Minchin Quotes & Sayings

Tim Minchin's musings on Tony, the first 'fish' ever to have feet:
Imagine what Tony would think, standing there on his brand new feet on the brink of the beginnings of mankind as we know it ... if he could look forward just a few short ... hundreds of millions of years ... to see one of his descendants ... an Israeli Jew by the name of Jesus, having a nail hammered through his feet ... the very feet that Tony provided him with, as a punishment for having a, sort of, schizophrenic discourse with a God who was created by Mankind to explain the existence of feet in the absence of the knowledge of the existence of Tony. — Tim Minchin

Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be NOT magic.. — Tim Minchin

To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are. — Tim Minchin

If anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single spiritual person who has been able to show either empirically or logically the existence of a higher power with any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for their moral choices or that there is any reason other than fear to believe in any version of an afterlife, I will give you my piano, one of my legs and my wife. — Tim Minchin

The day they discover yoga mats are carcinogenic will be the happiest day of my life. — Tim Minchin

If I had a religion, its deity would be Audysseus, the sound God, and He would be a vengeful god, dishing out eternal damnation to people with cheap stage monitors. — Tim Minchin

I do remain optimistic that one day the world will realise that carbon dioxide is more of a friend than an enemy to the earth's flora and fauna, and I do seriously believe that, given the extraordinary complexity of the natural forces controlling our climate, which have done so for millions of years, the only sensible policy response to the natural process of climate change is prudent and cost-effective adaptation. — Nick Minchin

Define yourself by what you love — Tim Minchin

Isn't this enough? Just this world? Just this beautiful, complex wonderfully unfathomable world? How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to diminish it with the invention of cheap, man-made myths and monsters? — Tim Minchin

Science adjusts its views based on what's observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved. — Tim Minchin

Don't Seek Happiness - Happiness is like an orgasm: if you think about it too much, it goes away. Keep busy and aim to make someone else happy, and you might find you get some as a side effect. We didn't evolve to be constantly content. Contented Australopithecus Afarensis got eaten before passing on their genes. — Tim Minchin

A famous bon mot asserts that opinions are like arse-holes, in that everyone has one. There is great wisdom in this ... but I would add that opinions differ significantly from arse-holes, in that yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined.
We must think critically, and not just about the ideas of others. Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the verandah and beat them with a cricket bat ... Be intellectually rigorous. Identify your biases, your prejudices, your privilege. — Tim Minchin

I don't go in for ancient wisdom
I don't believe just 'cos ideas are tenacious it means they're worthy — Tim Minchin

It's the fine balance of caffeine and alcohol that bookends my days — Tim Minchin

I am no nihilist. I am not even a cynic. I am, actually, rather romantic. And here's my idea of romance: You will soon be dead. Life will sometimes seem long and tough and, god, it's tiring. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad. And then you'll be
old. And then you'll be dead. — Tim Minchin

I have said consistently in my 16-and-a-half years in the parliament, I have always supported the party room's decision and the party room is the ultimate authority on these matters. I don't expect that to change. — Nick Minchin

A genius is a mentally ill person with an audience — Tim Minchin

If the question is do people (in the Liberal Party) believe that human beings are the main cause of the planet warming, then I'd say a majority don't accept that position — Nick Minchin

Burning a book is like burning a bra. After the adrenalin rush of the symbolic moment wears off, all you're left with is a pile of ashes and unsupported boobs. — Tim Minchin

It's an incredibly exciting thing, this one meaningless life of yours — Tim Minchin

I must say that when I first learned of the existence of the Australian Greenhouse Office, I assumed it was responsible for supplying tomatoes to the Parliament House kitchen. But, no, as I soon learnt as industry minister, it was in fact a government funded redoubt of veritable soldiers in a war against carbon dioxide. The zealotry and obsessive passion of these warriors in the battle against the apparent evils of carbon dioxide remains a curiosity to me. After fighting these people for three years as industry minister, I really did wish they would just go away and grow tomatoes. — Nick Minchin

Oh,Sara. It is like a story." "It is a story ... everything is a story. You are a story-I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Love without evidence is stalking. — Tim Minchin

The very fact that she never made an impudent answer seemed to Miss Minchin a kind of impudence in itself. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Only a ginger, can call another ginger Ginger. — Tim Minchin

The more you know, the harder you will find it to make up your mind, it doesn't really matter if you find it. You can't see which grass is greener, chances are it's neither and either way it's easier to see the difference when you're sitting on the fence. — Tim Minchin

We have tendency to define ourselves in opposition to stuff. But try to also express your passion for things you love. Be demonstrative and generous in your praise of those you admire. Send thank-you cards and give standing ovations. Be pro-stuff, not just anti-stuff. — Tim Minchin

As Tim Minchin put it in his song "If I Didn't Have You": Your love is one in a million; You couldn't buy it at any price. But of the 9.999 hundred thousand other loves, Statistically, some of them would be equally nice. — Randall Munroe

Difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books - great, big, fat ones - French and German as well as English - history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Who's the world going to revolve around now? — Tim Minchin

I am flattered that Bob Carter should ask me to launch what I think is a significant new book on climate change. I have developed a very high regard for Bob in the years that I have known him. He has been a terrific and leading voice in combatting the scare mongering that we have all been subjected to on the theory of anthropogenic global warming. — Nick Minchin

I don't know what it is about "magic happens"-stickers on cars but every time I see one I wanna get out my permanent marker and sneak over and write underneath it "so does cot death". — Tim Minchin

The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books
great, big, fat ones
French and German as well as English
history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things. Drag her away from her books when she reads too much. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? - Medicine. — Tim Minchin

Respect people with less power then you. I don't care if you're the most powerful cat in the room, I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful. So there. — Tim Minchin

It is absolutely outrageous that a spin doctor for Labor's NBN Co is being paid $450,000 per annum by Australian taxpayers to promote a company that generates no revenue, has no customers and provides no services to anybody — Nick Minchin

Making the documentary was an extraordinary experience and it really hit home to me the quasi-religious nature of this anthropogenic global warming cause. These people really have found religion. — Nick Minchin

It presents a really compelling case against the whole theory of anthropogenic global warming. From my point of view, it is a theory that has completely corrupted public policy making in most of the developed world. It confronts all the dubious claims that the warmists have put out there. — Nick Minchin

There are children in Africa, starving to death, and you don't hear them whinging. — Tim Minchin

[O]nce you reject evidence as a source of knowledge, you don't gotta believe nothin' you don't like. — Tim Minchin

Breastfeeding is the natural human way of providing exactly that continuous stimulation to the child's developing microbiome and immune system. Partial breastfeeding continued through the first year would ensure a greater likelihood of tolerance, ending the pointless but confusing wrangle over four versus six months as the better age for introduction to other foods. Strong medical advocacy in support of the WHO goal might just be enough to generate the societal re-structuring that would be needed for such breastfeeding to become possible for more than advantaged minorities. — Maureen Minchin

I spend so much time hating (my body) but it never says a bad word about me — Tim Minchin

Understanding that you can't truly take credit for your successes, nor truly blame others for their failures will humble you and make you more compassionate.
Empathy is intuitive, but is also something you can work on, intellectually. — Tim Minchin

Please don't make the mistake of thinking the arts and sciences are at odds with one another. That is a recent, stupid, and damaging idea. You don't have to be unscientific to make beautiful art, to write beautiful things.
If you need proof: Twain, Adams, Vonnegut, McEwen, Sagan, Shakespeare, Dickens. For a start.
You don't need to be superstitious to be a poet. You don't need to hate GM technology to care about the beauty of the planet. You don't have to claim a soul to promote compassion.
Science is not a body of knowledge nor a system of belief; it is just a term which describes humankind's incremental acquisition of understanding through observation. Science is awesome. — Tim Minchin

As we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony [Abbott] and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world. — Nick Minchin

When people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to say a word - just to look at them and THINK. Miss Minchin turns pale with rage when I do it, Miss Amelia looks frightened, and so do the girls. When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in - that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies. I scarcely ever do. Perhaps Emily is more like me — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can break hearts. — Tim Minchin