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I remember starting quite a while back a thread for very good, memorable quotes. But what about memorable quotes that are laughable in their content? Who is going to celebrate the misuse of the human mind and heart? Why, us, of course! That's what we're here for!

Keep one rule in mind: these quotes should be good. It's the thought processes behind 'em that are really...well, to quote Mel Brooks, dumb.

And so, without any further ado, a quote from that horrifically narrow-minded Puritan, William Prynne, who actually slapped middleclass women around in Queen Bess' Londontown if he found them on the street wearing any make-up:

Dancing is for the most part attended with many amorous smiles, wanton compliments, unchaste kisses, scurrilous songs and sonnets, effeminate music, lust-provoking attire, ridiculous love pranks, all of which savour only of sensuality, of raging fleshly lusts. Therefore it is wholly to be abandoned of all good Christians! Dancing serves no necessary use, no profitable, laudable or pious end at all. It is used only from the inbred pravity, vanity, wantoness, incontinency, pride, profaneness or madness of men's depraved natures. Therefore it must needs be unlawful unto Christians. The way to Heaven is too steep, too narrow for men to dance in and keep revel rout! No way is large or smooth enough for capering roisters, for jumping, skipping, dancing dames but that broad, beaten, pleas ant road that leads to Hell. The gate of Heaven is too narrow for whole rounds, whole troupes of dancers to march in together...!

Amen, brother!

LMAO!

Here are some more:

I suppose three important things certainly come to my mind that we want to say thank you. The first would be our family. Your family, my family -- which is composed of an immediate family of a wife and three children, a larger family with grandparents and aunts and uncles. We all have our family, whichever that may be ... The very beginnings of civilization, the very beginnings of this country, goes back to the family. And time and time again, I'm often reminded, especially in this Presidential campaign, of the importance of a family, and what a family means to this country. And so when you pay thanks I suppose the first thing that would come to mind would be to thank the Lord for the family.
--Dan Quayle


It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown -- a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman -- mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another `lifestyle choice'. I know it is not fashionable to talk about moral values, but we need to do it. Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood, network TV, the national newspapers routinely jeer at them, I think that most of us in this room know that some things are good, and other things are wrong. Now it's time to make the discussion public.
--Dan Quayle

The Democrats talked about putting people first. Well, they put people first unless you happen to be a spotted owl or a giant garter snake or some other endangered species and then that seems to have priority. Obviously, you take the bald eagle and things of that sort, of course you're going to make sure that they are saved and that they can live and you're going to take every precaution that you can. But others -- we just need a little flexibility.
--Dan Quayle


And finally my favorite Quayle Quote:

You always learn something by reading the classics. Particularly The Prince. I go through and look at this from this intellectual point of view. Machiavelli had these three classes of mind. The first class was the person that was creative enough to be leader and be able to lead a great nation without much help. The second class of mind was one that wasn't creative but could take ideas, put people around him, and be able to lead nations forward. And the third class of people didn't really know much of anything. And they were the worst kind of leaders, because not only were they not creative, but they didn't know what was right or wrong, and they just sort of went by whatever they felt like.
I've tried to figure out where I am. I know I'm not the first because I don't think I have the creativeness that Machiavelli talks about. If I go back and reread it I might figure it out exactly where I put myself. I'm somewhere between two and one.
--Dan Quayle

Oh, but wait: those Quayle quotes are bad ones, not good ones. They don't fit, here. (Though I enjoyed 'em tremendously.) I probably didn't make myself clear.

I'm seeking good, well-conceived quotes, in the service of wrong-thinking. Pithily phrased, intelligently expressed: just utterly, barking mad.

For instance, Friedrich von Bernhardi wrote in 1911, in his book, Germany and the Next War:

War is a biological necessity of the first importance.

Right! As if we haven't got diseases, starvation, and drought enough to take care of what people such as Bernhardi would euphemistically call "over-population."

Now do you see what I'm getting at?

Do these meet the criteria? (Probably most of you have heard the first two)

"We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again."

"We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe."

"My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace in our time..."

"Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."

- Neville Chamberlain on September 30, 1938

"We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out."
- Decca Records rejecting the Beatles in 1962

"All saved from Titanic after collision."
- New York Evening Sun, April 15 1912.

"I didn't realize I was in a Buddhist temple."
- Al Gore, former U.S. Vice President when asked about his illegal fundraising activities that took place in a Buddhist temple

"What good is the moon if you can't buy or sell it?"
Ivan Boesky, inside stock trader

Of course, these quotes are mostly just showing that hindsight is 20/20...

Of course, these quotes are mostly just showing that hindsight is 20/20...

That's perhaps my general impression, too. They lack the impressive stupidity that comes from carefully formulating an idea which is utterly without merit.

However, that Ivan Boesky remark definitely fits in. Look at it, again:

"What good is the moon if you can't buy or sell it?"

It's pithy. It's direct. It has punch. It is also appaling ignorant, and manages in one short sentence to discard the entire ballast of cultural wisdom accumulated by humankind over tens of thousands of years. Yes, this one merits inclusion in our topic. Bravo.

nice topic

This one is perhaps more disturping than ridicules

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

- Henry Kissinger


Ridiculesly naive!?

The purpose of all war is peace.

- Saint Augustine

This one Might not be well phrased but none the less...

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without
censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

- General William Westmoreland

The last one, I think, even translated, remains well expressed and have the virtue of being quit ridicules.

Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders
of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag
the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a
parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to
do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack
of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every
country.

- Hermann Goering

Excellent examples, @Tom. I especially enjoyed "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac," which tells us far more about Kissinger than it does about its subject.