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Michael Moore

Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an Academy Award-winning American filmmaker, author, and socialist political commentator.

Quotes

 * Well I failed to bring Roger to Flint. As we neared the end of the twentieth century, the rich were richer, the poor, poorer. And people everywhere now had a lot less lint, thanks to the lint rollers made in my hometown. It was truly the dawn of a new era.
 * Roger & Me (1989)

2001

 * White people scare the crap out of me... I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord... never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I've never heard a black person say, "We're going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here — have a nice day!"

 * Many families have been devastated tonight. This is just not right. They did not deserve to die. … If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him. Boston, New York, D.C., and the planes' destination of California — these were the places that voted AGAINST Bush.
 * Statement of 12 September 2001 attributed to Moore, as published in

 * I can't even think about this movie. I don't WANT to think about it because if I think about it I will have to face an ugly truth that has been gnawing through my head... This started out as a documentary on gun violence in America, but the largest mass murder in our history was just committed — without the use of a single gun! Not a single bullet fired! No bomb was set off, no missile was fired, no weapon (i.e., a device that was solely and specifically manufactured to kill humans) was used. A boxcutter! — I can't stop thinking about this. A thousand gun control laws would not have prevented this massacre. What am I doing?
 * In response to the September 11 attacks on New York City
 * In response to the September 11 attacks on New York City

2002

 * Librarians see themselves as the guardians of the First Amendment. … You got a thousand Mother Joneses at the barricades! I love the librarians, and I am grateful for them!
 * On the role of outraged librarians protesting when publisher HarperCollins insisted he rewrite Stupid White Men to be less critical of President Bush. "Muzzling Moore" Salon (7 January 2002)

 * I'm a millionaire, I'm a multi-millionaire, I'm filthy rich. You know why I'm a multi-millionaire? 'Cause multi-millions like what I do. That's pretty good, isn't it? There's millions that believe in what I do. Pretty cool, huh?
 * Responding to criticism over his purchase of a million-dollar home, as quoted in the Arcata Eye (3 March 2002); and in "Moore Lies, Moore Fun at Stanford" by Joe Fairbanks in the Stanford Review (17 April 2002)

 * If the small businesses suck they'll be driven out of business... If they got a good restaurant, people will go there and eat. You know in my town the small businesses that everyone wanted to protect? They were the people that supported all the right-wing groups. They were the Republicans in the town, they were in the Kiwanas, the Chamber of Commerce — people that kept the town all white. The small hardware salesman, the small clothing store salespersons, Jesse the Barber who signed his name three different times on three different petitions to recall me from the school board. Fuck all these small businesses — fuck 'em all! Bring in the chains. The small businesspeople are the rednecks that run the town and suppress the people. Fuck 'em all. That's how I feel.
 * As quoted in "Moore confounds anti-corporate conventional wisdom" by Cory Ratzlaff, in Arcata Eye (12 March 2002)

 * You know he's there illegally. You know he was not elected either by the popular vote or by the vote in Florida.
 * On President George W. Bush in "BuzzFlash Interviews Michael Moore" (13 March 2002)

 * We know all those facts about Florida and what Katherine Harris did, and the private firm that took African-Americans off the voting rolls and prohibited them from voting. But I've been surprised in this first week how many average Americans were not aware of all of the trickery and deceit that took place in the year before the election to fix it for George W. Bush.
 * "BuzzFlash Interviews Michael Moore" (13 March 2002)

 * It was the morning of April 20, 1999, and it was pretty much like any other morning in America. The Farmer did his chores. The milkman made his deliveries. The President bombed another country whose name we couldn't pronounce. Out in Fargo, North Dakota, Cary McWilliams went on his morning walk. Back in Michigan, Mrs Hughes welcomed her students for another day of school. And out in a little town in Colorado, two boys went bowling at 6 in the morning. Yes, it was a typical day in the United States of America.
 * Bowling for Columbine (2002) [released 11 October 2002]

 * You survive by having your fear compass calibrated correctly. Our compass is off now because we're being told to be afraid of everything. The things that we're frightened of, or told to be frightened of, are not necessarily the things that we need to fear.
 * Interview on All Things Considered NPR (November 2002)

2003

 * What the media are telling you to be afraid of are the wrong things... Fear is a necessary ingredient of our survival instincts.
 * Interview with filmmaker Michael Moore, Rolling Stone (January 2003)

 * These bastards who run our country are a bunch of conniving, thieving, smug pricks who need to be brought down and removed and replaced with a whole new system that we control.

 * Hey, here's a way to stop suicide bombings — give the Palestinians a bunch of missile-firing Apache helicopters and let them and the Israelis go at each other head to head. Four billion dollars a year to Israel — four billion dollars a year to the Palestinians — they can just blow each other up and leave the rest of us the hell alone.
 * Dude, Where's My Country? (2003)

 * Whoa. On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada, I'd like to thank the Academy for this. I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to — they're here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much.
 * Oscar Speech for Best Documentary Feature (23 March 2003)

 * The majority of Americans — the ones who never elected you — are not fooled by your weapons of mass distraction.
 * About President George W. Bush, in "A Letter to George W. Bush on the Eve of War" (17 March 2003)

 * I think the United States, I think our government knows where he is and I don't think we're going to be capturing him or killing him any time soon.
 * About Osama bin Laden in an interview with Bob Costas on On the Record with Bob Costas HBO (Spring 2003)

 * Should such an ignorant people lead the world? How did it come to this in the first place? 82 percent of us don't even have a passport! Just a handful can speak a language other than English (and we don't even speak that very well.)
 * On Americans in an Open Letter to the German publication Die Zeit (11 June 2003) (published in German)

 * There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.

 * Maybe it's a sick fantasy of mine, but I am really looking forward to a debate between a general and a deserter. Plus, I really want to hear President Bush have to say, "Yes, General, No, General."
 * On prospects of a debate between Wesley Clark and George W. Bush, as quoted at Treason Online (29 October 2003)

 * I'm going to do damage with it. I'll make sure that my work gets out. That no publisher will ever be able to tell me to take things out. Because I'll put it out myself. The more money I earn, the less they can stop me. Where I come from it's called fuck you money because I don't have to take an ounce of shit from anybody.
 * Upon being asked by Brian Reade if money and success have gone to his head, quoted in "The Awkward Conscience of a Nation" in The Daily Mirror (3 November 2003) - Full text available at Highbeam Research (paysite)

 * I stopped reading the comics page a long time ago. It seems that whoever is in charge of what to put on that page is given an edict that states: “For God’s sake, try to be as bland as possible and by no means offend any one!” Thus, whenever something like Doonesbury would come along, it would be continually censored and, if lucky, eventually banished to the editorial pages. The message was clear: Keep it simple, keep it cute, and don’t be challenging, outrageous or political. And keep it white! It’s odd that considering all the black ink that goes into making the comics section (and color on Sundays) that you rarely see any black faces on that page. Well, maybe it’s not so odd after all, considering the makeup of most newsrooms in our country. It is even more stunning when you consider that in many of our large cities like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago where the white population is barely a third of the overall citizenry, the comics pages seem to be one of the last vestiges of the belief that white faces are just…well, you know…so much more happy and friendly and funny! Of course, the real funnies are on the front pages of most papers these days. That’s where you can see a lot of black faces. The media loves to cover black people on the front page. After all, when you live in a society that will lock up 30 percent of all black men at some time in their lives and send more of them to prison than to college, chances are a fair number of those black faces will end up in the newspaper. Oops, there I go playing the race card. You see, in America these days, we aren’t supposed to talk about race. We have been told to pretend that things have gotten better, that the old days of segregation and cross burnings are long gone, and that no one needs to talk about race again because, hey, we fixed that problem. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, the “whites only” signs are down, but they have just been replaced by invisible ones that, if you are black, you see hanging in front of the home loan department of the local bank, across the entrance of the ritzy suburban or on the doors of the U.S. Senate (100 percent Caucasian and going strong!)
 * Foreword to "The Boondocks Treasury: a Right to be Hostile" by Aaron McGruder, (2003).

2004

 * They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks. We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing. National Geographic produced a survey which showed that 60 percent of 18-25 year olds don't know where Great Britain is on a map. And 92 percent of us don't own a passport.
 * On the American public, as quoted in "The Awkward Conscience of a Nation" in The Daily Mirror (3 November 2003); also partly quoted in "The company they keep" by Michael Barone, in U.S.News & World Report (12 July 2004)

 * A lot of political people, especially people on the left, have forgotten the importance of humor as an incredible weapon, and a vehicle through which to affect change.
 * The Corporation (2004)

 * I would like to apologize for referring to George W. Bush as a "deserter." What I meant to say is that George W. Bush is a deserter, an election thief, a drunk driver, a WMD liar, and a functional illiterate. And he poops his pants.

 * Halliburton is not a "company" doing business in Iraq. It is a WAR PROFITEER, bilking millions from the pockets of average Americans. In past wars they would have been arrested — or worse. The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?
 * There is a lot of talk amongst Bush's opponents that we should turn this war over to the United Nations. Why should the other countries of this world, countries who tried to talk us out of this folly, now have to clean up our mess? I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I'm sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe — just maybe — God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.

 * Stop this war! Shame on you Hobbits! Shame on you! This is a fictitious war! This Lord was not elected by the popular — [a computer-generated Oliphaunt steps on Moore, crushing him].
 * In a humorous sendup of Moore's previous acceptance speech for Best Documentary Feature at the 2003 Oscars. Moore himself delivered the lines in the opening act of the 2004 Oscars, while standing in front of a greenscreen which had the Battle of the Pelennor Fields scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King playing on it; a battle which was, itself, literally fictitious. (23 March 2004)

 * He is probably choking on a pretzel or something. I hope nobody tells him that I have won this award while he is eating a pretzel. … He has the funniest lines in the film. I am eternally grateful to him.
 * Statement about US President George W. Bush, at press conference after winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival for Fahrenheit 9/11; quoted in Reuters reports (22 May 2004) and in

 * I forgot out there on the stage to thank my cast. So if I could do that now, I want to thank Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. I thought the love scene between Cheney and Rumsfeld brought a tear to my eye.
 * Statement after winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival for Fahrenheit 9/11, quoted Reuters reports (22 May 2004), partly quoted in

 * I don't agree with the copyright laws, and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people… as long as they're not doing it to make a profit off it as long as they're not, you know trying to make a profit off my labor — I would oppose that but you know I do quite well, and I don't know... I make these books and movies and TV shows because I want things to change, and so the more people who get to see them, the better. And so I'm…I'm happy I'm happy if that happens. Should I not be happy? I don't know, It's like if a friend of yours had the DVD of my movie — gave it to you to watch one night is that person doing something wrong? I'm not seeing any money from that, but he's just handing the DVD to you so that you can watch my movie, that he bought, and you're not buying it — and yet you're watching it without paying me any money you see, I think that's OK, I mean, that's always been okay right? — You share things with people and I think information, and art, and ideas should be shared.
 * After being asked what he thought about his films being pirated on the internet, in a press conference (July 2004) (YouTube video), quoted in [Glascow, Scotland]

 * Our young people who go off to war and who join the service, we need to honor them because they're willing to risk their lives to protect us, to defend us, so we can have this way of life. And the agreement that they make with us is that we never send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary. I think most Americans — I just saw the latest poll today — 54% now believe that invading Iraq wasn't the wisest thing to do — it wasn't certainly in self-defense. You weren't threatened; I wasn't being threatened, and that's the only time, because ultimately if it was your child…would you give up your child to secure Fallujah?
 * On the television program Late Night with Conan O'Brien (25 June 2004)

 * The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich.
 * As quoted in

 * I would not use either of those words to describe myself. I would say I'm an Eagle Scout and I'm overweight.
 * When asked what he thought about he thought about people who called him un-American and a traitor, as quoted in "Filmmaker rehashes politics in Dome speech" in The Daily Orange (23 September 2004)

 * Nothing would make me happier than to have you share it with everyone you know. All surveys have shown that, the more people who see it — especially those still sitting on the fence — the more likely we will have regime change.
 * On the DVD release of Fahrenheit 9/11
 * On the DVD release of Fahrenheit 9/11

 * There is no terrorist threat. Yes, there have been horrific acts of terrorism and, yes, there will be acts of terrorism again. But that doesn't mean that there's some kind of massive terrorist threat.
 * As quoted in a review of Fahrenhype 9/11, - some indications exist that this was from a speech in Power Center, Michigan, promoting Dude (2003)

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

 * Comments about the movie, and from it:

 * Fahrenheit 9/11: The temperature where freedom burns!
 * A phrase used in some advertisements, it is wordplay based on the title of Ray Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451 about a totalitarian state, and the assertion made within it that 451° Fahrenheit was "The temperature at which book-paper catches fire and burns."

 * Controversy... What Controversy?
 * Humorous lines of various advertisements for the film, some showing doctored pictures of Moore walking hand in hand with George W. Bush.

 * They serve so that we don't have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again?
 * Comments by Moore, about the men and women in the U.S. Armed Services. Fahrenheit 9/11

 * George Orwell once wrote: "And it's not a matter of whether the war is not real or if it is. Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact."
 * The quote is almost identical to a block of narration from the 1984 movie version of "1984", which is excerpted from various parts of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four with some paraphrasing.

 * For once we agreed.
 * Michael Moore after Bush is shown saying "You can't get fooled again."

 * You've got the Bush Administration using that event in such a disrespectful and immoral way — using the deaths of those people to try and shred our civil liberties, change our Constitution, round people up. That's not how you honor them, by using them to change our way of life as a free country.
 * On the use of the September 11th attacks to expand governmental powers and diminish civil liberties, through "The Patriot Act". — CBS interview (June 2004)

 * I may be preaching to the choir, but the choir needs a good song.
 * USA Today (20 June 2004)

 * Clearly something has happened here that no one expected. And there aren't words to describe how any of us feel this morning on hearing this news.
 * On the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 breaking all box office records for a documentary in its first weekend, and becoming the first documentary ever to become number one at the box office in North American ticket sales.
 * On the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 breaking all box office records for a documentary in its first weekend, and becoming the first documentary ever to become number one at the box office in North American ticket sales.

 * I want to thank all the right-wing organizations out there who tried to stop the film, either from their harassment campaign that didn't work on the theatre owners, or going to the FEC to get our ads removed from television, to all the things that have been said on television. It's only encouraged more people to go and see it. We are happy to announce that the efforts of the small-minded few have failed miserably.
 * On the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 breaking box office records. — Zap2it.com (27 June 2004)

 * Early talk was that anti-Bush people would go see it and pro-Bush people would stay home, and that's not the case. Most people do not go around with labels. A lot of Republicans have open minds.
 * On the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 — Zap2it.com (27 June 2004)

2005

 * Because it would be Un-American.
 * Reply to a question as to why the standing down of the NORAD aerial forces on September 11, 2001 was not included in his movie Fahrenheit 9/11, as seen Martial Law: 9/11 Rise of the Police State (03:34, 2005) by Alex Jones.

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag. Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?
 * Dear Mr. Bush:
 * No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing — NOTHING — to do with this!

 * How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows?

 * Now, I know this is a bitter pill to swallow. Iraq was going to be your great legacy. Now, it's just your legacy. It didn't have to end up this way. This week, when Republicans and conservative Democrats started jumping ship, you lashed out at them. You thought the most damning thing you could say to them was that they were "endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party." I mean, is that the best you can do to persuade them to stick with you — compare them to me? You gotta come up with a better villain. For heaven's sakes, you had a hundred-plus million other Americans who think the same way I do — and you could have picked on any one of them! But hey, why not cut out the name-calling and the smearing and just do the obvious thing: Come join the majority! Be one of us, your fellow Americans! Is it really that hard? Is there really any other choice? George, take a walk on the wild side!

2007

 * We are the richest country in the world. We spend more on health care than any other country. Yet we have the worst health care in the Western world. Come on. We can do better than this.
 * As quoted in

 * The film that's leaked onto the Internet is not taken at a movie theatre with a little home video camera, right? The way it's usually done? This is an inside job... Now, if you were a police detective, one of the first questions you'd ask is motive. Who has a vested interest in destroying the opening weekend's box office of this movie? If I were the police or the FBI investigating this felony that's taken place, that's where I would look. Having said that, I'm glad that people were able to see my movie. … I'm not a big believer in our copyright laws. I think they're way too restrictive. … I've never supported this concept of going after Napster. I think the rock bands who fought this were wrong. I think filmmakers are wrong about this. I think sharing's a good thing. … They said television would kill the movies, it didn't. They said VCRs would kill the movies, it didn't. Now they're saying this is going to kill the movies. It won't. People want to get out of the house and go to the movies! Nothing's ever going to kill that, and I really hope people will do that on opening weekend.
 * On the posting of his film SiCKO on the Internet, prior to its official release, as quoted in "Michael Moore Takes on His Pirates!" by Edward Douglas (19 June 2007)

 * Jesus told us that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us.
 * The View (19 June 2007)

 * The stories of the pharmaceutical companies and the health insurance companies is told. My film acts as a balance. I exist to provide balance, and I tell you, it isn't much balance. They're on every day, all day. My film is two hours. If for two hours during this entire year, people are exposed to the other side of the story, isn't that ok? It's amazing how they go after me. You asked me back there, 'You're biased. You have only one side.' Well, yeah, I have a bias. I have a bias on behalf of the little guy who doesn't have a say. I'm lucky enough to be able to have this bully pulpit, to be able to say the things I say, on behalf of the people who don't have a voice. The pharmaceutical companies and corporate America, they've got their voice. They own the networks and they can say whatever they want, all the time, and they do. So can we just have two hours for this side to have their say? I hope so, I think so. That's what I'm trying to do.
 * Press conference in New York, as quoted in CommingSoon (June 2007)

 * The French, the British and the Canadian stuff that's in the films is through my American eyes, and I'm comparing it to America, and I'm not saying they don't have problems. But those aren't for me to fix. Trust me, from an American point of view, the Europeans look pretty good. You need to preserve what you have and fight to get back that which you lost.
 * Interview with Jay Harris, in The Brag (August 2007)

 * There are problems in all health-care systems, but at least [Europeans] have a health-care system that covers everyone, and it's not my position or my right or my responsibility to point out the flaws in [your] health-care system — that is your job — it is your job to fix those problems.
 * Casa del Cinema press conference, Rome, Italy, (August 2007)

2009

 * I just decided to make a movie. I had no training, no film school, but I had been to a lot of movies.
 * As quoted in "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" (23 June 2007)

 * Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy. So Obama will rise or fall based not so much on what he does but on what we do to support him.

2010

 * My mum taught me how to read before I went to kindergarden, I always thought that being able to read provided lightness, help to dispel darkness, ignorance and stupidity.
 * Interview while promoting Capitalism : A Love Story (March 2010)

 * How about that McDonalds two blocks from Ground Zero? That's killed more people than the nineteen hijackers.
 * On HBO's "Real Time" (September 17, 2010)

2011

 * Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.
 * Speech delivered at Wisconsin Capitol in Madison (5 March 2011)
 * Claim found to be "true" by PolitiFact and others.

 * Four hundred obscenely wealthy individuals, 400 little Mubaraks -- most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout of 2008 -- now have more cash, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined.
 * Speech delivered at Wisconsin Capitol in Madison (5 March 2011)
 * Claim found to be "true" by PolitiFact and others.

2012

 * Guns don't kill people – Americans kill people.
 * Michael Moore on The Ed Show, MSNBC, March 22, 2012

2013

 * Moore called the Affordable Care Act “awful” and added that, “Obamacare’s rocky start … is a result of one fatal flaw: The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go.” Nonetheless, Moore considered the plan a "godsend" since it provides a start "to get what we deserve: universal quality health care.”
 * Op-Ed written by Michael Moore in the New York Times (31 December 2013)

2016

 * Donald J. Trump is going to win in November. This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go ahead and say the words, 'cause you'll be saying them for the next four years: "PRESIDENT TRUMP."
 * "5 Reasons Trump Will Win", MichaelMoore.com (July 21, 2016)

 * Yes, on November 8, you Joe Blow, Steve Blow, Bob Blow, Billy Blow, all the Blows get to go and blow up the whole goddamn system because it's your right. Trump's election is going to be the biggest "fuck you" ever recorded in human history and it will feel good — for a day. Maybe a week. Possibly a month. And then, like the Brits, who wanted to send a message, so they voted to leave Europe, only to find out that if you vote to leave Europe, you actually have to leave Europe. And now they regret it. All the Ohioans, Pennsylvanians, Michiganders, and Wisconsinites of Middle England, right, they all voted to leave and now they regret it. And over 4 million of them signed a petition to have a do-over, they want another election, but it's not going to happen. Because you used the ballot as an anger management tool. And now you're fucked. And the rest of Europe. They're like, "Bye Felicia!" So when the rightfully angry people of Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin find out after a few months in office that President Trump wasn't going to do a damn thing for them, it will be too late to do anything about it.
 * Michael Moore in TrumpLand (October 7, 2016)

 * I know a lot of people in Michigan that are planning to vote for Trump and they don't necessarily like him that much, and they don't necessarily agree with him. They're not racist or rednecks, they're actually pretty decent people…
 * Michael Moore In Trumpland, film's premiere (October 18, 2016), “Supporters see Trump as ‘human Molotov cocktail’: Michael Moore,” Toronto Sun, (Oct. 25, 2016)

 * “The next wave of fascists will not come with cattle cars and concentration camps, but they'll come with a smiley face and maybe a TV show ... That’s how the 21st-century fascists will essentially take over.”
 * "Michael Moore: Fascists Now Come With ‘A Smiley Face And Maybe A TV Show’" - stated right after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, and inspired by the 1980 book, Friendly Fasicism (November 14, 2016)

2021

 * From today’s news (8/12/2021): “The Census data collected from the 2020 Census was released today — and it revealed that the number of White people in the U.S. has fallen for first time since the first Census was taken in 1790.” In other words, best day ever in U.S. history.
 * 12 August 20212 tweet

Quotes about Moore

 * Alphabetized by author

 * Michael Moore is a screwed asshole, that is what I think about that case. He stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission.
 * Ray Bradbury, commenting on Moore's allusions to his famous book title, Fahrenheit 451 in his title for Fahrenheit 9/11, as reported in World Net Daily News (7 June 2004)

 * It's a free country, so he's free to say whatever he wants, but I don't appreciate it. I don't like it.
 * George H. W. Bush New York Daily News (31 May 2004)

 * To have to answer anything about what that slimeball says is just too much.
 * George H. W. Bush New York Daily News (31 May 2004)

 * John Kerry had intense supporters of his own. Hollywood filmmaker Michael Moore came out with a so-called documentary that was nothing more than campaign propaganda. In return, Kerry said that Hollywood entertainers conveyed "the heart and soul of our country."
 * George W. Bush, Decision Points (2010), p. 290

 * I find it difficult to forgive George W. Bush a lot of things — mostly having to do with not telling the truth about important public matters, and then pretending it was no big deal that he had misled — and, come to think of it, that's pretty much my problem with Michael Moore, too … although one is a clown who makes movies and the other is, well, President of the United States. … we live in the age of the false dichotomy, an old propaganda trap (and logical fallacy) that says, for example: If you're not for the President's way of fighting terrorism (even if you'd like him to provide more information about what, exactly, that is), you are automatically assumed to be on the side of the terrorists; or, if you find fault with Michael Moore's methods, you must be on Bush's side. Of course, neither of these propositions is necessarily true. … You know how far the level of political discourse in American has fallen when people are asked to take the word of Dick Morris or Michael Moore at face value. So don't. And don't take my word for it. Do your own research.
 * Jim Emerson in a review of Fahrenhype 9/11 FahrenHYPE 9/11: Morris vs. Moore" at Chicago Sun Times (28 October 2004)

 * Post-war filmmakers gave us the documentary, Rob Reiner gave us the mockumentary and Moore initiated a third genre, the crockumentary.
 * Jean-Luc Godard speaking at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival

 * Moore doesn't like health insurance companies: "They're the Halliburtons of the health industry. I mean, they really--they get away with murder. They charge whatever they want. There's no government control. And frankly, we will not really fix our system until we remove these private insurance companies. I mean, they literally have to be eliminated. They cannot be allowed to exist in this country"...Taking on the multibillion-dollar healthcare industry is all in a day's work for Michael Moore. After several million people see "SiCKO," the time just might be right for a prescription for change.
 * Amy Goodman article (Jun 20, 2007)

 * I’m tired of being told how bad America is by leftwing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the religious freedom and women’s rights of Saudi Arabia, the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Gay people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela. Won’t multiculturalism be beautiful?
 * Robert A. Hall, I'm Tired (February 19, 2009)

 * Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American, someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.
 * Christopher Hitchens on Scarborough Country MSNBC (18 May 2004)

 * Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything … If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture.
 * Christopher Hitchens, "Unfairenheit 9/11", Slate, 21 June 2004, ISSN 1091-2339

 * This is not at all like watching the implosion of an obvious huckster and jerk like Michael Moore, who would have made a perfectly good Brownshirt populist.
 * Christopher Hitchens, "Love, Poverty and War", FrontPageMagazine.com (2004-12-29): On Noam Chomsky

 * You know, the problem I have with Michael Moore is the problem I have with a lot of people who are fanatical and push really hard on things, which is not willing to say the other side is wrong. They have to be evil. And what I'm looking for is him to just say, maybe people are making mistakes. But it's always this conspiracy thing. There's always a conspiracy out to get him and a bunch of people doing things that are evil and psychotic and not simply wrong. And he's so cynical. He's so incredibly cynical.
 * Penn Jillette, on Scarborough Country MSNBC (18 May 2004)

 * It was so sweet backstage, you should have seen it — The Teamsters were helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo.
 * Steve Martin, after Moore's speech at the 75th Academy Awards.

 * Sicko, which takes on America's profoundly profitable and catastrophically inefficient health care system, is Moore's most assured, least antagonistic and potentially most important film. Anecdotal in nature, Sicko shows what's wrong with our health care system by comparing it with those in Canada, England and France, where universal health care is as ingrained in the social fabric as their national anthems. Asked what would have happened in England if Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair had tried to dismantle the National Health Service, an elderly British statesman answers without pause, "There would have been a revolution."
 * "'Sicko' is boffo" by Jack Mathews / in New York Daily News (19 June 2007)

 * Moore attempts to ignite an essential democratic impulse among American citizens. He assumes the role of a provocateur who raises the consciousness of his audiences and offers a polemical voice to the power elite. Whereas Moore's advocates recognize his output as an admirable practical realization of the free speech principle, his adversaries often perceive him as a menace to democratic procedures. Considering the nationwide dispute and the popularity of his movies around the world, the director should be acknowledged as a significant phenomenon on the American political scene at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
 * Anna Misiak in "Not a stupid white man: the democratic context of Michael Moore's documentaries" in the Journal of Popular Film and Television (Fall 2005)

 * Hasn't that been the norm with such crowd-getters as Fahrenheit 9/11 or Sicko by Michael Moore? They seem to only produce interesting memories, leaving mostly just footprints in the sand.
 * Ralph Nader, Breaking Through Power (2016)

 * When Michael Moore makes a movie these days, all hell seems to break loose. It gets to a point where whatever message he's trying to communicate is drowned out by all the media attention, knee-jerk reactionaries, and general resentment.
 * Brian Orndorf (June 2007)

 * Have you seen Fahrenheit 9/11? Watch it. Theres an interesting scene where Bush thinks and waits seven minutes before acting against 9/11. Don't pay attention to the fact it's biased or "propaganda", just see what's going on in the documentary and notice a man like Moore from a place like Flint has been researching and is trying to open our eyes.
 * Lou Reed interview on Belgian Cable Ketnet giving his views on Bush

 * Moore is making a fortune out of his anti-Americanism. And I don't blame the guy for making a buck, but he's not serious.
 * John Rhys-Davies on Scarborough Country MSNBC (18 May 2004)

title: Michael Moore


text:
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1 July 1742 – 24 February 1799) was a German scientist, satirist, and philosopher.

Quotes

 * All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true.
 * As quoted in Lichtenberg : A Doctrine of Scattered Occasions (1959) by Joseph Peter Stern, p. 84

 * Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.
 * As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 153

 * A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.
 * As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 153

 * A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.
 * As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 154

 * The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, "bread-bread-fame" or "fame-fame-bread."
 * Referring to a diagrammatic "Compass of Motives", as quoted in Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten [Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious] (1905) by Sigmund Freud, as translated by James Strachey (1960), p. 101; also quoted by Freud in an open letter to Albert Einstein, Why War? (1933).
 * Variant translation: The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, "food-food-fame" or "fame-fame-food".

 * So wie wir ein Paar Hosen verwachsen, so verwachsen wir Umgang, Bibliotheken, Grundsätze und dergleichen, zuweilen, ehe sie abgenutzt sind und zuweilen, welches der schlimmste Fall ist, ehe wir neue haben.
 * Translation: Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and at times—and this is the worst of all—before we have new ones.
 * Gedanken, Satiren, Fragmente (Thoughts, Satires, Fragments), Volume 1 (1907)

Aphorisms (1765-1799)

 * This section was begun primarily with translations by R. J. Hollingdale, augmented by other sources, including Selected Writings of Georg C. Lichtenberg (1893) edited by Adolf Wilbrandt.

Notebook A (1765-1770)

 * One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.
 * A 10

 * It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.
 * A 11

 * Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?
 * A 14

 * It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: if we sought a universal measure the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal.
 * A 26

 * Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient. … To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.
 * A 38

 * Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.
 * A 58

Notebook B (1768-1771)

 * We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms.
 * B 11

 * Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.
 * B 12
 * Variant translation: Everyone has a moral backside, which he does not show except in case of need and which he covers as long as possible with the breeches of respectability.
 * As quoted in Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten [Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious] (1905) by Sigmund Freud, as translated by James Strachey (1960), p. 100

 * There are two ways of extending life: firstly by moving the two points "born" and "died" farther away from one another... The other method is to go more slowly and leave the two points wherever God wills they should be, and this method is for the philosophers.
 * B 22

 * I have written a good number of drafts and small reflections. They are not waiting for the last touch but for the sunlight to wake them up.
 * B 29

 * He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.
 * B 30

 * As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown.
 * B 33

 * Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me me.
 * B 37 "Speech of a suicide composed shortly before the act."

 * People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.
 * B 41

 * If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.
 * B 44

 * We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves. Even if my philosophy does not extend to discovering anything new, it does nevertheless possess the courage to regard as questionable what has long been thought true.
 * B 49

 * What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed...
 * B 52

Notebook C (1772-1773)

 * Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner.
 * C 16

 * Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.
 * C 23

 * Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
 * C 26

 * Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
 * C 33

 * Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the honest man that he was — nobody any longer wanted to be that.
 * C 36

 * The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.
 * C 38

 * If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.
 * C 54
 * Variant translation: If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.

Notebook D (1773-1775)

 * Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.
 * D 5

 * Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.
 * D 6

 * The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.
 * D 20

 * Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
 * D 25

 * That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.
 * D 58
 * The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.

 * What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?
 * D 62

 * When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?
 * D 66

 * There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.
 * D 70

 * Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of.
 * D 89

 * To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
 * D 96
 * Variant translation: To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.

 * We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy — at least until we have become as clever as they are.
 * D 97

 * Body and soul: a horse harnessed beside an ox.
 * D 103

Notebook E (1775 - 1776)

 * If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.
 * E 10

 * Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.
 * E 11
 * Variant translations: Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all. Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all. Nothing contributes more to a person's peace of mind than having no opinions at all.

 * A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
 * E 19

 * Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want?
 * E 32

 * Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
 * E 36

 * A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.
 * E 49
 * Variant translations of first portion: A book is a mirror: If an ape peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.
 * A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out. — this has actually been the most commonly cited form, but it is based on either a loose non-literal translation or a mistranslation of the German original: Ein Buch ist Spiegel, aus dem kein Apostel herausgucken kann, wenn ein Affe hineinguckt.

 * As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.
 * E 52

 * The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.
 * E 55

 * There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. … It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth … into a liar — that I call an achievement.
 * E 59
 * Variant translation: There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible...

 * Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.
 * E 65

 * Good taste is either that which agrees with my taste or that which subjects itself to the rule of reason. From this we can see how useful it is to employ reason in seeking out the laws of taste.
 * E 69

 * With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.
 * E 76

 * We do not think good metaphors are anything very important, but I think that a good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on...
 * E 91
 * Variant translation: A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.

 * What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.
 * E 92

 * A on his lips and not-A in his heart.
 * E 95

Notebook F (1776-1779)

 * If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.
 * F 1

 * The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.
 * F 8

 * If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.
 * F 33

 * If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.
 * F 39

 * The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.
 * F 44

 * We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.
 * F 47

 * Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.
 * F 49

 * Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.
 * F 53

 * I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
 * F 54

 * A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.
 * F 69

 * Ideas too are a life and a world.
 * F 70

 * I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up.
 * F 73

 * Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.
 * F 78

 * There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.
 * F 81

 * If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever.... Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later.
 * F 82

 * There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.
 * F 84

 * Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.
 * F 87

 * Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.
 * F 88

 * Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.
 * F 100

 * The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.
 * F 120

 * What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?
 * F 123

 * Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.
 * F 144

 * Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.
 * F 149

 * It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.
 * F154

 * When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.
 * F 155

 * You believe that I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.
 * F160

Notebook G (1779-1783)

 * People nowadays have such high hopes of America and the political conditions obtaining there that one might say the desires, at least the secret desires, of all enlightened Europeans are deflected to the west, like our magnetic needles.
 * G 2

 * It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody’s beard.
 * G 4
 * Variant translations: It is almost impossible to carry the torch of wisdom through a crowd without singeing someone's beard. It is virtually impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd, without singeing someone's beard

 * What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.
 * G 7

 * He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection.
 * G 8

 * There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
 * G 29

 * To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.
 * G 30

 * Popular presentation today is all too often that which puts the mob in a position to talk about something without understanding it.
 * G 32

 * The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.
 * G 42

 * The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.
 * G 46
 * Variant translation: The inclination of people to consider small things as important has produced many great things.

Notebook H (1784-1788)

 * The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
 * H 1

 * We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
 * H 4

 * The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.
 * H 7
 * Variant translation: The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

 * He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.
 * H 10
 * Variant translation: He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage — he won't encounter many rivals.

 * Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.
 * H 13

 * With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.
 * H 23

 * Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoitre the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.
 * H 36

Notebook J (1789)

 * A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.
 * J 10

 * A great speech is easy to learn by heart and a great poem even easier. How hard it would be to memorize as many words linked together senselessly, or a speech in a foreign tongue! Sense and understanding thus come to the aid of memory. Sense is order and order is in the last resort conformity with our nature. When we speak rationally we are only speaking in accordance with the nature of our being. That is why we devise genera and species in the case of plants and animals. The hypotheses we make belong here too: we are obliged to have them because otherwise we would unable to retain things... The question is, however, whether everything is legible to us. Certainly experiment and reflection enable us to introduce a significance into what is not legible, either to us or at all: thus we see faces or landscapes in the sand, though they are certainly not there. The introducion of symmetries belongs here too, silhouettes in inkblots, etc. Likewise the gradation we establish in the order of creatures: all this is not in the things but in us. In general we cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.
 * J 65

 * The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.
 * J 70
 * Variant translation: The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.

 * Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.
 * J 77

 * One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.
 * J 85

 * The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.
 * J 115

 * It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.
 * J 146

 * It is said that truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feels an inclination for satire would reflect that the finest satirist always has something of both in him.
 * J 157

 * Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.
 * J 249

 * One has to do something new in order to see something new.
 * J 1770

Notebook K (1789-1793)

 * Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.
 * K 13

 * Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
 * K 21

 * The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
 * K 27

 * To be content with life — or to live merrily, rather — all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.
 * K 29

 * It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.
 * K 37

 * Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming.
 * K 39
 * Variant translation: Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.

 * Man loves company — even if it is only that of a small burning candle.
 * K 40

 * He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.
 * K 41

 * To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.
 * K 42

 * If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.
 * K 46
 * Variant translation: A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

 * It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.
 * K 48

 * One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.
 * K 51

 * So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.
 * K 52

 * First we have to believe, and then we believe.
 * K 55

 * The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.
 * K 68

 * There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.
 * K 72

Notebook L (1793-1796)

 * There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.
 * L 16

 * If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.
 * L 23

 * Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them.
 * L24

 * The "second sight" possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don't wear trousers... That is also why in all countries women are more prone to utter prophecies.
 * L 26

 * Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.
 * L 34

 * Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.
 * L 44

 * What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.
 * L 49

 * Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.
 * L 50

 * He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.
 * L 70

 * Bei den meisten Menschen gründet sich der unglaube in einer Sache auf blinden Glauben in einer anderen.
 * Translation: With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
 * L 81
 * Variant translation: With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

 * I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.
 * L 98

Quotes about Lichtenberg

 * Sorted alphabetically by author or source

 * Perhaps he was even more remarkable as a psychologist than as a physicist.
 * Sigmund Freud, in an open letter to Albert Einstein, "Why War" (1933), as translated in Classical Readings in Culture and Civilization (1998) edited by Stephen Mennell and John F. Rundell

 * We may use Lichtenberg’s writings as the most wonderful dowsing rod: wherever he makes a joke, there a problem lies hidden.
 * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as quoted in Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (2002), p. 316

 * God created man in His own image, and in requital man created God in his, says Lichtenberg, and it is true that a man’s conception of God is essentially determined by the kind of man he is. So it is that I conceive of God as one who approves in a calculated vigilance, I believe that he approves of intrigues, and what I have read in the sacred books of the Old Testament is not of a sort to dishearten me. The Old Testament furnishes examples abundantly of a shrewdness which is nevertheless well pleasing to God, and that at a later period Christ said to His disciples, “These things I said not unto you from the beginning … I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now” – so here is a teleological suspension of the ethical rule of telling the whole truth.
 * Soren Kierkegaard, in Quidam’s Diary from Stages on Life’s Way (1845), Lowrie translation (1967), p. 217-218

 * He is not a household name. He is something rarer: a name savored by household names. Goethe, who corresponded with Lichtenberg, admired him greatly (even though Lichtenberg disputed his theory of color).
 * Roger Kimball, in Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (2002), p. 316

 * Lichtenberg digs deeper than anyone... but he does not come up again. Only he hears him who digs deep himself.
 * Karl Kraus, in Spruche und Widerspruche (1924), p. 193; as quoted in Lichtenberg : A Doctrine of Scattered Occasions (1959) by Joseph Peter Stern, p. 114
 * Variant translations:
 * Lichtenberg goes deeper than any other, but he does not come up again. He speaks under the Earth. He is only heard by those who themselves dig deep.
 * As quoted in The Last Days of Mankind : Karl Kraus and his Vienna (1967) by Frank Field, p. 196
 * Lichtenberg digs deeper than anyone... He speaks from the subterranean depths. Only he who himself digs deep hears him.
 * As quoted in Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (2002) by Roger Kimball, p. 316

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg


text:
Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus (28 April 1874 – 12 June 1936) was an Austrian journalist, satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet.

Quotes

 * Everyone is stopped and waiting, maitre d's, hansom cab drivers and governments. Everyone's waiting for the end. Let's hope the apocalypse is pleasant, Your Highness.
 * Statement of 1899, as quoted in Jahrhundertwende 1900 : Untergangsstimmung und Fortschrittsglauben (1998) by Franz Hare, p. 190

 * There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way.
 * Sprüche und Widersprüche [Dicta and Contradictions] (1909); as translated by Richard Hanser

 * What is the Ninth Symphony compared to a Tin Pan Alley hit played on a hurdy-gurdy and a memory?
 * Sprüche und Widersprüche [Dicta and Contradictions] (1909)

 * Der Fortschritt feiert Pyrrhussiege über die Natur.
 * Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature.
 * Pro Domo et Mundo (1912), 7

 * Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.
 * Beim Wort genommen (1955); as translated by Harry Zohn

In These Great Times : A Karl Kraus Reader (1976)

 * In These Great Times : A Karl Kraus Reader (1976), edited by Harry Zohn

 * Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence.
 * p. 73

 * Progress … has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools.
 * p. 73

 * The tyranny of necessity grants its slaves three kinds of freedom: opinion free from intellect, entertainment free from art, and orgies free from love.
 * p. 74

 * We are sacrificing ourselves for our ready-made goods; we are consumers and live in such a way that the means may consume the end.
 * p. 74

Die Fackel

 * Quotations from Die Fackel as translated in Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus’s Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry (1976) by Thomas Stephen Szasz

 * An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.
 * Die Fackel no. 270/71 (19 January 1909)

 * Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.
 * Die Fackel no. 315/16 (26 January 1911)

 * The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life.
 * Die Fackel no. 406/12 (5 October 1915)

 * My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.
 * Die Fackel no. 445/53 (18 January 1917)

 * War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that the enemy too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
 * Die Fackel no. 46 (9 October 1917)

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

 * Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths: Selected Aphorisms (1976) as translated by Harry Zohn

 * Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.

 * I hear noises which others don't hear and which disturb for me the music of the spheres, which others don't hear either.

 * Many share my views with me. But I don't share them with them.

 * It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas.

 * Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman.

 * The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he.
 * Variant translations:
 * The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he.
 * The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he is.

 * I hear noises which others don't hear and which disturb for me the music of spheres, which others don't hear either.

 * I have often been asked to be fair and view a matter from all sides. I did so, hoping something might improve if I viewed all sides of it. But the result was the same. So I went back to viewing things only from one side, which saves me a lot of work and disappointment. For it is comforting to regard something as bad and be able use one's prejudice as an excuse.

 * I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.

 * I no longer have collaborators. I used to be envious of them. They repel those readers whom I want to lose myself.

 * What is my love? That I amalgamate the bad features of a woman into a good picture. And my hatred? That I see the bad features in the picture of a bad man.

 * When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.

 * If I return some people's greetings, I do so only to give them their greeting back.

 * I trim my opponents to fit my arrows.

 * Many desire to kill me, and many wish to spend an hour chatting with me. The law protects me from the former.

 * Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or race hatred. To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all. No petty prejudices!

 * I would have stage-fright if I had to speak with every one of the people before whom I speak.

 * I like to hold a monologue with women. But a dialogue with myself is more stimulating.

 * Since the law prohibits the keeping of wild animals and I get no enjoyment from pets, I prefer to remain unmarried.

 * Many things I am experiencing I already remember.

 * Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution.

 * Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients.

 * Nestroy's words ought to apply to an artist and an idea: "I have made a prisoner, and he won't let go of me!"

 * Most writers have no other quality than the reader: taste. But the latter has the better taste, because he does not write - and the best if he does not read.

 * Hate must make a person productive; otherwise one might as well love.

 * Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them.

 * It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.

 * The real truths are those that can be invented.

 * One shouldn't learn more than what one absolutely needs against life.

 * Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.

 * Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

 * Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time writing essays.

 * The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater the distance from which it looks back.

 * My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

 * The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them.

 * Education is what most people receive, many pass on, and few have.

 * One of the most widespread diseases is diagnosis.

 * Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy.

 * So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes - with the exception of their occupation.

 * Psychoanalysis: a rabbit that was swallowed by a boa constrictor who just wanted to see what it was like in there.

 * Psychology is as useless as directions for using poison.

 * How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

 * War is at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that the other fellow isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.
 * When the word "peace" was uttered for the first time, there was panic at the stock exchange. They screamed in pain: "We've been earning! Leave us the war! We've earned the war!"

 * A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!

 * Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and the dessert of remorse.

 * The immorality of men triumphs over the amorality of women.

 * Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman.

 * The woman takes one for all, and the man all for one.

 * I am not for women but against men.

 * A "seducer" who boasts of initiating women into the mystery of love is like a stranger who arrives at a railroad station and offers to show the sights to a tourist guide.

 * There is no more unfortunate creature under the sun than a fetishist who yearns for a woman's shoe and has to settle for the whole woman.

 * To divide people into sadists and masochists is almost as foolish as dividing them into eaters and digesters. In all cases one must disregard abnormalities; after all, there are people who are better at digesting than they are at eating and vice versa. As regards masochism and sadism, it is safe to say that a healthy person displays both perversities. The only ugly thing in each case is the word. The one derived from the novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is particularly degrading, and it is hard not to let one's taste for things be spoiled by the designation. Nevertheless, a man with an artistic imagination will manage to let an authentic woman turn him into a masochist and an inauthentic one into a sadist. One knocks the latter's educated unnaturalness out of her until the woman is revealed. If she already is a woman, the only thing left to do is adore her.

 * True jealously wants not only fidelity, but the proof of fidelity as an imaginable situation. A jealous man is not content with his beloved not being unfaithful. Precisely that which he is not doing does not leave him in peace. But since there is no proving what is not done and the jealous man insists on proof, he ends up settling on proof of unfaithfulness.

 * A man's jealousy is a social institution, a woman's prostitution an instinct.

 * Nothing is more unfathomable than a woman's superficiality.

 * Many women would like to dream with men without sleeping with them. Someone should point out to them that this is utterly impossible.

 * The extraordinary ability of a woman to forget is not the same as the talent of a lady not to be able to remember.

 * A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.

 * How unreliable is the woman caught being faithful! Today she is faithful to you, tomorrow to another.

 * A woman is, occasionally, quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation. It takes an abundance of imagination, to be sure.

 * Women at least have elegant dresses. But what can men use to cover their emptiness?

 * The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes a man.

 * When someone has behaved like an animal, he says: "I'm only human!" But when he is treated like an animal, he says: "I'm human, too!"

 * "A cigar," said the altruist, "a cigar, my good man, I cannot give you. But any time you need a light, just come round, mine is always lit."

 * The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people meaner.

 * The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

 * There is no doubt that a dog is loyal. But does that mean we should emulate him? After all, he is loyal to people, not to other dogs.

 * Solitude would be an ideal state if one were able to pick the people one avoids.

 * Squeeze human nature into a straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear!

 * Family life is an encroachment on private life.

 * Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.

 * The development of technology will leave only one problem: the infirmity of human nature.

 * You don't even live once.

 * Keep your passions in check, but beware of giving your reason free rein.

 * To be human is erroneous.

 * Lord, forgive them, for they know what they do!

title: Karl Kraus


text:
Rosie O'Donnell

Roseann "Rosie" O'Donnell (born March 21, 1962) is an eleven-time Emmy Award-winning American television host, stand-up comedian, actress, and author.

Quotes

 * Get away from the fear. Don't fear the terrorists. They're mothers and fathers.
 * The View, Nov. 9, 2006 (quoted by ABC)

 * President Bush almost killed me.
 * Burned Up and Burned Out by Politics, Feb. 4 2008 (quoted by Huffington Post)

 * You know, you can imagine in China it's like: "Ching chong, ching chong chong, Danny DeVito, ching chong chong chong, drunk, 'The View,' ching chong.
 * O'Donnell using the pejorative term ching chong to describe Danny Devito on The View.
 * O'Donnell using the pejorative term ching chong to describe Danny Devito on The View.

 * But I'm also gonna give you a fair warning that there's a good chance I'll do something like that again, probably in the next week -- not on purpose. Only 'cause it's how my brain works.
 * O'Donnell's apology after using the pejorative term ching chong.
 * O'Donnell's apology after using the pejorative term ching chong.

title: Rosie O'Donnell


text:
Hedwig and the Angry Inch

-

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a musical and film by John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 * Hedwig: How did some slip of a girlyboy from Communist East Berlin become the internationally ignored song stylist barely standing before you?
 * Hedwig: She came up to me after the show and I thought, "This lady wants a piece of me." So, you know, I was alone, I had nothing in my hand, I was gonna go for the eyes... She came at me from both sides and she gave me a fucking hug.
 * Hedwig: Tommy, can you hear me? From this milkless tit you sucked the very business we call show!
 * Hedwig: I scraped by with odd jobs, mostly the jobs we call blow.
 * TV: Good things come to those who wait.
 * Hedwig: I lost my job at the base PX, and I lost my gag reflex. You do the math.
 * Hedwig: It is clear that I must find my other half. But is it a he or a she? What does this person look like? Identical to me? Or somehow complementary? Does my other half have what I don't? Did he get the looks? The luck? The love? Were we really separated forceably or did he just run off with the good stuff? Or did I? Will this person embarrass me? What about sex? Is that how we put ourselves back together again? Or can two people actually become one again?
 * Hedwig: I grew up listening to the American masters: Toni Tennille, Debbie Boone, Anne Murray--who was actually a Canadian working in the American idiom. Then there were the crypto-homo rockers: Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, David Bowie--who was actually an idiom working in America and Canada.
 * Hedwig:(singing) My sex change operation got botched/ My guardian angel fell asleep on the watch/ Now all I've got is a Barbie Doll Crotch/ I got an angry inch!
 * Hedwig:(singing) Now, there was three sexes, one looked like two men back to back/ called the Children of the Sun/ and similar in shape and girth was the Children of the Earth/ They looked like two girls rolled up in one/ And the Children of the Moon looked like a fork shoved on a spoon/ They was part sun, part Earth, part daughter, part son.
 * Hedwig: He played me songs. The bands were new to me: Boston, Kansas, America, Europe, Asia. Travel exhausts me.
 * Hedwig: You don't put a bra in a dryer. It warps!
 * Tommy: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior? Hedwig:  No, but I love his work.
 * Hedwig: I stumble naked through the ruins, back towards blander, less complicated confections, leaving in my wake a trail of rainbow carnage.
 * Hedwig: I got kicked out of university after delivering a brilliant lecture on the aggressive influence of German philosophy on rock and roll entitled "You, Kant, Always Get What You Want"
 * Hedwig: I tried singing once, back in Berlin; they threw tomatoes. After the show I had a nice salad.

title: Hedwig and the Angry Inch


text:
User:Acegikmo1~enwikiquote

I have nothing to say.

en:User:Acegikmo1

title: User:Acegikmo1~enwikiquote


text:
User:Neolux~enwikiquote/Archive

This page archived 04 June 2004.

I've also suggested a new logo design for Wikiquote :) And some variations added... Neolux 09:15, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Let me know what you think!

(I'll add some more here as I come up with them!)

 * It certainly has potential. I like the overall design. Nicely international. I would suggest a little modifying (remove the small straight edge near the center and change the color to a subtler shade of blue. Nanobug

 * I completely agree about the straight line. I whipped it up in about 2 minutes from an existing submission I had for the Main wikipedia logo comp.  I'll definately work on a better model based on what seems to be popular for the main WP logo submissions I've done.  Neolux 04:08 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * Slight variation is presently the live logo. See Logo. --Brion VIBBER 05:06, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * I made an svg version of it. Here it is with the line:

and here's without the line:

      <rect style="fill:#ffffff" x="0" y="0" height="200" width="100"/> <path style="fill:#ffffff;border-color:ffffff" d="M 100 0 L 100 100 L 200 0 z"/> <path style="fill:#ffffff;border-color:ffffff" d="M 100 200 L 100 100 L 200 200 z"/> <circle cx="50" cy="100" r="30" style="fill:#006699"/>

But I like the line. LittleDan 17:39, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I love the lettering but not to keen on the shapes. -fonzy

2nd one is brilliant (thumbs up from me) - fonzy

I also think 2nd one is the best. — Kalki 12:01, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Personally I rather like the cursive-style lettering. However I don't really hang out here much so my opinion shouldn't count that much. :) --Brion VIBBER 05:08, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

 * I think that that's unanimous. THe middle version with the clean arcs and scripty typeface.  Neolux 06:26, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

title: User:Neolux~enwikiquote/Archive