“Un-famous” can refer to family members, friends, complete strangeres or even a fellow Doper!
These quotes can range from deep thoughts, to silly comments, etc.
For me:
“And on the Seventh Day, God created Pink Floyd and all was good”
This was stated by some Youtube user, which I modified a bit.
So, fellow Dopers, which quotes have you liked from “un-famous” people?
My parents and I had gone to a movie and my mom was insisting that an actor was someone my father was sure he wasn’t. [I’m thinking Pop was right, but whatever.] Pop can be short-tempered so he was starting to fume about her harping on this point.
Mom (gesturing toward her own mouth): “He had that mouth…”
Pop: “WELL, EVERYONE HAS A MOUTH!”
I lost it and luckily broke the tension, but it’s a catchphrase in my own mind.
Alos, one time Mom and I were watching TV and the advertisement for the album Songs 4 Life came on. I said, “Why did they feel the need to use the numeral in the title?” Mom: “Yeah, they should have just spelled it out f-o-u-r…oops” but by then I had lost it. God forbid that commerical comes on when Mom and I are watching.
My all-time favorite quote on newborn care from a co-worker who was an awesome father of two and uncle of six:
“Babies are tough little critters. You can’t hardly kill 'em.”
When I was younger and heading out for a night on the town , my dad would often remind me that “The most expensive cab ride always beats the cheapest court appearance!”
“Shit on logic!”
Said to me by my good friend Rachael, in college, a long time ago. I don’t remember what I said to her to prompt this response, but it’s always cracked me up.
“Oh, did she have ears?”
Said by my wife’s uncle. A stacked woman had just walked by, and my wife’s sister had said to him, “Did you see the ears on her?!”
“It’s called a remote because it always is.”
-My dad
When putting back together anything you’re left with a few extra nuts and bolts, my brother calls it ‘just shaving weight’.
My saying to “throw all logic out the window” is my neighbor’s favorite.
From my mom: “I’m the best friend you’re ever gonna have!”
From a friend of mine: “The purpose of locks is to keep honest people honest. Thieves get where they want.”
Another momism, said when I came home drunk as a teenager: “Enright3, a man isn’t the one who drinks the most. A man is the one that knows when to quit.” (my mom divorced my dad because he was an alcoholic)
Jimmy Flair, I like your quote. You can bet I’ll be using that one on my kids. 
“The Red Cross is demanding access to the analogies currently being tortured.” Kal, on the Straight dope Message Board, Sept08
“One look at her and you can tell her attic is either empty or filled with frightening toys.” – Mr. Blue Sky
“The mark of a truly great mind isn’t whether you’re right or wrong. It’s how well you can weasel out of a jam.” – Cecil Adams, author of The Straight Dope
“If wishing for a return to “each holiday in its own good time” makes me a Grinch, well then pass the Who Hash. Harrumph” – Scarlett67
“You’re probably going to spend ten, twenty, or more years of your life working for a company that’d kill you and sell your organs if it got the CEO a third gold-plated bathtub for himself and his hookers.” – GMRyujin 29April04
“You can be talented, well-trained, highly experienced, and a loyal employee and they’ll still ship your job overseas if it’ll let the CEO get more hookers on bath night. And they’ll probably make you train the guy taking your job.” – GMRyujin 29April04
“I’m just saying that if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck,…etc. But then again, it could just be Elton John in a duck suit. We’ll just have to wait and see.” – Starving Artist
“I stopped trying to drown my sorrows years ago when I learned that all sorrows can float, several can tread water, some can swim, and a few can perform CPR on their fellow sorrows.” – pinkfreud
From my friend’s dad - a good twist on an old saying.
“If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly”
IOW: a job that’s done (badly) is waaaay superior than a job that’s not done because you don’t have time to “do it right”. Forget about “doing it right”. Just do it.
From my mum - in response to “Oh yeah - I really have to sort out this pile (right in front of me) some time”
“You know…‘now’ is a time.”
(it worked - we sorted the pile)
From my father-in-law:
“There are only two kinds of problems in the world: Little problems and big problems.
Little problems are the ones you can throw money at and they go away.
Big problems are the ones you can’t throw money at to make them go away.”
From my dad, on how to safely drive on icy roads:
“Drive like you have an egg between your foot and the pedal… and don’t break the egg.”
Resisting being called “defective” and “broken” is not intolerant; it is standing up for one’s rights as a citizen and one’s value as a human being. Asking to not be hit is not intolerant; asking not to be called “fag” is not intolerant, asking for the same rights that hetero folks enjoy is not intolerant. I will never accept that being “tolerant” means allowing myself to be regarded as inferior. I don’t care if bigots get hurt feelings because I fend off the hand that hits me.
What a good thing that we aren’t all the same. I mean, think of the oatmeal shortage.
The problem with “tolerance” is it does seem to imply an act of restraint of the part of the “normal people” (heterosexuals, whites, Christians, whatever the majority) in that they allow the anomalies to exist and graciously refrain from shooting them on sight.
That’s part and parcel of building infrastructure. The reasoning seems to be that if it works 99,8% of the time, it must be because it’s childishly easy. And when it’s so easy, then of course breakdowns can only be explained by an obvious and inexcusable lack of competence.
A Super American once bothered me to join in the Pledge of Allegiance. “Yer in Amaaaaarka boay, yew’d best respect the flag that’s-a keepin yer commie country free!” What could I do but respect his wishes and oblige? “I do pledge that I will bear true allegiance to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, her heirs and successors, according to the Law, so help me God.” It was just so nice to watch the vein on that man’s neck get bigger.
-Upham
The fact that the can-can was once considered sexy by heterosexual men explains why *we *invented civilization.
I wear the word “dyke” like I would wear a pair of combat boots. It gives me strength and snarly toughness when I need it; it gives me swagger when I feel silly or afraid. I also wear the word “boi” like a soft grey hoodie, framing my round cheeks and small hands. Sometimes I wear “boy”, a worn pair of baggy blue jeans. I wear “queer” as a necklace, and it rests proud against my pulse when I walk down the halls. “Genderqueer” is my summer sarong, patterned in bright oranges and deep blues. “Butch” I wear as sneakers, skinny-puppy high tops. “Femme” I wear as knee socks, striped in a thousand different colours (pink included). I can wear them both at the same time, you know.
But you seem to believe it’s the transsexual kid who was in the wrong, because she lied about something really important, like having a penis, rather than something trivial, like being willing and able to murder someone because they have a penis.
Portrayals of queer people nowadays are like representations of the Middle East and India 100 years ago. We are the new Mysterious Orient, full of exotic dangers, and a hint of exotic sex. We’ve become the big backdrop which Western Civilization uses to project its own unspoken desires and fears. Given what Western Civilization did to India and the Middle East over the last 300 years, this does not bode well at all.
One of the kids in the hall gave me a look, and said something like, “A lesbian in a dress and makeup? Did you find a good man to fuck?” I was ready to lodge my mascara brush up his nose.
It escapes me why gay men are always described as “mincing” when they walk. Mincing looks rather painful. I suppose that lesbians aren’t supposed to mince, though. We’re supposed to stomp.
We got three whole days into the topic [of gay marriage] before someone compared the love and commitment of two consenting adult human beings to his desire to rut with a chimp. …If you want to marry a chimp, you go right ahead. I guess, like the old song, you want a gal just like the gal who married dear old dad.
Well, normally, I’d comment with Hanlon’s Razor, which runs, Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. However, in this case, I think the corollary applies: Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
My father claims he first his grandfather say this, and maybe great-grandad heard it somewhere else; it’s always been my “mission statement”:
“I’m not smart enough to straighten up the whole world. I have my hands full just keeping my corner of the world straightened up. If everybody kept his corner of the world straightened up, it’d be a much better world. So, that’s what I’m going to do.”
I may have you all beat for sheer quantity. I’ve been saving funny quotes from my friends for well over 10 years now. Here’s my mother load:
http://homepage.mac.com/happywaffle/stuff/friendquotes.txt
My mom’s version: “Perfect is the nemesis of Good.” Dad, Middlebro and SiL are all “negative perfectionists,” the kind who won’t do something if they can’t do it perfectly. Now add “both virgin at marriage” and you have a recipe for what almost became a “fruitless marriage” (or a Middlebro and SiL murdered by the two eager grandmother-wanna-bes on grounds of “some things you just have to keep on trying until you get it right”).
From a friend: “if I die and find out there is no God, Him and I are going to have a talkin’-to!”
Same friend: “my husband is an imbecile, but he’s MY imbecile.”
From my then three-year-old grandson: I can do what I can do.
When a concert was approaching and the panic of the unrehearsed was setting in, my high school orchestra director would reassure us with the platitude, “Aim low – get results.” And well it’s served me since.
Make every step you take be one step closer to your goals. Larry Koch, a very wise man.
Some favorite Internet quotes from my quote files :
From Voyager : “Voyager’s amendment to Godwin’s Law: Godwin’s Law no longer applies when they start building concentration camps.”
From BrainGlutton :
“Scripture also says ‘Render unto Caesar what Caesar demands.’ And right now, Caesar demands a building permit,” - County Commission Chairman Mike Whitehead
“He incarnates himself to sacrifice himself to himself to appease himself and make himself lift a curse he himself put on humans.” - NecronLord on the sacrifice of Christ.
I don’t recall where I got this one :
“Luke Cage became so utterly repentant in prison that he volunteered as a test subject for a secret government project that gave him diamond-hard skin and superhuman strength. How the project obtained funding for their proposal, entitled “give diamond-hard skin and superhuman strength to angry young ethnic convicts” is yet another prime example of the dangerous incompetence of the Nixon administration.”
“You know that saying, ‘If you want peace, prepare for war?’ They wanted a lot of fucking peace.” - Sidewaysvision on the Fourth Imperium
Brainglutton : You are missing Carol’s point: This Scandinavian model of social democracy, it is all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
[QUOTE=Cervaise]
If you cut a zombie into two or more pieces, but do not destroy the brain, those pieces will remain dangerously ambulatory (to the best of their ability to amble, of course).
Question: If you then destroy the brain, will all the separate but dependent parts then “die”? In other words, if you destroy the parent chunk, will the child chunks be affected?
If so, what is the range of this effect? And the speed at which the information is transmitted?
Could you use it as a communication tool? Say, cut a bunch of zombies into a whole lot of small pieces, distribute them to military units designated “receivers,” have the “transmitter” back at command retain the head. If your piece of Zombie A dies, it means “retreat.” Your piece of Zombie B dies, that’s “advance.” Zombie C = “don’t eat the cornbread.” And so on.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Miller]
In the linked thread, I mentioned the evil campaign I’m involved in. It’s a D&D 3.5 campaign. My character is an undead monk. I used the mummy template to create him, although he’s not wrapped in bandages like Boris Karloff. Rather, he’s a skeletally thin figure with skin like dried leather, dressed in vividly colored Asian robes. His teeth are filed to points and stained blood red, and his fingers are mangled bone claws. Here’s the backstory I wrote when I created him:
I was a member of a holy order, a remote order of wise and benevolent men and women. It was my honor to work in the kitchens, preparing food for my brothers and sisters. I took no small pride in my skills there, all agreed that my meals were of the finest quality. But there was one person’s praise I sought above all else: Ming Lei, a priestess of the temple, whom I loved. But she was sworn to chastity in the service of our order, and I knew she would not entertain my suit, so I swore to never speak to her of my feelings.
That, as it turned out, would be the first of many vows I would break. One night, unable to restrain my feelings for her, I came to her small cell and told her of my love. I begged for her to run away with me, to leave the order and be my wife. But she spurned me! She turned away from me, and said she would speak to our abbot about my advances, for they showed that my dedication to our order was not as strong as it should have been. I could not bear it. So I took from her that which she refused to give me. When I was done, I took a heavy candlestick from beside her bed and ended her life.
I had committed a great crime, one for which I would surely hang. If I left her body there and ran, they would know I was the criminal, and they would hunt me down. I had to hide her body. I could not remove it from the monastery without being seen, but I could think of a great many places within the monastery where I could hide her bones indefinitely. But what of her flesh? The meat would rot, and the smell would give away the hiding place. It was then that my course of action became clear.
I butchered her carcass that night, boiled the bones clean, and hid them where they would never be found. The meat itself I cooked into a hearty stew, with onions and carrots, and the next day I served it to my fellow monks. I must say, it met with great success. I do not think my brothers and sisters had ever enjoyed one of my meals so much!
Ming Lei’s absence was noted, of course, but I had the presence of mind to secret away some few of her possessions along with her bones. It was assumed that she had run off, possibly with some local farm hand. No one suspected the great crime I had committed, and I was free to live the rest of my life in service at my temple.
Except that bitch would not leave me alone! That first night, after the meal, she appeared in my room, her face a bloody ruin from my blows with the candlestick. I was sure that her shrieks and moans would bring the rest of the temple running to my meager chamber, but no one appeared. It seemed I alone could see her specter, but it was small consolation. I could not sleep with her caterwauling. She appeared again the next night, and the one after that. Soon she appeared during the day, hovering over my shoulder in the kitchen, her ghostly blood dripping into the soup I was preparing.
It was too much for me. Maddened by her spirit beyond endurance, I went to where I’d hidden her body and tore it open. The candlestick I’d killed her with was hidden with her, and I took it up and began to pulverize her bones. I was… not stealthy. Indeed, it seems I was very vocal in my imprecations of her. By the time the other monks had shown up and restrained me, I had already confessed to most of the sordid deed. It was not until my fellows brought me before the abbot that I revealed their own role in my crime.
My punishment was decreed, but by then, it was too late for them. My sin was in their stomachs, and now it was upon their hearts. Simply hanging me was deemed to lenient. These wise, benevolent elders wanted vengeance. They wanted to visit upon me an evil as great as the one I had visited upon them. And in this, they outdid themselves. A powerful curse was laid upon me, one that bound me forever to this world, not alive, but not dead. A great vault was carved into the foundations of their mountain fastness, and I laid in it, still conscious, while it was sealed with a great stone lid, laid down by powerful holy wards, to keep my imprisoned in their, alone forever with my hunger.
But the wards were not perfect. My sin had entered them, and their sin upon me had weakened them further. I could sense an imperfection in my prison, and so I began to dig. They had not been fit to leave me with any tools, of course, so I used my fingers to claw at the lid to that great sarcophagus. It took me three hundred years to claw my way through two feet of stone with my bare hands. It left them the ruins you see now, while hunger wasted the rest of my body. But I was stronger than their magic, and finally, I broke free of my tomb.
And that is when I discovered a curious and wonderful thing. Over the long centuries of my burial, the stain of my crime had entered into the souls of all those who lived and studied at that monastery, slowly warping them. The sounds of my constant scraping, just beyond the audible, had driven those that remained mad. And in my long absence from their kitchens, the monks of my order had developed a fondness for my cooking. No longer a haven for light and peace, the order had become a foul and twisted thing, a cannibal cult that preyed on the surrounding villages to stock their larders.
When I emerged from my vault, ready to wreck my just vengeance against those who had for so long imprisoned me, I found instead a group of willing followers, debased men and women who fell to their knees and called me “Master.”
I fed well on their flesh that night.
Many escaped, of course. They still roam the night, alone or in small groups, looking for fresh meat for their stewpots, or fresh converts to their ways. Their devotion to me remains great. They keep my sacrament, and even spread it to others, for there are many who, once they taste the sweetest meat, find it very much to their liking. And I, in my turn, hunt them. And when I catch them, they gladly go under my knife. To my most faithful, I give the gift of allowing to watch as I feed on their extremities. For they are loyal, and know that, to best serve me, they must serve themselves.
[/QUOTE]
Another guy I don’t recall - “In fact, I’ve often thought that it was a piece of historical luck for humanity as a whole that nuclear weapons were developed precisely when they were, that is, at the tail end of a war. If they were developed between wars, then people would have built a lot of them, and next war, LOTS of nukes. If they were developed right in the middle of the war, again, lots of nukes before the war ends. At the very tail end of a war, they are used, end that war, and then people have a long time to stare at the horror they caused, think about the implications for future world wars, etc.”
And another - “The average American wouldn’t know what the fuck leftism was if it came by and paid his medical bills.”
A friend was working as a life guard here in Chicago many moons ago when he saw some guys water skiing. They had pulled up to a breakwater and the skier had gotten out and was standing on some of the boulders on the other side of it.
They were planning on gunning it while he held on. As my friend ran down the pier/breakwater screaming “NOOooooooo” he heard the skier yell out this:
"Let it happen, Cap’n"
These were his last words.
To this day my friends and I find that quote appropriate for all manner of occasions.