text:
Tariq Ali

Tariq Ali (born 21 October 1943) is a British-Pakistani Marxist, author, and filmmaker.

Quotes

 * The government of the US has no moral authority to elect itself as the judge over human rights in Cuba, where there has not been a single case of disappearance, torture or extra-judicial execution since 1959, and where despite the economic blockade, there are levels of health, education and culture that are internationally recognised.
 * Appeal signed by Tariq Ali in The Guardian (26 March 2005)

 * Torture, encouraged from above, became a fact of life [in occupied Iraq]. Perhaps some good liberal apologist for Blair will soon explain how democratic torture is much nicer than authoritarian torture.
 * "For one day only, I'm a Lib Dem" The Guardian (March 26, 2005)

 * We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane.
 * "For one day only, I'm a Lib Dem: We must take the politics of the anti-war front into the electoral arena" The Guardian (26 March 2005)

 * Stupidity knows no bounds, especially when fuelled by narcissism and a tongue laced with demagogy. There is no other way to describe George Galloway's absurd and offensive suggestion that Bradford should impose a total ban on Israeli tourists.
 * "Gallows Humour", London Review of Books (8 August 2014)

"What’s that?" She said: "Once, I was standing by a cliff-edge on the French Riviera – I was very unhappy, don't ask why – when a guy rolled up on a motorbike, with a leather jacket, stopped, looked sternly at me and said: 'You’re not thinking of committing suicide, are you?' And I was so stunned I said: 'Well, that is what I was about to do.' He said, 'Don’t be silly! Come on, get on the back of my motorbike – I don’t have a spare helmet – and I’ll take you to the nearest town, and we'll sit down and get rid of this nonsense in your head.' That was Christopher Logue. 'So,' she said, 'I owe Christopher my life, and when I saw that he was also one of the founding editors of your magazine ...' I checked with Christopher, who said: 'Thank God I did it.'"
 * [On funders of the Black Dwarf newspaper] The other one was an armed-struggle potter, a woman called Fiona Armour-Brown, who lived in Wales. She was slightly over the top. She believed we should be setting up small terrorist groups – that wasn't the word used, but that's effectively what it was – in Wales and parts of Northern England, to challenge Labour. So we laughed her out of that one. But, again, she would send a cheque for a hundred quid, occasionally more – I think she'd inherited family money, too. Once when she came to the office I asked her why she was giving us this money. She said: "Politics – it’s the best paper around – but there’s also a personal thing involved."
 * Interview with David Edgar, as cited in "That was the year that was" London Review of Books Vol. 40 No. 10 (24 May 2018)

 * Let's discuss the world. To answer the question, "is globalisation possible without God", the simple answer is "yes". Globalisation is after all itself a code word, a mask, for not using the C-word, capitalism. Globalisation is basically the latest phase of expanding capitalism. This not something which is neutral, this is a capitalism that has its rules: it has its economic rules, it has its political rules, it has its cultural rules and it has its military rules. It is a system. At the heart of this system is the United States of America, the world's only existing empire today. The first time in the history of humanity that you have just had a single empire, so dominant, whose military budget is higher than the military budgets of the next 15 countries put together, and whose military-industrial complex itself is the eleventh largest economic entity in the world. This is the reality we live in, and this is the reality which confronts us in different ways.
 * 10th Globalisation lecture, VRPO.

...Julian...should never have been kept in prison for bail. He should not be in prison now awaiting a trial for extradition. He should be released.
 * Julian exposed another set of wars. Basically, he exposed the so-called war on terror, which began after 9/11, has lasted 20 years, has led to six wars, millions killed, trillions wasted... So, what do you say to people like Chelsea Manning and Julian, who's the principal target of the legal and judicial brutalities taking place, when they reveal stuff, which everyone knows it's true, since some of it is on video — Americans bombing Iraqi families, totally innocent — totally innocent — laughing about it and are recorded killing them?... Julian, far from being indicted, should actually be a hero... And if they think that punishing him in this vindictive and punitive way is going to change people’s attitudes to coming out and telling the truth, they’re wrong.
 * Quoted in "Free Julian Assange: Snowden, Varoufakis, Corbyn & Tariq Ali Speak Out Ahead of Extradition Hearing", Democracy Now! (25 October 2021)

 * Hamas's atrocities, as they call it[, was] not something I would support, but in the middle of a liberation war that has been going on for nearly three decades it's a bit difficult for us sitting here to give concrete advice on tactics.
 * Every time the Palestinians have tried non-violence it has failed. [Since October 7] there's been a huge shift. Why? Because the resistance has resumed.
 * Comments at a Stop the War Coalition event (9 November 2023), as cited in "Organisers of pro-Palestinian march praise Hamas 'resistance'", The Times (11 November 2023)

The Clash of Fundamentalism (2002)

 * Tariq Ali - The Clash of Fundamentalisms, Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002)

 * Tragedies are always discussed as if they took place in a void, but actually each tragedy is conditioned by its setting, local and global. The events of 11 September 2001 are not exception.

 * Even if you reject everything, it is always better to know what it is you are rejecting.

 * I loved Lahore. By the time I was at secondary school we had moved from Race Course Road to our own apartments in a large block which my paternal grandfather had built for his five children. These were on Nicholson Road, but very close to the tiny streets and shops of Qila Gujyar Singh, an old Sikh-dominated locality, constructed around a small Sikh fortress. The street names were unchanged. Not that I ever asked myself what had happened to all the Sikhs. My early childhood was dominated by kite-flying and playing cricket with street urchins. It wasn't till much later that I even discovered that Basant, the festival of kites, when the Lahore sky is filled with different colours and shapes as old rivals seek to tangle with and cut down each other's kites, was the millennium-old product of Hindu mythology.

 * And then the burnt houses. How were they burned? I would ask the locals. Back would come a casual reply. 'They belonged to Hindus and Sikhs. Our fathers and uncles burnt them.' But why? 'So they could never come back, of course.' But why? 'Because we were now Pakistan. Their home was India.' But why, I persisted, when they had lived here for centuries, just like your families, spoken the same language, despite the different gods? The only reply was a sheepish grin and a shrugging of shoulders. It was strange to think that Hindus and Sikhs had been here, had been killed in the villages below. In these idyllic  surroundings, the killings and burnings seemed strangely abstract to our young minds. We knew, but could not fully understand, and therefore did not dwell on these awful events till much later

 * Nonetheless Russell had intuitively grasped that the first two decades of Islam had a distinctly Jacobin feel. I think this is true. Sections of the Koran remind one of the vigour of the founding manifesto of a new political organisation.

 * The reality of women in Islam is a prefabricated destiny.

 * Soldiers were incited to mass-rape the women in order to mutate the Hindu Bengali gene. This is what was said by Punjabi officers to Punjabi soldiers. This is what they did. In March 1971, West Pakistan invaded East Pakistan. Rapes and massacres took place. In one night alone, occupying soldiers, accompanied by Jamaat-e-Islami collaborators, invaded the student hostels at the university. Hundreds of students disappeared. Left-wing intellectuals were traced and shot. Sheikh Mujib was arrested and brought to a West Pakistani prison. His party went underground and prepared to resist. Pakistan's greatest poet, Faiz Ahined Faiz, wrote of 'eyes washed with blood'

 * I wrote and spoke and appealed for support, but the West remained silent. Nixon had ordered Kissinger (or perhaps it was the other way round) to 'tilt towards Pakistan'. Beijing tilted in the same direction. As the war raged, millions of refugees were provided with temporary accommodation in the Indian province of West Bengal. Finally, the Indian army crossed the border and defeated its Pakistani counterparts.

 * This single event had alienated me totally from the 'new' Pakistan. In the past one had fought against the elite, but this time a large section of the population was infected with an ugly chauvinism. It was not the Baluch or the Pashtuns as much as the Punjab and, to a certain extent. Sind. The failure of the Punjabis to protest against the crimes being committed in their name made them complicit. Some were no doubt frightened, but how could they be when they had only recently moved mountains, defied fear, toppled a dictatorship? It was something else. It was Bhutto. Having followed him during the movement, voted for him, they could not betray him. They assumed he must be right and so remained silent. It was then that I made my ow-n personal decision to stay away from them. The blood of Bengal separated us. Pakistan has yet to acknowledge these crimes and apologise to the people of Bangladesh. For its own sake, not only for theirs. Official histories in Pakistan continue to lie. They write of how India had decided to break up Pakistan. Not true. It was the Pakistan army backed by the bureaucracy and the majority People's Party led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who took the risk and lost. They did not succeed in implanting 'pure Muslim genes' via the 'pure Muslim sperm' of the Punjabi soldiery.

 * Zia's military dictatorship, once again fully backed by the United States, was the worst period in the country's history. Zia's men were dense, deaf and heartless. The new regime had decided to use Islam as its battering ram, and its bearded supporters, often incredibly stupid, were opportunist to the marrow of their bones. They combined religion with profanities of the vilest kind. Under Zia, despotism and lies mutilated a whole generation. Islamic punishments were introduced, public floggings and hangings instituted. The political culture of Pakistan was brutalised. It has still to recover. Washington and London watched from the sidelines as the country's elected leader was executed. Work on the nuclear programme continued, but Washington now chose to ignore the process because by now the pro Moscow Afghan left had seized power in Kabul.

 * For all their incoherence and senseless rage, their message is attractive to those layers of the population who yearn for some order in their lives. If the fanatics promise to feed them and educate their children they are prepared to forgo the delights of CNN and BBC World.
 * Referring to the Taliban. The Clash of Fundamentalisms ISBN 1-85984-457-X, p. 200.

 * "The Pashtun tribesmen under Khurshid Anwar`s command halted after reaching Baramula, only an hour`s bus ride from Srinagar and refused to go any further. Here they embarked on a three-day binge, looting houses assaulting Muslims and Hindus alike, raping men and women and stealing money from Kashmir treasury. The local cinema was transformed into a rape centre. A group of Pashtuns invaded St Joseph's convent, where they raped and killed four nuns, including the mother superior and shot dead a European couple sheltering there. News of the atrocities spread, turning a large numbers of Kashmiris against their would be liberators. When they finally reached Srinagar, the Pashtuns were so intent on pillaging the shops and bazaars that they overlooked the airport, already occupied by the Sikhs".

The Duel (2008)

 * 'Tariq Ali The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power'' (2008)

 * BOOKS HAVE A DESTINY. THIS IS MY THIRD STUDY OF PAKISTAN. The first, Pakistan: Military Rule or People’s Power?, was written in 1969 and predicted the breakup of the state. It was banned in Pakistan. Critics of every persuasion, even those who liked the book, thought it was going too far in suggesting that the state could disintegrate, but a few years later that is exactly what happened. Just over a decade later I wrote Can Pakistan Survive? The question mark was not unimportant but nonetheless struck a raw nerve in General Zia’s Pakistan, where to even pose the question was unacceptable. The general himself was extremely angry about its publication, as were sections of the bureaucracy, willing instruments of every despotism. Zia attacked both me and the book at a press conference in India, which was helpful and much appreciated by the publisher's sales department. That book too was banned, but to my delight was shamelessly pirated in many editions in Pakistan. They don’t ban books anymore, or at least not recently, which is a relief and a small step forward.

 * MEANWHILE THE ISLAMISTS, while far removed from state power, are busy picking up supporters. The persistent and ruthless missionaries of Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) are especially effective. ... The Tablighis stress their nonviolence and insist they are merely broadcasting the true faith to help people find the correct path in life. This may be so, but it is clear that some younger male recruits, bored with all the dogma, ceremonies, and ritual, are more interested in getting their hands on a Kalashnikov. Many commentators believe that the Tablighi missionary camps are fertile recruiting grounds for armed groups active on the western frontier and in Kashmir.

 * The Muslim League was always an extremely weak organization by comparison. Originally created by Islamic princes and nobles in 1906 "to foster a sense of loyalty to the British government among the Muslims of India" (to cite from its statement of aims), it was captured by the educated Muslim middle class led by Jinnah in the 1930s and for a brief period was in alliance with the Congress Party. However, its main thrust was always anti-Hindu rather than anti-British.

 * Jinnah’s Pakistan died on March 26, 1971, with East Bengal drowned in blood. Two senior West Pakistanis had, to their credit, resigned in protest against what was about to happen. Admiral Ahsan and General Yaqub left the province after their appeals to Islamabad had been rejected. Both men had strongly opposed a military solution. [Zulfikar Ali] Bhutto, on the other hand, backed the invasion. "Thank God, Pakistan has been saved," he declared, aligning himself with the disaster that lay ahead. Rahman was arrested and several hundred nationalist and left-wing intellectuals, activists, and students were killed in a carefully organized massacre. The lists of victims had been prepared with the help of local Islamist vigilantes, whose party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, had lost badly in the elections. Soldiers were told that Bengalis were relatively recent converts to Islam and hence not “proper Muslims”—their genes needed improving. This was the justification for the campaign of mass rape.

 * In Dhaka, Mujibur Rahman waited at home to be arrested. Many of his colleagues went underground. The military shelled Dhaka University. Artillery units flattened working-class districts; trade-union and newspaper offices were burned to the ground. Soldiers invaded the women’s hostel on the university campus, raping and killing many residents. With the help of the intelligence agencies and local collaborators, mainly Islamist activists, lists of nationalist and Communist intellectuals had been prepared (as in Indonesia in 1965), and they were now picked up and killed. Some had been close friends of mine. I was both sad and angry. I had predicted this tragedy, while hoping it might be avoided. Immediately after the December 1970 general election I wrote, "Will the Pakistan Army and the capitalist barons of West Pakistan allow these demands to go through? The answer is quite clearly no. What will probably happen is that in the short-term Mujibur Rehman will be allowed to increase East Pakistan’s percentage of import and export licenses and will be allocated a larger share of foreign capital investment. These are the 'concessions' which the Army will be prepared to make in the coming few months. If Rehman accepts them, he will be allowed to stay in power. If not, it will be back to business as usual in the shape of the Army. Of course there is no doubt that in the event of another military coup there will be no holding back the immense grievances of Bengal and the desire for an independent Bengal will increase a hundredfold."

 * Operation Searchlight was brutal, but ineffective. Killing students and intellectuals did not lead to the quick and clear victory sought by the Pakistani generals. Once the initial attack had failed, the military with the help of local Islamist volunteers (members of the Jamaat-e-Islami) began to kill Hindus—there were 10 million of them in East Pakistan— and burn their homes. Tens of thousands were exterminated. These were war crimes according to any international law.

 * PAKISTAN HAS the unique distinction of being the only South Asian country where it's legal to discriminate against women. This was institutionalized via a set of constitutional amendments during the period of General Zia-ul-Haq's dictatorship, which brutalized the country’s political culture: there were public hangings and floggings of criminals and dissidents. In 1979 the "Hudood Ordinance" repealed previous laws relating to rape. General Zia was determined to "Islamize" the country, and together with the creation of jihadi groups to fight Charlie Wilson's war in Afghanistan measures were taken on the domestic front that have proved difficult to reverse. A raped woman could no longer testify against her violator because she was now considered only half a witness. Four adult males were required to corroborate her evidence. By alleging rape, which she was not in a position to prove, the woman admitted to intercourse rendering her liable to prosecution. Add to this the fact that sexual assaults on women are an everyday crime: the Human Rights Commission estimates a rape every three hours. Today, more than 50 percent of women in prison are those accused of adultery (i.e., unproven rape) and are awaiting verdicts. Many of them languish in jail for several months and sometimes years before their case is heard. Acquittals are rare and the most lenient sentence is a year in prison.

 * Often poor women, who go to a police station and charge a man with rape, are subjected to further sexual abuse by the police, incidents of which multiplied dramatically after the “Islamic laws” were promulgated. Neither Benazir Bhutto nor General Musharraf managed to repeal the anti-women ordinances when they were in power. This gives a carte blanche to honor killers and anyone else. As social and economic conditions deteriorate for a vast majority of the population, women become even more vulnerable.

 * The treatment of women as subhuman can also be seen in the statistics related to acid and kerosene burn victims. Young girls and women between the ages of fourteen to twenty-five are the usual target of this particular crime. The aim is to disfigure the face and burn the genital region. The reasons vary from case to case: jealousy, imagined infidelity, economic need to get a new bride and dowry, wives refusing sexual favors, and so on.

The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution (2017)

 * History handed Lenin a gift in the shape of the First World War. He grasped it with both hands and used it to craft an insurrection. It is revolutions that make history happen. Liberals of every sort, with rare exceptions, are found on the other side.
 * Introduction, p. 3

 * Revolutionary periods invariably encompass a huge fluctuation of political consciousness that can never be registered accurately by any referendum.
 * Introduction, p. 7

 * Fractures in the state, divisions in the ruling class and indecision on the part of the intermediate classes pave the way for dual power, which, in Russia, led to the creation of new institutions and later, in China, Vietnam, and Cuba, rested on revolutionary armies with varying class compositions that were locked in battle against their respective state machines.
 * Introduction, p. 8

 * Why is insurrection an art? Because an armed uprising against he capitalist state or occupying imperialist armies has to be choreographed with precision, especially during its final stages.
 * Introduction, p. 9

 * Time, then, to bury Lenin's body and revive some of his ideas. Future generations in Russia might realise that Lenin still has a bit more to offer than [[w:Pyotr Stolypin|Prince Stolypin.
 * Introduction

 * The assassination of the Austrian crown prince by a Serbian nationalist was the trigger for the conflict, not the underlying cause, comparable in modern times to the explosions of 9/11 that provided the pretext for the war on Iraq, the destruction of Libya, Syria and the Yemen and the total destabilisation of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The post 9/11 wars have lasted longer than the First and Second Wars put together.
 * p. 133

 * Had the United States remained neutral, as a majority of the country wanted, a ceasefire and truce between the British and German empires would have been the only realistic solution.
 * p. 142

 * In State and Revolution. the unfinished theoretical text interrupted by the revolution, Lenin abandoned all references to the divide between Russia and Western Europe that had littered previous writings.
 * p. 175

 * Not even the largest party can 'make' or 'steal' a revolution, but the success of such an endeavor depends on the ability, lucidity, energy and single-mindedness of a revolutionary party when confronted with a prerevolutionary crisis.
 * p. 179

Uprising in Pakistan (2018)

 * Tariq Ali Uprising in Pakistan: How to Bring Down a Dictatorship Verso Books (2018)

 * The Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province had been through a brutal process of ethnic cleansing.

Street fighting years (2018)

 * Tariq Ali Street fighting years, an autobiography of the sixties (2018)

 * The centre of the town was swathed in red flags. It was my first demonstration and one that I remember to this day. The city was Lahore, which for many centuries had been a much envied metropolis in Northern India. Then the last conquerors had departed, leaving behind a divided subcontinent. The old town had become part of a new country – Pakistan. The founder of this state, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, an agnostic, had cynically used religion to create a 'Muslim nation'. Jinnah had expressed the hope that Pakistan would, despite everything, remain a secular state, but the logic of history had proved fatal. All the Hindu and Sikh families in Lahore had fled across confessional frontiers. Little ‘Lahores’ had sprung up in Delhi.
 * For my parents, most of whose friends suddenly vanished, Lahore in the fifties was like a ghost town. The pain of Partition has been sensitively depicted in a number of short stories by the Urdu writer, Saadat Hasan Manto, and by poets like Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Sahir Ludhianvi. I had been three and a half years old in 1947. Pre-Partition Lahore, for me, existed only in numerous overheard conversations. The recent past became a subject for discussions, sometimes heated, but more often sad, and these could be heard in every quarter of the city. They frequently centred on the vibrancy of the town. During the twenties, thirties and forties, it had been an important cultural centre, a home for poets and painters, a city that was proud of its cosmopolitanism. Nineteen forty-seven had changed all that for ever. The old coffee houses and teashops were still in place, but the Hindu and Sikh faces had disappeared, never to return. This fact was soon accepted; political gossip and poetry reasserted their old primacy under new conditions.
 * Growing up in a newly independent country should have provided at least a tiny bit of inspiration, excitement or stimulation. Pakistan, alas, was a state without a history. Its ideologues, on the few occasions when they were coherent, could only think in terms of comparing and counterposing everything, big or small, to neighbouring India. Pakistan’s rulers suffered from a gigantic inferiority complex. This created problems on many levels, but for those of us at school in the fifties it created a terrible vacuum. Nationalism in Pakistan did not mean keeping a self-respecting distance from the former colonial power, but crude anti-Indian chauvinism. It was not totally illogical. The Congress in India had waged a two-pronged struggle against British imperialism. The Muslim League had been created by the British to organize the Muslim gentry. Even in the years prior to 1947, the Muslim League had essentially fought, not the British, but the Congress. In secret, I admired Nehru, but to have said so publicly would have led to too many fist-fights at school.

 * Pakistan, deprived of a viable left after the migration of Hindu and Sikh communists following Partition, gained a set of radical mass-circulation daily papers and journals which had no equal in neighbouring India or elsewhere in the continent.

 * The Progressive Papers had always been an anomaly in Pakistan, where the bulk of the post-Partition intelligentsia was not merely conformist, but engaged in a project to rewrite the history of the struggle for Indian independence in order to provide the new state with a raison d’être.

 * Bhutto walked in smartly attired, but slightly nervous. He clearly thought that he would warm us up with a carefully chosen diatribe against India. He demanded that the Indians permit the people of Kashmir to determine their own future and decide whether or not they wanted to stay in India or join Pakistan. "There has to be a plebiscite in Kashmir", he thundered, expecting a round of applause. There was none. Unable to contain myself I shouted from the back: "What about a plebiscite in Pakistan first?" He was so shocked at my effrontery that, uncharacteristically, he was silent for a few seconds as he frowned at me. This was taken as a signal and heckling began on a massive scale. "Why are you in a military government?" "Are you scared to contest free elections?" "Death to Ayub Khan!" Bhutto refused to answer these questions, but kept insisting that he was there to talk on a different subject. We said we weren't interested in that topic, but wanted to discuss Pakistan.

 * Powell did strike me, however, as an extremely capable and intelligent Conservative politician. There was no fanatical gleam in his eyes, though I do remember feeling that his attitude to India was slightly strange. I could not place it at the time; it was neither jingoism nor simply nostalgia, but nor was it the scholarly interest of a historian or the detached reflections of a logician. Many years later when I was reading Paul Scott's opus on the British in India, I suddenly remembered Powell. One of the major characters in Scott's novels reminded me of him. It was Ronald Merrick, whose ambiguous class background in Britain ultimately exploded in colonial India. This was a reflection of something that ran very deep in many middle- and lower-middle-class Englishmen and women who had served as colonial administrators or officers in India.

 * A few days before we were due to leave for Hanoi, our Cambodian hosts took pity on us. A small plane was laid on to fly us to Angkor Wat, where we could marvel at the magic of the 850-year-old Khymer palaces. The occasion was slightly surreal. Next door a bitter and cruel war was taking place; we could hear the noise of the bombings from Cambodia. And yet these old ruins generated an unbelievable tranquillity. I walked silently through and around them. I observed their richness from every possible angle and gazed in awe at the rich repertoire of images. The beautiful reliefs on the plinths supporting the terraces were matched by the friezes of erotic groups and minor deities of traditional Hindu sculpture. Here in the middle of the Cambodian jungles one caught a glimpse of the myths and legends of medieval India. Here, too, a caste of military aristocrats must have established its control over tribespeoples and ‘barbarians’. As I wandered, in a semidaze, I thought of the polymathic qualities, skills and perseverance that must have been a hallmark of the architects, stonemasons, master-artists and their apprentices, the latter notorious for the outspoken eroticism of their sexual sculptures. And the slaves who carried the stones that made all this possible? What was their lifespan? I saw the sun set on Angkor Wat that evening and almost forgot the war. It is one of the wonders of the world, but impossible to record except in the mind’s eye. No postcard or film could convey the richness of the Cambodian sky or the play of golden red shadows and reflections on the stones and statues of the ancient Khymer works.

 * The same night, in a neighbouring palatial ruin, we saw a moon rise and in its light witnessed an exquisite display of Cambodian folk dancing, once again a variation of the old dances of Southern India. In the background lay the darkness of the forest. The night was enveloped by silence. The technologies of the 20th century could neither be seen nor heard. We might easily have been part of a scene from a different epoch. The image of Angkor Wat remains vivid. When I shut my eyes I can still recall many pictures of the sun setting on the delicate and graceful reliefs. I thought of them a lot in the years that followed, first when Kissinger and Nixon embarked on their campaign and bombed the country into the Stone Age, resulting in a savagery which gave birth to the deranged squads of Pol Pot. Neither variant, I am happy to say, destroyed Angkor Wat. It is still there and I have not given up the idea of seeing it again one day.

 * I spoke that afternoon of the struggle in Pakistan, but I went further and warned them that their demands for regional autonomy would never be conceded by the army. ‘Rather than grant you that, they will crush you. The only serious option is independence. A Red Bengal could become the Yenan of our subcontinent.’ These ideas had never been stated in this form in public and I felt the excitement of the audience. Even the Awami League students were stunned. Was I not after all a Punjabi? How could I talk in this fashion? But they recovered soon and cheered me till they were hoarse. Afterwards I was mobbed and the one question everyone wanted to discuss was how they could achieve their goal. If, at that stage, the political leaders had realized the holocaust that was to follow they could have politically armed their supporters and prepared them for the inevitable civil war. When I left Dhaka hundreds of students came to say farewell with clenched fists and cries of ‘Lal salaam!’ (‘Red salute’) and invitations to come back, but live in Dhaka.

 * I did, however, wonder aloud as to why it was that those who treated the Quran as a divine monopoly in Pakistan, the Jamaat-i-Islami, were also on the payroll of the American embassy. This led to a loud roar of approval and chants of ‘Death to the hired mercenaries’, etc.

Winston Churchill: his times, his crimes (2022)

 * What accounts, then, for his elevation to a cult figure?
 * Introduction, p. 5

 * One could add that the manufactured love for Churchill, and the uses made of him, came to embody the nostalgia for an Empire that was long gone.
 * Introduction, p. 6

 * ... importance of the Falklands conflict in re-launching Churchill.
 * Introduction, p. 6

 * One of the worst criminals Europe ever produced was Leopold of Belgium, whose ownership of and brutalities in the Congo led to the deaths of several million Africans.
 * Introduction, p. 8

On the Bengal famine (1943)

 * Three important books that have broken the wall of silence are Mike Davie's pathbreaking study Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the making of the Third World and works exclusively on the famine by two North America-based Bengali scholars, Janam Mukherjee and Madhusree Mukerjee. There are also innumerable articles, such that the picture we now have is virtually complete.  What exactly happened?
 * The Indian Cauldron, p. 268

 * Mukherjee's account makes absolutely clear that, in order to protect the (British) Raj from a Japanese threat that never materialized, the British state sacrificed the lives of some 5 million people. The war cabinet maintained an attitude of callous indifference.  In Churchill's case, the indifference was strongly tinged with racism.
 * The Indian Cauldron, p. 278

 * The Bengal famine was no natural disaster but 'the direct product of colonial and wartime ideologies and calculations that knowingly exposed the poor of Bengal to annihilation through deprivation'; 'a grievous crime was committed in broad daylight', one that is still unacknowledged.
 * The Indian Cauldron, p. 278

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Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan (Spring 1480 – 27 April 1521) Portuguese sea explorer who sailed for both Portugal and Spain; the first person to lead an expedition to circumnavigate the earth; born Fernão de Magalhães he changed his name to Fernando or Hernando de Magallanes after entering into the service of Spain.

Misattributed

 * The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church.
 * Variant: The Church says that the Earth is Flat, but I know that it is Round. For I have seen its Shadow on the Moon and I have more Faith in a Shadow than in the Church.
 * This quotation is often found on the internet attributed to Magellan, but never with a source, and is probably derived from an anecdote popularized by Robert Green Ingersoll in his essay "Individuality" (1873) where he writes:
 * It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions, — some one who had the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, "The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church." On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.
 * Ingersoll was probably citing an earlier version of the anecdote which appeared on Page 451 of the History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (1863) by John William Draper:
 * In the whole history of human undertakings there is nothing that exceeds, if indeed there is any thing that equals, this voyage of Magellan's. That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison. It is a display of superhuman courage, superhuman perseverance - a display of resolution not to be diverted from its purpose by any motive or any suffering, but inflexibly persisting to its end. Well might his despairing sailors come to the conclusion that they had entered on a trackless waste of waters, endless before them and hopeless in a return. "But, though the Church hath evermore from Holy Writ affirmed that the earth should be a wide-spread plain bordered by the waters, yet he comforted himself when he considered that in the eclipses of the moon the shadow cast of the earth is round; and as is the shadow, such, in like manner, is the substance." It was a stout heart - a heart of triple brass - which could thus, against such authority, extract unyielding faith from a shadow.
 * The quotation marks are noteworthy, suggesting that Draper is citing an earlier work, but Draper's work does not provide sources. Given that the quote is expressed in the third person, it is certainly possible that the statement was made by one of Magellan's crew members or other associates. It is unlikely that Magellan would have made the statement, since Earth's sphericity was well-established when Magellan's voyage occurred, although Earth's size was still debated.

Quotes about Magellan

 * They tell your kids they gotta love Justin Bieber, and then...your children are turned into a mindless vassals—who now, they look up to some twit, instead of looking up to Thomas Jefferson, or looking up to Nikola Tesla, or looking up to Magellan; I mean, kids, Magellan is a lot cooler than Justin Bieber! He circumnavigated with one ship the entire planet! He was killed by wild natives before they got back to Portugal! And when they got back there was only like eleven people alive of the two hundred and something crew and the entire ship was rotting down to the waterline! That's destiny! That's will! That's striving! That's being a trailblazer and explorer! Going into space! Mathematics! Quantum mechanics! The secrets of the universe! It's all there! Life is fiery with its beauty! Its incredible detail! Tuning into it! They wanna shutter your mind, TALKING ABOUT JUSTIN BIEBER!!! IT'S PURE EVIL!!! They're taking your intellect, your soul, and giving you Michael Jordan and Bieber. Unlock your human potential! Defeat the globalists who wanna shatter your mind!—Your doorways to perception!—I wanna see you truly live! I wanna see you truly be who you are!!!
 * Alex Jones, The "Justin Bieber" Rant (February 21, 2011).

 * So many of them charged down upon us that they shot the captain through the right leg with a poisoned arrow. On that account, he ordered us to retire slowly, but the men took to flight, except six or eight of us who remained with the captain. The natives shot only at our legs, for the latter were bare; and so many were the spears and stones that they hurled at us, that we could offer no resistance. The mortars in the boats could not aid us as they were too far away. So we continued to retire for more than a good crossbow flight from the shore always fighting up to our knees in the water. The natives continued to pursue us, and picking up the same spear four or six times, hurled it at us again and again. Recognizing the captain, so many turned upon him that they knocked his helmet off his head twice, but he always stood firmly like a good knight, together with some others. Thus did we fight for more than one hour, refusing to retire farther. An Indian hurled a bamboo spear into the captain's face, but the latter immediately killed him with his lance, which he left in the Indian's body. Then, trying to lay hand on sword, he could draw it out but halfway, because he had been wounded in the arm with a bamboo spear. When the natives saw that, they all hurled themselves upon him. One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass, which resembles a scimitar, only being larger. That caused the captain to fall face downward, when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses, until they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide. When they wounded him, he turned back many times to see whether we were all in the boats. Thereupon, beholding him dead, we, wounded, retreated, as best we could, to the boats, which were already pulling off.
 * Antonio Pigafetta's account of Magellan's death at the Battle of Mactan, Philippines.

 * Most versed in nautical charts, he knew better than any other the true art of navigation, of which it is certain proof that he by his genius, and his intrepidity, without anyone having given him the example, how to attempt the circuit of the globe which he had almost completed... The glory of Magellan will survive him.
 * Antonio Pigafetta

title: Ferdinand Magellan


text:
User talk:Robert Bruce Livingston~enwikiquote

Hi,, welcome back to Wikiquote ;-) Here are some useful links:
 * Browse To browse the site.
 * Reference desk To ask some questions related to quotes.
 * Village pump To discuss with other editors.
 * Community Portal Other useful links.

Shortly be bold and enjoy!--Aphaia 05:08, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

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text:
User talk:154.20.85.133

Instead of blindly re-creating Andy Lai after that article has been deleted in WQ:VFD, you might first explain who he is and why he is notable enough for inclusion. jni 06:51, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:154.20.85.133


text:
User:Simon Shek

See also Simon Shek.

zh:User:石

title: User:Simon Shek


text:
Talk:Paracelsus

 * So long as we do not blow our brains out, we have decided life is worth living.

This quote seems unlikely as guns were not common household items in the early 1500s, pistols even less so. Can we get a source? Rmhermen 13:07, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Nothing but the usual web suspects, like BrainyQuote.com. Many other websites cite it as coming from Edgar Watson Howe. (Howe, at least, appears to be a 19th/20th-century quotee.) Neither Bartlett (1980) nor Oxford (1999) have this quote under anyone's name. — Jeff Q (talk) 16:27, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Unsourced

 * A mortal lives not through that breath that flows in and that flows out. The source of his life is another and this causes the breath to flow.

 * All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison and a remedy.

 * God did not create the planets and stars with the intention that they should dominate man, but that they, like other creatures, should obey and serve him.

 * Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.

 * Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided.
 * Once a disease has entered the body, all parts which are healthy must fight it: not one alone, but all. Because a disease might mean their common death. Nature knows this; and Nature attacks the disease with whatever help she can muster.

 * So I have been a wanderer all my life, alone and a stranger feeling alien.

 * That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it ... We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.

He is not to look to that which can be seen, for we are not called upon to extinguish the smoke but the fire itself
 * '''The physician should look for the force and nature of illness at its source.

 * The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician. Therefore the physician must start from nature, with an open mind.

 * The human body is vapor materialized by sunshine mixed with the life of the stars.

 * Thoughts give birth to a creative force that is neither elemental nor sidereal. Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow. When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him. ... For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth.

All things are poison
The English is usually given as something along the lines as "All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; but the dose makes it clear that a thing is not a poison." Paracelsus did not write in English, and this is one of his most famous quotations, so we should include the original language. The German is "Alle Dinge sind Gift und nichts ist ohne Gift, allein die Dosis machts, dass ein Ding kein Gift sei." (All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose makes a thing be not a poison). The quotation is from the book Septem Defensiones (1538). From http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Paracelsus/Septem+Defensiones/Die+dritte+Defension+wegen+des+Schreibens+der+neuen+Rezepte Although the title of the book is Latin, the earliest texts I can find are in German. There is a Latin version, but I don't know whether it's the original. "Omnia certe venenosa, nihil quod veneno careat, Unica Dosis est, quae veneno caret, & rem per se venenosam, sana ac utilem reddit." (All things are certainly poisonous, nothing which lacks poison, it is the dose alone which lacks poison, and renders a thing in itself poisonous, wholesome and useful). From https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10174139?q=%28paracelsus+septem+defensiones%29&page=80,81 on the pages numbered 34-35 in the original text, but 80-81 of the electronic scan. 69.161.125.36 19:18, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Paracelsus


text:
Fred Hoyle

Sir Fred Hoyle, FRS (June 24, 1915 – August 20, 2001) was a British astronomer and science fiction author.

Quotes

 * We now come to the question of applying the observational tests to earlier theories. These theories were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. It now turns out that... all such theories are in conflict with observational requirements.
 * BBC radio broadcast, March 28, 1949. Reprinted in April 1949 in The Listener, a BBC magazine.

 * "Big Bang" theory
 * The Nature of the Universe (1950), p. 113

 * It is in the world of ideas and in the relation of his brain to the universe itself that the superiority of Man lies. The rise of Man may justly be described as an adventure in ideas.
 * Frontiers of Astronomy (1955), p. 1

 * It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned.
 * Quoted in "The Olduvai Theory: Sliding Towards a Post-Industrial Stone Age" by Richard C. Duncan
 * Originally from Fred Hoyle, Of Men and Galaxies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).

 * I do not believe that anything really worthwhile will come out of the exploration of the slag heap that constitutes the surface of the moon...Nobody should imagine that the enormous financial budget of NASA implies that astronomy is now well supported.
 * Galaxies, Nuclei, and Quasars, Harper and Row, New York, 1965

 * We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.
 * Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe (1978), p. 15

 * Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.
 * "Sayings of the Week", The Observer (9 September 1979)

 * Life cannot have had a random beginning … The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.
 * Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981)

 * Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate … . It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect … higher intelligences … even to the limit of God … such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific.
 * Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981), pp. 141, 144, 130

 * The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.
 * Hoyle on evolution, Nature, Vol. 294, No. 5837 (November 12, 1981), p. 105

 * The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.
 * The Big Bang in Astronomy, New Scientist, Vol. 92, No. 1280 (November 19, 1981), p. 527

 * A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.
 * Arguing that living organisms could not have arisen by chance alone.
 * The Intelligent Universe (1983), p. 19

 * Between the ages of five and nine I was almost perpetually at war with the educational system. ...As soon as I learned from my mother that there was there was a place called school that I must attend willy-nilly—a place where you were obliged to think about matters prescribed by a 'teacher,' not about matters decided by yourself—I was appalled.
 * The Small World of Fred Hoyle: an Autobiography (1986)

 * The creationist is a sham religious person who, curiously, has no true sense of religion. In the language of religion, it is the facts we observe in the world around us that must be seen to constitute the words of God. Documents, whether the Bible, Qur'an or those writings that held such force for Velikovsky, are only the words of men. To prefer the words of men to those of God is what one can mean by blasphemy. This, we think, is the instinctive point of view of most scientists who, curiously again, have a deeper understanding of the real nature of religion than have the many who delude themselves into a frenzied belief in the words, often the meaningless words, of men. Indeed, the lesser the meaning, the greater the frenzy, in something like inverse proportion.
 * Our Place in the Cosmos (1993), p. 14

 * To achieve anything really worthwhile in research it is necessary to go against the opinions of one's fellows. To do so successfully, not merely becoming a crackpot, requires fine judgement, especially on long-term issues that cannot be settled quickly. ...To hold popular opinion is cheap, costing nothing in reputation, whereas to accept that there is evidence pointing oppositely... is to risk scientific tar and feathers. Yet not to take the risk is to make certain that, if something new is really there, you won't be the one to find it.
 * Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life (1994) p. 235.

 * When I was young, the old regarded me as an outrageous young fellow, and now that I'm old the young regard me as an outrageous old fellow.
 * As quoted in Scientific American (March 1995)

 * There is a coherent plan to the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.
 * Attributed in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999) edited by Elizabeth Knowles and Angela Partington

 * I do not see any sense in continuing to skirmish on a battlefield where I can never hope to win. The Cambridge system is effectively designed to prevent one ever establishing a directed policy — key decisions can be upset by ill-informed and politically motivated committees. To be effective in this system one must for ever be watching one's colleagues, almost like a Robespierre spy system. If one does so, then of course little time is left for any real science.
 * As quoted by Bernard Lovell in Hoyle's obituary in The Guardian (23 August 2001)

 * Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension... Once let the sheer isolation of the Earth become plain to every man, whatever his nationality or creed, and a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose. (1948)
 * As quoted by El Hadi Jazairy in "New geographies. 4, Scales of the Earth"

Quotes about Hoyle

 * God was very much disappointed, and wanted first to contract the universe again, and to start all over from the beginning. But it would be much too simple. Thus being almighty, God decided to correct His mistake in a most impossible way. And God said: "Let there be Hoyle." And there was Hoyle. And God looked at Hoyle … and told him to make heavy elements in any way he pleased. And Hoyle decided to make heavy elements in stars, and to spread them around by supernovae explosions.
 * George Gamow, My World Line: An Informal Autobiography (1970, posthumous), "New Genesis", p. 127 [ellipsis in original]

 * Hoyle's enduring insights into stars, nucleosynthesis, and the large-scale universe rank among the greatest achievements of 20th-century astrophysics. Moreover, his theories were unfailingly stimulating, even when they proved transient.
 * Martin Rees, in Hoyle's obituary in Physics Today (November 2001)
 * In the popular mind, if Hoyle is remembered it is as the prime mover of the discredited Steady State theory of the universe. "Everybody knows" that the rival Big Bang theory won the battle of the cosmologies, but few (not even astronomers) appreciate that the mathematical formalism of the now-favoured version of Big Bang, called inflation, is identical to Hoyle's version of the Steady State model.
 * John Gribbin, in Hoyle's obituary "Stardust memories", The Independent, Friday 17 June, 2005.
 * Not far from the meeting's venue, at one of the famed Observatory Club tea meetings, Fred once started a talk by saying, 'Oh, Ooh, basically a star is a pretty simple thing.' And from the back of the room was heard the voice of R. O. Redman, saying, 'Well, Fred, you'd look pretty simple too, from ten parsecs!'
 * John Faulkner, in his contribution, Red giants: then and now, to The Scientific Legacy of Fred Hoyle, 2005.

title: Fred Hoyle


text:
Liar Liar

Liar Liar is a 1997 comedy film starring Jim Carrey about a fast-track lawyer who can't lie for 24 hours due to his son's birthday wish.

 * Directed by Tom Shadyac. Written by Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur.

Trust me. (taglines)

Fletcher Reede

 * What's wrong with me? [suddenly monotone] I'm getting what I deserve, I'm reaping what I sow, I- [claps both hand over his mouth while involuntarily ranting]
 * [after farting in the elevator] It was me!

Dialogue

 * [Max's class talks about their parents' careers]
 * Max: My mom's a teacher.
 * Teacher: And your dad?
 * Max: My dad? He's... a liar.
 * Teacher: A liar? Oh, I'm sure you don't mean a liar.
 * Max: Well, he wears a suit and goes to court and talks to the judge.
 * Teacher: Oh! Oh! I see! You mean he's a lawyer.
 * [Max shrugs]

 * Fletcher: [On the phone] Audrey! Let me explain, something has happened to me!
 * Audrey: Well, something else is about to happen to you, Fletcher: Max and I are moving to Boston.
 * Fletcher: What?
 * Audrey: Jerry has asked me to marry him, so Max and I are going with him this weekend to look at some houses.
 * Fletcher: I thought it was "semi-serious."
 * Audrey: Yeah, well it just took a violent shove into "serious."
 * Fletcher: You can't move to Boston, I'll never see Max!
 * Audrey: Well, then you'll pretty much have the same relationship with him that you have now, won't you?

 * Cop: You know why I pulled you over?
 * Fletcher: Depends on how long you were following me!
 * Cop: Why don't we just take it from the top?
 * Fletcher: Here goes: I sped. I followed too closely. I ran a stop sign. I almost hit a Chevy. I sped some more. I failed to yield at a crosswalk. I changed lanes at the intersection. I changed lanes without signaling while running a red light and speeding!
 * Cop: Is that all?
 * Fletcher: No... I have unpaid parking tickets. [opens his car's glove compartment; a huge pile of tickets spills out] Be gentle.

 * Fletcher: You scratched my car!
 * Impound Guy: Where?
 * Fletcher: [showing him] Right there!
 * Impound Guy: Oh. That was already there.
 * Fletcher: You... you liar! You know what I'm going to do about this?
 * Impound Guy: What?
 * Fletcher: Nothing! Because if I take it to small claims court, it will just drain eight hours out of my life and you probably won't show up, and even if I got the judgment you'd just stiff me anyway. So what I'm gonna do is piss and moan like an impotent jerk and then bend over and take it up the tailpipe!
 * Impound Guy: You've been here before, haven't ya? [throws Fletcher his keys]

 * [Fletcher tells Greta about Max's wish]
 * Fletcher: You don't believe me, do you?
 * Greta: Of course not.
 * Fletcher: How ironic! Okay. Ask me something you think I would normally lie about.
 * Greta: All right. Remember a couple of months ago when I wanted a raise?
 * Fletcher: [nervously] Forget it. I don't wanna do this.
 * Greta: And the company wouldn't give me one...
 * Fletcher: [freaking out] Greta please!...
 * Greta: And I asked if you would give it to me out of your own pocket! And you said "the company would not allow it, because it would create jealousy among the other secretaries!" Now, was that true, or did you just not wanna pony up the dough?

 * Miranda: Mr. Allen, you remember Fletcher Reede.
 * Mr. Allen: Oh, yes! Yes. Nice to see you again, Fletcher. By the way, I'll be observing you in court this afternoon. I've been hearing some good things about you.
 * Miranda: Well, Fletcher has just been telling me what how much he thinks of you. [to Fletcher] Well, why don't you tell Mr. Allen? Well, what do you think of him?
 * Fletcher: [Defeated] He's a pedantic, pontificating, pretentious bastard. A belligerent, old fart. A worthless, steaming pile of cow dung. [sighs] Figuratively speaking.
 * [Everyone in the board stares at Mr. Allen; after a moment of silence, Mr. Allen laughs; the rest of the board joins in the laughter]
 * Mr. Allen: That's the funniest damn thing I've ever heard! You're a real card, Reede! I love a good roast! Do Simmons!
 * Fletcher: [points at Simmons] Simmons is old! He should've been outta the game years ago, but he can't stay home, 'cause he hates his wife! You've met her at the Christmas parties! She's the one that gets plastered and calls him a retard! [to another member of the board] And you, Tom! You're the biggest brown-nose I've ever seen! You've got your head so far up Mr. Allen's ass, I can't tell where you end and he begins!
 * Mr. Allen: [roars with laughter] Priceless!
 * Fletcher: [to another board member] You have bad breath caused by gingivitis! [to another member] You couldn't get a porn star off! [to yet another] Your hairpiece looks like something that was killed crossing the highway! I don't know whether to comb it or scrape it off with a shovel and bury it alive! [points at five other members of the board one at a time] Loser! Idiot! Wimp! Degenerate! [at Miranda] SLUT! [Miranda is shocked]
 * Mr. Allen: I like your style, Reede! [shakes hands with Fletcher] That's just what this stuffy company needs! A little irreverence!
 * Fletcher: GOOD! I'll see ya later, dickhead!
 * [Everyone else laughs]
 * Mr. Allen: Dickhead! Priceless!
 * [Fletcher pulls of a board member's hairpiece and sticks it on the wall, makes a stereotypical American Indian whoop, then walks off as the laughter continues]
 * Mr. Allen: [takes his seat] Keep your eye on that boy. "Dickhead"!
 * [After Fletcher darts out of the meeting room, still laughing, he faints from exhaustion]

 * Fletcher: Oh, come on! Your Honor, how can it be proved that the male voice on that tape is not Mr. Cole himself?
 * Samantha: [on tape] You are such a better lover than my husband!
 * Fletcher: Your Honor, I object!
 * Judge: And why is that, Mr. Reede?
 * Fletcher: Because it's devastating to my case!
 * Judge: Overruled.
 * Fletcher: Good call!

 * Fletcher: Mr. Falk, do you know my client, Samantha Cole?
 * Kenneth: Yes.
 * Fletcher: Isn't it true that your relationship with my client is entirely platonic? [to the judge] I object, your Honor!
 * Judge: To yourself?
 * Fletcher: Yeah. But I would like to rephrase the question. [to the witness] Mr. Falk, would I be accurate, if I described your relationship with Mrs. Cole as totally professional? [to the judge] I object, your Honor, and I move to strike! [slams hand on desk, and makes weird faces]
 * Judge: Mr. Reede, I don't know what you're on, but you better get to the point, and quick.
 * Fletcher: Thank you, sir. [to the witness] Is your relationship with my client entirely platonic? NOT. Is NOT your relationship with my client-- Boink! Bad baby! Bad baby! Did you never not make LEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHH--?! Did you... [wheezes]
 * Judge: Mr. Reede!
 * Fletcher: You had sex with her every time you met, didn't ya?! DIDN'T YOU?! LIAR!
 * Dana: He's badgering the witness!
 * Judge: It's his witness.
 * Fletcher: You slammed her! You dunked her donut! You gave her dog a Snausage! YOU STUFFED HER LIKE A THANKSGIVING TURKEY!
 * [Fletcher gobbles like a turkey while shoving himself against the witness stand]
 * Kenneth: All right! All right! It's true, okay?! I humped her brains out! There! Now ya happy?!
 * [silence]
 * Fletcher: No further questions...

 * [Fletcher is shaken by the court ruling and seeing Samantha Cole pull her children away from their father, and Mr Allen congratulating him on his performance doesn't help]
 * Fletcher: Your Honor, may I please approach the bench?
 * Judge: We're adjourned, Mr. Reede.
 * Fletcher: Your Honor, I think we've made a big mistake.
 * Judge: Mr. Reede, I am tired and very cranky.
 * Fletcher: I know, but this is just... wrong, isn't it? I manipulated the system. Just because you bought it doesn't mean I'm right. It's a technicality!
 * Judge: Young man, having my judgement mocked in my own court is not something I'm prepared to tolerate!
 * Fletcher: Well, tell that to the kids when they're adopted by the Manson family!
 * Judge: [angered] One more word outta you, Mr. Reede, and I'll hold you in contempt!
 * Fletcher: I hold myself in contempt! Why should you be any different?!
 * Judge: Bailiff, take him away!
 * Fletcher: [points to Mr Cole] This man is a good father, [glares at Miranda and Mr Allen] and children are not leverage! [as the bailiff manhandles him out of court] Oh, no, don't do this! l have a date to play ball with my son! I can't be late! It's my last chance! I'm Jose Canseco! I'm Jose Canseco!

Taglines

 * Trust me.
 * Would I lie to you?

Cast

 * Jim Carrey - Fletcher Reede
 * Maura Tierney - Audrey Reede
 * Justin Cooper - Max Reede
 * Jennifer Tilly - Samantha Cole
 * Cary Elwes - Jerry
 * Amanda Donohoe - Miranda

title: Liar Liar


text:
Robert Mitchum

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American film actor, author, composer, and singer.

Quotes

 * For a while it looked like I was going to be stuck in westerns. I figured out I could make 6 a year for 60 years and then retire. I decided I didn't want it. So I started blinking my eyes every time a gun went off in the scenes. That got me out of westerns.
 * As quoted in "In Hollywood" by Erskine Johnson (NEA), in The Blytheville Courier News (May 2, 1946)

 * She may have been right. Looking back, I suppose I was expecting, as a young actor, to discuss Stanislavski or 'Acting as an art.' Instead, I palled around with the crew—the grips, the stagehands—and the conversation centered around the two B's—broads and booze.
 * Recalling Katharine Hepburn's assertion that he couldn't act and owed his success solely to his good looks; as quoted in "Kate and Deborah Disagree", in The San Bernardino Sun (October 31, 1982)

 * I usually take no notice of reviews unless a critic has thought up some new way of describing me. That old one about the way I sleep my way through pictures is so hackneyed now.
 * As quoted in "Kate and Deborah Disagree"

 * No. But it was indicated by other people that I should go there—like my wife, my friends, the woman from Alcoholics Anonymous who came around. My wife, Dottie, was the prime mover. It would have been a disappointment to her if I'd rejected her suggestion. I stayed until they were done with me. I don't know if it 'worked.' I don't understand that.
 * When asked if he was "feeling better" following his previous year's stay at the Betty Ford Center, as quoted in "Roberto Mitchum: After all these years, still one of a kind" by Victor Davis, in The Chicago Tribune (November 23, 1984)

 * Listen, when I arrived in Los Angeles in the early '40s, there were just 640,000 people. Every loser in the world headed there because there was no competition. The keynote was mediocrity because the film, radio and music businesses had defined that the average mental age of the audience was 12. They handed me the bloodstained hat of a guy who'd fallen off his horse and suddenly I was in the movies—in a Hopalong Cassidy picture. I give hope to the hopeless. People say, "If he can make it, I can be Queen of England.
 * As quoted in "Roberto Mitchum: After all these years, still one of a kind"

 * Yeah, I'm unique—like an actor who has only one eye in the middle of his forehead. Or the Elephant Man. I've got a patent on the type. To be an actor is to be a moveable freak. Once you have been up there on that giant screen, everybody knows you—and you know no one. It counts as a source of embarrassment.
 * As quoted in "Roberto Mitchum: After all these years, still one of a kind"

 * Got the same attitude I had when I started. Haven't changed anything but my underwear. I've played everything except midgets and women. People can't make up their minds whether I'm the greatest actor in the world - or the worst. Matter of fact, neither can I. It's been said I underplay so much, I could have stayed home. But I must be good at my job. Or they wouldn't haul me around the world at these prices.
 * Speaking at the 1989 Deauville American Film Festival, as quoted in "Obituary: Robert Mitchum" by Gilbert Adair, in The Independent (July 3, 1997)

 * Hey, I get enough exercise; I breathe in and I breathe out.
 * Responding to a request that Mitchum join Stuart Whitman and friends for some skeet shooting, concluding with the Whitman's observation,"You need some exercise"; as quoted by Whitman during a post-screening Q & A at the on Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs on May 18, 2013

Quotes about Mitchum

 * You know you can't act, and if you hadn't been good-looking you never would've gotten a picture.
 * Katharine Hepburn, speaking to Mitchum in 1947; as quoted in "Kate and Deborah Disagree", in The San Bernardino Sun (October 31, 1982)

 * As an actor he is superb. However you read a line, he has anticipated it. He is a fantastically sensitive, decent human being.
 * Deborah Kerr, c. 1960 or later, as quoted in "Kate and Deborah Disagree", in The San Bernardino Sun (October 31, 1982)

 * Deep down he is a gentle, obliquely witty man, possessed of many, many more talents than the acting by which he is known.
 * Deborah Kerr, as quoted in "Fast Trackː Runners" by Cheryl Lavin, in The Chicago Tribune (June 19, 1983)

title: Robert Mitchum