Infamous quotes from politicians

[Chupacabras]

What's a fire machine?

Would you believe, I woke late at night wondering if I had used the proper term, but decided not to wory - I meant Fire Engine!!! Sorry.

 

[espritch]

Nova Land, I'd just like to note that Machiavelli would have been proud of that last post of yours.

 

[Drooper]

"Any boss who fires anybody today is a bum."


Bob Hawke, Prime Minister of Australia, 1983

 

[Shane Costello]

In response to growing public disquiet about lack of transparency in government one of our former PMs promised to conduct the affairs of state "as if behind a sheet of glass". When reality fell short of expectations on a later occassion he explained that this wasn't really the fault of him or his cabinet, but was due to the failure of the opposition to ask the right question.

We also had the infamous occasion when another former Taoiseach (PM) addressed the nation on TV in the midst of an economic crisis, solemnly informing people "that we as a nation are living beyond our means". This coming from a man who at the time was up to his oxters in personal debt, and recieving handouts from businessmen.

 

[Iconoclast]

It would be helpful (to me, at least) if people would indicate when providing quotes whether they are giving something that they have personally read or heard (in context, in a primary source) or if they are just repeating something that somebody else claims to have read or heard. In the latter case, I would appreciate being given the actual source of the alleged quote.

Here are examples of a couple of the quotes provided in this thread that aroused my curiosity as to actual source.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." —Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

This one I can help you with. It's been quoted all over the place, notably in Bryson's "Made In America", Minerva, 1996, p114, and Bryson notes that Duell actually resigned as patents commissioner with that quote.

Now, Bryson's reference comes from "The Economist", April 13, 1991, p83, so if you're serious about finding the source of this quote then you'll have to go down to your local library and request that particular issue of The Economist from their archive to find what -- if any -- cite they give.

 

[ceptimus]

We are a grandmother - Margaret Thatcher

 

[slimshady2357]

Here is a beauty from Toronto's Mayor at the time, Mel Lastman:

In early June, Lastman visited Mombasa, Kenya, to promote Toronto's Olympic bid. Prior to that trip, he told a Toronto Star freelancer that he didn't want to visit Africa because he and his wife feared snakes.

"What the hell would I want to go to a place like Mombasa," he said. "I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me."

Nice one, doofus!

Adam

 

[Nasarius]

Now, Bryson's reference comes from "The Economist", April 13, 1991, p83, so if you're serious about finding the source of this quote then you'll have to go down to your local library and request that particular issue of The Economist from their archive to find what -- if any -- cite they give.

Are you quite sure? I'm getting:

The Economist (US), April 13, 1991 v319 n7702 p83(2)

The End of Laissez Faire. (book reviews)

It doesn't contain anything like that quote.

 

[Nasarius]

Aha, after searching for "Duell", the article is actually on page 63, not 83.

The Economist (US), April 13, 1991 v319 n7702 p63(1)
Research and disillusionment. (industrial research and development)

EVER since Charles Duell resigned as director of America's patent office in 1899, protesting that "everything that can be invented has been invented", corporate R&D departments have been doing their best to prove him wrong. Last year American firms spent $74 billion on R&D, dwarfing Japanese companies' still-hefty $36 billion and the $47 billion spent by firms in the European Community.

Blah blah blah, no mention of a source. Sorry.

By the way, I'm getting all this from InfoTrac OneFile.

 

[gnome]

"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society."
-Hillary Clinton, 1993

I found many references to this quote on the web... none of them had any source material other than the year. Does anyone have more info on this one?

I suspect a misquotation that has been copied and recopied... not to mention that it makes sense that the more inflammatory versions of a quote would pass around more.

Many of the quotations on this list are of that nature.

" The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people"
--Bill Clinton, during an interview on MTV in 1993

The only info I found on this quote that was not simply repeating it with the minimal sourcing provided, was in a Democrats' discussion forum, one member apparently looked up some MTV transcripts and did not find it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forum_archive_html/DCForumID12/1792.html

We have to take this guy's word that he looked, of course. But I personally consider this to be a statement that would be rather out of character for President Clinton.

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans . . . ."
--William J. Clinton, USA Today, March 11, 1993

It's amazing what you can do without the entire quotation.

From the Washington Post, March 2, 1993, according to the above amateur researcher:

Clinton said the country "can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles . . . that we are unable to think about the reality" of unsafe streets and violence throughout the country. "I hope the leadership of the National Rifle Association will go back to doing what it did when I was a boy" -- providing information about hunting and safety rather than fighting gun control proposals like those here and in Virginia, he said.

The Post here seems to be doing some selective editing themselves. Anyone got a transcript of the entire statement?

When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... [However, now] there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it."
Bill Clinton

More selective editing.

April 19, 1994:

Yes -- the young man, Michael Fay, in Singapore. As
you know, I have spoken out against his punishment for two reasons. One is, it's not entirely clear that his confession wasn't coerced from him. The second is that if he just were to serve four months in prison for what he did, that would be quite severe, but the caning may leave permanent scars, and some people who are caned, in the way they're caned, they go into shock. I mean, it's much more serious than it sounds. So, on the one hand, I don't approve of this punishment, particularly in this case.
Now, having said that, a lot of the Asian societies that are doing very well now have low crime rates and high economic growth rates, partly because they have very coherent societies with strong units where the unit is more important than the individual, whether it's the family unit or the work unit or the community unit.
My own view is that you can go to the extreme in either
direction. And when we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would used it responsibly. That is, when we set up this country, abuse of people by government was a big problem. So if you read the Constitution, it's rooted in the desire to limit the ability of government's ability to mess with you, because that was a huge problem. It can still be a huge problem. But it assumed that people would basically be raised in coherent families, in coherent communities, and they would work for the common good, as well as for the individual welfare.
What's happened in America today is, too many people live in areas where there's no family structure, no community structure, and no work structure. And so there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities. So that's my answer to you. We can have --the more personal freedom a society has, the more personal responsibility a society needs, and the more strength you need out of your institutions -- family, community and work.

This still contains the provocative part of his commentary, but a more thorough reading gives a better idea of where he was coming from on this. Obviously one is free to disagree with his point of view.

"Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal."
--Janet Reno

Covered in other posts

"Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed."
--Sara Brady, Chairman, Handgun Control

Covered in other posts.

"If a President of the United States ever lied to the American people he should resign."
- Bill Clinton running for US Representative in 1974

Misquoted--a grain of truth here that is badly exaggerated.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/clinton.htm

I have to say, I could tell by reading the quotes that most of them were untrue or questionable... politicians with secret communist or facist beliefs may exist, but they don't blab their hidden thoughts at press conferences and interviews.

This reminds me a lot of the old myths about high profile individuals appearing on Oprah Winfrey and admitting to being racist, Satanist, or something else universally disliked.

 

[Brown]

"We've had sex."

--George H. W. Bush, speaking of his relationship with Ronald Reagan (Bush meant to say "success," and corrected himself a moment later, but many radio stations were fond of playing this quote without the correction.)

BTW, don't get me started on stupid Reagan quotes. Reagan beats any president within living memory (and beats Quayle, too) for the sheer number of absurdities he uttered in public.

"I'm afraid he'll catch me pickin' my nose."

--Richard Nixon, moments before going on the air on August 8, 1974, to announce his resignation. Nixon was making light of the fact that White House photographer Ollie Atkins had license to take whatever photographs he wanted, and Atkins was diligently snapping the president as he prepared to make an announcement unprecedented in American history. Nixon's light remark allowed him to get in a laugh before going on the air and making his somber resignation announcement.

 

[Brown]

"BULL$#!+!! Carter, Reagan and Anderson! It's all BULL$#!+!!"

--From a political commercial aired on the radio by dark horse candidate Barry Commoner in 1980. Although there were many complaints about the language, the FCC ruled that Commoner could say pretty much whatever he wanted in his political ads.

 

[JAR]

"Strike the Poles in such a way that they will despair of their lives; I have every sympathy with their situation, but if we want to exist we cannot do anything else than exterminate them. The wolf, too, is not responsible for being what God has made it, but we kill it, nevertheless, if we can."
--written by Otto von Bismarck in a letter from Petersburg to his sister in 1861

"I attach little value to human life because I believe in another world." -- Otto von Bismarck

 

[crocodile deathroll]

"Reports that say something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."
- Donald Rumsfeld

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/031201/80/efbou.html

That is an all time classic, so I thought to use it as a part of my signature

 

[JAR]

"After seeing 'RAMBO' last night, I know what to do the next time this happens."

-- said by Ronald Reagan in reference to the hijacking by terrorists of a TWA flight.

 

[Nova Land]

Ronald Reagan (as someone noted earlier) has lots of good ones.

Early in his presidency, when he didn't realize the microphone in front of him was live, he made a joking remark about how he had just declared war on the Soviet Union and that "the bombers are on their way."

My favorite Reagan infamous quote is from his address to the 1992 Republican convention that was nominating George Bush to run against Bill Clinton.

originally spoken by Ronald Reagan

"I heard those speakers at the other convention saying, 'we won the Cold War' -- and I couldn't help wondering, just who exactly do they mean by 'we'? And to top it off, they even tried to portray themselves as sharing the same fundamental values of our party! What they truly don't understand is the principle so eloquently stated by Abraham Lincoln: 'You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.'

"If we ever hear the Democrats quoting that passage by Lincoln and acting like they mean it, then, my friends, we will know that the opposition has really changed.

"Until then, we see all that rhetorical smoke, billowing out from the Democrats, well, ladies and gentlemen, I'd follow the example of their nominee. Don't inhale."

Why is this so embarrassing? Because Lincoln never said any such thing!

The words quoted are actually from William J. H. Boetcker, although over the years many people unfamiliar with Lincoln have passed the passage off as being from Lincoln. The misattribution was exposed in a 1970 book The Hoaxers by Morris Kominsky, but (as with many other of the false quotations Kominsky exposed) this didn't stop gullible people from copying the quote from each other and passing it off as genuine.

It would have been somewhat embarrassing for Reagan (and the GOP) if the coverage of this speech -- a highlight of the convention -- had included the fact that his quotation was spurious. Fortunately for Reagan, the US media prefers not to engage in fact-checking when it can be avoided. It was a week before I saw any mention in the papers that the "Lincoln" quote was not from Lincoln.

If you are going to lecture "the other party" about Lincoln, it helps to be familiar with Lincoln yourself!

 

[Brown]

Ronald Reagan (as someone noted earlier) has lots of good ones.

Early in his presidency, when he didn't realize the microphone in front of him was live, he made a joking remark about how he had just declared war on the Soviet Union and that "the bombers are on their way."

Actually, Reagan was well aware that the microphone was live (but not on the air), and he spoke so that the technicians could do a sound check. He improvised that he had just signed legislation that would "outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

This was not intended as a serious policy statement, and it was not a "blooper" in the strictest sense. It was just an off-the-cuff joke that Reagan made so that the sound guy could do his work.

As I've said before, I think a lot of Reagan remarks are unfairly regarded as boneheaded, and this "bombing" remark is one of them. This was simply a lame joke inserted in place of saying something banal like "Testing one two three."

There are a few comments (such as Reagan's infamous "sonsabitches" remark and Nancy's "doing everything we can" prompt) that were inadvertently picked up by microphones and that caused embarrassment to the White House. These remarks were doubly embarrassing, because when they were reported, the White House denied that the remarks were made, forcing the news media to air the recordings to show that the White House denial was wrong.

Reagan made plenty of other remarks that were far more stupid than the "bombing" joke, and made them with full knowledge that they were being presented to the public.

 

[Zep]

Not guns. Rights.

No, just guns.

But keep the quotes coming in - they ARE funny.

 

[a_unique_person]

Fortunately for Reagan, the US media prefers not to engage in fact-checking when it can be avoided. It was a week before I saw any mention in the papers that the "Lincoln" quote was not from Lincoln.

If you are going to lecture "the other party" about Lincoln, it helps to be familiar with Lincoln yourself!

It's not quite that simple. If it was Al Gore who said that, he would have been hounded with it the rest of his life.

 

[anti-woowoo]

"The founders of Rome were Romulus and Remulus" -- Italian PM Burlusconi.

There are quite a few more... URL=http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3041288.stm]here[/URL]