Abracadabra Quotes

• Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Men, Ideas

  Thomas Jefferson (1964). “The Jefferson Bible: With the Annotated Commentaries on Religion of Thomas Jefferson”

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• Abracadabra, thus we learn
  The more you create, the less you earn.
  The less you earn, the more you're given,
  The less you lead, the more you're driven,
  The more destroyed, the more they feed,
  The more you pay, the more they need,
  The more you earn, the less you keep,
  And now I lay me down to sleep.
  I pray the Lord my soul to take
  If the tax-collector hasn't got it before I wake.

  Ogden Nash

  Sleep, Soul, Needs

  Ogden Nash (1941). “The face is familiar: the selected verse of Ogden Nash”, Garden City publishing company, inc

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• In order that the relations between science and the age may be what they ought to be, the world at large must be made to feel that science is, in the fullest sense, a ministry of good to all, not the private possession and luxury of a few, that it is the best expression of human intelligence and not the abracadabra of a school, that it is a guiding light and not a dazzling fog.

  William Jay Youmans

  School, Science, Intelligent

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• Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religion, Atheism, Libertarian

  Thomas Jefferson (1939). “Democracy”

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• Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you could do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint could think he understood.

  Ezra Pound

  Latin, Thinking, Greek

  Ezra Pound (1950). “The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941”, p.339, New Directions Publishing

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• Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

  Neil Peart

  Sleep, Soul, Taxes Funny

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• The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take, If the tax-collector hasn't got it before I wake.

  Ogden Nash

  Sleep, Soul, Praying

  Ogden Nash (1935). “The primrose path”

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• Kids use words in ways that release hidden meanings, revel the history buried in sounds. They haven't forgotten that words can be more than signs, that words have magic, the power to be things, to point to themselves and materialize. With their back-formations, archaisms, their tendency to play the music in words--rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, repetition--children peel the skin from language. Words become incantatory. Open Sesame. Abracadabra. Perhaps a child will remember the word and will bring the walls tumbling down.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Children, Wall, Kids

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• Abracadabra, I'm up like Viagra.

  Lil Wayne

  Viagra

  Song: 3 Peat, Album: Tha Carter III, 2008

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• I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.

  Anne Lamott

  Healing, Dark, Silver Bells

  Anne Lamott (2008). “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith”, p.43, Penguin

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• One might point to the great illumination that has resulted from Freud's analysis of the abracadabra of our dreams. No one can any longer dismiss the fantasy because it is logically inconsistent, superficially absurd, or objectively untrue.

  Walter Lippmann

  Dream, Illumination, Might

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

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• We treat the Bible, not as if it's a magic book that has to be handled like a piece of abracadabra, make sure it's dusted, never put it on the floor, and things like that.

  D. A. Carson

  Book, Magic, Pieces

  Source: www.booksataglance.com

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