Wit Quotes - Page 35

• My philosophy has always been that benefits should percolate up rather than trickle down.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Wisdom, Philosophy, Benefits

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• You cannot tell a poor boy from a small country town on the plains of South Dakota who has had the opportunity to be a teacher, a mayor, a senator, and a vice president, that America is not a nation of promise.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Wisdom, Country, Teacher

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• The message of the United States is not nuclear power. The message of the United States is a spiritual message. It is the message of human ideals; it is the message of human dignity; it is the message of the freedom of ideas, speech, press, the right to assemble, to worship, and the message of freedom of movement of people.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Ideas

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• There is no such thing as an acceptable level of unemployment, because hunger is not acceptable, poverty is not acceptable, poor health is not acceptable, and a ruined life is not acceptable.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Wisdom, Unemployment, Levels

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• In the minds and hearts of the American people, there is a great hunger for peace based on a universal recognition of the values of freedom and human dignity.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Wisdom, Heart, People

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• The gap between the rich and the poor is the most dangerous threat to world peace we have.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Wisdom, World, Gaps

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• From whence it happens, that they which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves; but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Book, Errors, Glasses

  Thomas Hobbes (1898). “The Ethics of Hobbes: As Contained in Selections from His Works”

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• ...he had a fascinating technique of gnawing his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, as if his teeth were equipped with trolley tracks, and suddenly grabbing it out and gesticulating wit it before he jammed it back.

  Leslie Ford

  Track, Technique, Teeth

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• A trial is still an ordeal by battle. For the broadsword there is the weight of evidence; for the battle-ax the force of logic; for the sharp spear, the blazing gleam of truth; for the rapier, the quick and flashing knife of wit.

  Lloyd Paul Stryker

  Knives, Justice, Battle

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• And the people who live in the southern part of my state do not have a secure environment. To wit, there are signs that the government put up that say, "Warning. You are in a drug smuggling area and a human smuggling area."

  John McCain

  Government, People, Southern

  "Sen. John McCain Talks Economy, Elections, Immigration". "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace, www.foxnews.com. September 5, 2010.

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• And though I might have learnt more wit and advanced my understanding by living in a Court, yet being dull, fearful and bashful, I neither heeded what was said or practised, but just what belonged to my loyal duty and my own honest reputation.

  Margaret Cavendish

  Understanding, Literature, Loyal

  Margaret Cavendish (2002). “Bell in Campo and The Sociable Companions”, p.205, Broadview Press

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• The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.

  Robertson Davies

  Students, Graduates, Champagne

  Robertson Davies (1983). “High spirits”, Viking Adult

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• Prithee don't screw your wit beyond the compass of good manners.

  Colley Cibber

  Good Man, Screw You, Compass

  Colley Cibber, Charles Bathurst (1777). “Love's last shift; Woman's wit; Love makes a man; She would and she would not”, p.49

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• Myth is the practical metabolism of our soulish life, the logic of our obsessions and oversights for which we have no language or code. Myth is the "morality" that the ineffable puts upon us, our unaccountable imperatives, our inexplicably selective clarity and obscurity, the mortal one-sidedness of our talents and wits, the passion and apathy that make such a transient passage through our hapless minds; that weave a pattern of fatality others will see before we do. Myth is distinctively human or sublime higher-order instinct, the "reason" in culture that reason knows not of.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Passion, Order

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• If the finding of Coines, Medals, Urnes, and other Monuments of famous Persons, or Towns, or Utensils, be admitted for unquestionable Proofs, that such Persons or things have, in former Times, had a being, certainly those Petrifactions may be allowed to be of equal Validity and Evidence, that there have been formerly such Vegetables or Animals. These are truly Authentick Antiquity not to be counterfeited, the Stamps, and Impressions, and Characters of Nature that are beyond the Reach and Power of Humane Wit and Invention, and are true universal Characters legible to all rational Men.

  Robert Hooke

  Character, Men, Animal

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• A woman of haughty and fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and active spirit, a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man.

  John Winthrop

  Men, Tongue, Nimble

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• Breakin down the weed about to make a plane, a hundred niggas wit me all reppin taylor gang.

  Wiz Khalifa

  Weed, Gang, Hundred

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• Nirvana's success drew attention to a marketing demographic previously ignored by the mainstream, and inadvertently started a gold rush with advertising executives, product manufacturers, merchandise distributors, fashion coordinators, and rock imitators, the latter of whom have yet to equal the sincerity, power, and wit of Nirvana.

  Kim Thayil

  Fashion, Rocks, Marketing

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• A rich, multi-dimensional tour of Naples, most brilliant, battered, and bewildering of cities, here fixed to the page with wit and élan. Splendid.

  Stacy Schiff

  Cities, Pages, Naples

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• Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow is a marvel, deftly examining the connections between art and everyday life. Andy Sturdevant's lively, unique inquiries into trust fund kids, co-opted flags, gubernatorial portraits, art in second-tier cities, and Upper Midwestern esoterica, brim with both wit and humor.

  Joe Meno

  Art, Kids, Unique

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• Ah Fate, cannot a man Be wise without a beard? East, West, from Beer to Dan, Say, was it never heard That wisdom might in youth be gotten, Or wit be ripe before 't was rotten?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Fate, Beer

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.32, Delphi Classics

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• The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the commonsense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Wise, Men, Light

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.43

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• It hardly needs explaining at length, I think, how much authority or beauty is added to style by the timely use of proverbs. In the first place who does not see what dignity they confer on style by their antiquity alone?... And so to interweave adages deftly and appropriately is to make the language as a whole glitter with sparkles from Antiquity, please us with the colours of the art of rhetoric, gleam with jewel-like words of wisdom, and charm us with titbits of wit and humour.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Art, Thinking, Jewels

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• ...the wonderful poems interpreting with equal magic the romance of strange lands and times, or the modern soul, naked and unashamed, as if clothed in its own complexity; the humorous-tragic questionings of the universe; the delicious travel-pictures and fantasies; the lucid criticisms of art, and politics, and philosophy, informed with malicious wisdom, shimmering with poetry and wit.

  Israel Zangwill

  Art, Philosophy, Humorous

  Israel Zangwill (1908). “Dreamers of the Ghetto”, p.551, Library of Alexandria

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• Rush Limbaugh is a principled conservative, master broadcaster and stinging social critic who has won his mammoth following through his own energy, individualism and wit. His daily radio show is the one reliable place ordinary citizens can turn to for a different perspective in the blizzard of propaganda and disinformation from the Northeastern media establishment. History will show that Limbaugh was a major force over the past decade in waking this country up from its p.c. coma.

  Camille Paglia

  Country, Past, Media

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