Big 40 Quotes & Sayings

The very large brain that humans have, plus the things that go along with it - language, art, science - seemed to have evolved only once. The eye, by contrast, independently evolved 40 times. So, if you were to 'replay' evolution, the eye would almost certainly appear again, whereas the big brain probably wouldn't. — Richard Dawkins

Most Scots might be able to identify six vegetables - but only two MSPs. There are parts of Scotland where you rarely get more than 40% turnout at the polls. There's a big disconnect there, and I think comedians bridge that gap. — Rory Bremner

I went to work at 11 years old. I became governor. It's not a big deal. Work doesn't hurt anybody. I'm all for not allowing a 12-year-old to work 40 hours. But a 12-year-old working eight to 10 hours a week or a 14-year-old working 12 to 15 hours a week is not bad. — Paul LePage

If kids see you on the street and they want an autograph, that's a big honour so I spend half an hour before I get in the ground and 40 minutes to an hour after the game with the Everton fans signing autographs. — Timothy F. Cahill

Well ... yes, and here we go again. But before we get to The Work, as it were, I want to make sure I know how to cope with this elegant typewriter - (and, yes, it appears that I do) - so why not make this quick list of my life's work and then get the hell out of town on the 11:05 to Denver? Indeed. Why not? But for just a moment I'd like to say, for the permanent record, that it is a very strange feeling to be a 40-year-old American writer in this century and sitting alone in this huge building on Fifth Avenue in New York at one o'clock in the morning on the night before Christmas Eve, 2000 miles from home, and compiling a table of contents for a book of my own Collected Works in an office with a tall glass door that leads out to a big terrace looking down on The Plaza Fountain. Very strange. — Hunter S. Thompson

Growing older is not such a big deal for me, despite the fears that older actresses have in Hollywood. When I hit 40, for example, I didn't feel 40 - or whatever that is supposed to feel like. — Halle Berry

For 40 years we were led to think of the Russians as godless, materialistic and an evil empire. When the Cold War ended, we suddenly discovered that Russia was a poor Third World country. They had not been equipped to take over the world. In fact, they were just trying to improve a miserable standard of oppressive living, and couldn't. They had to spend too much on arms build-up. We didn't win the Cold War; we bankrupted the Russians. In effect, it was a big bank exhausting the reserves of a smaller one. — Norman Mailer

It really reminds me of the great movies of the 30's and 40's with huge sets and voluminous fireplaces you could walk around in. Glazed floors. I was expecting a Busby Berkley dance number. Big fanfare and all the girls coming out. I'd have joined in. It's got that scale, you know? — Ray Stevenson

They say God is one and the same everywhere, in all countries. Well, I know everything, everything from the very beginning. Those big noses just came here with their books and spread them all over the place. Our ancestors, the founding father of our race, was Tangun. He came down from the heavens a long, long time ago. They say that's not so. They say that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. People should worship their own ancestors properly if they want to be proper human beings. Our country has gone to the dogs because so many have started worshiping someone else's God. (2007: 40) — Hwang Sok-yong

I listen to all kinds of music, but I've always been a really big fan of Top 40 radio. If I'm in my car, that's what I listen to. — Aaron Tveit

The typical big Japanese company has somewhere between a third and 40 percent of its revenues coming from developing countries, and about a third of Japan's exports are also to the emerging countries, so in a strange way, Japan, which has very little internal growth, its big companies are a good way to play the emerging markets. — Wilbur Ross

A wacky, trendy outfit on a guy over 40 indicates he's got big issues. — Merrill Markoe

I was definitely honored to be chosen, but I just didn't feel ready to be pitching in big games yet. It was a tough decision. I talked to my wife and my mother. I'm not sure I'm ready to be pitching in front of 40,000 to 50,000 people. I don't think I'd be helping Team USA or the Indians if I hurried up (his training schedule) and got hurt. — CC Sabathia

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

At 40 years of age, I thought I knew everything. I got a reality check with this class. Kenny (Winston) has become like a big brother to me. We've learned to agree to disagree. I hope and pray that this program continues and we all keep in touch. I'm a st — Robert Hughes

Back in the '40's, Lyndon Johnson could still steal a Senate election in South Texas with the help of the big patrons. — Calvin Jillson

I would say a magical thing happened on when the big 40th birthday came. I felt like a light kind of just went off, and maybe that's because I felt like at 40 I had the right to say and be who I wanted to be, say what I wanted to say, and accept what I didn't want to accept. — Halle Berry

The big thing is it's a domestic drama. Everything else in science fiction tends to be high-concept. Really for the last 40 years or so I think sci-fi's been a little cold and a little inhuman quite often - certainly since the 1980s - and I really wanted to do something that almost felt like a regular, real-life drama but just set it in a sci-fi setting. I think the best stuff is always like that. — Mark Millar

deep-seated hatred between the cattlemen and the settler."40 This should come as no shock; the only surprise is that the big cattlemen would sometimes deny their attitude toward settlers. A settler who exercised his perfect right to 160 acres along a stream could significantly impair a big cowman's range; if several did so, the range would be lost altogether, as happened, for example, along Shell Creek in the Big Horn Basin. — John W. Davis

I don't have great thighs. I have very big breasts and a soft, fatty little tummy. And I've got back fat. People assume that I'm walking around in little spaghetti-strap dresses. It's insidious - Glam Jamie, the Perfect Jamie, the great figure, blah, blah, blah. And I don't want the unsuspecting 40-year-old women of the world to think that I've got it going on. It's such a fraud. And I'm the one perpetuating it. — Jamie Lee Curtis

I think 30 is a big jump from your 20s, but 40 holds no fear for me. — Rachel Hunter

Martha Stewart is now under house arrest. So she'll go to her $40 million 153-acre estate. So she's going from the big house to an even bigger house. — Jay Leno

My mother has a very big family in Shanghai, so I have, like, almost 40 cousins, so we stayed together all the time. So by the time I get to Hong Kong, I become the only child and the only one surrounded by adults, you know. — Wong Kar-Wai

Right now, with millions of Americans still out of work, and struggling to recover from the worst economic downturn since the great depression, with 40 million Americans dealing with student loans, with millions of people working full-time at minimum wage and still living in poverty, with the big banks getting bigger and the workers getting poorer, and seniors struggling to make ends meet, Republicans in Washington have decided the most important thing for them to focus on is how to deny women access to birth control. — Elizabeth Warren

I got the idea for Netflix after my company was acquired. I had a big late fee for Apollo 13. It was six weeks late and I owed the video store $40. I had misplaced the cassette. It was all my fault. — Reed Hastings

The only way to win tournaments is with the short game. Over half your shots out here are within 30 or 40 yards. Ballstriking is where I'm trying to improve, yes, but more to eliminate big numbers than make birdies. — Phil Mickelson

The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is 1 to a number with 40,000 noughts after it (1040,000) ... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence. — Fred Hoyle

When I started working on 'Battlestar Galactica' in Canada, I was told to get as fit as a marine for my character Lee 'Apollo' Adama. So I did. But now I have a problem with suits, because I'm 5 ft. 9 in. with a 40 inch chest and a 31 inch waist, so I'm rather too big for that very tailored British look, and they always have to be altered. — Jamie Bamber

I played in a band and attended Grambling University. I think the Mob style funk music I do was patterned after the big college bands. I was also influenced by groundbreaking efforts of Too Short. — E-40

Toward the end of my pregnancy, I felt really big - I gained about 40 pounds, which is a lot for my size. — Christina Aguilera

I'm not a fan of fillers at all. If you've gone 35 or 40 years without big lips, I don't think it's time to start plumping them up artificially. — Cindy Crawford

Let me tell you a story about when I was growing up in Spain. Many Sundays, we would invite 30, 40, 50 people to the countryside, and my father would make a big paella. He put me in charge of the fire and the 'stove' - the rocks that hold the pan. But he wouldn't let me cook. I got so unbelievably upset. — Jose Andres

It is easy to turn a scooter, but not a train with 40 bogeys. This is such a big country, changes are constant and widespread. — Narendra Modi

People have always challenged me. People told me I was going to get this big beer belly when I got done playing. But I work out six days a week, and when I turn 40, I'm going to still have that six pack. — Donald Driver

The zooming wealth of the top 1 percent is a problem, but it's not nearly as big a problem as the tens of millions of Americans who have dropped out of high school or college. It's not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock. It's not nearly as big a problem as the nation's stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent. — David Brooks

I've been on the planet for 40 years now, and I'm still none the wiser as to what it's all about really. I've never worried about life's big questions. People at my age sit about pondering about 'why are we here?' The only time I ever asked meself that is when Suzanne booked us a surprise holiday to Lanzarote. — Karl Pilkington

10 years ago [in 2006], nearly 90 percent of those albums sold enough in that year to reach Gold status. 10 years later, about 30 percent were eligible. With the new rules, we figure about 40 percent of the top 200 best-sellers for the year will be eligible. We were very cautious in our approach to changing how we calculate what is eligible because the integrity of the process is our foremost consideration. It's difficult to get certified sales awards, and it's a big deal and we didn't want there to be a huge change in how many would be eligible. — Cary Sherman

I feel lucky to be getting older. The fact that I made it to 30 and then 40 was big enough. So I can't get too down on getting older; otherwise, it kind of undoes everything I've fought for. — Sam Taylor-Wood

The biggest danger we face is overfishing. We literally could fish out our oceans, some scientists believe, in the next 40, 50, 60 years. We are fishing out the top of the food chain, and it's pretty crucial because about 200 million people depend on fish and fishing for their livelihood, and about a billion people, mostly in poorer countries, depend on fish for their protein. So this is a big problem. Good news is, it's fixable. — Ted Danson

Nutrition matters for everybody, but you can't major in it at Harvard. Most top scientists go into other fields. Most of the big studies were done 30 or 40 years ago, and most are seriously flawed. The food pyramid that told us to eat low fat and enormous amounts of grains was probably more a product of lobbying by Big Food than real science; its chief impact has been to aggravate our obesity epidemic. There's plenty more to learn: we know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition. It won't be easy, but it's not obviously impossible: exactly the kind of field that could yield secrets. — Peter Thiel

HOW TO TRIUMPH LIKE A GIRL I like the lady horses best, how they make it all look easy, like running 40 miles per hour is as fun as taking a nap, or grass. I like their lady horse swagger, after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up! But mainly, let's be honest, I like that they're ladies. As if this big dangerous animal is also a part of me, that somewhere inside the delicate skin of my body, there pumps an 8-pound female horse heart, giant with power, heavy with blood. Don't you want to believe it? Don't you want to lift my shirt and see the huge beating genius machine that thinks, no, it knows, it's going to come in first. — Ada Limon

If the same family were always on the bottom, then you'd have big resentments. But if DuPonts go down and Pampered Chef up, [that's good]. That much churn makes people think the system is fairer. Buffett: We don't like churn now, but we liked it more 30-40 years ago. — Charlie Munger

When Martha gets out she'll be under house arrest in her big $40 million mansion in Bedford. Boy, that'll teach her. She's only allowed out of the house for doctors visits, grocery shopping, or to dump more stock. — David Letterman

Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big - big money, big businesses selling weed - after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing? — Michel'le

3D is very exciting. I love it. I'm a complete convert. Everything for me, from now on, is 3D. I'm completely convinced it's the future of home entertainment, as well as cinema entertainment. I think it's a paradigm shift, in terms of cinema, and those things don't happen very often. The introduction of sound, the introduction of color photography and now 3D have been the big shifts. They happen once every 40 or 50 years, so it's very exciting to be a filmmaker, working while one of them is happening. — Paul W. S. Anderson

It's very important to not repeat yourself. After 'Delhi Belly,' I was offered 40 'Delhi Belly's and you can't do that! So 'Revolver Rani' is dark and gritty with action, 'Sooper Se Oopar' is a big commercial love story, 'Santa Banta' is a 'theth' Punjabi comedy, 'Golu Aur Pappu' is a kids' film and 'Amit Sahni Ki List' is an urban romcom. — Vir Das

A number of studies of homeless youth in big cities put forth a startling statistic: Depending on the study, somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of homeless youths identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. — Margot Adler