Rube Quotes & Sayings

We used to languish when we walked, or sidle down the street like dogs that have just done something wrong. Now Rube walks upright, because he's on the attack. — Markus Zusak

When we played the Dodgers in St. Louis, they had to come through our dugout, and our bat rack was right there where they had to walk. My bats kept disappearing, and I couldn't figure it out. Turns out, Pee Wee Reese was stealing my bats. I found that out later, after we got out of baseball. He and Rube Walker stole my bats. — Stan Musial

When I'm there, Rube's eyes fire into mine. Make sure you get up, they tell me, and I nod, then jump up. The jacket's off. My skin's warm. My wolfish hair sticks up as always, nice and thick. I'm ready now. I'm ready to keep standing up, no matter what, I'm ready to believe that I welcome the pain and that I want it so much that I will look for it. I will seek it out. I'll run to it and throw myself into it. I'll stand in front of it in blind terror and let it beat me down and down till my courage hangs off me in rags. Then it will dismantle me and stand me up naked, beat me some more and my slaughter-blood will fly from my mouth and the pain will drink it, feel it, steal it and conceal it in the pockets of its guts and it will taste me. It will just keep standing me up, and I won't let it know. I won't tell it that I feel it. I won't give it the satisfaction. No, the pain will have to kill me. — Markus Zusak

We trigger each other, it seems, some dysfunctional Rube Goldberg mousetrap, a laugh, then a slap, a razor gliding over a mirror, a glass filled, a glass emptied, a ball rolling down a length of pipe, a pipe filling up and overflowing with smoke. On our best days, we see each other for all that we are, and we find a way to make each other better. — Richard Thomas

The Statist has constructed a Rube Goldberg array of laws and policies that have institutionalized his objectives. His success breeds confidence in the limitlessness of his endeavors. — Mark Levin

And, uh, I did that, and there was nothing more ridiculous to me than finding the weight of the earth because I didn't care how much the earth weighed. — Rube Goldberg

It just happened that the public happened to, uh, appreciate the satirical quality of these crazy things. — Rube Goldberg

If when you hear a song by OK Go you conjure up thoughts of a gigantic Rube Goldberg device or treadmills or drones or perfectly executed dance routines, then you know that this is a band that is masterful at coming up with amazingly creative music videos. — Rachel Martin

Set flush in the wall behind the desk was a steel door. It was knobless, and along one edge were three brass keyholes spaced a few inches apart. Rube brought out a key ring, selected a key, then walked around the desk, inserted the key in the topmost lock, and turned it. From his watch pocket he took a single key, pushed it into the middle keyhole, and turned. The guard stood waiting beside him, and now the guard inserted a key in the bottom keyhole, turned it and pulled the door open with the key. Rube removed his two keys and gestured me in through the open door before him. He followed, and the door swung solidly shut behind us. I heard the multiple click of the locks engaging, and we were standing in a space hardly larger than a big closet, dimly lighted by an overhead bulb in a wire cage. Then I saw that we were at the top of a circular metal staircase. — Jack Finney

The automobile industry began a campaign to popularize the use of the word "jaywalking" (walking like a "jay," or rube), a term so derogatory that when it was used in 1915 by New York's police commissioner, The Times responded with an editorial criticizing the "truly shocking" and "highly opprobrious" slur. — Anonymous

I, I don't think anybody's continually happy, uh, except idiots, you know. You know, you have to have little moments of depression. — Rube Goldberg

When I did sports cartoons, I used to uh, go to fights. — Rube Goldberg

Obamacare is the wildly complex Rube Goldberg contraption it is because getting the legislation through Congress required so many political tradeoffs and so many unavoidable deals with so many vested interests. But that's no excuse. — Tina Brown

Uh, I just had an operation last March which was rather serious and I'm recuperating now. I'm on a very bland diet. But, uh, I'm lucky, I was just lucky, that's all. — Rube Goldberg

The vital aspect of the electoral college was that it got the Convention over the hurdle and protected everybody's interest. The future was left to cope with the problem of what to do with this Rube Goldberg mechanism... The Electoral College was neither an exercise in applied Platonism nor an experiment in indirect government based on elitist distrust of the masses. It was merely a jerry-rigged improvisation which has subsequently been endowed with a high theoretical content. — John Roche

Naturally, I'm conservative; I'm a Republican. I always was. — Rube Goldberg

And, uh, I've got about six thousand cartoons up there, also books and papers. — Rube Goldberg

Okay, let's cut the chatter. Open Mike Night's not 'til Tuesday.' Ruby's voice broke in. He must have had a van full of people to do that, as he normally let the comedians in the group rant away at will.
Sorry, Rube.' It was Danny, in the blue van.
Danny, you weren't even talking just now.'
I know.'
Then what are you apologizing for? — Vincent H. O'Neil

And during my college, at the end of the junior year I worked in a mine. — Rube Goldberg

In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that's why you're not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not. But immaculate virtue does not exist either, or if it exists it is detestable. — Primo Levi

It was a Rube Goldberg disease. A change in the sequence of a gene caused the change in the sequence of a protein; that warped its shape; that shrank a cell; that clogged a vein; that jammed the flow; that racked the body (that genes built). — Siddhartha Mukherjee

If you stand up for your rights you'll be criticized, put through the ringer, dragged into court, arrested, pepper sprayed, sucked into an overcomplicated, Rube Goldberg bureaucracy the mistakes of which become your mistakes and which will drive you insane with stress. Wouldn't you rather be providing service with a smile? — Carl-John X. Veraja

I didn't write because in the corps I took mining engineering of all things and, you know, they, they graduate a mining engineer as a sort of an illiterate. — Rube Goldberg

I thought for a moment about the dog. Miffy. I guess no matter how much Rube and I complained about him, we knew we'd sort of miss him if something happened to him. It's funny how there are things in this world that do nothing but annoy you, but you know you'd miss them when they're gone. Miffy, the Pomeranian wonderdog, was one such thing. — Markus Zusak

Windows 95 is what Rube Goldberg would have designed if he'd studied cartooning at M.I.T. — Russell Baker

Her first really great role, the one that cemented the "Jean Arthur character," was as the wisecracking big-city reporter who eventually melts for country rube Gary Cooper in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). It was the first of three terrific films for Capra: Jean played the down-to-earth daughter of an annoyingly wacky family in Capra's rendition of Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take It With You (1938), and she was another hard-boiled city gal won over by a starry-eyed yokel in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). "Jean Arthur is my favorite actress," said Capra, who had successfully worked with Stanwyck, Colbert and Hepburn. " ... push that neurotic girl ... in front of the camera ... and that whining mop would magically blossom into a warm, lovely, poised and confident actress." Capra obviously recognized that Jean was often frustrated in her career choice. — Eve Golden

How'd it feel?" Rube asked himself. "I don't know exactly, but it made me want to howl. — Markus Zusak

A Rube Goldberg machine is, in its essence, a trial-and-error thing. — Adam Sadowsky

There is only one reason people have children: they're programmed to. Whatever reasons they may have for it - selflessness, wanting to pass something on, having so much love to give - I don't believe they choose children any more than naked mole rats decide to start tunneling. Human beings are basically big complicated Rube Goldberg contraptions constructed by genes to copy themselves, and only as an unintended side effect build mosques, make screwball comedies, and launch interplanetary probes. — Meghan Daum

Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don't believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I am a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery. My name to them is like a spiral staircase, veal cutlets, barber's itch - terms that give you an immediate picture of what they mean. — Rube Goldberg

Yeah, yeah. I, I don't think I'm always right. But I don't think young people are always right, either. — Rube Goldberg

Big Rube was on my first album and some of my mixtapes. His words are so powerful. I want to speak every word he says into existence. I wanna be a part of that! I wanna be a part of greatness. His wordplay is great to me. — Nayvadius Cash

When (Rube) Waddell
had control and some sleep, he was unbeatable. — Branch Rickey

And I, uh, I wonder how anybody can think his personality changes with his success. I've had quite a bit of success but I feel that I'm just the same person as I always was. — Rube Goldberg

And uh, I'm glad that I still have my hands and my eyes to work with. — Rube Goldberg

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or where will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for war seem to know who did it or where to look for them.
This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed
for anyone, and certainly not for a baffled little creep like George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it off. — Hunter S. Thompson

america...is the interplay of three hundred million rube goldberg contraptions invented only yesterday — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Rube, this is me you're talking to, Clancy Crew, remember? Your best buddy? And I hate to break it to you this way but your grandmother on your mother's side, she isn't sick - she's dead! — Lauren Child

One good punch from Rube on me would send the sky into my head and the clouds into my lungs. I just always tried to stay up. — Markus Zusak

The Republican base is now made up of religious and neoconservative ideologues, and the uneducated white underclass with a token person of color or two up front on TV to obscure the all-white, all-reactionary, all-backward, 'there-is-no-global-warming' rube reality. Actual conservatives, let alone the educated classes, have long since fled. — Frank Schaeffer

I didn't have any real art training, but when I was about twelve nad thirteen, another boy and I went to a sign painter's house every Friday night and took lessons. — Rube Goldberg

You have a pet theory, one you have been turning over for years, that life itself is a kind of Rube Goldberg device, an extremely complicated machine designed to carry out the extremely simple task of constructing your soul. — Kevin Brockmeier

She stopped shrieking after a moment. It wasn't the crazy looks she drew from the other pedestrians that made her stop. And her damaged sanity hadn't managed to repair itself. She'd left something behind in that apartment. Something she'd always taken for granted. Faith in a rational world. It was like a tiny cog had been removed from her brain, and all the gears were still working, but a slight wobble was slowly and inevitably stripping the teeth until one day, without warning the Rube Goldberg device that was her mind would fall apart with a loud SPROING. — A. Lee Martinez

Dr. S didn't notice. "Do you remember the cartoons of Rube Goldberg? An inventor of the most ludicrous contraptions. You know: a lever is pulled, causing a boot to kick a dog, whose bark motivates a hamster to run on a wheel which winds a pulley that raises a gate that releases a bowling ball and so on? Until, at the end, finally, the machine does something incredibly mundane, like making a piece of toast. Yes? Well, as it turns out, that's the world. All these incredibly complex, inscrutably intertwined Rube Goldberg machines that can only be seen in retrospect when something happens. — Adam Felber

Thieves always count their change! — Jason P. Goodman

I say, 'Don't lose your heart, Rube.'
And very clearly, without moving, my brother answers me.
He says, 'I'm not tryin' to lose it, Cam. I'm tryin' to find it. — Markus Zusak

Do not worry. Try to appear jolly and unconcerned. I have smiled often with the bases full with two strikes and three balls on the batter. This seems to unnerve. — Rube Foster

This deluded little rube who really thought the future would be any better. If you just worked hard enough. If you just learned enough. Ran fast enough. Everything would turn out right, and your life would amount to something. — Chuck Palahniuk

Theater owners dodged construction costs, cutting corners and employing nonunion labor. Shoddy methods caused the death of vaudeville comedian Rube Dickinson in Kansas City. Booked at a brand-new venue, Dickinson stepped outside to have a smoke and was standing underneath the large wooden marquee advertising him when it collapsed. As the marquee caved, so too did his head - killed under the weight of his own name. — Kliph Nesteroff

He was a rube, but he was no tourist. — Colson Whitehead

Be your own dentist! — Rube Goldberg

Professor Butts walks in his sleep, strolls through a cactus field in his bare feet, and screams out an idea for a self-operating napkin. — Rube Goldberg

It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls-as little as one may like to admit it, human experience tends, in a good many ways, to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one's sense of humor begins to reassert itself. — Stephen King