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Fight Club (film)

Fight Club is a 1999 film about an insomniac office worker, looking for a way to change his life, who crosses paths with a devil-may-care soap maker, forming an underground fight club that evolves into something much, much more.
 * Directed by David Fincher. Written by Jim Uhls. Based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk.

Mischief. Mayhem. Soap. (taglines)

The Narrator

 * Bob had bitch tits.
 * People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden.
 * When the fight was over, nothing was solved, but nothing mattered. We all felt saved.
 * If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?
 * Strangers with this kind of honesty make me go a big blubbery one.
 * You wake up at SeaTac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O'Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
 * I am Jack's... complete lack of surprise.
 * On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
 * I felt like destroying something beautiful.
 * I am Jack's wasted life.
 * I am Jack's smirking revenge.
 * When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep... and you're never really awake.
 * With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything's far away. Everything's a copy of a copy of a copy.
 * Fight club wasn't about winning or losing. It wasn't about words. The hysterical shouting was in tongues, like at a Pentecostal Church.
 * Tyler built himself an army. Why was Tyler Durden building an army? To what purpose? For what greater good? In Tyler we trusted.
 * When you have a gun in your mouth, you can only speak in vowels.
 * I want you to really listen to me. My eyes are open.
 * You met me at a very strange time in my life.

Tyler Durden

 * Gentlemen, welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: YOU DO NOT. TALK. ABOUT FIGHT CLUB! Third rule of Fight Club: Someone yells "Stop!", goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: Only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: One fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: No shirts, no shoes. Seventh rule: Fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: If this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.
 * Self-improvement is masturbation. Now, self-destruction...
 * Our fathers were our models for God, if our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?
 * Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
 * In the world I see; you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.
 * Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.
 * It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
 * You are not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
 * Hi, you're gonna call off your rigorous investigation. You're gonna publicly state that there is no underground group, or, these guys are gonna take your balls. They're gonna send one to the New York Times, one to the LA Times, press release style. Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on: we cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances, we guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us.
 * Hitting bottom isn't a weekend retreat. It's not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go! LET GO!
 * The things you own end up owning you.
 * You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you, never wanted you, in all probability he hates you. It's not the worst thing that could happen.
 * Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
 * If we are God's unwanted children, so be it!
 * First you've gotta know - not fear, know - that someday you're gonna die.
 * I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I'm free in all the ways that you are not.
 * We're consumers. We are the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.
 * You wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.
 * Listen up, maggots! You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

Marla Singer

 * A condom is the glass slipper of our generation. You slip one on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night, and then you throw it away. The condom, I mean, not the stranger.
 * My God ... I haven't been fucked like that since grade school.
 * Candy-stripe a cancer ward. It's not my problem.
 * I've got a stomach full of Xanax. I took what was left in the bottle. It might have been too much.
 * [on the phone, after taking a bottle of sleeping pills] This isn't a real suicide-thing. This is probably one of those cry-for-help things... You're going to have to keep me up aaaall night.
 * It's a bridesmaid's dress. I got it at a second-hand store. It was loved intensely for one night.. then cast aside.

Dialogue

 * Narrator: When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just …
 * Marla Singer: … instead of just waiting for their turn to speak?
 * Narrator: Yeah. Yeah.

 * Tyler Durden: I want you to do me a favor.
 * Narrator: Yeah, sure.
 * Tyler Durden: I want you to hit me as hard as you can.
 * Narrator: ...What?
 * Tyler Durden: I want you to hit me, as hard as you can.

 * Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
 * Woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
 * Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
 * Woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
 * Narrator: A major one.
 * [Plane turns heavily, narrator thinks to himself]: Every time the plane banked sharply on takeoff or landing, I prayed for a crash, or mid air collision, anything. Life insurance pays triple when you die on a business trip.

 * [Narrator's bags have just been confiscated]
 * Narrator: Was it ticking?
 * Airport Security Officer: Actually, throwers don't worry about ticking 'cause modern bombs don't tick.
 * Narrator: Sorry, throwers?
 * Airport Security Officer: Baggage handlers. But when a suitcase vibrates, then the throwers gotta call the police.
 * Narrator: My suitcase was vibrating?
 * Airport Security Officer: Nine times out of ten it's an electric razor. But … every once in a while [looks around, leans in conspiratorially] … it's a dildo. [leans back] Of course, it's company policy never to imply ownership in the event of a dildo. We have to use the indefinite article, "a dildo", never … your dildo.
 * Narrator: I don't own a dildo!

 * Narrator: Let me tell you a little bit about Tyler Durden. Tyler was a night person. While the rest of us were sleeping, he worked. He had one part time job as a projectionist. See, a movie doesn't come all on one big reel. It comes on a few. So someone has to be there to switch the projectors at the exact moment that one reel ends and the next one begins. If you look for it, you can see these little dots come into the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
 * [In the background, Tyler points to the corner of the screen as one such mark briefly appears.]
 * Tyler Durden: In the industry, we call them cigarette burns.
 * Narrator: That's the cue for a changeover. He flips the projectors, the movie keeps right on going, and nobody in the audience has any idea.
 * Tyler Durden: And why would anyone want this shit job?
 * Narrator: Because it affords him other interesting opportunities.
 * Tyler Durden: Like splicing single frames of pornography into family films.
 * Narrator: So when the snooty cat and the courageous dog with the celebrity voices meet for the first time in reel three, that's when you'll catch a flash of Tyler's contribution to the film.
 * [As the audience is watching the film, pornography flashes for a split second]
 * Narrator: Nobody knows that they saw it, but they did.
 * Tyler Durden: A nice, big cock.
 * [Several audience members look rattled, a little girl cries]
 * Narrator: Even a hummingbird couldn't catch Tyler at work.

 * Narrator: When you buy furniture, you tell yourself, that’s it. That’s the last sofa I’ll need. Whatever else happens, got that sofa problem handled. I had it all. I had a stereo that was very decent. A wardrobe that was getting very respectable. I was close to being complete.
 * Tyler: Shit man, now it’s all gone.
 * Narrator: All… gone.
 * Tyler: All gone. Do you know what a duvet is?
 * Narrator: A comforter.
 * Tyler: It’s a blanket. Just a blanket. Why do guys like you and I know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word? No. What are we, then?
 * Narrator: I don’t know. Consumers.
 * Tyler Durden: Right. We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.
 * Narrator: Martha Stewart.
 * Tyler Durden: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may. But that's me, and I could be wrong. Maybe it’s a terrible tragedy.

 * [Tyler and Narrator stop outside a convenience store at night. Tyler takes out a gun and walks into the store to do their homework assignment of a "human sacrifice", while Narrator protests. Tyler forces the clerk out the back exit at gun point.]
 * Voice-over: On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everybody drops to zero.
 * Narrator: Stop! What are we doing? Come on! God!
 * Tyler Durden: Hands behind your back. Give me your wallet.
 * [The clerk, now kneeling, hands him his wallet.]
 * Tyler Durden: Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 South East spanning apartment A. Small cramped basement apartment, Raymond?
 * Raymond K. Hessel: How did you know?
 * Tyler Durden: 'Cause they give shitty basement apartments letters instead of numbers. Raymond, you are going to die.
 * [Raymond begins to cry. Tyler examines content of the wallet.]
 * Tyler Durden: Is that your mom and dad? Mom and Dad are going to have to call up kindly Doctor So-and-so. Pick up your dental records. Wanna know why? Because there's gonna be nothing left of your face.
 * Narrator: Oh come on, come on.
 * Tyler Durden: An expired community college student ID. What did you study, Raymond?
 * Raymond K. Hessel: S-stuff.
 * Tyler Durden: Stuff? Were the mid-terms hard? I asked you what you studied!
 * Raymond K. Hessel: Biology mostly.
 * Tyler Durden: Why?
 * Raymond K. Hessel: I don't know.
 * Tyler Durden: What did you wanna be, Raymond K. Hessel? The question, Raymond! Was "What did you want to be"?!
 * Narrator: Answer him, Raymond! Jesus!
 * Raymond K. Hessel: Veterinarian, veterinarian.
 * Tyler Durden: Animals.
 * Raymond K. Hessel: Yeah animals and stuff.
 * Tyler Durden: And stuff, yeah I got that. That means you have to get more schooling.
 * Raymond K. Hessel: Too much school.
 * Tyler Durden: Would you rather be dead? Would you rather die? Here, on your knees in the back of a convenience store?
 * Raymond K. Hessel: No, please no!
 * [Tyler takes his gun down, takes out Raymond's driver's license throwing the wallet in front of Raymond.]
 * Tyler Durden: I'm keeping your license. I'm gonna check in on you. I know where you live. If you're not on your way to becoming a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead. Now run on home.
 * [Raymond gets up and runs into the night.]
 * Tyler Durden: Run Forrest, run!
 * Narrator: I feel ill.
 * Tyler Durden: Imagine how he feels.
 * Narrator: Come on, this isn't funny! That wasn't funny. What the fuck was the point of that?!
 * Tyler Durden: Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.
 * Voice-over: You had to give it to him. He had a plan. And it started to make sense in a Tyler sort of way. No fear, no distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.
 * [Tyler throws gun to Narrator who opens the cylinder to find no bullets inside.]

 * Narrator: I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every Panda that wouldn't screw to save its species. I wanted to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all those French beaches I'd never see. I wanted to breathe smoke.
 * Tyler Durden: Where'd you go psycho boy?
 * Narrator: I felt like destroying something beautiful.

 * Narrator: I know it seems like I have more than one side sometimes...
 * Marla Singer: More than one side? You're Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Jackass!

 * Tyler Durden: [the Narrator is trying to disarm a car bomb of nitroglycerin] You don't know which wire to pull.
 * Narrator: I know everything you do, so if you know I know.
 * Tyler Durden: Or maybe, since I knew you'd know I spent all day thinking about the wrong wires.

About Fight Club (film)

 * Norton plays Jack, a generic name for a generic guy. He's a mild-mannered corporate drone whose complacently consumerist lifestyle is turned inside out when he encounters one Tyler Durden. The punkishly anarchic Durden (Pitt) is everything Jack would like to be but isn't, his own walking, talking id. Like Terry Southern's Magic Christian, Durden expresses his repugnance of society's materialistic values in a series of actes gratuits of mischievous subversion. Moonlighting as a cinema projectionist, he splices single, subliminally registered frames from pornographic films into bland mainstream fare; moonlighting as a waiter in a swanky restaurant, he pees into the oxtail soup. Bare-knuckled and bare-chested, the two of them start pummelling one another for thrills, only gradually discovering that there's a whole world out there of emasculated American males just waiting for an opportunity to let the sweat, blood and sperm pent up within them ooze out from every pore. Well, why not? It's a promising idea for a film, especially a satirical comedy, which is what Fight Club unambiguously is for its first half-hour. Fincher is a vulgar, flashy film-maker (he directed Seven and The Game) who doesn't so much make films as take them, the way we refer to a photographer taking, rather than making, photographs: he's interested only in surfaces and he likes even grunge to glitter. (The French, as usual, coined the perfect expression for this style: le look.) He's a sharp scriptwriter, however, and Norton's omnipresent voice-off narration, coupled with the subject's sociological relevance (cf Susan Faludi's new book Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man), initially sucks one in.
 * Gilbert Adair, "Sometimes it's hard to be a man", The Independent, (14 November 1999).
 * Fight Club starts out funny. The first 30 minutes are overwhelmingly perfect. Like the beginning of American Beauty, the opening sequence whirls you through time, taking you in and out of the narrator's (Norton's) yuppie disillusionment. Poor Edward Norton—his character isn't even given a name. For good reason, since his identity consists of what furniture to buy, what shoes match his suit, and which dinette set best fits his non-existent personality. In this yuppie's life, IKEA is synonymous with orgasm. Enter Tyler Durden. Brad Pitt takes on the challenging role of this American psycho—a soap salesman who lives as a squatter, steals a sportscar one day and ditches it the next, and takes random nightshift jobs to survive. Tyler wants "freedom" from yuppie existence and he makes it a point to obliterate any rules with which he comes in contact—he pees in customers' food, inserts frames of nudity into family films at random movie theaters, and, of course, starts a Fight Club with Norton. It happens in a matter of seconds. He asks Norton to hit him as hard as he can and—bam!--shirtless yuppies are pounding each other to bloody shreds in bar basements all over the city. The opening of Fight Club makes it clear that the movie's a satire. It's supposed to be a biting mockery of yuppie angst. The problem, unfortunately, is that Fincher completely underestimates Edward Norton as an actor. If Fight Club is to be a successful satire, the audience can't fall in love with Norton's narrator. We shouldn't see him as the righteous crusader, the man who can do no wrong. Because when we take every punch Norton takes, we lose our sense of detachment. We lose that ironic distance—the distance that makes a movie like American Beauty such a compelling psychological portrait. There's no seeing the forest from the trees here because of Norton's intensity and ability to elicit endless empathy. We're his unconditional ally. But after being pummeled by Fight Club into bloody submission, we're just begging for mercy and an ending that will leave our senses—not our intellect—intact. But there's one other glaring flaw. Unfortunately, it's an actor. Can you guess who it is? Oh yes, Brad Pitt should have been eternally jailed by the acting police after Seven Years in Tibet, Meet Joe Black, etc. etc. The guy has no range. He just yells when he's trying to be profound and adds a slight stutter when he's trying to be subtle. Pitt tries so damn hard not to be a pretty face, but he spends half the movie flexing his muscles and tearing off his shirt. And worst of all, he's self-conscious! Despite his posing, he's not a confident actor. Instead, he's annoying rather than intimidating; dumb rather than deep; an irritating yapper rather than the moral voice of the film. Perhaps if Pitt and Norton had switched parts, it might have worked. After all, we don't feel anything for Tyler Durden and we care far too much about Norton's narrator. But here's the only recourse. I hope David Fincher sits in a crowded movie theater a few times over the next couple weeks to watch audience reaction to his film. Maybe he'll realize that Fight Club isn't as "funny" as he thinks it is. Maybe he'll realize that biting satire often blurs into the irresponsible. Maybe he'll realize he took the "traumatized male" theme one step too far. Or maybe he's still mesmerized by the sheer brutality of it all—the glistening blood spattered on the wall. He's so enthralled by its color, its undeniable immediacy, that he can't see its indelible pattern. And even more dangerously, he can't tell whose blood it is.
 * Soman S. chainani, "Fight Club", The Harvard Crimson, (October 15, 1999).
 * "Fight Club" is the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since "Death Wish," a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw and beat one another up. Sometimes, for variety, they beat up themselves. It's macho porn—the sex movie Hollywood has been moving toward for years, in which eroticism between the sexes is replaced by all-guy locker-room fights. Women, who have had a lifetime of practice at dealing with little-boy posturing, will instinctively see through it; men may get off on the testosterone rush. The fact that it is very well made and has a great first act certainly clouds the issue. Edward Norton stars as a depressed urban loner filled up to here with angst. He describes his world in dialogue of sardonic social satire. His life and job are driving him crazy. As a means of dealing with his pain, he seeks out 12-step meetings, where he can hug those less fortunate than himself and find catharsis in their suffering. It is not without irony that the first meeting he attends is for post-surgical victims of testicular cancer, since the whole movie is about guys afraid of losing their cojones. Only gradually are the final outlines of his master plan revealed. Is Tyler Durden in fact a leader of men with a useful philosophy? "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything," he says, sounding like a man who tripped over the Nietzsche display on his way to the coffee bar in Borders. In my opinion, he has no useful truths. He's a bully—Werner Erhard plus S & M, a leather club operator without the decor. None of the Fight Club members grows stronger or freer because of their membership; they're reduced to pathetic cultists. Issue them black shirts and sign them up as skinheads. Whether Durden represents hidden aspects of the male psyche is a question the movie uses as a loophole—but is not able to escape through, because "Fight Club" is not about its ending but about its action. Of course, "Fight Club" itself does not advocate Durden's philosophy. It is a warning against it, I guess; one critic I like says it makes "a telling point about the bestial nature of man and what can happen when the numbing effects of day-to-day drudgery cause people to go a little crazy." I think it's the numbing effects of movies like this that cause people go to a little crazy. Although sophisticates will be able to rationalize the movie as an argument against the behavior it shows, my guess is that audience will like the behavior but not the argument. Certainly they'll buy tickets because they can see Pitt and Norton pounding on each other; a lot more people will leave this movie and get in fights than will leave it discussing Tyler Durden's moral philosophy. The images in movies like this argue for themselves, and it takes a lot of narration (or Narration) to argue against them.
 * Roger Ebert, "Fight Club", Rogerebert.com, (October 15, 1999).
 * A stylized version of our IKEA present. It is talking about very simple concepts. We're designed to be hunters and we're in a society of shopping. There's nothing to kill anymore, there's nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. In that societal emasculation this everyman is created. We wanted a title sequence that started in the fear center of the brain. [When you hear] the sound of a gun being cocked that's in your mouth, the part of you brain that gets everything going, that realizes that you are fucked - we see all the thought processes, we see the synapses firing, we see the chemical electrical impulses that are the call to arms. And we wanted to sort of follow that out. Because the movie is about thought, it's about how this guy thinks. And it's from his point of view, solely. So I liked the idea of starting a movie from thought, from the beginning of the first fear impulse that went, Oh shit, I'm fucked, how did I get here?
 * David Fincher, "Gavin Smith goes one-on-one with David Fincher", Film Comment, October/November 1999 issue.
 * The movie is not that violent. There are ideas in the movie that are scary, but the film isn't about violence, the glorification of violence or the embracing of violence. In the movie, violence is a metaphor for feeling. It's a film about the problems or requirements involved with being masculine in today's society. I do like movies that take a toll on the audience. I want to work the subconscious. I want to involve you in ways in which you might not necessarily want to get involved. I want to play off those things that you're expecting to get when the lights go down and the 20th Century Fox logo comes up. There's an audience expectation and I'm interested in how movies play with—and off—that expectation. That's what I'm interested in.
 * David Fincher, Interview with Drew.com "Fightin Words", Drdrew.com, (1998).
 * "Fight Club" appears threatening to some because it seems to challenge the safety of the modern world. But while Edward Norton and Brad Pitt seem only to offer unprovoked violence and mayhem, there are some salient points on offer behind it all. Namely, it is the examination of a man who has allowed himself to become sucked into the minutiae of his corporate job. He further exacerbates his spiral of paranoia by turning to other corporate gimmicks for solutions, and treating them like a religion. He is Edward Norton and Fight Club is his desperate reaction.
 * Almar Haflidason, "Fight Club Review", BBC, (14 November 2000).
 * Edward Norton: The reason Fight Club penetrated to a lot of people our age was that it grappled with that idea that there's this person that I am who's forced to move around in this neutered, contemporary world, but people don't know what I've got inside me. That sensation—not just in young men, but in people in general—or that idea of how to get your authentic self out there in the contemporary world. I think the reason that lodged with a lot of people was that people really do understand that sense that there's a schism inside them that they're aware of, that doesn't get expression. I feel that way. I think a lot of people our age feel that way. They feel more complex than the world allows them to be.
 * Ed Norton in "Interview: Edward Norton" by Sean O'Neal, The A.V. Club, (3/31/10).
 * Guaranteed: Fight Club will blow your skirt up. It's not just the rush of seeing Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and director David Fincher hit career peaks in a groundbreaking film. And it's not the sick kick of watching Gen X amateurs bare-knuckling each other in seedy basements; that'd get old fast. The film's bold, bruising humor leaves marks on a wide range of hot-button issues: It's about being young, male and powerless against the pacifying drug of consumerism. It's about solitude, despair and bottled-up rage. It's about how not to feel dead as Y2K approaches. It's about daring to imagine the disenfranchised reducing the world to rubble and starting over. For daring to imagine, Fight Club will take a few hits. Fincher's film of Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel – with a high-voltage script by newcomer Jim Uhls – is already being misinterpreted as an “apology for fascism.” One critic wondered whether Rupert Murdoch's Fox 2000, the company releasing Fight Club, “knew what it was doing” in spending $70 million on a movie that is “not only anti-capitalism but anti-society and, indeed, anti-God.” My take is that Fight Club is pro-thinking, no matter what deities are offended. Is that threatening? You bet. Norton catches lightning in a revelatory performance that keeps delivering miracles of character nuance. He may be the best actor of his generation. Watching Jack beat himself bloody in front of his boss is a high-wire act that belongs in a time capsule. And Pitt, in his riskiest role to date, uses his sexual swagger to subversive comic effect; he's freer, funnier and freakier than you've ever seen him. It's Tyler who shows Jack how to add nitric acid to soap and make nitro-glycerin. It's Tyler who turns fight clubs into militias and then bomb squads ready to blast the foundations of the planet's power base: banks and credit-card companies.
 * Peter Travers, "Fight Club", Rolling Stone, (October 16, 1999).
 * "We had some great choreographers on the fight scene once we got into the club itself," says Pitt, who plays Tyler Durden, a self-styled male-consciousness raiser. Newsweek's David Anson reviews Pitt's character as "a kind of Nietzschean Robin Hood, using violence to restore dignity to the benighted American male. "If Rudy Giuliani was upset by a little bit of elephant dung on a portrait of the Virgin Mary," writes critic Jason Kaufman for NY Rock, referring to the New York mayor's recent displeasure with the Brooklyn Museum of Art's "Sensation" exhibit, "'Fight Club' should give him a coronary on the spot." Anson, in his Newsweek review, says the film trades in homoerotic imagery without addressing it: "When the movie, after satirizing the gym-enhanced bodies of men in Gucci subway ads ("Self-improvement is masturbation," Tyler pronounces), cuts to the impeccably lean and cut body of its leading man, it is in the grips of a style-content contradiction that this slick denunciation of surface values battles throughout."
 * Paul Vercammen, "Brad Pitt spars with 'Fight Club' critics", CNN, (October 14, 1999).

Taglines

 * How much can you know about yourself, if you've never been in a fight?
 * When you wake up in a different place at a different time, can you wake up as a different person?
 * Losing all hope is freedom
 * Mischief. Mayhem. Soap.
 * It's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything.
 * This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.
 * Fuck Martha Stewart ..its all going down
 * You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
 * Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes; working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need.

Cast

 * Edward Norton - The Narrator
 * Brad Pitt - Tyler Durden
 * Helena Bonham Carter - Marla Singer
 * Meat Loaf	- Robert Paulson
 * Jared Leto - Angel Face
 * Zach Grenier - Richard Chesler, The Narrator's boss

title: Fight Club (film)


text:
User:LGagnon

Pages created by me:

 * Chuck Palahniuk
 * Fight Club
 * Generation X: Tales For An Accelerated Culture
 * Jello Biafra
 * Jennifer Government
 * Lullaby

Pages (other than those that I've created) that I've contributed to considerably:

 * George Carlin

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 * My work at Wikibooks
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license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:LGagnon


text:
Shirin Ebadi

Shirin Ebadi (born 21 June 1947) is an Iranian lawyer and human rights activist. On December 10, 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to receive the prize.

Quotes

 * Any person who pursues human rights in Iran must live with fear from birth to death, but I have learned to overcome my fear.
 * From 1999 interview.
 * Noted in the October 2003 BBC News profile of Ebadi. (retrieved Oct. 15, 2008)

 * In the last 23 years, from the day I was stripped of my judgeship to the years of doing battle in the revolutionary courts of Tehran, I had repeated one refrain: an interpretation of Islam that is in harmony with equality and democracy is an authentic expression of faith. It is not religion that binds women, but the selective dictates of those who wish them cloistered. That belief, along with the conviction that change in Iran must come peacefully and from within, has underpinned my work.
 * : A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, '', 2006, p.204.

 * In my memoir, I wanted to introduce American women to Iranian women and our lives. I'm not from the highest echelons of society, nor the lowest. I'm a women who is a lawyer, who is a professor at a university, who won the Nobel Peace Prize. At the same time, I cook. And even when I'm about to go to prison, one of the first things I do is to make enough food and put it in the fridge for my family.
 * From 2006 interview with Ebadi by New America Media editor Brian Shott (translator, Banafsheh Keynoush) about her newly released book, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope.
 * New America Media, 2006. (retrieved Oct. 15, 2008)

 * I compare my situation to a person on board a ship. When there is a shipwreck the passenger then falls in the ocean and has no choice but to keep swimming. What happened in our society was that the laws overturned every right that women had. I had no choice. I could not get tired, I could not lose hope. I cannot afford to do that.
 * From 2006 interview with Ebadi by Harry Kreisler (translator, Banafsheh Keynoush) about her newly released book, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope.
 * From May 10 2006 interview with Ebadi at Institute of International Studies, [[w:University of California, Berkeley|University of California, Berkeley].] (retrieved Oct. 15, 2008)

 * I, who have defended many prisoners of conscience such as the seven imprisoned Baha'i leaders and others, would face unacceptable restrictions on my human rights work if I returned to Iran, if I were not arrested, now my own lawyer - who also represents many other activists - is detained, and her lawyer has been threatened with arrest for defending her. Where is the justice if your lawyer is arrested for defending you?
 * About the arrest of.

title: Shirin Ebadi


text:
Talk:George Carlin

Copyright notice
As part of the Copyright Cleanup Project, this article has been trimmed to a maximum of five quotes per standup performance. Additional quotations could be added so long as an equal number are deleted. See Limits on quotations for guidelines. - InvisibleSun 00:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Looks like somebody has since been adding a bunch of quotations back to the page, including entire routines. Ugh. According to the Limits on Quotations guidelines, it should be a maximum of five quotes per page, and a maximum of 250 words per quote. Geezerbill (talk) 08:10, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Irony
I added one on irony but it may be one of those internet things floating around so if someone knows that it is, feel free to correct or move it.

It is by carlin ~weaver

 * As "weaver" said, the irony/abortion quote is indeed genuine Carlin, it's one of the opening lines from the album Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics. Also, I cleaned up the section.  The use of bullets made it seem like the various statements on irony were all individual quotes, but they are really all part of the same piece from the book.  Using a double bullet for the citation seemed kind of ugly to me, and the single bullet on the aformentioned abortion quote added to the confusion. - Ugliness Man 13:07, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Sources versus Attributed
The topic categorization is a bit premature is it not? Shouldn't this list be organized the way other pages are organized? Where the ones with a legitimate source are at the top, and those whom someone has merely attributed to him should be at the bottom, because we don't have any reference proving Carlin said it? Then, sourced quotes could be further broken down into categories by subject matter, but only after it has been confirmed Carlin actually said them. ZachsMind 21:07, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Also, in hindsight, I find it rather peculiar that George Carlin's most famous and historically significant pronouncement of the "Seven Words You Can't Say On the Radio" in the particular order with which he presents them, is eerily absent from this collection. Are we unable to quote him in that regard due to concerns of obscenity? The words are used elsewhere on the page, just not altogether in his unique order. I don't know if Carlin himself would give a shit, (especially since he also once pointed out that one doesn't give a shit but does leave a shit) but it just seems incomplete to have a list of Carlin quotes without THAT particular one also in residence. It's like quoting from Abraham Lincoln several times and then neglecting the Gettysburg Address. ZachsMind 00:29, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I think the obscenity policy here is: "we're as obscene as the quotee": feel free to add that quote. Note that many people here probably don't even know who Carlin is, and didn't think to add the quote. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 00:49, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Politics
I've added the "cause chickens are decent people" quote after the abortion one. It's after it in the audio routine as well.

Sourced and unsourced
I've split this article into "Sourced" and "Unsourced" to make the distinction that ZachsMind rightly called for in "Sources versus Attributed" above. (We've switched from "Attributed" to "Unsourced", in general, since then.)

The criteria I used for "Sourced" was a specific, dated, published source that can be verified. Citing a show or an album without the specific routine name requires someone who wishes to verify the material to watch the entire show or listen to the whole album, when it should be possible to cite the specific routine from which the quote comes. (In the case of news or talk shows like Real Time with Bill Maher, we might leave out a specific segment title if the guest is only on for a few minutes, implying a specific "George Carlin segment".)

Citing the routine without a published source (i.e., a show title or album) is equally unsatisfactory, as the reader must dig up which publication the routine was used in. (In general, we prefer the first occurrence, but any one is better than none.) For books, we should have at least a chapter, and preferably page numbers for specific editions. (Different editions usually have different page counts, so page numbers alone are often ambiguous.)

For websites, we need more than just the main website link. We need the specific page on which the quote appears, preferably with a page title and an access date. Websites are complex and very dynamic, so it's important to try to get the most specific information possible for them. Providing this makes it possible to track down where this material may have been moved in reorganizations, or where it might be found in historical references like the Internet Archive.

Ultimately, the key is to make it reasonably easy for readers to verify the quotes. I invite regular readers of this article to clean up the sourcing so quotes can be moved into the "Sourced" section. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 09:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

 * I am going to separate the "Sourced" quotes into their respective category i.e.: book, album, movie, etc. I will leave the unsourced quotes in their own section. This way, someone can recognize the unsourced quotes, source them properly, and move them to their correct section. (Antonio.sierra 00:47, 6 March 2007 (UTC))

Frisbeeterianism
i think this would go better under religion rather than under sports... what do you guys think? (190.72.50.132 06:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC))

Unsourced
Have you noticed that most of the quotes on this page are Steven Wright quotes that are falsely attributed to George Carlin? (65.41.100.44)
 * If anyone knows any quote to be wrongly attributed to someone, and especially if they can provide a proper source, they are invited to provide that information, and to move or copy such quotes to the places that are perceived to be most appropriate. ~ Kalki 13:49, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

We need to either remove the unsourced section (not my idea) or add all the stuff back on to the Mitch Hedberg page that was removed by User:LrdChaos. Really, what is wikiquote's stance on sources for material? It seems quite inconsistent. /Timneu22 01:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

For that matter, what about "unsourced" quotes that later get sourced? I've been filling in some of the correct sources for some of the authentic quotes in the list below. Should we just remove these as they get sourced? Move them to the front page (so long as the maximum number of 4 quotes per album hasn't been reached)? Geezerbill (talk) 16:47, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Famous people

 * Beethoven was so hard of hearing, he thought he was a painter.

 * George Washington's brother, Lawrence, was the Uncle of Our Country.

 * If Frank Sinatra owed you a favor, you should ask him to have one of his buddies kill Andy Williams.

 * If Helen Keller had psychic ability, would you say she had a fourth sense?

 * What year did Jesus think it was?
 * From Brain Droppings

Politics

 * Deep Throat: think about it. There is actually a semi-important figure in American history who is named for a blow-job movie. How do school teachers handle this?

 * Have you ever wondered why Republicans are so interested in encouraging people to volunteer in their communities? It's because volunteers work for no pay. Republicans have been trying to get people to work for no pay for a long time.

 * Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

 * You can't fight City Hall, but you can goddamn sure blow it up.

 * Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.

 * This country was founded by a group of slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free! So they killed a lot of white English people in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people, in order to move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know what the motto for this country ought to be? "You give us a color, we'll wipe it out."

 * Conservatives say if you don't give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they've lost all incentive because we've given them too much money.

 * In America, anyone can become president. That's the problem.

 * Balance the stupid fucking budget!
 * "Capital Punishment" (Back in Town)

 * Once you leave the womb, conservatives don't care about you until you reach military age. Then you're just what they're looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.
 * "Abortion" (Back in Town)
 * Even in a fake Democracy, the people ought to get what they want once in a while, just to feed the illusion that they're really in charge (You Are All Diseased)

Religion

 * I credit that eight years of grammar school with nourishing me in a direction where I could trust myself and trust my instincts. They gave me the tools to reject my faith. They taught me to question and think for myself and to believe in my instincts to such an extent that I just said, "This is a wonderful fairy tale they have going here, but it's not for me."
 * New York Times, 1995-08-20

 * I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don't have as many people who believe it.
 * Brain Droppings, p76

 * Atheism: a non-prophet organization.

 * I think everyone should treat one another in a Christian manner. I will not, however, be responsible for the consequences.

 * I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
 * This was even made as Wikiquote's quote-of-the-day for December 4, 2003. Alas, still no source.  Still probably a false attribution.  I saw it on IMDB a while back, though IMDB never really sources their stuff. Geezerbill (talk) 02:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

 * Here's a spiritual one [bumper sticker]: I've found him, I have Jesus in the trunk.
 * "More Stuff on Cars & Driving", What am I Doing in New Jersey?

 * The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music.
 * Brain Droppings, p77

 * "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?" This title offends all three major religions, and even vegetarians!

 * Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.
 * "Why We Don't Need Ten Commandments" (Complaints and Grievances)

 * I can't wait until the Middle East really explodes. Ancient hatred and modern weapons. My kind of show, man!

 * … This experiment, this magnificent experiment in democracy is just being shredded to pieces by these right-wing Christians, the Ashcroft branch of Republicanism. [They're] just shredding the rest of the Bill of Rights which hadn't been shredded already.

 * Religion is like a lift in your shoe. If it helps you stand up straighter and walk a little better, good for you! But don't you go and try to put your lifts in my shoes, and for crying out loud, let's stop sending missionaries to Africa to nail the lifts to the natives' bare feet!
 * Saturday Night Live, Premiere Episode

 * Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

 * Don't these professional Christians have something to do during the day? I mean, didn't Jesus leave instructions on how to plan your day? Something constructive? Didn't he kind of help people? Didn't he look out for the afflicted, to use half of A.J. Liebling's quote? Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable to complete it. It just seems that they get off on these tangents here. And, of course, the homosexuality and the reading of science fiction, such as the Bible, and giving it the standard of truth I mean, they it would be cartoonish if it weren‘t dangerous to some people.
 * On the October 23, 2007 edition of Countdown with Keith Olbermann discussing the religious right's reaction to the revelation that the Harry Potter character, Dumbledore, was gay.

Censorship

 * There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are 7 you can't say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 … to 7. They must really be baaad. They must be outrageous to be separated from a group that large. "All of you words over here, you seven … baaad words". That's what they told us, right? "That's a bad word!!" Awww. No bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions, and wooords. You know the seven, don't you? That you can't say on TV? Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. Huh? Those are the heavy seven. Those are the words that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war. Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits, wow! And tits doesn't even belong on the list! It seems like such a friendly word. Sounds like a nickname. "Hey Tits, come here man! Tits! Meet my friend Toots. Toots, Tits. Tits, Toots". Sounds like a snack … oh yeah, it is. Right. But I don't mean your sexist snack, I mean new Nabisco Tits. Corn Tits n' Sesame Tits n' Cheese Tits … Tater Tits. Bet you can't eat just one!!
 * Class Clown

Sports

 * Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life; football begins in the fall, when everything is dying.

 * Baseball is a 19th century pastoral game; football is a 20th century technological struggle.

 * Baseball is the only major sport that appears backward in a mirror.

 * Bowling is not a sport because you have to rent the shoes.
 * from Playin' With Your Head

 * Boxing is not a sport. Boxing is a way to beat the shit out of somebody. In that respect, boxing is a more sophisticated form of hockey. But beating the shit out of somebody isn't a sport, in spite of what the police think. When police brutality becomes an Olympic event, fine, then boxing can become a sport.
 * from Playin' With Your Head

 * Don't you find it funny that all these tough-guy boxers are fighting over a purse?

 * How come none of these boxers seem to have a losing record?

 * Gymnastics is not a sport because Romanians are good at it! Took me a long time to come up with that one, but by God, I thought of one.
 * from Playin' With Your Head

 * Hockey is not a sport. Hockey is three activities going on at the same time: ice skating, playing with a puck, and beating the shit out of somebody.
 * from Playin' With Your Head

 * If the Cincinnati Reds were really the first major league baseball team, who did they play?

 * It's never just a game when you're winning.

 * Swimming is not a sport; swimming is a way to keep from drowning. That's just common sense!
 * from Playin' With Your Head

 * You ever watch golf on television? It's like watching flies fuck.

 * Running isn't a sport 'cause everybody can do it. Anything we can all do can't be a sport. I can run, you can run. My mother can run … you don't see her on the cover of Sports Illustrated, do you?
 * from Playin' With Your Head

General

 * When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front-row seat.

 * Kilometers are shorter than miles. Save gas, take your next trip in kilometers.

 * And now, in the interest of equal time, here is a message from the National Pancake Institute, and it says "Fuck waffles".
 * Source: Carlin on Campus

 * I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

 * Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

 * Somewhere in the world is the world's worst doctor. And what's truly terrifying is that someone has an appointment with him tomorrow morning.

 * I committed suicide and all I got was this stupid fucking T-shirt!
 * Life Is Worth Losing

 * A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.
 * A Place for My Stuff!

 * Have you ever noticed that their stuff is shit, and your shit is stuff?
 * A Place for My Stuff!

 * A day off is always more welcome when it's unexpected.

 * Cancer research is a growth industry.

 * Cloud nine gets all the publicity, but cloud eight actually is cheaper, less crowded, and has a better view.

 * Honk if your horn is broken.

 * Have you ever noticed, in traffic, anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac! "Would you look at this idiot? Take a look at this idiot right here, just creeping along … woah, look at that maniac go!"
 * Napalm and Silly Putty (2001)

 * Have you ever noticed that the lawyer always smiles more than the client?

 * Reminds me of something my grandfather used to say. He used to say "I'm going upstairs and fuck your grandmother." Well, he was an honest guy, you know? He wasn't going to bull-shit a 4 year old.

 * I never eat sushi. I have trouble eating things that are merely unconscious.

 * Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.

 * Saliva is known to cause cancer. But only if swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time.

 * I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven't tried that for a while. Maybe this time it'll work.

 * I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it.
 * Napalm and Silly Putty

 * Just think, right now as you read this, some guy somewhere is gettin' ready to hang himself.

 * Rarely does a loose woman have a tight pussy.

 * On Opening Day, the President doesn't throw out the first ball. He throws it in. If he threw it out, it would land in the parking lot and someone would have to go get it.

 * The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.

 * Imagine how thick Japanese people's photo albums must be.

 * A lot of these people who keep a gun at home for safety are the same ones who refuse to wear a seat belt.

 * As soon as someone is identified as an unsung hero, he no longer is.

 * If a movie is described as a romantic comedy, you can usually find me next door playing pinball.

 * The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions.

 * I knew a transsexual guy whose only ambition is to eat, drink, and be Mary.

 * Tits always look better in a pink sweater.

 * The status quo always sucks.

 * Fuck soccer moms.

 * Fuck rational thinking.

 * Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

 * You know what's interesting about assassination? Well, not only does it change those popularity polls in a big fucking hurry, but it's also interesting to notice who it is we assassinate. Ya ever notice who it is, got to think who it is we kill? It's always people who've told us to live together in harmony and try to love one another. Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, John Lennon – they all said, "Try to live together peacefully." Bam! Right in the fucking head! Apparently we're not ready for that. Yeah, that's difficult behavior for us. We're too busy thinking around, sitting around trying to think up ways to kill each other.

 * Pacifism is a nice idea, but it can get you killed. We're not there yet. Evolution is slow, small pox is fast. (Complaints and Grievances)

 * There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

 * Think off-center.

 * Who decides when the applause should die down? It seems like it's a group decision; everyone begins to say to themselves at the same time, "Well, okay, that's enough of that."

 * When someone is impatient and says, "I haven't got all day," I always wonder, how can that be? How can you not have all day?

 * I feel sorry for confetti. Its useful life lasts about two seconds. And it can never be used again.

 * I go to bed early; my favorite dream comes on at nine.

 * I never watch Sesame Street. I already know most of that stuff.

 * I put a dollar in a change machine. Nothing changed.
 * Brain Droppings

 * I went to the Missing Persons Bureau, but no one was there.

 * I worry about my judgment when anything I believe in or do regularly begins to be accepted by the American public.

 * If a man smiles all the time, he's probably selling something that doesn't work.

 * If all our national holidays were observed on Wednesdays, we could wind up with nine-day weekends.

 * If you mail a letter to the post office, who delivers it?

 * In comic strips, the person on the left always speaks first.

 * "Meow" means "woof" in cat.

 * Most people with low self-esteem have earned it.

 * "No comment" is a comment.

 * Nothing is so boring as listening to someone else describe a dream.

 * People who ask "Can I ask you a question?" Didn't really give me a choice, did you there, buddy?
 * "Ten Things That Piss Me Off"

 * Property is theft. Nobody "owns" anything. When you die, it all stays here.

 * The best thing about living at the water's edge: you only have assholes on three sides of you, and if they come this way, you can hear them splash.

 * The difference between the blues and the blahs is that you can't sing the blahs.

 * The future will soon be a thing of the past.

 * The planet is fine. The people are fucked. (Jammin' in New York)

 * The radio ad "Hi, I'm Jeff Healey from the Jeff Healey Band. Don't drink and drive. I don't." Well, I hope you don't drive sober either, Mr. Healey. You're blind, for God's sake!
 * "Ten Things That Piss Me Off"

 * The sicker you get, the harder it is to remember if you took your medicine.

 * The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done."

 * There are two pips in a beaut, four beauts in a lulu, eight lulus in a doozy, and sixteen doozies in a humdinger. No one seems to know how many humdingers there are in a lollapalooza.

 * Tonight's Forecast: dark, it will be mostly dark tonight, followed by widely scattered light in the morning.

 * Wanna help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone!!!

 * I've never seen a homeless guy with a bottle of Gatorade.

 * One great thing about getting old is that you can get out of all sorts of social obligations just by saying you're too tired. (It's Bad For Ya)

 * When you sneeze, all the numbers in your head go up by one.

 * Why do people say "I'm going to take a shit"? … They don't take a shit, they leave one.

 * God bless the homicidal maniacs. They make life worthwhile.
 * Napalm and Silly Putty

 * If you've got a cat and a leg, you've got a happy cat. If you've got a cat and two legs, you've got a party. (Napalm and Silly Putty)

 * If the cops didn't see it, I didn't do it!

 * 69 … 71, which is 69 with two fingers up your ass … 68, which is "You do me an' I'll owe you one." Women hear that one all the time!
 * "Incomplete List of Impolite Words"

 * Rat shit, bat shit, dirty old twat! 69 assholes tied in a knot! Hooray! Lizard shit! Fuck!

 * You can prick your finger, just don't finger your prick. (Class Clown)

 * As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.

 * Reminds me of something my third grade teacher said to us. She said, "You show me a tropical fruit and I'll show you a cock-sucker from Guatemala." (Complaints and Grievances)

 * Soft rock music isn't rock, and it ain't music. It's just soft.

 * We have more ways to describe dirty words than we actually have dirty words. We call them bad words, dirty, filthy, foul, vile, vulgar, coarse, in poor taste, unseemly, street-talk, gutter-talk, locker room language, barrack talk, bawdy, naughty, saucy, raunchy, rude, crude, lewd, indecent, profane, obscene, blue, off-color, suggestive, cursing, cussing, swearing and all I could think of was shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits!

 * Two heart attacks has changed my diet, but I still cook bacon for the smell.

 * The kind of doorhandles which is recessed a little bit into the door and your fingers actually go in a little before they actually grab it. Don't you like that? I like that. That's why they're not going to make it anymore. They found out we liked that.
 * Source: Carlin on Campus 1984 (23:45)

 * No one should ever have any object placed inside their asshole that is larger than a fist and less loving than a dildo.

 * Prayer: please let me find a nymphomaniac coke connection who owns a Ferrari dealership. (Carlin on Campus)

 * Where ideas are concerned, America can be counted on to do one of two things: take a good idea and run it completely into the ground, or take a bad idea and run it completely into the ground.
 * Source: George Carlin, Brain Droppings (1997)

 * When ever you hit the brake in a car, you're putting your life in your feet's hands.

 * If my teacher could have influenced my sexuality I would have turned out to be a nun.
 * Quoted in New York, Vol. 11 (1978), p. 41

 * Everyone appreciates your honesty, until you're honest with them, then you're an asshole

Well done!
Just wanted to say congratulations to everyone who contributed to this excellent article. This is one of the best pages I've seen. Great job! - Daniel Tomé (talk) 00:19, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Some of the sections are a little long (e.g. 15 substantial quotes from a one hour recording) but, yes, this is a well done article in most respects. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:24, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It seems to me some quotes are way over the max of 250 words. The longest quote "But I want you to know something, this is sincere..." is over 1500 words. Shouldn't these quotes be trimmed down? -- Mdd (talk) 11:30, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Bogus quotation on "accumulating possessions"
One bogus quote I constantly see attributed to Carlin is "Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body." The reason I'm claiming this as bogus is because 1) it doesn't sound like something he'd say, 2) he very rarely used similes like this in his act, and most importantly, 3) the quote doesn't show up at all on any of his albums, HBO specials, or books. As he said on his own website, #3 is a good indication of a bogus quote.  Of course, we need a little more evidence before we can safely put it on the main page under the "Misatrributed" section.  So does ANYBODY out there know who may have actually said it first?  What the earliest reference to it is? Geezerbill (talk) 21:41, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It's not Carlin's, I think. That quote only seems to have become popular online after 2010. The earliest attribution to him that I could find is from 2006, in Mary Bray Pipher Writing to change the world, p. 12:
 * The comedian George Carlin eloquently expressed it this way: "Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body."
 * But, actually, a very similar quote can be found in Roger Corless The vision of Buddhism: the space under the tree (1990), p. 20:
 * We make ourselves miserable by first closing ourselves off from reality and then collecting this and that in an attempt to make ourselves happy by possessing happiness. But happiness is not something I have, it is something I myself want to be. Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over my body.
 * He then goes on to talk about the Buddha... So, yes, I would agree with you that the quote is probably bogus. ~ Daniel Tomé (talk) 22:04, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks like you nailed it! I'd say it's Corless.  Thanks a lot, Daniel! Geezerbill (talk) 02:29, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's probably Corless'. You're welcome. ~ Daniel Tomé (talk) 11:00, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I am a Carlinist and can, like may others, tell when a quote is George's just by the sund of it. In my opinion, as stated by one of you as well, unless it can be referenced by something he published, it shouldn't be credited to him. It's insulting in my opinion to be incorreclty credited to something. Bob W

I agree totally on that!ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVORITE COMEDIANS IF YOUR FAMILAR WITH ANY OF STUFF YOU CLEARLY CAN ELIMINATE THE B.S.YOUR SO VERY CORRECT HE CARRIES CERTAIN TONE PERSONA IF I MAY IT DIDNT EVEN QUALIFY IN A G.C.REMARK PERIOD SO THX FOR PUTTING THAT 1 OUT THERE.EVERYTHING THAT MAN SAYS IS TRUELY FUNNY AND ITS HARD TO EVEN FIND SOMEONE AS TRUELY GUT RENCHING EYE TEARING FUNNY LIKE G.C....BET! Shayjay78 (talk) 05:07, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

An entire 1,000+ word routine is not a "quotation"
Some people keep trying to add full transcriptions of routines from Carlin's stand-up performances, or entire essays from his books. They get cleaned up now and then, only to be added back. I wouldn't call a routine that's over 1,000 words a "quotation"! According to the Limits on Quotations guidelines, for stand-up albums it should be a maximum of five quotes per page, and a maximum of 250 words per quote. For books, five lines for every ten pages, so there's some more leeway there. As a Carlin fan myself, I know how hard it is to narrow things down to only so many quotes per work. But the situation right now seems really out of hand. Geezerbill (talk) 09:39, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

 * Earlier I also expressed my concerns about this. Now I have removed the remaining 10+ quotes over 250 words... instead of trimming them down. I hope that users put back their favorite sections as long as they don't exceed the 250 words. -- Mdd (talk) 11:29, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Mdd!! Is there maybe a different kind of warning that should be put on the main page, to hopefully remind more people of the limit? I know there's a "limits of quotation" banner, but apparently it's only meant to be used on the talk pages (and I put one at the top here). Geezerbill (talk) 21:44, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

stupid people in large groups?
I see this quote, "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." It's referenced in a casual editorial in the Wall Street Journal and by an expert in a Pew article. But I don't actually see it sourced anywhere.

--100.4.146.166 17:25, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:George Carlin


text:
Donald Rumsfeld

Donald Rumsfeld (9 July 1932 – 29 June 2021) was the 21st United States Secretary of Defense, serving from 2001 to 2006, succeeded by Robert Gates. He also served as the 13th Defense Secretary in 1975–1977 under President Ford, and in other roles under various presidents.

1960s

 * It's a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy.
 * As quoted in The Chicago Tribune (13 April 1966)

1970s

 * Congress, the press, and the bureaucracy too often focus on how much money or effort is spent, rather than whether the money or effort actually achieves the announced goal.
 * "Rumsfeld's Rules" January 12, 1974

 * It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.
 * Rumsfeld's Rules" January 12, 1974

 * Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance.
 * "Rumsfeld's Rules" January 12, 1974

 * This war [in Vietnam] has been marked by so many lies and evasions... that it is not right to have the war end with one last lie.
 * In April 1975, as quoted in "How 'Vice' Explains Trump's Appeal" (6 January 2019), by Matt Latimer, POLITICO

2000s

 * Pearl Harbor Post-Mortem: In some future hearing, I am going to say that I do not want to be sitting before this panel in a modern day version of a Pearl Harbor post-mortem as to who didn't do what, when, where and why. None of us would want to have to be back here going through that agony.
 * Donald Rumsfeld's Unclassified Memo — July 23, 2001

 * Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
 * The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or vice versa.
 * Department of Defense news briefing (12 February 2002)
 * Variant:
 * Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.
 * It sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious, important matter.
 * There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist. And yet almost always, when we make our threat assessments, when we look at the world, we end up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three.
 * Extending on his earlier comments in a press conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium (6 June 2002)

 * I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that.
 * Interview with Steve Croft, Infinity CBS Radio Connect (14 November 2002)

 * And it is not knowable if force will be used, but if it is to be used, it is not knowable how long that conflict would last. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.
 * TownHall Meeting At Aviano Air Base in Italy (7 February 2003)

 * Then there are three or four countries that have said they won't do anything. I believe Libya, Cuba and Germany are ones that have indicated they won't help in any respect.
 * "Threats And Responses: Germany; Rumsfeld Faces Tense Greeting and Antiwar Rallies in Munich" by Thom Shanker, in The New York Times (8 February 2003)

 * Now, you're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe.
 * As quoted in "Outrage at 'old Europe' remarks" in BBC News' (23 January 2003)

From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it's never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been. Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here.
 * I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny -- "The sky is falling." I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that's being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot —one thing after another.
 * DOD news briefing following the fall of Baghdad (11 April 2003)

 * I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons.
 * At a hearing of the Senate's appropriations subcommittee on defense (14 May 2003)

 * Today we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?
 * Rumsfeld memo: Global War on Terrorism (October 16, 2003)

 * You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase immediate threat. I didn't, the president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore that that's what's happened.
 * CBS Face the Nation  (14 March 2004); in response Thomas Friedman quoted his previous statement from a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee (10 September 2002):
 * But no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

 * I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty.
 * Interview with the Washington Post (9 January 2002)

 * Look at me! I'm sweet and lovable!
 * http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3516 Foreign Press Center (21 June 2002)]

 * [ Osama bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.
 * DoD News Briefing October 07, 2002

 * I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?
 * Written on a memo in reference to the treatment of Guantanamo prisoner and to the way he worked in his office as Secretary of Defense, 2002. Reported in The Washington Post, 24 June 2004.

 * We're so conditioned as a people to think that a military campaign has to be cruise missiles and television images of airplanes dropping bombs, and that's just false. This is a totally different war. We need a new vocabulary. We need to get rid of old think and start thinking about this thing the way it really is.
 * on CBS' Evening News, October 9, 2001

 * We know where they [ Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat....I would also add, we saw from the air that there were dozens of trucks that went into that facility after the existence of it became public in the press and they moved things out. They dispersed them and took them away. So there may be nothing left. I don't know that. But it's way too soon to know. The exploitation is just starting.
 * Interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News This Week, March 30, 2003

 * I didn't advocate invasion...I wasn't asked.
 * Responding to George Stephanopoulos about whether he would have advocated an invasion of Iraq if he had known that no weapons of mass destruction would be found there, ABC News This Week, November 20, 2005

 * ...it seems to me that it's up to all of us to try to tell the truth, to say what we know, to say what we don't know, and recognize that we're dealing with people that are perfectly willing to, to lie to the world to attempt to further their case and to the extent people lie of, ultimately they are caught lying and they lose their credibility and one would think it wouldn't take very long for that to happen dealing with people like this.
 * From the 2004 documentary film Control Room

 * As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe -- it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.
 * Responding to the question "Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up armor our vehicles, and why don't we have those resources readily available to us?"
 * I shouldn't get into ... this is diplomacy, and I don't do diplomacy.
 * I shouldn't get into ... this is diplomacy, and I don't do diplomacy.

 * We do have a saying in America: if you're in a hole, stop digging ..... erm, I'm not sure I should have said that.

 * What we are seeing is not the war in Iraq. What we're seeing is slices of the war in Iraq.

 * Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet.
 * Regards upcoming elections in Iraq, January 14, 2005.

 * It recalls to mind the statement by Winston Churchill, something to the effect that: I have benefited greatly from criticism, and at no time have I suffered a lack thereof.
 * During the Nomination of Robert Gates for the next U.S. Secretary of Defense, November 8, 2006

 * It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.
 * referring to the ongoing War on Terrorism

 * Those who follow orders to commit such crimes will be found and they will be punished. War crimes will be prosecuted. And it will be no excuse to say, 'I was just following orders.' Any official involved in such crimes will forfeit hope of amnesty or leniency with respect to past action.
 * Pentagon briefing, March 20, 2003

 * Oh, Lord. I didn't mean to say anything quotable.
 * Interview with Associated Press Friday, September 7, 2001

 * Let's hear it for the essential daily briefing, however hollow and empty it might be. We'll do it.
 * Meeting with Media Pool Bureau Chiefs October 18, 2001

 * There will be good moments, and there will be less good moments.
 * April 7, 2004, in reference to the 2004 spring uprising in Iraq

 * I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that's a good thing.
 * Talking to reporters about whether President Bush knows about equipment inadequacies in Iraq

 * Pieces of intelligence, scraps of intelligence...you run down leads and you run down leads, and you hope that sometimes it works.
 * DoD News Briefing May 01, 2002

 * And there is, I am certain, among the Iraqi people a respect for the care and the precision that went into the bombing campaign.
 * DoD News Briefing April 09, 2003

 * Stuff happens.
 * DoD News Briefing on the issue of looting and chaos in Baghdad, Saturday, April 11, 2003

 * I suppose the implication of that is the president and the vice president and myself and Colin Powell just fell off a turnip truck to take these jobs.
 * In response to Jeffrey Goldberg's question to comment on accusations that the "Jewish lobby" maneuvered the administration into war. The New Republic, October 8, 2007.

Bureaucracy to Battlefield Speech, (September 10, 2001)

 * The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America. This adversary is one of the world's last bastions of central planning. The adversary is closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy. Not the people, but the processes. Not the civilians, but the systems. Not the men and women in uniform, but the uniformity of thought and action that we too often impose on them.
 * The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector, but not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible. To that end, we're announcing today a series of steps the Department of Defense will take to shift our focus and our resources from bureaucracy to battlefield, from tail to tooth.
 * Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the Pentagon in front of its people? To them I reply, Today, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.
 * A new idea ignored may be the next threat overlooked. A person employed in a redundant task is one who could be countering terrorism or nuclear proliferation.
 * But keep in mind the story about the donkey, the burro, and the ass. The man and the boy were walking down the street with the donkey and people looked and laughed at them and said, "Isn't that foolish—they have a donkey and no one rides it." So the man said to the boy, "Get on the donkey; we don't want those people to think we're foolish." So they went down the road and people looked at the boy on the donkey and the man walking alongside -- "Isn't that terrible, that young boy is riding the donkey and the man's walking." So they changed places, went down the road, people looked and said, "Isn't that terrible, that strong man is up there on the donkey and making the little boy walk." So they both got up on the donkey, the donkey became exhausted, came to a bridge, fell in the river and drowned. And of course the moral of the story is, if you try to please everybody, you're going to lose your donkey.
 * It's about professionalism, and it's also about our respect for ourselves, about how we feel about seeing GAO reports describing waste and mismanagement and money down a rat hole. We need your help. I ask for your help. I thank all of you who are already helping. I have confidence that we can do it. It's going to be hard. There will be rough times. But it's also the best part of life to be engaged in doing something worthwhile.

2010s

 * After he saw what happened to Saddam Hussein, he (Gaddafi) did not want to be Saddam Hussein. He gave up his nuclear program.
 * Rumsfeld doesn't support sending U.S. troops into Libya March 9, 2011.

 * The natural state of man is to want to be free. To have opportunities. To have choices.
 * On Arab Spring, Rumsfeld, that he wasn't surprised by popular uprisings of Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia. March 9, 2011.

 * And the only way there's going to be followers, is if the leader is doing things that have merit, that are persuasive to others. Why else would someone follow somebody if they didn't think the individual was doing something worthwhile, going in the right direction?
 * As quoted in "My Date With Rummy: Now 84, The Former Secretary Of Defense Is As Wily As Ever" (12 June 2017), by Adam Linehan, Task & Purpose

Quotes about Rumsfeld

 * At the same time, Kissinger, Carter and détente were condemned as weakening the West by a group of conservative Democrats led by Henry (Scoop) Jackson, a critic of SALT, as well as by key Republicans who were influential in the Ford administration (1974–7), notably his Chief of Staff, Richard (Dick) Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. They drew on advice from commentators such as Richard Perle, Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz who warned about Soviet intentions. The continuity of this group, through 1990s’ opposition to Clintonian liberal internationalism, to the neo-conservative activism of the early 2000s, especially against Iraq, is notable.
 * Jeremy Black, The Cold War: A Military History (2015)

 * About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments... I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”... he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.”
 * Wesley Clark, quoted in Chomsky on 9/11, Syria’s “Bloody Partition” and Why U.S. Role Ensures Failure of Mideast Talks, Democracy Now! (11 September 2013)

 * Mohammed al-Qahtani's torture, which was directly authorized by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, included forcing him to urinate on himself, months of isolation, sleep deprivation, and blaring loud music, even when he was in the hospital. "They strip-search him and briefly make him stand nude," the interrogation log recounts matter-of-factly. "They tell him to bark like a dog and growl at pictures of terrorists.
 * Amy Goodman Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times (2008)

 * Cheney and Rumsfeld were inveterate schemers whose cynicism about going to war was exceeded only by their ineptitude in conducting it.
 * Jacob Heilbrunn, "Why the United States Invaded Iraq" New York Times (28 July 2020)

 * The warfare in Syria is a follow-on to the attacks on Iraq and Libya. We may recall General Wesley Clark’s claim in March 2007 that shortly after 9/11 a Pentagon official had shown him a Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz list of seven Middle East and North African countries that were scheduled for attack and regime change.  Iraq and Libya, both on that list, have been attacked and transformed into U.S.-destroyed states with new or unsettled leadership.  The United States has been supporting regime change forces in Syria as far back as 2011, but the job has not been completed, in part because of Russian support for president Assad.  Truce efforts by the U.S. and Russia have regularly broken down because the U.S. still aims at regime change and supports the rebel forces that Russia targets, many or most of which are Al Qaeda- or ISIS-related and whose victory would mean another Libya-like failed state.
 * Edward S. Herman, “U.S. Political and Moral Disarray”, Z Magazine, December 2016, pp. 15-17.

 * He's a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that.
 * Richard Nixon, White House conversation 464-12

 * In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Donald Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation. And so Kennedy was killed, and al-Qaida wasn't present at that time, but rather, those corporations were the primary beneficiary from his killing. And the war continued after that for approximately one decade. But after it became clear to you that it was an unjust and unnecessary war, you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, Rumsfeld.
 * Osama bin Laden, as quoted in Not Popular.

 * We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement — that's the kindest word I can give you — of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war. The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously. I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history.
 * John McCain
 * Here's what I can tell you about Don Rumsfeld. You're never going to get any credit. And you'll only know how well you're doing if he gives you more work. If that happens, you're doing fine.
 * Dick Cheney, U.S. Vice President, Quoted in Bob Woodward's State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, Simon & Schuster, 2006
 * Dick Cheney, U.S. Vice President, Quoted in Bob Woodward's State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, Simon & Schuster, 2006

 * Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the War Against Terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. When the maddened king stamps his foot, slaves tremble in their quarters. So, standing here today, it's hard for me to say this, but The American Way of Life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.
 * Arundhati Roy War Talk (2003)

 * Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk was on the mark... in November 2002, he wrote, “Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 11 September. If the United States invades Iraq, we should remember that.” On many psychological levels, the Bush team was able to manipulate post-9/11 emotions well beyond the phantom of Iraqi involvement in that crime against humanity. The dramatic changes in political climate after 9/11 included a drastic upward spike in the attitude—fervently stoked by the likes of Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the president—that our military should be willing to attack potential enemies before they might attack us. Few politicians or pundits were willing to confront the reality that this was a formula for perpetual war, and for the creation of vast numbers of new foes who would see a reciprocal logic in embracing such a credo themselves. President Bush’s national security adviser “felt the administration had little choice with Hussein,” reporter Bob Woodward recounted in mid-November 2002. A quote from Condoleezza Rice summed up the approach. “Take care of threats early.” Determining exactly what constitutes a threat—and how to “take care” of it—would be up to the eye of the beholder in the Oval Office.
 * Norman Solomon in Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You, p. 99  (2003)

 * Rumsfeld told a group of senior Pentagon aides, “I never again want our army to arrive somewhere and meet the CIA on the ground.” To a gathering of top generals in “the tank,” the Joint Chiefs' secure conference room, he was even more succinct: “Every CIA success,” he told them, “is a DoD failure.”
 * Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine (2006)

The Coming Wars - What the Pentagon can now do in secret, by Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, January 16, 2005
(Complete text)

 * George W. Bush... his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state... The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney... The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books — free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A.

 * Bush and Cheney may have set the policy, but it is Donald Rumsfeld|Rumsfeld who has directed its implementation ... [Rumsfeld's] reappointment as Defense Secretary was never in doubt... In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility.  The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

 * The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. "...They’re not even going to tell... the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)

 * Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the government’s intelligence wringer,” the former official went on. “The intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in competition. What’s missing will be the dynamic tension that insures everyone’s priorities—in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even the Department of Homeland Security—are discussed. The most insidious implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell people what he’s doing

title: Donald Rumsfeld