"Don't try to answer my rhetorical questions." --S. Piker "Oh, fuck. I have an identity. I don't want that." --Kir the Titleless "The vampires are administrators and not really playing." --OTPBDH "He has a nice smash." --badminton instructor "Existence is a state of weirdness." --Robin who lives in OCB and wears a white hat "I don't like eating things I've been introduced to." --Ruth Alfasso "You don't EAT things that have a name!" --Local Hero "The straightforward algebra is pretty tricky." --S. Maurer "I feel like, um, what's-her-nose -- in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"." --Marcia something. "You can't have your lunch and eat it too." --Roger Smith "One day a Martian comes to visit us, and we're sitting at the origin..." --S. Maurer again "There is, however, another, much less recognized category of deviant behavior, and one that explains a great deal about the literature and the literary reportage that this century has witnessed: the writer as lunatic." William Buford, Granta #15 "My, but this is boring. Whatever happened to those vigorous, piercing comments of the great wits of last semester?" --Anon, from GRAFITTI "Every exit is an entrance someplace else." --T.Stoppard, R&GaD "Who is Michael Dunkins?" --anon, from QUOTATIONS You're IN Quotations!! "Lets say you're a gas and you get compressed, how would you feel about it?" "I'd heat up." "Right! So much for entropy." -a random moment in E-41 "I didn't eat the pink elephant." --Ruth Alfasso "I've never talked with them, I've just slept with them." Perry Deess on Smith (college, that is) women Have you REALLY, Perry? Yes, actually, twice in fact but never with less than four at a time. That's life on the debate circuit. -P six more lines and we're at 900! (900 factorial?) quick, somebody, say soemthing profound, interesting, weird, or... 5! no, no, not like that!...4! "Oh, no!" 3! --Mr. Bill 2! "At least he's not a Ph. d." Yeah! We did it! 900 lines! --oh, by the way, the quote is from Desperately Seeking Susan "You'd pay to know what you REALLY think." -- BOB (Dobbs) Julie Blue on V.I. Lenin: "We're talking about a family friend here!" "Wait, when was last night?" -John Halbert "The first time I saw that nowhere man, I knew he was a somebody." Ringo, from Yellow Submarine "I'm a born lever-puller." --Ibid (or was it John? or someone else?) "He was wonderful to the battalion, but rotten to the Corps." -- from some movie review in a 1961 Newsweek "He had not been born with those particular liberal prejudices; if anything, he had been born with a silver railroad in his mouth." -- David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (1969), Ch. 10 "He had a gift for making himself look ridiculous in the most tragic of situations." --Alexis De'Toqueville on the President of France "I love my introductory philosophy class. Today we discussed life, death, the nature of reality, being, non-being. I mean, this could change the whole way I dress!" Mallory on "Family Ties" (It's a TV show) "It is very difficult to make perfectly flawed items" Prof. Siddiqui "I'd rather be black than gay, because at least when you're black you don't have to tell your parents." -- Some genius whose name I have momentarily forgotten "In 1965, the Immigration Act of 1965 was born." --K. Greene "I love God. And when you get to know Him, you'll find He's a Livin' Doll." -- Jane Russell, quoted in E.F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade "I'm going home now..." --all of us "Context is EVERYTHING!" --my high school English teacher "Swahili, Truth, and Greek; the languages I never hear you speak." --A Little Night Music, from "Sitting Ducks" "And, having put out both his eyes, he sort of wished he hadn't." -- PDQ Bach, Oedipus Tex "If you read the Gospel closely, you'll come across the naked young man in the garden. It's sort of like Alfred Hitchcock." "I know I look imposing today. It's just because my sweats are dirty -- my baby barfed on them." "Jesus died in the early 30's -- both his and the era's (Common Era)" "Baby Jesus and Toddler John the Baptist -- they're very cute." -- AJ Levine, Intro Chr. Scr. "I want us to have two conversations before we start talking about Schizophrenia." -- J. Maracek, Abnormal Psych "We refer to people in comas as vegetables. It's not so much because they're edible, as that they're in a vegetative state." "You will exchange papers with two other students, and then I want you to write comments that reflect the Golden Rule." -- Hans Oberdiek, Moral Issues "By the time I'm a Junior, I expect I'll have slept with all of my friends." -- I'll be nice & not say "I know they are the right answers, because I didn't use them." --(your guess here) "What if I guess wrong?" --me "Feminists miss out on a lot of fun." --I'll be nice & not say (but female) [ Hold it. Is that the same "I'll be nice and not say" as the one who expects to have slept with all of their friends by the time they're a Junior? ] [no. --Ed] "His habits were as orderly as a polka dot napkin." --Thomas M. Disch "Mathematics are like vitamins. A little bit is necessary, but a heavy overdose causes irritation and loss of hair." ----Wulff Heintz, Astro "How exciting and stimulating can a finger be?" --yet another Ibn&ns "So I whip out my +1 club..." -- Dave Salmonson after dropping his scimitar during a hot D&D session "Real great +1 club, Dave..." -- Debby How NO! PLEASE! *Don't* let's turn this into a SWIL Quotes-Out-Of-Context board -- we have enough of those in our dorms as it is! And besides, it wasn't Deb who made the comment first, so please, get your out-of-context quotes in the right non-context. -Me "But if we don't quote out of context, how should we quote?" --me "Students are dead these days. I think it's too much Van Halen." -- Don Shimamoto "She is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich." --S.L.Armstrong "I woke up this morning and said to myself, 'I just HAVE to do that third-order Taylor polynomial!' " -- Don Shimamoto "The average person has one breast and one testicle." -Anon "They have _______" (insert female name) "Is that better or worse than an outhouse?" -Anon 1 and 2 "Quick! Where is Zim's time displacer?! Tell me or...um...I'll kill you with my elbow!" "No. No!! Not the Elbow of Doom!" --Jeff Meyer, REC.ARTS.COMICS "Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi. What Jove may do/Is not permitted to a cow." --Ibid. [Actually, that's been around a lot longer than this Meyer person, but it's still good.] "It's a bad idea to attribute 'Ducky, ducky, ducky' to me." --Erich Hoeber "I think everyone in the world should just get together in a big hug." "Yeah! Then they'd all be in one place and we could drop a bomb on them!" Ibn&ns, lunch, 3/16 "When Robert Frost was in highschool he was editor of the literary magazine. He got lots of submissions, but thought they were all terrible, so he threw them all away and wrote the whole thing himself." "That's pretty rude!" "Yeah, but he WAS Robert Frost! ...course, he didn't know that at the time..." dinner, 3/15 "High school is TWO words, not one!" --me, again. "All I know I learned at my mother's knee and other low joints." -- Secretary of State Dean Acheson, circa 1950 WHILE ATLANTA BURNED: (in intense Georgia accent) "Boy, bring me my fiddle and some matches." -- Alex W., breakfast 3/16 "It is important to know when to die." -prof Oberdiek, ethics, 3/17 "I always thought God was smaller and more furry." --- Matt K 3/16/87 "I have to change my mind occasionally - otherwise it'll get dirty." -- KLS 3/15?/87 "When in doubt, do as the Romans do" --Jim's mom "Now a little bit about what happens when you're crucified, in case you ever need to know." -AJ "Superconductors make mag-lev trains feasible!" --Rob "I just HATE electrons; they're so, so SMALL!" -- Jack Waas, chem major "I just HATE doughnuts; they're so, so ROUND!" -- Michael Dunkins "It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety." --Isaac Asimov, _Foundation_ "He who hesitates is sometimes saved" --James Thurber, _Fables_of_our_Time_ "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistiguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke (!), _The_Lost_Worlds_of_2001_ "If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't." --Emerson Pugh, _The_Biological_Origin_of_Human_Values_ (These four are all from this month's Reader's Digest's Quotable('s) Quotes) "It's a good thing there's such a thing as free association, or I'd have to invent it." "It's a good thing there's such a thing as bullshit, or I'd have to invent it." --two anonymous students in Beardsley, 3/30/87 overheard tour (in wharton courtyard): "We'll be going over to the dining hall next, but first I'd like to show you the athletics facilities. See that smoke stack over there? Right on the other side of it is the..." "The train wheel works until you stop it dead in its tracks." --S. Platt "If people are going to elect turkeys to tell them what to do, then the people are going to have problems. You can't blame the turkeys. The Constitution never guaranteed smart government, it guaranteed representative government." --Drew West in _Code_of_the_Lifemaker_ by James Hogan "All you need is love." -Beatles "Love is all you need." -same guys "Yah yah yah." ' ' "Counter-induction is the belief that: Since A never occurred in the past, it WILL occur in the future. Proof of counter-induction: It has never worked in the past, thus it will in the future." - some prof. "This song is for anyone who has been blinded by love, or, as I like to think of it, 'romantically impaired'" --ron romanovsky "Throw the baby out the window it's bottle." - Pete greenberg overheard at a Christian Fellowship meeting -- "Words are SO important! You know, for talking and things like that..." " a. John caused Bill to die by swallowing his tongue. b. John killed Bill by swallowing his tongue." -- something we had to read for linguistics "Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be." -- Daniel Keyes, _Flowers_for_Algernon_, p. 50. (the novel) "Outer space is no place for persons of breeding." -- From _The_637_Best_Things_Anybody_Ever_Said_ "Quick, Robin! The BAT SHARK-REPELLANT!!!" -- Batman "Some days you just CAN'T get rid of a bomb!" -- Same Bat-guy, same Bat-movie "They may be drinkers, Robin, but they're STILL human beings." -- And again. "Chaucer. Now THERE'S a guy who wasn't American." --Rob Smith "You people have an attitude problem. I should just go around and beat the hell out of every one of you." -- Prof. Shimamoto "Once the '70s came around, we could feel ourselves to be out of the heat of the Cold War." -T. White "He's got feet of clay clear up to his eyebrows. A little of something else at the very top though." --R.A.Lafferty, _Arrive_at_Easterwine_ "If ever a face meant death -- if looks could kill -- we saw it at that moment." Bram Stoker, _Dracula_ "The world seems full of good men -- even if there _are_ monsters in it." --Ibid "I'm at the end of my straw!!!!" -- a frustrated high-school Latin teacher "Suppose we have a genie. And we say, `O mighty genie, what I want most in life is to know all the Length 8 paths from Vi to Vj..." -- who else but Prof. Maurer? "The Earth attracts the sap of intellect to itself. And so it is also with watercress..." -- Socrates, in Aristophanes' _The_Clouds_ "Nixon was one of the greats. He was a nut, a wildman, and eventually a criminal..." - Duck's Breath Mystery Theatre "Math is irrelevant" -- my significant other "I don't want to do that. I want to be narrow-minded. I'm sick of this Liberal Arts bullshit." -- lunch conversation, 4/22 "And peas shall rain for ever and e-e-ver" "And we all know that the Mississippi River flows uphill..., there are all sorts of lumps in the Earth." S. Dunn, from an (out of) Control Theory class. "They had interlocking neuroses -- before Mike, Wendy was energy without direction, and before Wendy, Mike was anxiety without focus." --letter from a hs friend, about a couple at her college "Everyone alive on the planet is dead." --cartoon quote, from same letter "Sex is a broad word; it doesn't just mean sex." -- different letter. different person, in fact "'Expletive deleted,' I Howard Coselled (Cosold?) Mac-Timex, which was Tarzaning at me Van Halen-wise. I Burt Reynoldsed out of Mac-Niagara Adjustable, Head-&-Shouldered, 'n' Colgated before munching Mac-Wonder, Velveeta, 'n' Kellogg's with Coke. I took Mac-Chevy to Paly, since parent had taken Mac-Chevy and parent had Schwinned. "'Smith's Horse Fodder,' I reached out 'n' touched friend. 'Smith's Horse Fodder,' friend Bob Newharted. Then friend, whom I hadn't Bausch 'n' Lombed for goodyears, walked up. Friend was always Johnny Carsoning about Trojan's. Since my Mac-Trojan's life was going Rodney Dangerfieldly, I..." --Bee Bell ("what would happen if everybody talked the way east coast foax do about Coke.") "Every man should have a hobby." -- Marian Crane to Norman Bates, in _Psycho_ "Wealthy alumni Aren't easily come by." -- Professor Woodard, on why Princeton admitted Brooke Shields I no longer consider myself smart. Smarter than the general population, yes, but then, who isn't?" (smart enough to know a one-way quote mark when she uses one) (smarter than the average bear) "Oh, but they're firemen -- they can sleep through anything." --dinner, 5/4 "Anyone under 30 and conservative has no heart, Anyone over 30 and liberal has no brains." --W. Churchill WAIT! THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE GRAFITTI FILE! HOW COME IT IS PRACTICALLY IDENTICAL TO QUOTATIONS? A friend of my family, from Hungary, said that he had heard it said that "If you are not a Communist before the age of thirty, you have no heart. If you are still a Communist after the age of thirty, you have no brain." (actually, it was probably 20, not 30) The factor of safety need not be so high in the case of, say, a warehouse, because the loss of a few lives is not so important. --Professor Siddiqui The material then reaches the eeled point. --Ibid. Still keeping the world safe for crackpot theories, I see? -- Rob to James The only things that violate the laws of Doppler and get red as you approach them are traffic lights... Neutrinos are very difficult to capture- they can get through anything. They are basically cosmic cocaine dealers... (pronounced coca-ine) -- Wulff Heintz "He's still alive, to the best of my knowledge. He finds out tonight, unless he is asleep when they tell him." --Geoff, on Chris' survival "We are to the gods as unwatched Haagen-Dazs; we might melt if we're stupid." --Bee again "Yeah. Yeah!" "Dude! DUDE!" -- two Santa Cruzians ascending the steps to a restaurant. "Have a wonderful wonderful wonderful summer!" -me -and me! "Safety is number one." "Safety is not an accident." -- conversation between shuttle passenger and driver, 5/19/87 "Voted least likely to be a line from 'The Glass Menagerie': 'We must be the bad guys...look how easy their heads come off.' " -- Mr. Boffo "Where to go ... What to do ... and Where did I put those bombs?" -- Chris "Sharples will be relocated within two weeks." -- Custom Management Handout "The only moderate Iranian is one that has run out of ammunition" -- U.S. Representative during Iran-Contra hearings New_quotations contains a representative sample of the quotations file to be used as the starting grain for next year's pearl. Write any new quotes to new_quotations. -the Mgt. "It's supposed to be a nice weekend - it's just a question of when it's going to arive." -- Chris "How about somebody (Hal?) spooling/archiving this file and cleaning out all but the last couple of pages?" --concerned student "Alarmism. This file is only nine records long, as you will see if you type SIZE QUOTATIONS. Considering that we have 118 empty records, it seems pretty pointless to delete it." -- not Hal, but concerned too "I wish there were no such thing as word order." -- Prof. William Turpin "Ada [the computer language designed/used by DoD] was another language explicitly designed to take over the world. . . . If the DoD had already converted to it, it would be out of the cradle and hard to kill." -- Prof. David Saunders "I am the milkman of human kindness." -- line from a song at the coffeehouse, 9/11 student (to woman, apparently professor): "Are you missing class right now?" prof.: "No, I've got a free period. I'm going home to take my dog for a walk. He has spots." --overheard in passing, 9/13 "When your true love writes, 'Dear Light of My Life, Joy of My Heart, O Lovely Pulsating Core of My Sensate Life', some response is called for." --Garrison Keillor, in "How to write a personal letter", one of those ads for the International Paper Company. "Conan the librarian." -- what David Harrison called his high school librarian (and now calls Ed Fuller). "It's an institute of higher learning that can, like, intellectually kick some ass." --John Halbert, on Swarthmore "It is always possible to write impenetrable code in any language." -Prof. Saunders, in _Programming Languages_ class "Mathematics is the subject in which we do not know what we are talking about nor whether what we say is true." -Bertrand Russell "Wait -- a PHILOSOPHER said THAT?" -- me (reply: yeah, he was serious too. Makes sense if you're a mathmatician.) "She was already twice his age" - Sununu "I don't believe it, but it does work" - Clif Kussmaul "Act like a dimwit and they'll treat you as an equal." -- "BOB" "If His Holiness wants to see me, he can buy a ticket and come to my show." -- Madonna, declining an invitation to an audience with the Pope during her Italian tour this summer. "The ultimate goal of religion, then, is man's moral perfection. Religion is therefore essentially ethical and social. This emphasis leaves no room for fanatic and mystical experience. Any abnormal practices like asceticism, celibacy, and self-immolation are ruled out." -- Wing-tsit Chan, "Religious Trends in Modern China" Compare: "Heaven and Earth are not benevolent; for them the myriad creatures are but straw dogs." [which are used in sacrifices, then cast aside] -- Lao Tzu (ca. 300 BC) "We are to the gods as flies to wanton boys; They kill us for their sport." -- William Shakespeare (ca. 1600 AD) "All gods are one God, and all paths one path." -- Druidic teachings, c. 400 AD "Translation: You go your way, I'll go mine, and we'll all muddle through somehow." -- Me, c. 1986-87 [Uh-ohh, do I detect a Religion Board in the offing? -- The Mgt.] Off the Religion Board! maturity: the state of not having fun when those around you are. loudly. "I made it look fuzzy because I'm waving my hands..." -- Noam Chomsky, 1987 "Otherwise, people die when their parts give out in mid-mission." --James Deane Prof. Sununu: "What does Christmas celebrate?" Student: "Giving gifts!" "I am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me." --Kipling, _Just_So_Stories_ "'Vantage Number Two! You couldn't do THAT with a mere-smear nose." --same guy, same book. "Life is an A minus." -- Prof. Turpin "Did we have to learn anything for today?" -- Latin I student "...if a Bio major wanted to take a science course..." --Leif [The comment previously occupying this space was a misquote; having taken the liberty of removing it, I hope it will not also be a missed quote. -brian ] "One of the most powerful storytellers in a new generation forges a brilliant punk saga of the too real future." --ad in _Analog_ "O.K. If you don't like that contorted logic, try it yourself." --T. Langer "An infinite number of examples will work, but I don't know about the rest of them." _-jeh _- "I violate Title 11, Section 133b of the Maryland State Code often, safely, and EXTREMELY well." -- T-shirt seen at a recent political rally LOVE IT! "I just sometimes like to talk to people who aren't straight." "I just like to talk to people who sometimes aren't straight." --2 answers to "why we go to BQC" "And if that bokes were aweye Yloren were of remembraunce the keye." ("If books were gone, The key of remembrance would be lost.") --? |Chaucer, don't you know| "The Texan in the yellow Day-Glo polyester pants would not have tried to get Jorja Monatella into bed if he had known she was in the mood to castrate someone." -- _Strangers_ by Dean. R. Koontz "The Californian in the polka-dotted patent-leather skirt would not have tried to get Wyoming Serpinski into bed if she had known he was in the mood to mastectomize someone." -- _Good_Buddies_ by Provost R. Cox "People _do_ underestimate the role of terror in education." -- Prof. Turpin "If you get behind early, you have more time to catch up!" -Rick "It is well known that love between man and woman can result only in anxiety, grief, and pain." --Su Man-shu, "The Broken Hairpin" (translated by Liu Wu-chi) "She asked God to send her to the most wretched place on earth, and He did. Sixty Minutes." --commercial for 60 Min. "I'm not advocating getting rid of liberal arts courses. I even listen to music on weekends." -- science professor (some years ago) [Yo! Julie! I saw you writing stuff down all through the R&P concert. PUT IT HERE!] okay, okay... "How many of you are out to your parents? If you're heterosexual and out, that's cool too." conversation on a plane: "Y-you're the first gay person I've ever talked to!" "I seriously doubt that." "So, if you're having trouble coming out to your family or co-workers, you can practice by coming out to total strangers on airplanes." "I don't live in Berkeley, or on Valencia Street I don't look good in work shirts with sandals on my feet I'm not a vegetarian give me a steak to eat! What kind of politically-correct lebsbian am I?" --alternate verse to "What Kind of Self-Respecting Faggot am I?" "Thank you for that round of indifference." "Sometimes I have this terrible fear, that I'm living up to my full potential!" "We're going to do some new songs now, so those of you who are lip-synching can suddenly be stopped in your tracks." all from Ron and/or Paul. "Never handle feed that bites you." --Michael Dunkins, who has been working at the Proximan Live Poultry-Food Store and is currently in the hospital with wounded appendages. "I think terror should be employed productively." -- Prof. Turpin, 1 1/2 weeks after previous terror quote. "It was a mixed blessing in disguise." --Michael Dunkins "I think it [the midterm] is going to take a little longer than an hour; but that doesn't bother me, so it shouldn't bother you." -- David Boler, for a MWF class "I was going to walk in the snow without shoes, but I got cold feet." --Michael Dunkins "Who *is* Michael Dunkins?" -- quite a lot of people Be warned, folks: the professors are collecting *our* quotes too, in a list titled, "There Will Always Be A Swarthmore..." Strange But True... -- your friendly neighborhood paranoia salesman. "Who is Michael Dunkins? Just a fictional character, capable of saying stupid things, yet having a keen insight on, well, nothing. As Michael would have put it, 'I reach out every morning for my alarm, but today it was replaced by a cup of water. Imagine that!'" --DVS "The rumors of my non-existence have been greatly exaggerated." --Michael Dunkins "Economics is a one-word oxymoron." --Jonathan Wald "The only thing worse than a global economic depression is hearing economists talk about it." --Arthur Evans "I slept really well last night, and awoke with the feeling you get whenever you're doing something VERY well and it gets interrupted." "There was a pre-Monday world, and now there is this world." -- John H. Gutfreund, chairman of Salomon Brothers, as quoted in the _New_York_Times_, Oct. 26, 1987, page 1 "I'm dead Jim." --- alleged quote by McCoy on Star Trek. "Very few people would deny that ["If you hold an object above the Earth's surface and let go of it, it will fall"] is a statement of objective fact -- a real characteristic of the universe that exists regardless of what anybody thinks about it. Most nonbelievers are no longer with us, having fallen to their deaths or been crushed by falling objects." --Stanley Schmidt, "Matters of Opinion" (_Analog_ editorial, mid-December 1987 issue) "I've got a croissant in my pocket." --Ruth Jerrold Marsden is not afraid to ask the tough questions: "Does pointwise convergence of continuous functions on a compact set to a continuous limit imply uniform convergence on that set?" -- J. Marsden, _Elementary_Classical_Analysis_, chapter 5, exercise 8 "Quoth the raven, 'Here, ducky, ducky, ducky!'" "I'm surprised they didn't use Fortran '77, because they're really on top of things in that group." -- Nelson Macken "Boston is a seven hour drive without a baby." -- David Bohler "This is a pretty old song, in both meanings of the word." -- singer, Swarthmore Coffeehouse, 11/4/87 "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." --S. Freud