- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony. Please feel free to browse and borrow.
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
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- 20-Jan-20 - "The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life," sermon, New Covenant Baptist Church, Chicago (9 Apr 1967) | WIST on “Rediscovering Lost Values,” sermon, Second Baptist Church, Detroit (28 Feb 1954).
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Quotations by Marx, Groucho
I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go into the library and read a good book.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
“King Leer,” Tele-Views (Sep 1950)
Commonly paraphrased: "I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on, I go into another room and read a good book." A number of uses of this line by Marx are found around the same time frame, with variant wordings. See here for more discussion.
Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
(Attributed)
Those are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
(Attributed)
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
(Attributed)
I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
(Attributed)
Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
(Attributed)
Quoted by Ever Star, "Inside TV," Greensboro Record (3 Nov 1954). Also attributed to Ambrose Bierce, Henry Ward Beecher, and Lawrence J. Peter. More research and discussion here.
He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
(Attributed)
Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
(Attributed)
I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
(Spurious)
Groucho (in 1962) denied ever using the phrase (attributed to him as early as 1941). The earliest, somewhat dubious instance of it found is in 1936, attributed to comedian Hugh Hubert. More here.
The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can’t fool around. If you write about someone else, you can stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about yourself the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly that there may be honor among thieves, but you are just a dirty liar.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
Groucho and Me (1959)
