Favourite but Obscure Quotations

[Colwyn]

I thought it might be fun to share some our favourite, but little known, quotations. I hope this one fits the criteria - it certainly can't be found on Google.

I once heard the wonderful John Arlott in a radio interview describing an evening with a friend: "We were doing some plain and fancy two-handed drinking". Doesn't that evoke a brilliant image in the mind?

[GordonA]

If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end---I shouldn't be at all surprised. -- Dorothy Parker.

You've started me off now, Colwyn, I could see me getting deported from this here Forum !!

[usedbustickets]

One of my favourite, but obscure, qoutes makes serious point with funniest punchlines

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead - Thomas Paine  

[Colwyn]

Gordon, I heard a similar one about economists - "If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, it would serve them damn well right".

UBT - didn't know it, but now a new favourite (and from a good bloke, overall)

[mike A]

There goes the good time that was had by all........Dorothy Parker.

[mike A]

When Roosevelt asked Churchill  "what are you going to do about the Indian Problem", Churchill replied
" Are you talking about the greatest democracy in the world or the second class citizens of your country"

[GordonA]

Two more I'd like to share ...


"The state, it cannot be too often repeated, does nothing, and can give nothing which it
has not taken from somebody."

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big
enough to take from you everything you have."

[Colwyn]

Have you sources for these quotes Gordon?

The second is contentious having been allegedly "misattributed" to Thomas Jefferson, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan. One confident corresondent says it was actually that great American intellectual and philosopher Gerald Ford (you know the guy who was reputed not to have sufficient brain power to walk and chew gum at the same time.

I have no idea who the first quote is from but it sounds like another US, right-wing, no-brain, tosspot to me. Perhaps Richard Nixon?

[GordonA]

No definitive source Colwyn, just remembered a website from some time ago, looked it up again upon commencement of your thread, et voila !!
Probably are from the "Good Ole US of A"!! Mr. Ford did come up with some howlers though, didn't he ?
I do hope you don't mind me "Hi-jacking" your postlike this, but, Obscure/Bizzare quotes is/are? one of my favourite ways of wasting time,now I have retired from winding people up !!

[GordonA]

A politician is a man who will double cross that bridge when he comes to it.
Oscar Levant, American composer 1906_1974

My VERY favourite, Attributed to that great person & doyen of a million sayings, Oscar Wilde;


A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. -

Personally, I believe that quote to be one of the most beautiful pieces of literary thought that I have ever seen committed to paper. My opinion, of course.