October 9, 2025
Humor that Inspires–for Teachers! Part V
If you liked the last Humor that Inspires, here are more to kick-start your day:
- “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.”
– A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.) - “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
– H. M. Warner (1881-1958), founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927 - “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
– Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962 - “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
– Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899 - “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”
– Mark Twain (1835-1910) - “A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.”
– General George S. Patton (1885-1945) - “After I’m dead I’d rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.”
– Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato) - “He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.”
– Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) - “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”
– last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923) - “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) - “The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”
– Tom Clancy - “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
– Mark Twain (1835-1910) - “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”
– Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), “The Prince” - “Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.”
– Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) - “The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.”
– Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live - “We’re going to turn this team around 360 degrees.”
– Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks - “Half this game is ninety percent mental.”
– Yogi Berra - “There is only one nature – the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole.”
– Bill Wulf - “There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
– Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) - “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
– Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) - “I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.”
– Cicero (106-43 B.C.) - “Love is friendship set on fire.”
– Jeremy Taylor - “God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time.”
– Robin Williams, commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky affair - “My occupation now, I suppose, is jail inmate.”
– Unibomber Theodore Kaczynski, when asked in court what his current profession was - “Woman was God’s second mistake.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) - “This isn’t right, this isn’t even wrong.”
– Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), upon reading a young physicist’s paper - “For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.”
– Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) - “Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.”
– Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) - “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
– Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) - “Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies.”
– Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan. - “Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.”
– Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) - “He would make a lovely corpse.”
– Charles Dickens (1812-1870) - “I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”
– Irvin S. Cobb - “I worship the quicksand he walks in.”
– Art Buchwald - “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.”
– Mark Twain (1835-1910) - “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.”
– Paul Valery (1871-1945) - “We are not retreating – we are advancing in another Direction.”
– General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) - “If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?”
– Seymour Cray (1925-1996), father of supercomputing - “#3 pencils and quadrille pads.”
– Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer; he also recommended using the back side of the pages so that the lines were not so dominant. - “I just bought a Mac to help me design the next Cray.”
– Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when was informed that Apple Inc. had recently bought a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac. - “Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis.”
– Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God. - “I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.”
– Francois-Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues - “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.”
– Mark Twain (1835-1910) - “The truth is more important than the facts.”
– Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959) - “Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.”
– Wernher Von Braun (1912-1h977) - “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
– Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) - “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
– Albert Einstein (1879-1955) - The speech was made 29 October 1941 to the boys at Churchill’s old public [private] school, Harrow–not Oxford or Cambridge:”Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
- I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by
Author: Douglas Adams
