FOOLS AND STUPIDITY



"The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right."
-- Mark Twain

"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made School Boards."
-- Mark Twain, Following the Equator; Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

"In my life, I have prayed but one prayer: 'Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."
-- Voltaire

"A fool uttereth all his mind."
-- Bible, Proverbs 29:11

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few."
-- Shunryu Suzuki

"When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
-- Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects

"Cats are smarter than dogs. You can not get eight cats to pull a sled through snow."
-- Jeff Valdez

"Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in."
-- Flaubert, Sentimental Education

"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."
-- Andrew Jackson

"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it."
-- Clarence Darrow

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits."
-- Unknown

Dan Quayle Quotes:

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle

"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 5/22/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."
-- Senator Dan Quayle, 9/15/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92, The New Yorker, 10/10/88, p.102)

"This election is about who's going to be the next President of the United States!"
-- Senator Dan Quayle, 9/2/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared.'"
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 12/6/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, to the Phoenix Republican Forum, 3/23/90 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) Also reported by Reuters, 5/2/90

"Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the -- to the back!"
-- Senator Dan Quayle, 8/17/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle winning friends while speaking to the United Negro College Fund, 5/9/89 This gem has been added to Bartlett's `Familiar Quotations.' (reported in Esquire, 8/92) (reported in the NY Times, 12/9/92)

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child."
-- Senator Dan Quayle, US News and World Report (10/10/88)

"Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, Hawaii, 4/25/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle addressing the 20th anniversary celebration of the moon landing, 7/20/89 (reported in Esquire,
8/92)

"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 8/11/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"The loss of life will be irreplaceable."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle after the San Francisco earthquake, 10/19/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"Bobby Knight told me this: 'There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.' In other words a good offense wins."
-- Senator Dan Quayle, in a speech to the City Club of Chicago, comparing the offensive capabilities of the Warsaw Pact with the defensive system of NATO, 9/8/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"Target prices? How that works? I know quite a bit about farm policy. I come from Indiana, which is a farm state. Deficiency payments -- which are the key -- that is what gets money into the farmer's hands. We got loan, uh, rates, we got target, uh, prices, uh, I have worked very closely with my senior colleague, (Indiana Sen.) Richard Lugar, making sure that the farmers of Indiana are taken care of."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle on being asked to define the term `target prices'. Quayle's press secretary then cut short the press conference, after two minutes and 30 seconds.

"My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will never, never surrender to what is right."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle speaking to the Christian Coalition about the need for abstinence to avoid AIDS, 11/15/91 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"Unfortunately, the people of Louisiana are not racists."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, regarding David Duke's candidacy, 10/12/90, (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"My grandfather... saw where inherited wealth ruined people. And my grandfather was right."
-- Vice-President Dan Quayle giving an analysis of his own situation: he has a half-million dollars worth of his family's newspaper stock holdings. (ABC's `Prime Time Live', August 10, 1992)

"This isn't a man who is leaving with his head between his legs."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle discussing John Sununu's resignation and apparent lack of flexibility, 12/6/91

"The other day [the President] said, I know you've had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. [He paused, then said] Would you like a puppy?"
-- Vice President Dan Quayle (LA Times 5/21/89)

"Although in public I refer to him as Mr. Vice President, in private I call him George... When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it's Mr. Vice President, because that's who he is."
-- Senator Dan Quayle shortly after being named George Bush's running mate, 8/27/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92, The NY Times, 8/28/88)

"They asked me to go in front of the Reagans. I'm not used to going in front of President Reagan, so we went out behind the Bushes."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle after the swearing in ceremony on Inauguration Day, 1/20/89. (reported in the NY Daily News, 1/21/89)

"I'm the Vice-President. They know it, and they know that I know it."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle talking about his political enemies, 3/13/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle

"For NASA, space is still a high priority."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, talking to NASA employees, 9/5/90 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle on the concept of a manned mission to Mars.

"We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world."
-- Senator Dan Quayle, 9/21/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"What you guys want, I'm for."
-- Senator Dan Quayle to farmers on a local pork issue (8/25/88) (from the Book `The Clothes have No Emperor')

"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle to Sam Donaldson, 8/17/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"I have made good judgments in the Past.
"I have made good judgments in the Future."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle

"The future will be a better tomorrow."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle

"Votes are like trees, if you are trying to build a forest. If you have more trees than you have forests, then at that point the pollsters will probably say you will win."
-- Senator Dan Quayle, during the '88 campaign (reported in Newsweek in 1988)

"Office of the Vice President... The Council on Competativeness."
-- The letterhead on stationery, complete with misspelling, found in Dan Quayle's old White House office by Clinton adminstration staffers. (Newsweek, 2/8/93)

"I felt like I was in charge."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle after working the locks of the Panama Canal locks during his visit to Panama City in January 1990. (reported in High Times, 11/92)

"It's rural America. It's where I came from. We always refer to ourselves as real America. Rural America, real America, real, real, America."
-- Senator Dan Quayle, 10/20/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, to the American Samoans, whose capital Quayle pronounces `Pogo Pogo', 4/25/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

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