Quotes & Sayings About Light Bulbs

For a long time, for years, I have carried in my mind the excruciating image of plants, bulbs, in a cellar, trying to grow without light, putting out white shoots that will inevitably wither. — May Sarton

Still, he should be forgiven what we all want: forgetting within the fuck. Love is a nervous habit. Haven't many said so? Snacking. Smoking. Talking. Joking. Alike as light bulbs. Drinking. Drugging. Frigging. Fucking. — William H Gass

She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs. — J.D. Salinger

I drive a hybrid, and we've changed our light bulbs and windows and installed solar panels and geothermal ground source heat pumps and most everything else. — Al Gore

It's energy intensification, where we essentially have, through our light bulbs and cars, the manpower of [hundreds of] people working on our behalf, helping our food being created, helping our materials like steel and plastic and wood and paper be created. Our lifestyles are incredibly energy intense. — Bill Gates

Just take me home where the mood is mellow
And the roses are grown
M&M's are yellow
And the light bulbs around my mirror don't flicker
Everybody gets a nice autograph picture
One for you and one for your sister
Who had to work tonight but is an avid listener
Every song's a favorite song
And mics don't feed back. — Lupe Fiasco

If Edison was worried about his candle customers, he would have never invented the light bulb. — Nathan Fielder

Our work on light bulbs wasn't an arbitrary mandate. We didn't just pick a standard out of the air, or look for a catchy sounding standard like 25 by 2025 not based in science or feasibility. Instead, we worked with both industry and environmental groups to come up with a standard that made sense and was doable. — Fred Upton

Light bulbs. Electricity. It seems likely that ours will be the last generation to ever gaze, wide-eyed, at something truly novel. That our kind will be the last to ever stare in disbelief at a man-made thing that could not possibly exist. We made wonders, boys. I only wonder how many of them are left to make. — Graham Moore

The more of those little light bulbs that can turn on the better. Eventually you'll have enough to light up a movie screen. — A.D. Posey

After the German occupation of Holland in May 1940, the last two dark years of the war I spent hiding indoors from the Nazis, eating tulip bulbs to fill the stomach and reading Kramers' book "Quantum Theorie des Elektrons und der Strahlung" by the light of a storm lamp. — Nicolaas Bloembergen

Babies have millions of brain cells. They are like light bulbs waiting to be turned on. Don't wait for them to go to school and hope for the best. — Tony Buzan

fluorescent bulbs were the result of a multimillion-dollar program specially engineered to offer the most hopeless light possible. — Marcus Sakey

We live technologically, with man as the master of nature, man as the engineer, and let anyone who raises his voice against it stop using bridges not built by nature ... No electric light bulbs, no engines, no atomic energy, no calculating machines, no anaesthetics-back to the jungle. — Max Frisch

Excerpted From Chapter 18
The most famous sign in the world was only a few hundred yards above me, and the sight of it stopped me in my tracks. The light bulbs surrounding the letters must have been controlled by a timer of some kind because they were off now. But what shocked me was the scale. I was used to seeing the sign from a distance. From this perspective there was no sense of the word HOLLYWOODLAND. All I saw were gigantic letters looming dimly above me in the moonlight like ancient monoliths erected in tribute to the gods of some long-extinct tribe.
A primal feeling of foreboding prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. I could imagine the traveler of an earlier age coming across Stonehenge in the dark and experiencing a similar sensation. — H.P. Oliver

Many creative minds, just like many light bulbs, lit up simultaneously, could lead to brainstorming and breakthrough innovation. — Pearl Zhu

All of us can make changes, but the changes that are most needed are not light bulbs and windows but laws and policies and treaties. So, yes, we are in a phase of this (climate protection) struggle where civic and political action is at the top of the list. — Al Gore

I'm pretty much your average, energy-saving-light-bulbs-recycling citizen. — James Van Der Beek

He spent more time on the road to Damascus than a Syrian camel driver. And we thought nobody could fill John Kerry's flip-flops! ... [Romney's record was] "anything but conservative until he changed all the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for President." — Mike Huckabee

Sometimes it's more important to change politicians than light bulbs. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

What a relief. I didn't have to check the toilet for anything or the light bulbs or the phone. It was just good old-fashioned friendship. — Julia Roberts

Sometimes I feel like tap-dancing, screeching, unscrewing light bulbs, pulling curtains, combing hair, doing knee bends, handstands and turning somersaults out there. — Ilie Nastase

I hope that energy-efficient LED light bulbs will help reduce energy use and lower the cost of lighting worldwide. — Shuji Nakamura

In those years when their mother disappeared into herself, and old Mrs Jeffrey next door turned into Frannie, their honorary grandmother, Alice also taught herself how to change light bulbs, fix running toilets and cook chops and veggies while Elisabeth learned how to demand refunds, pay bills, fill in forms and talk to strangers. — Liane Moriarty

To the one in the skies, this city must look like a scintillating pattern of speckled glows in all directions, like a firecracker going off amid thick darkness. Right now the urban pattern glowing here is in hues of orange, ginger, and ochre. It is a configuration of sparkles, each dot a light lit by someone awake at this hour. From where the Celestial Gaze is situated, from that high above, all these sporadically lit bulbs must seem in perfect harmony, constantly flickering, as if coding a cryptic message to God. — Elif Shafak

I always loved bulbs, and I use light a lot in my shows. In my office in Paris, I have 300 bulbs. — Alexandre De Betak

Carlyle had come fluttering to the flame, lured by the false invitation Dominic had sent in Eloise's name and lured, too, by Eloise's conclusion that J.E.D.D. Mason was something not unlike a miracle. How confident the cousin was that in this golden age of peace and ever watching trackers, a virgin with a bag of gold could walk across this earth without danger. Our modern moths have bounced so many times off light bulbs they aren't prepared for torches and forget that wings can burn. — Ada Palmer

I like your Jesus ... there's no doubt he was a great sadhu, most likely trained in India, but you know, he was wrong about God. God is not a judgemental giant sitting up in heaven, it's a force within us all - we are light bulbs in the electrical system of the universe. — Sarah Macdonald

Often when I'm on TV, they'll ask what are the three most important things for people to do. I know they want me to say that people should change their light bulbs. I say the number one thing is to organize politically; number two, do some political organizing; number three, get together with your neighbors and organize; and then if you have energy left over from all of that, change the light bulb. — Bill McKibben

They were shiny, shiny people that were bright like light bulbs, but there I stood out like a sore thumb, my dimness flickering self, and they saw it and removed themselves from me, forming their circle of light. Until the night died, they never noticed when the sun broke open its skull of rays, where I laid by the stop sign. — Anthony Liccione

All schools have their skeletons. St Oswald's is no exception. Most of the time, we try our best to keep them in the closet. But this time, the only recourse we have is to throw open all the closets, light as many bulbs as we can and catch the vermin as it comes out. — Joanne Harris

The train passed through a series of tunnels. Because the overhead light fixtures had no bulbs in them, some people lit candles inside the tunnels, which dramatically illuminated their black, liquid eyes. There was a solemn, almost devotional cynicism to these eyes, reflecting, as though by a genetic process, all of the horrors witnessed by generation upon generation of forebears. — Robert D. Kaplan

Even though it's important for all of us to change our light bulbs and the vehicles we drive, it's much more important to change our laws and policies. I drive a hybrid and we've changed our light bulbs and windows and installed solar panels and geothermal ground source heat pumps and most everything else. But putting the burden on individuals to solve this global crisis is ultimately not going to be the most effective way to solve it. — Al Gore

What more shall I say: born under light bulbs, deliberately stopped growing at age of three, given drum, sang glass to pieces, smelled vanilla, coughed in churches, observed ants, decided to grow, buried drum, emigrated to the West, lost the East, learned stonecutter's trade, worked as model, started drumming again, visited concrete, made money, kept finger, gave finger away, fled laughing, rode up escalator, arrested, convicted, sent to mental hospital, soon to be acquitted, celebrating this day my thirtieth birthday and still afraid of the Black Witch. Chapter 46, pg. 587 — Gunter Grass

I might not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I'm pretty good at getting most of the other bulbs to light up. — Jack Welch

Dreams in your life are like light bulbs that brighten your room. But having them on the ceiling is just not enough; you got to make an effort by pressing on the switch and there it goes taking away the darkness! — Israelmore Ayivor

As Desmond Tutu told me on a recent trip to Cape Town, We are only the light bulbs, Richard, and our job is just to remain screwed in! — Richard Rohr

Of the 200 light bulbs that didn't work, every failure told me something that I was able to incorporate into the next attempt. — Thomas A. Edison

Light bulbs up the ass, no big deal!" you say. "On a good night I can fit a Butterball and two sweet potatoes up my bum!"
Aye
But here's the rub:
How did these bulbs come to shine so brightly? They weren't plugged into an electrical socket ...
An hour before her performance, Ida lay spread-eagle on the ground, and she had a helping hand (and how) slowly, carefully, millimeter by millimeter
INSERT A BATTERY PACK INTO HER UPPER INTESTINE. — James St. James

Thinking! Thinking! The process should no longer be merely this feeble flurry of hailstones that raises a little dust. It should be something quite different. Thinking should be a terrifying process. When the earth thinks, whole towns crumble to the ground and thousands of people die.
Thinking: raising boulders, hollowing out valleys, preparing tidal waves at sea. Thinking like a town: that's to say: eight million inhabitants, twelve million rats, nine million pints of carbon dioxide, two billion tons. Grey light. Cathedral of light. Din. Sudden flashes. Low-lying blanket of black cloud. Flat roofs. Fire alarms. Elevators. Streets. Eighteen thousand miles of streets. 145 million electric light bulbs. — Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

It was the feeling she'd had when Sam had first kissed her in the pub. When he'd first put his lips against her. She didn't know if she'd imagined it or if it had just been the effects of the booze, but it had felt as if a thousand flash bulbs were going off in her brain. As if someone had turned on a very bright, very intense light. And she;d sure as hell never wanted to switch it off. — Alexandra Potter

When I was 16, at night I went to my high school and chucked rocks at the billboard sign and broke the light bulbs. That was fun. — Christopher Mintz-Plasse

The neighborhood homeowners always knew when she ran by, because they suddenly felt the desire to organize their sock drawers and finally replace those burned out light-bulbs they'd been meaning to. — Sarah Addison Allen

My latest works are these things with light bulbs. — Jim Hodges

One of the first things electric I ever saw was a guitar. I was living in a house with no electricity until, at 7, we moved to a house that had it. It had electric lights, but the previous owners had even taken the light bulbs with them when they moved. — George Benson

I wish I could pull shorts off. My wife tells me that I just can't. But that's okay. I'm tall, I can do other things, like change light bulbs. — Adam Driver

In the old days, Christmas lights had come in short strings that were wired serially. If a single bulb burned out or even just loosened in its socket, the circuit was broken and the entire string went dark. One of the season's rituals for Gary and Chip had been to tighten each little brass-footed bulb in a darkened string and then, if this didn't work, to replace each bulb in turn until the dead culprit was found. (What joy the boys had taken in the resurrection of a string!) By the time Denise was old enough to help with the lights, the technology had advanced. The wiring was parallel, and the bulbs had snap-in plastic bases. A single faulty light didn't affect the rest of the community but identified itself instantly for instant replacement ... — Jonathan Franzen

Well, what did we buy? Instead of a leaner, smarter government, we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which light bulbs to buy, and which will put 16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing President Obama's health care bill. — Michele Bachmann

There was a rumor - a joke? Hard to tell at the DAR - that the fluorescent bulbs were the result of a multimillion-dollar program specially engineered to offer the most hopeless light possible. Cooper didn't know about that, but they did make everyone look two weeks dead. — Marcus Sakey

And what do you do in the face of this powerlessness? As a parent?"

"You get to be obsessed and angry," Tom said. "And they get to be the age they are, and act like teenagers if they want to. There is a zero-percent chance you will change them. So we breathe in, and out, talk to friends, as needed. We show up, wear clean underwear, say hello to strangers. We plant bulbs, and pick up litter, knowing there will be more in twenty minutes. We pray that we might cooperate with any flicker of light we can find in the world. — Anne Lamott

Now, if you're Al Gore, you can afford $10 a pop for squiggly-pig-tailed fluorescent light bulbs. But if you're mainstream America, two or three kids, mom and dad working outside the home, that's not a very good deal. — Joe Barton

Everything in Russia is made of cement - phone booths, fence posts and light bulbs. — Ian Frazier

Now see the nasturtiums. The leaves are like tiny green parasols blown inside-out and the flowers are terrifically garish. In every village we pass through, see how they are everywhere, how they fill every gap in every wall, every crack in every path.
The nasturtiums have it figured out, how survival's just a matter of filling in the gaps between sun up and sun down. Boiling kettles, peeling potatoes, laundering towels, buying milk, changing light-bulbs, rooting wet mats of pubic hair out of the shower's plughole. This is the way people survive, by filling one hole at a time for the flightiest of temporary gratifications, over and over and over, until the season's out and they die off anyway, wither back into the wall or path, into their dark crevasse. This is the way life's eaten away, expended by the onerous effort of living itself. — Sara Baume

One action society needs to take is to use energy much more efficiently. Instead of incandescent light bulbs, you could switch to LEDs that consume a lot less electricity, for example. — Mario J. Molina

Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one. — Terry Pratchett

I come from Montana, and in eastern Montana we have a lot of dirt between light bulbs. It is expensive trying to bring the new technologies to smaller schools to upgrade their technologies to take advantage of distance learning. — Conrad Burns

I dislike this whole business of experimentation on animals, unless there's some very good and altogether exceptional reason to this very case. The thing that gets me is that it's not possible for the animals to understand why they are being called upon to suffer. They don't suffer for their own good or benefit at all, and I often wonder how far it's for anyone's. They're given no choice, and there is no central authority responsible for deciding whether what's done is morally justifiable. These experiment animals are just sentient objects; they're useful because they are able to react; sometimes precisely because they're able to feel fear and pain. And they're used as if they were electric light bulbs or boots. What it comes to is that whereas there used to be human and animal slaves, now there are just animal slaves. They have no legal rights or choices in the matter. — Richard Adams

The cashier had long since left for home. By now she was probably bustling by an unmade bed that was waiting in her small room like a boat to carry her off to the black lagoons of sleep, into the complicated world of dreams. The person sitting in the box office was only a wraith, an illusory phantom looking with tired, heavily made-up eyes at the empyiness of light, fluttering her lashes thoughtlessly to disperse the golden dust of drowsiness scattered by the elctric bulbs. — Bruno Schulz

The newer education put stress on culture ... Saturday mornings, the young were brushed and washed, forced into blue cheviot suits, and dragged to children's concerts to learn appreciation. They wriggled, squirmed, counted the light bulbs in the ceiling, dived under seats to gather ticket stubs, stampeded out at intermissions. The weakness of their bladders was astounding. — Zelda Popkin

'Eclipse' is a concept piece, and its concept centers on 36 large light bulbs strung from above in a geometrical pattern and at different heights, some of them at times down below the dancers' chest level. — Robert Gottlieb

It's the color scheme of that first afternoon - that white panorama full of potential, that threshold white - that Marina understands as whomise. And that's what she's trying to recreate now, a year and a bit later, with a series of expensive light bulbs. 'White light,' the packaging promised. She fits them one by one throughout the house, and unbeknown to her, choreographs the slow dance of light-over-puddle in the passageway. — Laia Jufresa

You can drive an SUV, but there's a balance. If you do that, maybe use energy-efficient light bulbs at home or just be conscious of switching off lights. If you can afford to drive an SUV, maybe you can afford to make a donation to a wind farm or plant some trees. It's all about balance. — Orlando Bloom

Change your leaders, not your light bulbs. — Thomas Friedman

We've already seen the federal government stretch their regulatory tentacles into our homes and determine what kind of light bulbs we have to use. — Marsha Blackburn

It's a slow process, but it is scary, because if someone can control your energy sources, they can control you. We are already being told what light bulbs we can and cannot use ... through legislation. We are being forced to fund research into alternative energies sources that are inefficient, and that cause the price of food, energy, and everything else to rise ... through legislation ... rather than allow free enterprise to allocate funds to those energy sources that will survive through good old American innovation! — Mike Thompson

There were pools of light among the stacks, directly beneath the bulbs which Philip had switched on, but it was now with an unexpected fearfulness that he saw how the books stretched away into the darkness. They seemed to expand as soon as they reached the shadows, creating some dark world where there was no beginning and no end, no story, no meaning. And if you crossed the threshold into that world, you would be surrounded by words; you would crush them beneath your feet, you would knock against them with your head and arms, but if you tried to grasp them they would melt away. Philip did not dare turn his back upon these books. Not yet. It was almost, he thought, as if they had been speaking to each other while he slept. — Peter Ackroyd

In spite of the string of magazine covers announcing the contrary, we all know that ten simple things will not save the earth. There are, rather, three thousand impossible things that all of us must do, and changing our light bulbs, while necessary, is the barest beginning. We are being called upon to act against a prevailing culture, to undermine our own entrenched tendency to accumulate and to consume, and to refuse to define our individuality by our presumed ability to do whatever we want. — Lyanda Lynn Haupt

I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty, more and more revelation in my work in order to give it back to the people where it goes into their lives and nourishes them and changes their direction and makes light bulbs go off in their head and makes them feel. And it isn't vague, it strikes against the very nerves of their life and in order to do that you have to strike against the very nerves of your own. — Joni Mitchell

Most never received messages from solid-state entities, evil or otherwise (although talking to the furniture, overhead light bulbs, lava lamps, and computer screens is commonly reported, these "entities" do not usually answer back) and never experienced paranoid episodes lasting for more ... — Karl Jansen

A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. Cars drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around ... Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind ... And of course, the usual mess - apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody's handkerchief, somebody's penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow. — Arkady Strugatsky

I'm the breadwinner. I kill the spiders. Actually I don't kill them. I put them in a plastic bag and take them outside. I take out the trash cans. I change the light bulbs. I lug the 50 lbs. suitcases down the stairs. — Teri Hatcher

As important as it is to change the light bulbs, its more important to change the laws — Al Gore

By evening, when the winds rose yet again, the power began to stutter at half-strength, and the sirens to fail. From those streetlights whose bulbs hadn't been stoned, a tea-colored dusk settled in uncertain tides. It fell on the dirty militias of pack dogs, all bullying and foaming against one another, and on the abandoned cars, and everything - everything - was flattened, equalized in the gloom of half-light. Like the subjects in a browning photograph in some antique photo album, only these times weren't antique. They were now. — Gregory Maguire

What more can I say: born beneath light bulbs, interrupted my growth at the age of three, was given a drum, sangshattered glass, smelled vanilla, coughed in churches, stuffed Luzie with food, watched ants as they crawled, decided to grow, buried the drum, moved to the West, lost what was East, learned to carve stone and posed as a model, went back to my drum and inspected concrete, made money and cared for the finger, gave the finger away and fled as I laughed, ascended, arrested, convicted, confined, now soon to be freed, and today is my birthday, I'm thirty years old, and still as afraid of the Black Cook as ever - Amen. — Gunter Grass