Category: Notable Quotes

As a Phoenician, nothing makes me more depressed than endless sunny days." ~ Jon Talton, The Rogue Columnist

While I haven't reached that point again yet, I know it will eventually come, and I do remember many, many times before we moved to Denver feeling this way about life in Phoenix. I often remember waking up, looking outside and saying in as deadpan voice as possible, "Oh look, another cloudless sunny day."

That being said, even when that inevitable day returns, after having spent four years in Denver, it will still be preferable to looking outside first thing in the morning and seeing that Mother Nature had dumped eight inches of snow overnight.

We're so self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. 'Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.' And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I'm tired of this shit. I'm tired of f-ing Earth Day. I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn't going anywhere. WE are!

We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, 'Why are we here?'

Plastic… asshole." ~ George Carlin

I don't even mind if people make up things about me as long as they don't make me look boring or ordinary—as long as they don't smooth me out or reduce me." ~ Grace Jones, from her new autobiography, I'll Never Write My Memoirs

We have to stop idolizing stupidity in our society and herald, not ostracize, intelligence." ~ Facing Traffic

Sometimes I wonder how an alien race would feel about people if they came down here and the first shit they saw was this crazy lady telling a cheering crowd of supporters that God says she doesn't have to marry gay people.

They travel billions of miles through the cosmos and their first contact ever with human beings is this odd, odd scene of this somewhat rotund, bespectacled woman standing on a raised platform, screaming into a voice amplifier that the invisible man who created everything doesn't allow two men to sign a love contract. She says it, and the huge group of people that agree with her let out what seems to be a war cry and smash their hands together in approval.

She informs the crowd, and all the people watching the digitally broadcast feed around the world that their invisible friend has rules. He created everything from storm clouds to billy goats to subatomic particles—he's all knowing, and all powerful, but he gets really hung up on two dudes sucking on each other's genitals. He hates it. For some reason he REALLY hates it when those two dudes get married. For that, he reserves a special place in the fiery oven at the center of the planet where he will torture them until the end of time itself.

There would probably be that one alien that was encouraging the others to gather more data—that they should consider the entire spectrum of human thinking before they dismiss the species as dangerously insane. Then there would be the alien that thinks like me, who says, 'Dude, they have nuclear bombs. Seriously, fuck this place. Let's get out of here before one of these crazy assholes blows us all up because their imaginary friend told them we have the wrong underwear on or something.'" ~ Joe Rogan, posting on Facebook

"The burned hand teaches best. After that, advice about fire goes to the heart." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

"I'm old enough to recall when Patriot meant 'a guy who loves America', not 'an angry guy with a bald eagle fetish who hates other Americans.'" ~ John Fugelsang

"Sometimes, you win the life lottery and the thing that you do for 40 hours a week in a nondescript office building somewhere in the city you live in is not a soul-crushing exercise in managing disappointments. Sometimes, you're lucky enough to really, truly, love what you do. If you are one of these people, I'm very happy for you. . . ." — Megan Reynolds, introducing her new every-Monday column on work issues on "The Frisky"

Unfortunately I cannot claim that winning ticket at this time…

"I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I've become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that's why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience." ~ Meryl Streep

"When I ask a fundamentalist, 'Would you kill me if god told you to?' they always dodge the question. It puts their beliefs face to face with the morality most humans have within their core.

"They're forced into the uncomfortable position to either say they would kill me if they believed god told them to—which is clearly sociopathic behavior—or to admit that they have a sense of morality independent from religion."