Bartlett's Quotes & Sayings

Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food — Albert Allen Bartlett

Universities are not here to be mediums for the coercion of other people, they're here to be mediums for the free exchange of ideas. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

We have an obligation to spread amateur baseball both at home and abroad. Building up the game at all levels - Little League, Babe Ruth Leagues, the colleges - is in our own self-interest. That's where the pool of talent is - and also of fans. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

I can be a little obsessive about avoiding colds and flu. Thera Zinc Echinacea lozenges are awesome, and I almost always have some with me. — Murray Bartlett

I'm not going to sit here now and say 'do this,' or 'do that.' But you must - must - expunge any vestige of racism. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Baseball is part of America's plot, part of America's mysterious, underlying design-the plot in which we all conspire and collude, the plot of the story of our national life. — Albert Allen Bartlett

Jesus' mission was not to make a big deal of himself or to elevate his followers to positions of power, authority, and prestige through identification with him. It was rather to point through and beyond himself to God and to God's coming reign on earth, and to invite his followers to find their voice in bearing witness to this transforming, redemptive God — David L. Bartlett

Without the media, the American people won't have the type of information they need to hold their leaders to account. The relationship between government and media has always been strained, and I think most of the time that's a healthy strain. — Dan Bartlett

Rick Perry's an idiot, and I don't think anyone would disagree with that, — Bruce Bartlett

With all due respect to Speaker Hastert, trying to eliminate the IRS by adopting a national retail sales tax is a very dumb idea. — Bruce Bartlett

Firstly I commit my Soul into the hands of God, its great and benevolent author. — Josiah Bartlett

People will say I'm an idealist. I hope so. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

The stories we are told as children do, undoubtedly, mark us for life. They are often stories of dark and terrible things, and we are usually told them just before the lights are turned out and we are left alone; but we love them. We love them when we first hear them, and even when we are grown, and think we have forgotten them entirely, they never lose their power over us. — Neil Bartlett

I ask for your indulgence when I march out quotations. This is the double syndrome of men who write for a living and men who are over forty. The young smoke pot - we inhale from our Bartlett's. — Rod Serling

Major sports are major parts of society. It's not anomalous to have people who love sports come from other parts of that society. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

I always strive to create a setting that leaves the readers' imagination room to roam. That way, every reader sees the story through their own eyes. — P.S. Bartlett

As I grew up, I knew that as a building it was on the level of Mount Olympus, the Pyramid of Giza, the nation's capital, the czar's winter palace, and the Louvre - except, of course, that it was better than all of those inconsequential places. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

There's nothing bad that accrues from baseball. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Baseball is about homecoming. It is a journey by theft and strength, guile and speed, out around first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper, then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language and, at third, to proceed, no longer by paths indirect but straight, to home. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

So I think we shouldn't be overly concerned about the decline in personal saving at this particular moment and time, but it's something we certainly need to keep an eye on. — Bruce Bartlett

The problem we have had on the budget all along is a lack of adult supervision on the part of the White House. You can't blame members of Congress for looking out for their parochial interests. It is the president's responsibility to look out for the national interest. — Bruce Bartlett

The last romantic novel I think I read was 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles.' — Bartlett Sher

A convention is a social pattern we have chosen to prefer over whatever the raw world simply proffers. It is a sign of the operation of the mind, drawing the assent of a sufficient number of other minds so that the agreement will be widely operative. A convention is not a custom; a custom is a habit in which a sufficient number acquiesce. A custom can appear as a convention, but it is really a lesser act, the result of passive acceptance rather than of the imposition of design. It is the difference between learning to live by the annual flooding of the river or by a calendar. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

A child's behavior we see on the surface is the reflection of the feelings that are rooted underneath. We can use topical treatments to try to shape what the behavior looks like, but if we really want things to change, we need to address the roots. Nourish the roots, see the growth. — Kelly Bartlett

Speaking personally, I didn't think 40 would be a big issue, and I don't think I have issues about age, but there are naturally some big questions that come up at that point in your life. — Murray Bartlett

On a good day, I view the job [of president] as directing an orchestra. On the dark days, it is more like that of a clutch
engaging the engine to effect forward motion, while taking greater friction. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

The Mormon issue is a real problem in the South; it's a real problem in other parts of the country. But people are not going to say it. People are not going to step out and say, 'I have a problem with Romney because he's Mormon.' What they're going to say is he's a flip-flopper ... It's a fact; it's reality. — Dan Bartlett

I made a promise to myself years ago, never to use the phrase "at least" ever again. When you say that, what you're really saying is you did the least amount you had to do to get by.
That just isn't good enough and will never make you the success you're meant to be.
If you're still saying it ... stop. — P.S. Bartlett

I have gathered a posy of other men's flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own. — John Bartlett

There ought to be something about computers and artificial intelligence [in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations]. Surely somebody somewhere said something memorable. — Justin Kaplan

Republicans favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, but these had no stimulative effect during the George W. Bush administration, and there is no reason to believe that more of them will have any today. As for the idea that cutting regulations will lead to significant job growth, it's just nonsense. It's just made up. — Bruce Bartlett

Look at him, lying there. Why should he need me to give him strength
to watch over him, and always be worrying how he's feeling? Surely he'll find it himself. Isn't that what we believe, that we do always somehow find the strength? That the path will lead out of the forest; that the riddle will be solved; that the child never dies. — Neil Bartlett

Baseball has the largest library of law and love and custom and ritual, and therefore, in a nation that fundamentally believes it is a nation under law, well, baseball is America's most privileged version of the level field. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

I always wanted to live outside of Australia ... because I think it's good to see the world and get out of where you've been living, particularly if you're from somewhere like Australia, which is so isolated from the rest of the world. I chose New York because there was such a great choice of acting classes and it's such an intense place. — Murray Bartlett

No person and no character is beyond redemption, ultimately. That's the great thing about playing a character that has kind of a dark side; there's room to explore the opposite. — Murray Bartlett

The conservative side of our political spectrum has had an outsized voice over the last few years. I think especially since the establishment of Fox News, which has created an echo chamber in which people just hear the same ideas repeated ad infinitum. And you know, it's just basic advertising, basically. You hear the same idea over and over again. Or you can call it propaganda if you like. — Bruce Bartlett

Many of my sharpest critics have decided to take a position of ignoring me - because they feel that by attacking me, they would draw attention to my book and give me more publicity and help me sell more books. So I think that they decided that the best thing for them to do is to say nothing. Also, I think that some of my critics simply can't refute my argument - and so it's easier for them to ignore it as well, so that they're not forced to confront the logical contradiction in their own position. — Bruce Bartlett

When a day goes by and I haven't written anything, I better have been doing something worth writing about. — P.S. Bartlett

Up until 1986, the top marginal rate, the top statutory rate was 50 percent. Now it's 35 percent. And all the pressure is on to lower that even further. And this just doesn't make a great deal of sense. When people say, 'Oh, we can't raise taxes on the rich. They'll go on strike, they'll move to another country.' But within recent memory, it hasn't been that long ago that we had rates that were substantially higher. And these people did just fine. I just think that there's a disconnect between the facts of what taxes do and the sort of mythology of what they do. — Bruce Bartlett

The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is a sad end if a sorry episode. One of the game's greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts. There is absolutely no deal for reinstatement. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

You can drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, on every continental shelf and atop every hill in America for that matter, and you still won't reverse the fact that our oil production is in permanent decline. We're just sopping up what's left, digging ourselves into a deeper hole. — Roscoe Bartlett

I will work for energy policies that recognize oil won't last forever. — Roscoe Bartlett

What's great about [Guettel] is his very distinct voice as a composer. And that distinct voice is something worth cherishing and expressing so we just didn't want to screw that up. — Bartlett Sher

On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' ... Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's. — William Safire

I think Republicans should fight for the black vote and blacks should fight for a place in the Republican Party, just as they fought for their civil rights in the last century. It's a necessary thing and each may find more in common with the other than they imagine. Blacks will be in a far stronger position if both parties must compete for their votes. And the Republican Party is going to need black votes to compensate for the loss of Hispanic votes resulting from the strongly anti-immigrant views of its base - views that many blacks are in sympathy with. The passing of the generation of black leaders who led the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s and the rise of a new generation of black leaders like Barack Obama and others, who have lived their whole lives in a post-civil rights society, may make possible an alliance that was unthinkable just a few years ago. — Bruce Bartlett

Encouragement is about drawing forth a child's potential. As we raise and educate our kids on how to be good people, how to work hard, and how to do the right thing, we must find ways to draw it out of them, as opposed to "filling them up" with our words and values. — Kelly Bartlett

I'm sort of a Freudian about theater; it's always a struggle between freedom and security, between 'Do I stay where I am with my family because I love them or do I follow the thing that makes my heart feel the greatest?' — Bartlett Sher

He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither odor nor perfume - just strange, and curiously exciting. "Superintendent, what's that smell? Casey noticed it too, the moment Sven opened the door." Armstrong hesitated. Then he smiled. "That's Hong Kong's very own, Mr. Bartlett. It's money. — James Clavell

And in the act of making things, just by living their daily lives, they also make history.
Knitting is clothing made in spare moments, or round the fire, whenever women gathered together ... It's something to celebrate-clothes made in love and service, something women have always done. — Anne Bartlett

No woman ever gets given a fur coat for good reasons; if it's not to keep her on her back, it's to get her off his. — Neil Bartlett

The break for me was the Medicare drug benefit in 2003. It's just grossly expensive, bad policy. After that, I no longer gave them the benefit of the doubt and started seeing the glass as half-empty. — Bruce Bartlett

There was a pair of books, one by Hemingway, another by Thomas Wolfe. Each had written a long inscription to the other. A knowledgeable dealer had to inform the unfortunate owner who had just paid a pretty penny for them that the inscriptions were not authentic, and that the value was not what he had hoped. Later, another dealer discovered that they were spectacular forgeries: Wolfe had written Hemingway's inscription, and Hemingway, Wolfe's. — Allison Hoover Bartlett

We get a lot of raps as Americans for being small-minded, but in fact, when you really drill down to the core of the culture, there's an enormous amount of compassion and forgiveness and support. — Bartlett Sher

That's the best thing that classic can do, is it can return to us from our own past to give us lessons about the future, and it can give us a sense of both who we were and who we could become. — Bartlett Sher

I'm the world's expert on sterotypes held by academics about athletes and held by athletes about academics. To me, both of them are caricatures. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

The anonymity of the internet is a dangerous but powerful thing - to any fool who will listen. — P.S. Bartlett

I had a unique circumstance in which my career was associated with George W. Bush, who went straight to the top. I went to work for him in October of 1993. So my whole identity in national politics is associated with this president, and you know, I kind of want to leave it that way. It's not tugging at me to go do the '08 cycle. — Dan Bartlett

'Smart growth' destroys the environment. 'Dumb growth' destroys the environment. The only difference is that 'smart growth' does it with good taste. It's like booking passage on the Titanic. Whether you go first-class or steerage, the result is the same. — Albert Allen Bartlett

Winning has a joy and discrete purity to it that cannot be replaced by anything else. Winning is important to any man's or woman's sense of satisfaction and well-being. Winning is not everything; but it is something powerful, indeed beautiful, in itself, something as necessary to the strong spirit as striving is necessary to the healthy character. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

To go from Yale to the National League is simply to go from one form of management to another. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

My writing is a lens into the possibilities of the American experience. — Charles Bartlett Johnson

So I predicted the need to work my glutes. — Ashley Bartlett

The professionals must set a good example. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

It's probably this way with a lot of professionals: At first the BlackBerry is a savior, because it makes you mobile, but then it becomes a curse, because you're at a restaurant and looking down at it under the table. — Dan Bartlett

Of all the vices incident to man, lying is the most mean, most contemptible; it evinces a very weak, depraved heart, which shrinks at the exposure of motives and of actions. — Josiah Bartlett

This is not the first time in my life where you know going into a job that you're going to hear in stereo what was wrong with what you did. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

After all, much of the fondness avid readers, and certainly collectors, have for their books is related to the books' physical bodies. As much as they are vessels for stories (and poetry, reference information, etc.), books are historical artifacts and repositories for memories-we like to recall who gave books to us, where we were when we read them, how old we were, and so on. — Allison Hoover Bartlett

Black life is ambiguous, and a kaleidoscope of meanings, rich, multi-sided ... we have frozen our vision in figures that caricature, at best the complexity of our lives and leave the real artistic chore of interpretation unfinished. — Charles Bartlett Johnson

More butter please. — Thomas Bartlett

There was a natural resource in the affective devotion to the saints and to Jesus, and a similar intensity of devotion inevitably became directed to the ordinary human.7 Eleanor of Aquitaine, the paragon of courtly love at the courts of Angers and Poitiers, was a grandchild of Guillaume, duke of Aquitaine, the first known troubadour. In many of Guillaume's love songs 'the vocabulary and emotional fervor hitherto ordinarily used to express man's love for God are transferred to the liturgical worship of woman, and vice versa.'8 The layering of Christian feeling and the new romantic spirit is also witnessed in the roman courtois, the epic stories filled with legendary material and hinged on figures of woman, mystery and quest. — Anthony Bartlett

He was interested in the sudden friendship between two women so apparently dissimilar as Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish. They were always in each other's company, with Lucy a slighted third. Miss Lavish he believed he understood, but Miss Bartlett might reveal unknown depths of strangeness, though not, perhaps, of meaning. — E. M. Forster

Oh, nice one, honey. Yes. Clever. That's becoming quite a familiar quotation in its own right, isn't it? Maybe I should just add it to the next edition. 'Mother was right.' Author: Mrs. Bartlett, world-renowned nag. Year: 1859. Attribution: A short play entitled Every Goddamn Weekend! — John Bartlett

You meet new people. We just spent two hours with people we didn't know before, just talking about the Badgers. — Steve Bartlett

Jesus loves me! This I know
As He loved so long ago
Taking children on His knee
Saying, Let them come to Me. — Anna Bartlett Warner

For me, baseball is the most nourishing game outside of literature. They both are re-tellings of human experience. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

It had a crisp paper jacket, unlike the paper-covered library books I was used to, and the way the pages parted, I could tell I was the first to open it ... I valued that half-dream state of being lost in a book so much that I limited the number of pages I let myself read each day in order to put off the inevitable end, my banishment from that world. I still do this. — Allison Hoover Bartlett

It is not enough to offer a smorgasbord of courses. We must insure that students are not just eating at one end of the table. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

It's obvious that a lot of Tea Party members tend to be elderly. You've seen that famous sign, 'Tell the government to keep its hands off my Medicare.' And I think as long as the government does keep its hands off their Medicare, they're fine with talking about low taxes. But once they start to realize that the Republicans really do want to not just cut Medicare, but essentially abolish it, you know, I just think those people are not going to be part of the Tea Party. They're going to be over with Occupy Wall Street. — Bruce Bartlett

This filing spike is a result of bad information being pushed on people, and then they file for bankruptcy out of fear. — Steve Bartlett

On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Those of us who believe in princesses are often laughed at. But I believe the world needs princesses and dukes and queens and kings. We need people who glitter and shine and make a room silent with their entrance. We need them the same way we need ice cream and soccer and music and stories. Oh, how we need stories. — Beverly Bartlett

Jesus loves me, this I know ... — Anna Bartlett Warner

Reservation should be under 'Bartlett.' Right, that's two T's. Yes. 'Bart-let-et.' — John Bartlett

I will fight for budget honesty and eliminating the deficit to reduce the transfer of debt to younger generations. — Roscoe Bartlett

It is a law of nature that a dream carried for too long inside you must, eventually, begin to rot. — Neil Bartlett

The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government. — Bruce Bartlett

The university is our culture's assertion that what is made by the mind has value and can convey values. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music. They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume. These are the properties of music and music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can't. — Josiah Bartlett

There's bound to be a recovery in [capital spending] sometime soon. We have had basically no capital investment for about year. At some point, machinery wears out, and you've got to replace it. — Bruce Bartlett

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. — Albert A. Bartlett

Writing is my refuge. It's where I go. It's where I find that integrity I have. — Charles Bartlett Johnson

Americans like to believe we can overcome all obstacles and always triumph in the end, but that's not real life and a steady diet of stories like that will give you a pretty unhealthy view of reality. — Bartlett Sher

Americans have been remarkably devoted to the capacity for belief, to idealism. That's why we get into trouble all the time. We're always viewed as naive. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Our personal natal horoscope provides us with a powerful tool for understanding our own energy signature and how it [one person, or, a group] is affected by other energy forms including matter. — Robert Allen Bartlett

bread were being baked, or gold or silver purified in a furnace." Afterwards the Christians of Smyrna wish to collect his remains, desiring "to have a share in his holy flesh." Before they are allowed to do so, they have to overcome the objections of pagans and — Robert Bartlett

To resist him that is set in authority is evil — John Bartlett

I'm a real nature lover, so whenever possible, I like to get to the beach or get to a forest or get somewhere there's fresh air. Apart from that, I'm a film addict and a DVD freak. — Murray Bartlett

Daffy-down-dilly came up in the cold, Through the brown mould Although the March breeze blew keen on her face, Although the white snow lay in many a place. — Anna Bartlett Warner

George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her. Before she could speak, almost before she could feel, a voice called 'Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!' The silence of life had been broken by Miss Bartlett, who stood brown against the view. — E. M. Forster

Al Gore may think Medicare is at a crossroads, but his plan puts it on a highway to bankruptcy. — Dan Bartlett