Canaries Quotes

• The canary is like a man's soul. It sees bars around it, but instead of despairing, it sings.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Men, Soul, Bars

  18 Copy quote

• If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.

  Paul Farmer

  Country, Should Have, Retrospect

  27 Copy quote

• A caged canary is safe but not free.

  Walter E. Williams

  Liberty, Safe, Libertarian

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• Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.

  Anton Chekhov

  Pious

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• places to hunt places to hide are getting harder to find, and pet canaries and goldfish too, did you notice that?

  Charles Bukowski

  Pet, Goldfish, Harder

  Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.360, Canongate Books

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• Israel is the canary in the mine. What happens to Israel will eventually happen to America itself.

  David Horowitz

  America, Israel, Mines

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• You are not called to be a canary in a cage. You are called to be an eagle, and to fly sun to sun, over continents.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Opportunity, Eagles, Sun

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• The song of canaries
  Never varies,
  And when they're moulting
  They're pretty revolting.

  Ogden Nash

  Song, Vary

  1931 Free Wheeling,'The Canary'.

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• Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a word to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and delight, the canary that sings on the skull.

  Annie Dillard

  Pain, Games, Skulls

  7 Copy quote

• Artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive.
  They are supersensitive.
  They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas,
  long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Artist, Long, Poison

  "Physicist, Purge Thyself". Chicago Tribune Magazine, June 22, 1969.

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• Souls of poets dead and gone,
  What Elysium have ye known,
  Happy field or mossy cavern,
  Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
  Have ye tippled drink more fine
  Than mine host's Canary wine?

  John Keats

  Wine, Mermaid, Soul

  'Lines on the Mermaid Tavern' (1820)

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• Why employ intelligent and highly paid ambassadors and then go and do their work for them? You don't buy a canary and sing yourself.

  John Keats

  Intelligent, Ambassadors, Paid

  7 Copy quote

• A caged canary is secure; but it is not free. It is easier for free men to resist terrorism from afar than tyranny from within.

  Chuck Baldwin

  Integrity, Patriotic, Men

  10 Copy quote

• Like the canary in the coal mine, the climate changes already evident in the Arctic are a call to action.

  Susan Collins

  Climate, Coal, Action

  28 Copy quote

• That's what the cat said to the canary when he swallowed him - 'You'll be all right.

  Alvah Bessie

  Cat, Said

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• The smell of that buttered toast simply spoke to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cozy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.

  Kenneth Grahame

  Morning, Cat, Winter

  1908 The Wind in the Willows, ch.8.

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• My father used to run auctions. He's now a singer in the Canary Islands.

  Jason Statham

  Running, Father, Islands

  Interview with Steve Head, www.ign.com. June 06, 2003.

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• Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine, but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions.

  Jaron Lanier

  Powerful, Class, Musician

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• Satire must always accompany any free society. It is an absolute necessity. Even in the most repressive medieval kingdoms, they understood the need for the court jester, the one soul allowed to tell the truth through laughter. It is, in many ways, the most powerful form of free speech because it is aimed at those in power, or those whose ideas would spread hate. It is the canary in the coalmine, a cultural thermometer, and it always has to push, push, push the boundaries of society to see how much it’s grown.

  Joe Randazzo

  Powerful, Laughter, Hate

  "Former 'Onion' editor: Freedom of speech cannot be killed" by Joe Randazzo, www.msnbc.com. January 7, 2015.

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• Social media is the ultimate canary in the coal mine

  Jay Baer

  Media, Coal, Social

  11 Copy quote

• You know it's time to start using mouthwash when your dentist leaves the room and sends in a canary.

  Joan Rivers

  Rooms, Dentist, Jokes

  7 Copy quote

• You can't soar like an eagle and crap like a canary.

  Ed Sabol

  Eagles, Soar, Crap

  "Ed Sabol, Founder Of NFL Films, Dies At 98" by Sam Sanders, knkx.org. February 9, 2015.

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• We are the canaries in the mine. If we go, the last ecosystems go. So does the wisdom of how to sustain resources, live in balance with nature, and create communities based on cooperation, not competition. I think the rest of the world is searching for these values. I know we're here to share them. But we can only share them if we're here.

  Rebecca Adamson

  Thinking, Ecosystems, Community

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• A tom cat hijacked a plane, stuck a pistol into the pilot's ribs and demanded: 'Take me to the canaries'.

  Bob Monkhouse

  Funny, Cat, Humor

  "They're not laughing now". www.theguardian.com. December 29, 2003.

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• Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams. We compared notes. We found strange affinities. The same June of the same year (1919) a stray canary had fluttered into her house and mine, in two widely separated countries. Oh, Lolita, had you love me thus!

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Dream, Country, Years

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.5, Hamilton Books

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