Famous Quotes & Sayings

Dave Barry

There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: passive systems collect the sunlight that hits your home, and active systems collect the sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too.

Dave Barry

I say the American Medical Association ought to get the hell off the golf course and answer this question ...

Dave Barry

In my experience, if you go to a hospital for any reason whatsoever, including to read the gas meter, they give you a tetanus shot.

Dave Barry

I feel that nasal spray is a wondrous medical achievement, because it is supposed to relieve nasal congestion, and by gadfrey, it relieves nasal congestion. What I'm saying is that it actually works, which is something you can say about very few other aspects of the medical establishment.

Dave Barry

What I like best about the telephone is that it keeps you in touch with people, particularly people who want to sell you magazine subscriptions in the middle of the night.

Dave Barry

Canada, as you know, is a major important nation boasting a sophisticated, cosmopolitan culture that was tragically destroyed last week by beavers.

Dave Barry

The Russians will never be able to get their missiles thought the dense protective layer of delayed flights circling over the United States in complex, puke-inducing holding patterns.

Dave Barry

Funny, isn't it? The airlines go to all that trouble to keep you from taking a gun on board, then they just hand you a dinner roll you could kill a musk ox with.

Dave Barry

If Charles Lindbergh, flying with no instruments other than a bologna sandwich, managed to cross the Atlantic and land safely on a runway completely covered with French people, why are today's airplanes, which are equipped with radar and computers and individualized liquor bottles, unable to cope with fog?

Dave Barry

It was you readers who really came through, proving once again that when the American people decide to "get involved" in a problem, it is best not to let them have any sharp implements.

Dave Barry

We have been flooded with postal cards from all over the United States and several parallel universes. Just a quick glance though these cards is enough to remind you why this great nation, despite all the talk of decline, still leads the world in tranquilizer consumption.

Dave Barry

The Japanese tend to communicate via nuance and euphemism, often leaving important things unsaid; whereas Americans tend to think they're being subtle when they refrain from grabbing the listener by the shirt.

Dave Barry

Many, many of you have written to me asking the following question: 'Dave, have their been any new advancements in the field of artificial falcon insemination, and could these developments be used to improve the American electoral process?'

Dave Barry

Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care? It's not his money.

Dave Barry

When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer.

Cathy Guisewite

Cathy was the first widely syndicated humor strip created by a woman. The strip was pretty revolutionary at the time not only because it starred a female, but also because it was so emotionally honest about all the conflicting feelings many women had in 1976.

Casey Stengel

Okay everybody, line up in alphabetical order according to your height.

Carl Hiaasen

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

Gina Barreca

The search for truth can be compared to a cat chasing her tail: frantic in her pursuit, her quarry nevetheless eludes her; despite the fact that all the world can see it's right there, it remains just beyond her reach. It cannot be possessed because, paradoxically, it is already part of her.

Bob Newhart

I don't know how many sacred cows there are today. I think there's a little confusion between humor and gross passing for humor. That's kind of regrettable.

Billy Joel

And the only people I fear are those who never have doubts... Save us all from arrogant men, and all the causes they're for.

Bernard Williams

What a strange world this would be if we all had the same sense of humor.

David Riesman

America is not only big and rich, it is mysterious; and its capacity for the humorous or ironical concealment of its interests matches that of the legendary inscrutable Chinese.

Ben Stiller

I'm not an expert on the Malaysian sense of humor.

Dick Cavett

Great humorists are great insulters.

Deepak Chopra

We go where our deepest desires take us.

Ed Koch

If I traveled to the end of the rainbow as Dame Fortune did intend, Murphy would be there to tell me the pot's at the other end.

Bertolt Brecht

The righteous one has no sense of humor.

Carolyn Wells

musicians rarely have a sense of humour, at least, about themselves.

Agnes Repplier

Humor hardens the heart, at least to the point of sanity ...

Agnes Repplier

Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.

Agnes Repplier

Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.

Agnes Repplier

The essence of humor is that it should be unexpected, that it should embody an element of surprise, that it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all, must be our habitual frame of mind.