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)


AD MAN’S VERSION:

“If you can supply something that stimulates conspicuous consumption, you can create something from nothing.”
       Patrick Hanlon
       American advertising consultant and writer
       Primal Branding (2006)


GOVERNMENT VERSION:

“The government can create something from nothing. It can spend more than it collects in taxes. If there are private savings lying fallow, the government can borrow them. If there are no such savings, it can borrow from itself (by simply printing more money).”
       Prof. David Schweickart
       American philosopher and mathematician
       Against Capitalism (1996)


DRILL, BABY, DRILL VARIATION:

“Just as something cannot be created from nothing, truth cannot be revealed by falsehood. Belief never yields knowledge...Public policy based on mere beliefs or opinions sooner or later crashes headlong into the wall of reality causing disastrous consequences.”
       Prof. John Kozy
       Centre for Research on Globalization
       Post on the GlobalResearch.ca website, May 16, 2010

June 9, 2010

“A wife is to submit graciously...”


THE ORIGINAL (IN)FAMOUS QUOTE:

“A wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.” 
       Amendment added to the “Baptist Faith and
           Message” guidelines, 1998
       This controversial amendment to the religious tenets of the Southern Baptist Convention was adopted on June 9, 1998. It’s loosely based on a line from the Bible, Ephesians 5:22, which says: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.” The SBC amendment, which also included an anti-gay provision, generated many mocking comments at the time, such as the following…


ANTI-GAY CONUNDRUM QUOTE:

“I guess the Southern Baptists issued a new ruling this week stating that a wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband. What if a husband wants to lead her and the family to Disneyland on Gay Day? What do you do then?”
       Comedian Jay Leno
       On The Tonight Show, June 1998


POLITICALLY INCORRECT QUOTE:

“Recently, we’ve been warned that God will wreak great vengeance upon Orlando, Florida, unless it stops catering to gays; that God thinks homosexuality is a disease, like kleptomania; that God wants wives to submit graciously to their husbands and Moses to lead the NRA. These signs can mean only one thing: God is a Republican.”
       Comedian Bill Maher
       On his Politically Incorrect TV show, June 1998


PRESBYTERIAN QUOTE:

“I’m not a Southern Baptist, I’m a Presbyterian. The men of our denomination aren’t likely to suggest to us women anytime soon that we should graciously submit to anything because they’re afraid we’d smack them with our Bibles and leave them in the church parking lot.”
       Freelance writer Kelly Burgess 
       In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 1, 1998

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Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on my Famous Quotations Facebook group.

June 8, 2010

“One day at a time” gets repurposed…


THE FAMOUS MOTTO:

“One day at a time.”
       Alcoholics Anonymous slogan
       This is the shortened version of one of the group’s
“90 TOOLS FOR SOBRIETY,” first published around 1939. The third “tool” says: “Progress is made ONE DAY AT A TIME.”


DR. CHRISTIAN TROY’S COUNTERQUOTE:

“You want the wisdom to know the difference between what you can and can’t change? Here’s step 13: everything disappears. Love, trees, rocks, steel, plastic, human beings. None of us get out alive. Now you can huddle in a group and face it one day at a time, or you can be grateful that when your body rubs against somebody else’s it explodes with enough pleasure to make you forget even for a minute that you're a walking pile of ashes.”
       Dr. Christian Troy (actor Julian McMahon)
       In the TV series Nip/Tuck
      
The “Kurt Dempsey” episode (Season 1, Ep. 5)
       First broadcast August 19, 2003


CRASH DAVIS WISDOM:

CRASH DAVIS (Kevin Costner): You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down: ‘We gotta play it one day at a time.’”
“NUKE” LALOOSH (Tim Robbins):
Got to play...It’s pretty boring.”
CRASH: “‘Course it’s boring, that’s the point.” 
       In the movie
Bull Durham (1988)


CHARLIE BROWN’S VARIATION:

“I’ve developed a new philosophy. I only dread one day at a time.”
       Charlie Brown
       In the Peanuts animated cartoon A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969)

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Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on the Famous Quotations Facebook page.

Related reading and viewing…

June 1, 2010

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ass – nor his wife’s


THE FAMOUS BIBLICAL QUOTE:

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.”
       The Bible, Exodus 20:17 (King James Version)
       The Tenth Commandment


AD MAN’S COUNTERQUOTE:

“This was always obviously a no-hoper of a Commandment. Coveting is all everyone does, all the time, everyday. It’s what drives the world economy, pushes people to make a go of their lives...And would you want to be married to someone who nobody coveted?”
       Charles Saatchi
       The British advertising mogul
       In an interview posted on The Daily Beast


HONOR THY ASS QUOTE:

“I have coveted my father’s adultery and not honored my neighbor’s ass.”
       Rowan Atkinson, as Edmund (Blackadder) 
       Confessing his sins in “The Archbishop” episode of Black Adder (1983)


KISS MY ASS QUOTE:

“You shall not covet thy neighbor's wife? Well, how about if she goddamn covets me? What do you think about that?”
       Gene Simmons
       U.S. rock musician in the band Kiss
       In a “What I've Learned” interview in Esquire, reprinted in Esquire’s The Meaning of Life

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