A quote from Dr. Joyce Brothers

by Jack Brummet

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Ken Kesey Wisdom

Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.

To hell with facts! We need stories!

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

The trouble with super heroes is what to do between phone booths.

Ken, on a bus trip heading east, stopped in Yellowstone and saw a sign that said "Beware of Bear" and said : This used to mean be aware of the bear. But now, it means "be afraid of the bear."

Of offering more than what I can deliver,

I have a bad habit, it is true.
But I have to offer more than I can deliver,
To be able to deliver what I do.

Always stay in your own movie.

You're either on the bus or off the bus.

... you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen. (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

When Shakespeare was writing, he wasn't writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.

To hell with facts! We need stories!

Good writin' ain't necessarily good readin'. (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

The frontiers we broke into in the '60s are still largely unexplored.

When you're around the whole Dead scene, they're there as a tribal thing; they're there as part of a rendezvous and a pow-wow.

The truth doesn't have to do with cruelty, the truth has to do with mercy.

Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking.

The fundamentalists have taken the fun out of the mental.

He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.

Nowhere else in history has there ever been a flag that stands for the right to burn itself. This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself.

You've got to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine; otherwise you're just a lizard standing there with the sun shining on you.

Listen, wait, and be patient. Every shaman knows you have to deal with the fire that's in your audience's eye.

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A great quote from Don't Rock The Boat (the 2000 film starring Jefff Bridges as President Jackson Evans

A quote from Don't Rock The Boat (Jeff Bridges as President Jackson Evans):

"You've got five apes in a cage. You've got a banana hanging by a string in the middle of the cage. You've got some stairs going to the banana. Now pretty soon one of those apes is going to go for the banana and as soon as he hits the stairs you take a hose and you spray all five apes with freezing cold water for five minutes. Now, some time passes and pretty soon another one of the apes is going to make the same attempt with the same result. All five apes get sprayed with a cold water. Now you turn off the cold water. You never use it again. One of the apes is going to go for the banana. He hits the stairs, the other four apes pounce on him and beat the shit out of him. Right? Okay, understandable. Now you replace one of those original apes with a new ape. After a while that new ape is going to spy that banana and when he goes for the stairs, the other four apes are going to jump on him and beat the shit out of him. Right? Now, time passes, you replace another one of the original apes with a new ape. That new ape is going to go for the banana. The other four apes beat the shit out of him. Right? Including the first new ape who has no idea why he's so enthusiastically beating the shit out of this poor guy nor why he himself had the shit beat out of him. Okay? Now you keep replacing these original apes with new apes until finally you've got a cage filled with fives apes who have never had the freezing cold water sprayed on them and never the less not one of those apes will never attempt to climb those stairs again. Why not? Because that's the way it's always been done around here."  - Presidenr Jackson Evans, The Contender

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Quote of the day, from Anthony Bourdain

"A good laugh, a little context, they go a long ways to bringing one back from the urge to shave one's head, climb a tower, and start shooting pedestrians." - Anthony Bourdain ("The Nasty Bits")
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Quotations about Seattle, Wash.

click to enlarge

"What do they call this--Bar Mitzvah? Where you come out as a man? I think Seattle was kind of like that for me. . .all of a sudden I had to become a man. There were a lot of faces around Seattle, and I tried to make mine familiar so I could keep working. . .I could see that in a city like Seattle--a place which was more sophisticated and open than I was used to--my act was going to pay off." - Ray Charles

From a New Yorker cartoon about Seattle: "They're backpacky, but nice."

"Our grandfather started a sawmill and helped to clear-cut Ballard. And he gained wealth here. He was a very aggressive businessman. . .Now our generation is very much into nonprofit and here we are operating a foundation giving away as much money as we can to save the forests that my grandfather did not cut." - Harriett Bullitt, former co-owner of King Broadcasting

"Many a morning in June, I've come upon slugs three feet up on my asparagus plants, rocking back and forth in the feathery foliage like a sailor relaxing on a hammock." - Jim Hollman

"When somebody associates someone with being a resident of the Pacific Northwest, there's a lot of Paul Bunyan notions of people raising Cain out in the hills." - Bruce Pavitt, co-founder of Sub Pop Records

"A Seattle native is a Californian, Minnesotan, or Iowan who has lived in Seattle more than six months and knows how to pronounce Sequim (or Puyallup)." - Jean Godden, Seattle columnist and former city council member

"I like Californians. When I'm down there." Emmett Watson, Seattle author, newspaperman

"The real misconception that outsiders have about Seattle's rain is that it's a bad unpleasant thing. True Northwesterners, on the other hand, like the misty, foggy weather, with its beautiful moody promise of regeneration." - Bart Becker

"It will stop raining, won't it?" - Richard Eberhard, a poet on a 1967 visit to Seattle

"Despite what the fish and game department likes us to believe about fishing, gardening is easily the number one avocation in the Pacific Northwest. . .We may treat the local Orca pods as wildlife celebrities, we may reinvent the spotted owl as our symbol of wildness, we may expend vast amounts of money, time, and self-respect trying to get close enough to grab a salmon under the gills, but it is the slugs we know best. And most often. Slugs: our primary window into the heart of the wilderness." - Jim Hollman, Seattle writer

"A newcomer to Seattle arrives on a rainy day. She gets up the next morning and it's raining. It continues to pour for the rest of the week. Leaning out her apartment window she sees a little boy playing on the stoop below and asks, 'Hey, kid, does it ever stop raining around here?' The kid looks up at her and calls back, 'How should I know? I'm only six.' - a joke that made the rounds a few years ago
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Video: "the 100 best movie lines in 200 seconds"

OK. These are probably not the 100 best movie lines (although quite a few of them are), but they're mostly memorable, and do cover a lot of territory. It's worth a few to see some of those old cherished nuggets...

Witnesses tangle with lawyers, from "Disorder in the American Courts"

These quotes are from a book, "Disorder in the American Courts" -- actual transcripts of things people said in court.

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
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ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
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ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
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ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
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ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's twenty, much like your IQ.
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ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
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ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid
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ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORN EY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
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ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
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ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.
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ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
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ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
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ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
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ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished ..
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ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
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ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy ?
WIT NESS : No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.
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