Famous quotes
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“A gentleman reading a poem that began withWhere is that man that never yet did hear Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen?[Jonson] calling his cook, asked if he had ever heard of her, who answering "No," demonstrate to him Lo, there the man that never yet did hear Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen.”
Ben Jonson (1572–1637) said by 1637 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Current concern with reading and spelling reform steers away from visual to auditory stress. (p. 54)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reading Decline of the West I learned that in Spengler’s view ours was a Faustian civilization and that we, the Jews, were Magians, the survivors and representatives of an earlier type, totally incapable of comprehending the Faustian spirit that had created the great civilization of the West. … What Magians were to Faustians, Faustians might very well be to Americans.”
Saul Bellow (1915–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because in the end those kind of conservative tea-leaf-reading focus group driven polling types who I think led Kim into nothingness, he's got his life to repent in leisure now at what they did to him.”
Paul Keating (born 1944) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Kim Beazley's ALP Leadership, Lateline interview, 7 June 2007.
“And the Germans killed the Jews And the Jews killed the Arabs And the Arabs killed the hostages And that is the news And is it any wonder That the monkey's confused He said Mama Mama The President's a fool Why do I have to keep reading These technical manuals?”
Roger Waters (born 1943) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Perfect Sense (part I)" on Amused to Death (Roger Waters, 1992)
“There is a dilemma in any High Standard of Living in a profit economy. I am referring to the embarrassing truth that the best things in life are free. ... things like friendly competitive sports, friendly gambling, love-making and sex, solitary study and reading, contemplation of nature and cosmos, art-working, music, religion.”
Paul Goodman (1911–1972) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Leisure and Work" (1962)
“I will do all your reading, and I will tell you what to think about it.”
Rush Limbaugh (1951–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have devoted exhaustive study to the Protocols of Zion. In the past objection was always made that they were not suited to present day propaganda. In reading them now I find that we can use them very well. The Protocols of Zion are as modern today as they were when published the first time! At noon I mentioned this to the Führer. He believed the protocols to be absolutely genuine!”
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm on it pretty much all the time. I edit Wikipedia every day, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, I'm reading the news. During one of the US elections, I actually went through my computer and I blocked myself from looking at the major newspaper sites and Google News because I wasn't getting any work done.”
Jimmy Wales (born 1966) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Independent, October 23rd 2011
“Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance, that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a law in all our Colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villany is this!”
John Wesley (1703–1791) first seen 1787 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William Wilberforce (24 February 1791), quoted in John Telford (ed.), The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. Vol. VIII: July 24, 1787, to February 24, 1791 (Epworth Press, 1960), p. 265
“The grateful savants had accepted, and they were spending the rest of their lives reading fifteenth-hand opinions, taking pleasant naps, and drooling out to yawning students the anemic and wordy bookishness which they called learning.”
Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fairly large print is a real antidote to stiff reading.”
Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 31 May 1929, in a letter to K.Sisam, Oxford University Press. Printed in Natural Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics, p. 20, ed. J.H.Bennett, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.
“The current tax code is harder to understand than Bob Dylan reading Finnegans Wake in a wind tunnel.”
Dennis Miller (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never mind what two tons refers to. What is it? How has it entered in so definite a way into our exprerience? Two tons is the reading of the pointer when the elephant was placed on a weighing machine. Let us pass on. … And so we see that the poetry fades out of the problem, and by the time the serious application of exact science begins we are left only with pointer readings.”
Arthur Eddington (1882–1944) said by 1944 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reading Europe's press, it is really reassuring to see how warmly Europeans have embraced President Bush's formulation that an "axis of evil" threatens world peace. There's only one small problem. President Bush thinks the axis of evil is Iran, Iraq and North Korea, and the Europeans think it's Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice.”
Thomas Friedman (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My reading of history has shown me that simply 'being a good man' is not enough. That there are many kings who are good men and yet bad kings. And even good kings sometimes make disastrous decisions. So government is complex, politics is complex.”
George R. R. Martin (born 1948) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On a panel with R. Scott Bakker in Semana Negra, Spain (2008)
“I felt something like the man on the resurrection morning who was reading his own tombstone and said either someone is an awful liar or I'm in the wrong hole.”
Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: August 3,1961, NDP Leadership Convention .
“Last month we had to sit through a presentation on eliminating redundancy, and it was a bunch of PowerPoint slides, plus a guy reading out what was on the slides, and then he gave us all hard copies.”
“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.”
Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That's something the kids should know about. Reading is a gateway to witchcraft and lesbianism.”
"Weird Al" Yankovic (born 1959) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I Love the 90's Part Deux, VH1, 1998; referring to Willow Rosenberg from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?" (1987)
“… if anyone thinks they can get an accurate picture of anyplace on the planet by reading news reports, they're sadly mistaken.”
Bruce Schneier (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.”
Horace Mann (1796–1859) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Common School Journal, Vol. V, No. 19 (2 October 1843)
“It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.”
Howard Zinn (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co-ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, "Give me the co-ordinates."… The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea…. Hot dog!”
Norman Mailer (1923–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Vibrant debate and dissent exist in this country, but you are not reading or hearing about this in the mainstream press.”
Amy Goodman (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.”
Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Technology Review (July 1996)
“Having risen at my customary hour of seven, going down, tiptoeing down, and seeing the paper slanting through the letterbox, and reading the words “Heath's Gamble...” Heath's Gamble? I thought. Gamble? So I pulled it through and it fell out flat on the mat: “Heath's Gamble Fails”. So I took it up with me to the bathroom and sang the Te Deum.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Recalling the day after the February 1974 general election, quoted in Phillip Whitehead, The Writing on the Wall: Britain in the Seventies (1985), p. 113
“I'm reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940, and the general calls up Churchill and says, 'It's over,' and Churchill says, 'How can it be? You got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?' He said, 'It's over.'”
Chris Matthews (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why is commitment the kryptonite of men, super and otherwise? [...] The trouble is that, deep down, most of us men believe we have a great deal in common with superheroes. This is the secret truth of all male thinking. I'm not even supposed to be telling you this. When men are growing up and reading about Batman, Spiderman and Superman, these are not fantasies, these are options.”
Jerry Seinfeld (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It turns out that only twenty percent of human beings have a sense of irony — which means that eighty percent of the world takes everything at face value. I can’t imagine anything worse than that. Okay, maybe I can, but imagine reading the morning newspaper and believing it all to be true on some level.”
Douglas Coupland (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Adding a column of figures is a repetitive thought process, and it was long ago properly relegated to the machine. True, the machine is sometimes controlled by the keyboard, and thought of a sort enters in reading the figures and poking the corresponding keys, but even this is avoidable.”
Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) said by 1974 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.”
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the journal of Franz Kafka; diary entry (7 June 1953); Past Tense: Diaries Vol. 2 (1988)
“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.”
Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In law school, I never understood [antitrust law]. I later found out, in reading the writings of those who now do understand it, that I should not have understood it because it did not make any sense then.”
Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Antitrust law: Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, 8/5/1986, transcript at p. 36).
“A judge who is a 'strict constructionist' in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs—the latter two groups having been the principal beneficiaries of the Supreme Court's 'broad constructionist' reading of the Constitution.”
William Rehnquist (1924–2005) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court (2001) by John Dean; quoted in an article at Slate.
“This program is not a place where personal opinion should be mixed up with ascertainable facts...It is not, I think, humanly possible for any reporter to be completely objective, for we are all to some degree prisoners of our education, travel, reading—the sum total of our experience.”
Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introducing the first broadcast of "This is the News" (September 1947)
“The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”
Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Forbes (April 1948), p. 42
“Once I reveled in a destiny like no other joy I'd known: when the warden — reading my death sentence — wept.”
José Martí (1853–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I (Yo soy un hombre sincero) as translated by Esther Allen in José Martí : Selected Writings (2002), p. 273
“Modern dynamic economies do not stay still long enough to allow for an accurate reading of their underlying structures.”
Alan Greenspan (1926–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In many cases, ignorance is a good thing : the mind retains its freedom of investigation and does not stray along roads that lead nowhither, suggested by one's reading. I have experienced this once again. ... Yes, ignorance can have its advantages; the new is found far from the beaten track.”
Jean Henri Fabre (1823–1915) said by 1915 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I quit reading what the papers said about me because either they portrayed me as more self-sacrificing than I was, or they didn't like me and said, in a variety of ways, that I was a fake.”
“To be honest, I haven't even seen the film yet. Tobey, if you're reading this, I apologize.”
Eliza Dushku (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I first set my sights on becoming a writer at age eleven or so, I wanted to be a fantasy and science fiction writer. That was my preferred reading material and that's what I thought I was going to write. That's always been there. You can even see little hints of it in Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonderboys.”
Michael Chabon (born 1963) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Metro Weekly, March 12, 2002
“(as himself): "Multimedia? As far as I’m concerned, it’s reading with the radio on.”
Rory Bremner (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm sitting in the bus station, minding my own business, reading ‘Ta-Da!’ magazine; a magazine by and for gay magicians, but that's a different story.”
Dave Attell (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have been reading recently about synesthesia, in this case, the association of music and other sensory information with colors and I realized that I probably have a little or a lot of that current. I don't think it's unusual for songwriters. When I think of other people's songs or albums, a color comes to my mind.”
Chris Martin (born 1977) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On interview with Wall Street Journal, 2015. source
“If you wanna find gold Go looking in the mountains If you wanna find silver Go digging in stones If you wanna find heaven Go reading in the Bible If you wanna find love Go looking at home.”
Kenny Rogers (1938–2020) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: If You Want to Find Love" (co-written with Skip Ewing and Max D. Barnes), on Back Home Again (1991)
“All the cold-reading clairvoyants and the nonsensical astrologers and absurd ESP merchants and other such people who talk about vibrations and energies.... God, if there’s a word that drives me mad it’s “energy” used in a nonsensical way—don’t get me started!”
Stephen Fry (born 1957) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Chance to Think" Interview (2010) by Kylie Sturgess in Skeptical Inquirer. Vol 34 (1)