“Not everything worthwhile can be measured, and not everything that can be measured is worthwhile.” Or, to put it another way, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” Attributions for these quotes are so dubious I shan’t repeat them here. We’ll just let it go at anonymous.
Rumsfeld on France
Thank you Clark Smith. “Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was apparently not fond of the French military. However mean-spirited but hilariously, he is reported to have observed:
“Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion."
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Ancient Variation
That last quote reminds me of Gloria Steinem’s “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
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Fox News Defined
“Fox News is to journalism what the Mafia is to capitalism — same basic genre, but a morally corrupt perversion of the real thing.”
―Tom Friedman
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The American Voter
Voter: “Every thinking person in America will be voting for you.”
“I’m afraid that won’t do,” Stevenson supposedly replied. “I need a majority.”
―Two-time Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, apocryphal
“I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.”
― Flannery O'Connor
I have been saying this of myself for decades, albeit not as succinctly. My late mother said the same thing was true for her.
Changing fortunes in the gas pumping business have robbed me of one of my personal favorite tics.
When there was a choice of self-serve or having someone else pump my gas, I always chose full service. Passengers would say, “Why not save the five cents a gallon?” I responded, “I didn’t pay $10,000 for an MIT education so I could pump gas.”
Which shows, of course, how long ago I went to college (a half century).
Another Garbled Quote
The life of quotations amazes me. While I love my UPI chat group, they don’t always double-check the provenance and exact wording of quotes. A garbled but still accurate version of this quote (which I loved and should be inscribed of the top of the PCs of every political reporter and editor) appeared last week.
“It is very difficult to predict — especially the future.”
―probably NOT Niels Bohr; most likely a Danish parliamentarian between 1935 and 1939.
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Some Accurate Quotes
My mentor, Edwin Diamond, often said, “Life is a shit sandwich, and every day you take another bite.” My mom said, “Life is short and then you die, but have a nice day anyway.” I: believe a better expression is: “Life is a 21,000 course meal. Savor them all. Dessert will be here soon enough, and no one knows if the after-dinner drinks are any good.”
From Tom Rush in his weekly newsletter, some funny ones:
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."
- Oscar Wilde
"He had delusions of adequacy."
- Walter Kerr
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
- Oscar Wilde
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx
From my friend Clark Smith:
“Lord, grant me patience. For if you grant me strength, I will also need bail money.”
-the Book of Comic Prayer
From my UPI chat group:
“Who, in their right mind, Kevin, could possibly deny (that) the 20th century was entirely mine? All of it, Kevin! Mine!”
- Al Pacino, playing Satan, in the movie The Devil's Advocate.
Readers of this column surely remember Dan Quayle’s term as vice president) He was described in my UPI chat group as,“not only almost cutely benign in retrospect, but a minor hero of Jan 6 [He advised Pence not to try to overthrow the election results].”
Here’s a collection of Quayle quotations collected by Associate Professor of Finance Rauli Susmel from the University of Houston C. T. Bauer College of Business.
If my brother or I reported something lost, my mother would often say, “Last time I used it, I put it away.” When we were teenagers, she apologized, saying sarcasm wasn’t appropriate for young children. She never used the phrase in her daycare practice, nor with her grandchildren. I only used it rarely, out of habit.
Here’s you bonus pearl; near the end of her life, mom always said, “I don’t even buy green bananas.”
In high school, for some reason, I began using the phrase “I’m surrounded by idiots,” in reference to some of my fellow students who were sort of friends. “What’s that say about you?” was Mom’s response that quickly ended that verbal tic.
I am quite certain that, had my mom lived past 2010, she would have found even more proof―although she needed none―of one of her favorite aphorisms: “the masses are asses.” She learned that one in college, and no experience in her later life disproved it.
Ok, you got me. There was no Roman Numeral I last week because I didn’t realized it was going to be a series. Then, I was talking to one of my daughters when were were both reminded of my mother’s general response to complaints: “Life is hard, and then you die. But have a nice day anyway.” (I have been informed she cleaned up a cruder version of this statement)
(FYI I have some family news. Email me if you’re interested)