Mumbo Quotes & Sayings

And of course the reason the Enlightenment has taught us to trash our own history, to say that Christianity is part of the problem, is that it has had a rival eschatology to promote. It couldn't allow Christianity to claim that world history turned its great corner when Jesus of Nazareth died and rose again, because it wanted to claim that world history turned its great corner in Europe in the eighteenth century. "All that went before," it says, "is superstition and mumbo-jumbo. We have now seen the great light, and our modern science, technology, philosophy, and politics have ushered in the new order of the ages." That — N. T. Wright

The author brings to the table a healthy skepticism of the conventional wisdom, an admirable ability to separate fact from fancy, and an undisguised repugnance for the mumbo-jumbo that's the curse of so much commentary on anything to do with economics or investment. A World of Wealth is not only a lively read, but an exceptionally enlightening and rewarding one to boot. — Alan Abelson

The bailiff tucked the jurors into their windowless room where they could surf for porn on their PDAs, and the judge turned to me. "Mr. Lassiter, Ah assume you got some legal mumbo jumbo for the record." His Honor came from a family of gentleman farmers in Homestead by way of Kentucky, and his voice rippled with bourbon and branch water. — Paul Levine

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Mumbo ... Jumbo ... will ... hoo-doo ... you. — Vachel Lindsay

It is an absurd and silly notion that international credit must be limited to the quantity of gold dug up out of the ground. Was there ever such mumbo-jumbo among sensible and reasonable men? — Liaquat Ahamed

Why do we say razzle-dazzle instead of dazzle-razzle? Why super-duper, helter-skelter, harum-scarum, hocus-pocus, willy-nilly, hully-gully, roly-poly, holy moly, herky-jerky, walkie-talkie, namby-pamby, mumbo-jumbo, loosey-goosey, wing-ding, wham-bam, hobnob, razza-matazz, and rub-a-dub-dub? I thought you'd never ask. Consonants differ in "obstruency" - the degree to which they impede the flow of air, ranging from merely making it resonate, to forcing it noisily past an obstruction, to stopping it up altogether. The word beginning with the less obstruent consonant always comes before the word beginning with the more obstruent consonant. Why ask why? — Steven Pinker

There's a snobbery at work in architecture. The subject is too often treated as a fine art, delicately wrapped in mumbo-jumbo. In reality, it's an all-embracing discipline taking in science, art, maths, engineering, climate, nature, politics, economics. — Norman Foster

There's a reason why one master teacher said, "Love your enemies." He wasn't preaching some touchy-feely mumbo jumbo. He was talking about a cosmic law. He knew there was only One of us here. That means that anything you withhold from another you're withholding from yourself. But it also means that anything you give to another, you're giving to yourself. — Derek Rydall

Education, the great mumbo jumbo and fraud of the age purports to equip us to live and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything from juvenile delinquency to premature senility. — Malcolm Muggeridge

Amie frowned. 'That's what I can't figure out. I mean everyone wants their happy ending, right? No one cares about reading actual literature anymore anyway. All they want is vampires and supernatural mumbo-jumbo. It's sick, really. — Jennifer Silverwood

Men praise poverty, as the African worships Mumbo Jumbo
from terror of the malign power, and a desire to propitiate at. — Alexander Smith

I'm awfully sorry for people who are taken in by all of today's dietary mumbo jumbo. They are not getting any enjoyment out of their food. — Julia Child

It's not that I literally believe in magic or spirits. In my logical life I absolutely don't believe in any kind of mumbo jumbo. But I do have this belief in the greater magic of the universe. — Aoife O'Donovan

Where our knowledge of beauty harmonizes with the ludus naturae, sorcery begins.
No, not spoon-bending or horoscopy, not the Golden Dawn or make-believe shamanism, astral projection or the Satanic Mass
if it's mumbo jumbo you want go for the real stuff, banking, politics, social science
not that weak blavatskian crap. — Hakim Bey

I'm a priest, not a priestess. Priestess implies mumbo jumbo and all sorts of pagan goings-on. Those who oppose us would love to call us priestesses. They can call us all the names in the world
it's better than being invisible. — Carter Heyward

Whoever makes big records is a winner to me. Not the person with the mumbo jumbo, or the biggest diss record, or whatever the case may be. In the end of the day, whoever is most successful, whoever puts out a big record, wins the battle. — Fat Joe

MAMBO SUN"

"Beneath the bebop moon
I want to croon with you
Beneath the Mambo Sun
I got to be the one with you

My life's a shadowless horse
If I can't get across to you
In the alligator rain
My heart's all pain for you

Girl you're good
And I've got wild knees for you
On a mountain range
I'm Dr. Strange for you

Upon a savage lake
Make no mistake I love you
I got a powder-keg leg
And my wig's all pooped for you

With my hat in my hand
I'm a hungry man for you
I got stars in my beard
And I feel real weird for you

Beneath the bebop moon
I'm howling like a loon for you
Beneath the mumbo sun
I've got to be the one for you — Marc Bolan

I know what pheromones are! But that's
mumbo jumbo. You're just horny, I'm just
horny. It's not science. — Lauren Dane

It's cloaked in cultural mumbo jumbo, but I assure you that it is very hard science. — Jonathan Maberry

Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along. — Robert A. Heinlein

... both spiritual teachers and preachers fall into the trap of using imprecise, emotional mumbo jumbo - if you can't define it or explain it, then it's mumbo jumbo - to connect with an audience. The audience reads into it what they want, and it makes for good theater. — Gudjon Bergmann

Capital investment in fixed assets that produce real goods is the actual driver of long term economic growth, and until slick financiers hijacked the country with 'new economy' mumbo-jumbo based on computer models and hype most Americans understood this. — Richard Karn

Are you certain they aren't?"
Rose looked for a delicate way to put it.
"Doing the horizontal mumbo?"
Tyler laughed at the look the other two women gave her.
This was her mother, after all. "Mother spent too many years with a man who treated her like crap. She was lonely even when she wasn't alone. If Doctor Yum-Yum could coax her into bed, I'd say more power to her and way to go, Mom! — Mary J. Williams

Theta clearing is about as practical and simple as repairing a shoe lace. It is nothing to do with hypnotism, voodooism, charalatanism, monkeyism or theosophy. Done, the thetan can do anything a stage magician can do in the way of moving objects around. But this isn't attained by holding one's breath or thinking right thoughts or voting Republican or any other superstitous or mystic practice. So for the reason I brought up, rule out, auditor, any mumbo jumbo or mysticism, spiritualism, or religion. — L. Ron Hubbard

Most nightmares are caged in their realm by implausibilities. The sleeper slogs through quicksand in a fun house of frightening nonsense and disjointed mumbo jumbo. But everything's all better once the bedside lamp is back on, because reality, even when it's bad, is easily distinguished from night terror. Except for the trying-to-scream dream. That one's pretty much spot-on. — Jamie Mason

I'd have found it amusing enough, I dare say, if I hadn't been irritated by the thought that these irresponsible Christian zealots were only making things harder for the Army and Company, who had important work to do. It was all so foolish and unnecessary - the heathen creeds, for all their nonsensical mumbo-jumbo, were as good as any for keeping the rabble in order, and what else is religion for? In — George MacDonald Fraser

Neo-Hoodoo is the 8 basic dances of 19th century New Orleans' Place Congo- the Calinda the Bamboula the Chacta the Babouille the Conjaille the Juba the Congo and the VooDoo- modernized into the Philly Dog, the Hully Gully, the Funky Chicken, the Popcorn, the Boogaloo and the dance of great American choreographer Buddy Bradley. — Ishmael Reed

I'm a huge fan of meditation. I know lots of people assume meditation to be some Buddhist mumbo-jumbo, but it's been scientifically documented to create therapeutic changes in the brain. — Karen Salmansohn

Jesse Jackson and Al Not-So-Sharpton would be lisping their ebonic mumbo-jumbo that the policy and the president are racist and bigoted. — Ted Nugent

So far, I've never missed a deadline for a term paper, a review, a manuscript. I perform the mumbo-jumbo of voting with belief in my heart, I've not yet won even a jaywalking ticket, and unlike my father, whom I fault in this respect, I refrain from opting out of jury duty; instead, they mostly kick me out. — William T. Vollmann

I thought it was foolish mumbo jumbo when I was alive - then I woke up dead. — C.V. Hunt

Global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to the realm of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. — David Deming

Old friend, there are people - young and old - that I like, and people that I do not like. The former are always in short supply. I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it's revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from scripture by and old one. We are all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can't see it all that way bore hell out of me. — John D. MacDonald

Being a monk was the strangest and most perverted way of life imaginable. Monks spent half their lives putting themselves through pain and discomfort that they could easily avoid, and the other half muttering meaningless mumbo jumbo in empty churches at all hours of the day and night. They deliberately shunned anything good - girls, sports, feasting and family life. — Ken Follett

One of the monks was doing something incomprehensible at the altar, and the others would occasionally chant a few phrases of mumbo jumbo. — Ken Follett

You take the lead. He'll open up more easily to a copper than a mumbo jumbo man — Val McDermid

Today the people from my State of Tennessee would listen to this debate, or even talk about a reference to God on our money or in the Halls of Congress or in our Pledge and say, please, let common sense and logic win the day and prevail versus legal mumbo jumbo. — Zach Wamp

What do people get from all that devil mumbo-jumbo anyway?" "A sense of purpose, I guess." "They could volunteer at an animal shelter instead." "Yes, sir. But then they wouldn't get to have group sex while wearing goat horns or kill people for fun. — Dean Koontz

I've definitely seen that Texas is certainly a right-wing area politically. I think if you talk to the average Texan, some people may still think that alternative energy is some sort of hippie mumbo-jumbo, you know. I think there's still a strong movement to continue to drill and continue to find these other sources of oil within the country. — Jesse Metcalfe

We found that the most exciting environments, that treated people very well, are also tough as nails. There is no bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo ... excellent companies provide two things simultaneously: tough environments and very supportive environments. — Tom Peters

Do you have protection?"
"Sure do." Durbin flipped up his jacket to reveal the M9 in his shoulder holster. "You people can keep your superstitious mumbo-jumbo. I have all the protection I need. — Laura Oliva

Did you know that Jacques Benveniste, one of the world's leading homeopathic "scientists," now claims that you can *email* homeopathic remedies? Yeah, see, what you do is you can take the "memory" of the diluted substance out of the water electromagnetically, put it on your computer, email it, and play it back on a sound card into new water. I mean, that could work, right?
(Nick's thoughts after reading Francis Wheen's book "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World") — Nick Hornby

If you say someone is good, at something, what is your benchmark? Who are you comparing them with? When evaluating capability, or success, in anything, don't listen to mumbo-jumbo rubbish. — Strive Masiyiwa