TED: My orders came through. My squadron ships out tomorrow. We’re bombing the storage depots at Daiquiri at 1800 hours. We’re coming in from the north, below their radar.
ELAINE: When will you be back?
TED: I can’t tell you that. It’s classified.David Zucker (b. 1947) American writer-director
Airplane (1980)
(with Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker)
MASIAS: Captain, maybe we ought to turn on the search lights now.
McCROSKEY : No … that’s just what they’ll be expecting us to do.David Zucker (b. 1947) American writer-director
Airplane (1980)
(with Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker)
RUMACK: Captain, how soon can you land?
OVEUR: I can’t tell.
RUMACK: You can tell me. I’m a doctor.
OVEUR: No. I mean I’m just not sure.
RUMACK: Well, can’t you take a guess?
OVEUR: Well, not for another two hours.
RUMACK: You can’t take a guess for another two hours?David Zucker (b. 1947) American writer-director
Airplane (1980)
(with Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker)
RUMACK: You’d better tell the Captain we’ve got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.
ELAINE: A hospital? What is it?
RUMACK: It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.David Zucker (b. 1947) American writer-director
Airplane (1980)
(with Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker)
KRAMER: Do you know what it’s like falling in the mud and getting kicked, in the head? With an iron boot? Of course you don’t, no one does, that never happens. Sorry Ted, that’s a dumb question.
David Zucker (b. 1947) American writer-director
Airplane (1980)
(with Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker)
Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.
Zoroaster (628?-551? BC) Persian religious leader
(Attributed)
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
Emile Zola (1840-1902) French author, journalist
(Attributed)
MARTY: Wait a minute, Doc. Ah … Are you telling me you built a time machine … out of a DeLorean?
BROWN: The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?Robert Zemeckis (b. 1952) American screenwriter, director
Back to the Future (1985)
(with Bob Gale)
I try to write every day. I used to try to write four times a day, minimum of three sentences each time. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s kinda like the hare and the tortoise. If you try that several times a day you’re going to do more than three sentences, one of them is going to catch on. You’re going to say “Oh boy!” and then you just write. You fill up the page and the next page But you have a certain minimum so that at the end of the day, you can say Hey I wrote four times today, three sentences, a dozen sentences. Each sentence is maybe twenty word long. That’s 240 words which is a page of copy, so at least I didn’t goof off completely today. I got a page for my efforts and tomorrow it might be easier because I’ve moved as far as I have.
Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) American writer
Interview, Phlogiston #43 (1995)
To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, I wish I had known this some time ago.
As I was finishing, I heard a crashing noise. A horned and tusked purple thing went racing along the ridge to my right pursued by a hairless orange-skinned creature with long claws and a forked tail. Both were wailing in different keys.
I nodded. It was just one damned thing after another.Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) American writer
Trumps of Doom (1985)
There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something, we’d all love one another.
Frank Zappa (1940-1993) American singer-songwriter
(Attributed)
My attitude toward anybody’s sexual persuasion is this: without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
Frank Zappa (1940-1993) American singer-songwriter
(Attributed)
I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone’s teeth get cleaner?
Frank Zappa (1940-1993) American singer-songwriter
(Attributed)
on the influence of music on behavior
Stupidity has a certain charm — ignorance does not.
Frank Zappa (1940-1993) American singer-songwriter
(Attributed)
There’s a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
Frank Zappa (1940-1993) American singer-songwriter
(Attributed)
Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.
Frank Zappa (1940-1993) American singer-songwriter
(Attributed)
Everything worthwhile, everything of any value, has a price. The price is effort.
Loretta Young (1913-2000) American actress [b. Gretchen Michaela Belzer]
(Attributed)
To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Eva Young
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
Andrew Young (b. 1932) American politician, diplomat, activist
(Attributed)
There are very few problems that cannot be solved by orders ending with “or die.”
Alistair J.R. Young (b. 1974) British systems software developer
(Attributed)
Hold to the helm of faith, and mind not the buffeting of untoward circumstances. Be more furious than the fury of misfortune, more audacious than your dangers.
Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952) Indian religious leader
(Attributed)
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Irish poet and dramatist
“Easter 1916,” st. 4, ll. 57-59, Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)
(Source)
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Irish poet and dramatist
(Attributed)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Irish poet and dramatist
“The Second Coming,” ll.1-8 (1920)
(Source)
More examination of this quotation: The Best Lack All Conviction While the Worst Are Full of Passionate Intensity – Quote Investigator. See also Russell and Bukowski.
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Irish poet and dramatist
“The Municipal Gallery Revisited,” l.54–55 (1938)
I have long felt that the trouble with discrimination is not discrimination per se, but rather that the people who are discriminated against think of themselves as second-class.
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (1921-2011) American medical physicist, Nobel laureate
(Attributed)
Ignorance is not bliss — it’s oblivion.
Philip Wylie (1902-1971) American author
The Generation of Vipers
Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspect as it does religion.
William Wycherley (1640-1716) English dramatist
The Plain Dealer
Wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it.
William Wycherley (1640-1716) English dramatist
The Country Wife (1675)
Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.
Steven Wright (b. 1955) Canadian-American humorist
(Attributed)
Factorials were somebody’s attempt to make math look exciting.
Steven Wright (b. 1955) Canadian-American humorist
(Attributed)
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.
Steven Wright (b. 1955) Canadian-American humorist
(Attributed)
Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts.
Steven Wright (b. 1955) Canadian-American humorist
(Attributed)
In relativity theory, space and time are the same thing. Einstein discovered this when he kept showing up three miles late for his meetings.
Steven Wright (b. 1955) Canadian-American humorist
(Attributed)
That best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and love.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) English poet
“Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (13 Jul 1798)
(Source)
Often paraphrased into a sentence, e.g., "The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love."
Do not permit what you cannot do to interfere with what you can do.
John Wooden (1910-2010) American basketball player and coach
Coach Wooden One-on-One, “Day 25” (2003) [with Jay Carty]
(Source)
Variant: "Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."
If you can’t have faith in what is held up to you for faith, you must find things to believe in yourself, for a life without faith in something is too narrow a space to live.
George Edward Woodberry (1855-1930) American man of letters
(Attributed)
Ya gots to work with what you gots to work with.
Stevie Wonder (b. 1950) American musician and songwriter [b. Stevland Hardaway Morris]
(Attributed)
It’s important to remember that just because there are crooks, zealots and morons supporting a position, it does not automatically follow that the position is wrong.
Jan D. Wolter (1959-2015) American computer science professional
(Attributed)
It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) English social philosopher, feminist, writer
A Vindication of the Rights of Women, ch. 4 (1792)
(Source)
Faith is not knowledge of what the mystery of the universe is, but the conviction that there is a mystery and that it is greater than us.
David Wolfe-Blank (1951-1998) American religious teacher, rabbi
(Attributed)
If there were a verb meaning ‘to believe falsely,’ it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Austrian-English philosopher
(Attributed)
The limits of my language mark the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Austrian-English philosopher
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 5.6 (1921)
Alt. trans:
- "The boundary of my language is the boundary of my world." [tr. Kolak]
- "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." [tr. Pears and McGuinness]
- "The limits of my language stand for the limits of my world."
If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Austrian-English philosopher
(Attributed)
Demand perfection of yourself and you’ll seldom attain it. Fear of making a mistake is the biggest single cause of making one. Relax — pursue excellence, not perfection.
Lloyd "Bud" Winter (1909-1985) American track coach
(Attributed)
Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.
Oprah Winfrey (b. 1954) American TV personality, actress
(Attributed)
Life is about becoming more than we are.
Oprah Winfrey (b. 1954) American TV personality, actress
Charlie Rose TV interview, PBS (29-Oct-1998)
Life is about becoming more than we are.
Oprah Winfrey (b. 1954) American TV personality, actress
Charlie Rose TV interview, PBS (29-Oct-1998)
People tell me that the movies should be more like real life. I disagree. It is real life that should be more like the movies.
Walter Winchell (1856-1972) American journalist
(Attributed)
When a network changes a show, it’s like brain surgery with a baseball bat.
Stephanie A. Wiltse (contemp.) American graphic designer, fanzine publisher
(Attributed)
It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) US President (1913-20), educator, political scientist
(Attributed)
Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translations of those declarations into definite action.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) US President (1913-20), educator, political scientist
(Attributed)
Ere I close, you will let me add my emphasis to the fact that it is in our life and conduct that we must show our devotion to Christ. The silent Gospel reaches further than the grandest rhetoric.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) US President (1913-20), educator, political scientist
(Attributed)
Do you covet honor? You will never get it by serving yourself. Do you covet distinction? You will get it only as you serve mankind. Do not forget, then, as you walk these classic places, why you are here. You are not here merely to prepare to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) US President (1913-20), educator, political scientist
Speech, Swarthmore College (25 Oct 1913)
(Source)