Great Thinkers 2
"The new Irish Flag would be orange and green, and would in the future be known as the Irish tricolor."
- Smith O'Brien, Irish revolutionary.
"This extraordinary man left no children behind him, except his brother, who was killed at the same time."
- from a biography of French revolutionary leader Robespierre, in a nineteenth-century Irish paper.
"Bruce Sutter has been around for a while and he's pretty old. He's thirty-five years old. That will give you some idea of how old he is."
- Ron Fairly, San Francisco Giants broadcaster.
Yogi Berra: "You mean you get seasick?"
Rube Walker: "Do I ever!"
Yogi Berra: "On water?"
- as reported by sportswriter Phil Pepe.
"In no way is it possible for a person to be in two places at the same time, especially if there is a great distance in between."
- Judge Amado Guerrero, Mexican Tenth District Federal Court, on a defendant's alibi.
"The thing is this - we have incidents happening here all the time."
- Department of Energy spokesman at Hanford, Washington, on why no announcement was made on a leak of radioactive material.
" I love sports. Whenever I can, I always watch the Detroit Tigers on radio."
- President Gerald Ford
"I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted."
- Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, explaining why we should export toxic wastes to Third World countries.
"It's unfair that it remains empty and unspoiled."
- Hugh Stone, developer of a proposed subdivision, on delays in permits to begin construction.
"The secret to keeping winning streaks going is to maximize the victories while at the same time minimizing the defeats."
- John Lowenstein, Baltimore Orioles outfielder.
"Every monumental inscription should be in Latin, for that being a dead language, it will ever live."
- Samuel Johnson, eighteenth-century English writer, in a blunder noted by his contemporaries.
"I don't want to tell you any half-truths unless they're completely accurate."
- Dennis Rappaport, boxing manager, explaining his silence regarding boxer Thomas Hearns.
"I apologize for lying to you...I promise that I won't deceive you except in matters of this sort."
- Spiro T. Agnew, Vice President under Nixon, speaking to reporters about his assertions that he wouldn't be going to Cambodia. He made this apology on the plane headed to Phnom Penk, Cambodia.
"I think we're on the road to coming up with answers that I don't think any of us in total feel we have the answers to."
- Kim Anderson, mayor of Naples, Florida.
"There's a lot of uncertainty that's not clear in my mind."
- Gib Lewis, speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.
"We must restore to Chicago all the good things it never had."
- Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago