Whopping Quotes & Sayings

Heights plummeted because of a little disaster called civilization. "Heights go way down when we go into state society," says Bogin. "When Egypt conquered the Nile area, the height of peasants fell dramatically. They moved from having access to a wide variety of foods to growing what the Egyptian state demanded. Their bones show lots of deficiencies in minerals and iron." The same stunting happened repeatedly throughout history. As late as the 1800s, male Cheyenne Indians, who hunted bison and collected berries, averaged a whopping 5'10", towering above even today's Americans, not to mention General Custer's cavalry, which averaged 5'7", and the period's wealthy European monarchies. — Arianne Cohen

You know how most people think that eggs are great sources of protein? Well, you only get about six grams from an egg, and about half of that is in the yolk and the other half is in the white. If instead you opt for a cup of lentils, you get a whopping eighteen grams of protein, plus all that fiber that makes you feel full and cleans out your body! — Kathy Freston

A whopping 89 percent of buyers start their home search online. How your house looks online is the modern equivalent of 'curb appeal.' Rent a wide-angle lens and good lighting, get rid of your clutter and post at least eight great photos to win the beauty contest. — Barbara Corcoran

Animal agriculture takes up an incredible 70% of all agricultural land, and a whopping 30% of the land surface of the planet. As a result, farmed animals are probably the biggest cause of slashing and burning the world's forests. — Kathy Freston

Pennsylvania one year paid out $90,000 in bounties for the killing of 130,000 owls and hawks to save the state's farmers a slightly less than whopping $1,875 in estimated livestock losses. (It is not very often, after all, that an owl carries off a cow.) — Bill Bryson

I'm a whopping 5 foot 4 inches tall. I'm not going to get any taller. — Kevin Hart

In 2008, the Swedish telecom company Ericsson found itself under investigation by the U.S. State Department for selling telecom equipment to the regimes of Iran, Sudan, and Syria, all considered state sponsors of terrorism. In 2011, Ericsson was named in a State Department report proposing to include telecom restrictions as part of its new sanctions against terrorist regimes. That year, Ericsson sponsored a speech by Bill Clinton and paid him a whopping $750,000, around three times Clinton's fee at the time. Ericsson had never previously sponsored a Clinton speech. Ericsson's timing could not have been more fortuitous, since later that year the State Department unveiled its new sanctions list for Iran. Telecom sanctions were not on it. Douglas — Dinesh D'Souza

Listen, ah don't wanna speak ill of the dead but have ah told you that mah mother was a great whopping whale of a cunt? Well she was precisely that - a great whopping whale of a hog's cunt with a dirty maggot for a brain. — Nick Cave

You want to know what happened, right? No, you don't. Just no. Big whopping no. A plate full of no with a side of no. I — Jake Bible

The Revelation was my master's project, and after I finished it, I thought I'd send it off to a publisher and within a year or so be a rich and famous writer. Two years later I finally sold it. For a whopping $4,000. A year after that, it finally came out. Which explains why there are all those terrible jobs on my resume! — Bentley Little

Sarah turned her narrow-eyed gaze on him, making me glad once more that Antimony's comic books got it wrong, and telepaths can't actually kill you with their brains. Give you a whopping headache and earworm you with annoying jingles, yes; kill you, no. (Although sometimes, when she's managed to stick "The Happy Banana Song" in my head for a week, I sort of wish she could kill people with her brain. It would be kinder.) — Seanan McGuire

I love the French language ... it's a delightful language, especially to curse with. It's like whopping your ass with silk. — Oscar Wilde

Anyhow, isn't it a bit wrong to think happiness is all smooth and serene. Isn't it mostly a great energetic struggle - you against the universe - a great whopping opponent, with the referee in its pocket? — Margaret Mahy

A twenty-three-year-long study in Ohio determined that people who saw growing older as something positive lived a whopping seven and a half years longer than those who didn't. (356) — Victoria Moran

One 2 x 4 beam can support 607 pounds, but two 2 x 4s nailed together can support not just 1,214 pounds (which is what you'd expect), but a whopping 4,878 pounds! So it is with us. We can do so much more together than we can alone. — Sean Covey

There has always been something less than wholesome about New Labour. But Blair for a long time had an easy ride. There was the whopping majority. There was the relief that the Tories were finally gone. There was the grand hyperbole. — Martin Jacques

As with scientists, American university professors were more atheistic or agnostic than the general populace (23 percent versus 7 percent nonbelievers, respectively). But when professors from different areas were polled, it became clear that scientists were the least religious. While only 6 percent of "health" professors were atheists or agnostics, this figure was 29 percent for humanities, 33 percent for computer science and engineering, 39 percent for social sciences, and a whopping 52 percent for physical and biological scientists together. When disciplines were divided more finely, biologists and psychologists tied as the least religious: 61 percent of each group were agnostics or atheists. — Jerry A. Coyne

When Time magazine conducted a poll in Europe in March [2003] asking which of three - North Korea, Iraq, or the United States - was the biggest threat to world peace, a whopping 86.9% answered the United States. — Immanuel Wallerstein

Who on earth is going to use 'utilize' in a text message, a whopping seven characters including the always-hard-to-type 'z,' when you can say the exact same thing in three characters? I can't think of a sentence in which 'use' can't replace 'utilize.' — Susan Orlean

This morning, prompted by increasing concerns about terrorism, oil prices reached a record high as the cost of a barrel of crude is a whopping $44.34. Wow, it seems shocking that a product of finite supply gets more expensive the more we use it. Now the terror alert means higher oil prices, which oddly enough means higher profits for oil companies giving them more money to give to politicians whose policies may favor the oil companies such as raising the terror alert level. As Simba once told us: "It's the circle of life." — Jon Stewart

Avocados have a creamy texture, making them a healthier replacement for ingredients like butter and mayo in recipes, though they do contain a surprisingly large amount of fat - a whopping 30 grams per medium-sized avocado. — Marcus Samuelsson

Keep the change, Gin," McCallister said in a smarmy, mocking voice. "Consider it an early Christmas present."
"Aw," I drawled. "A whopping thirteen cents. You're too kind, Jonah. Why, you'd put Ebezener Scrooge to shame with your bighearted generosity. — Jennifer Estep

In market research I did at Microsoft Corp. in the early 1990s, I estimated that the 'Wall Street Journal' took in about 75 cents per copy from subscribers, $1.25 at the newsstand and a whopping $5 per copy from ads. The ad revenue let them run a far bigger newsroom than subscribers were paying for. — Nathan Myhrvold

You encountered a misery near the end of the day and it took a while to gauge its full extent. Some miseries had sharp curvature and could be negotiated readily. Others had almost no curvature and you knew you'd be spending hours turning the corner. Great whopping-big planet-sized miseries. — Jonathan Franzen

Fine, Storm is on your team."

Alec whistled and Storm shot over to his side, which surprised Aideen.

"He can run?" she asked, her eyes wide with surprise.

I rolled my eyes.

"No fraternising with the enemy. You steer clear of the humans with tits and vaginas. You got that, buddy?"

Storm barked in response to Alec as if he was answering the question with a whopping yes.

I grunted, "Traitor. — L.A. Casey

Figure 36. A "trick" can be played on Nature by slowing down the light that takes shorter paths: glass of just the right thickness is inserted so that all the paths will take exactly the same time. This causes all of the arrows to point in the same direction, and to produce a whopping final arrow-lots of light! Such a piece of glass made to greatly increase the probability of light getting from a source to a single point is called a focusing lens. — Richard Feynman

Chicago in the twenties may have been corrupt, but it was not really as violent as reputation has it. With an annual rate of 13.3 murders per every 100,000 people, it was indubitably more homicidal than New York, with 6.1, Los Angeles, with 4.7, or Boston, with just 3.9 - but it was less dangerous than Detroit, at 16.8, or almost any city in the South. New Orleans had a murder rate of 25.9 per 100,000, while Little Rock had a rate of 37.9, Miami 40, Atlanta 43.4, and Charlotte 55.5. Memphis was miles ahead of all other cities, with a truly whopping rate of 69.3. The average in America today, you may be surprised and comforted to hear, is 6 murders per 100,000 people. — Bill Bryson

look at the last column, which totals up all the summer gains from first grade to fifth grade. The reading scores of the poor kids go up by .26 points. When it comes to reading skills, poor kids learn nothing when school is not in session. The reading scores of the rich kids, by contrast, go up by a whopping 52.49 points. Virtually — Malcolm Gladwell

Who among us is not at a loss for words? Tears pour out. Tears of joy. Tears of relief. A stunning, whopping landslide of hope in a time of deep despair. In a nation that was founded on genocide and then built on the backs of slaves, it was an unexpected moment, shocking in its simplicity: Barack Obama, a good man, a black man, said he would bring change to Washington, and the majority of the country liked that idea. — Michael Moore

About 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but a whopping 17.8 million pounds are fed to livestock. — Jonathan Safran Foer

This was Susan's second round at boot camp. The only thing that kept her coming back was that it helped her shed what everyone called the 'Dubai stone', a whopping 14 pounds. She had gained it since moving to the most glamorous place on earth, with lots of temptation and not too much work. After she and her husband had moved to Dubai, she had decided to take a break from the psychiatric nursing she'd been doing for 13 years. — Anne Louise O'Connell

78 percent never have a single relapse. Less than 15 percent have one relapse but not a second. And those with more than one relapse? A whopping 7 percent. — Debra Jay

I still have a whopping bad case of what you call scag magnetism. I thought i had gotten rid of it there, but it looks like scary guys still materialize from thin air in my presence. They are drawn to me. I am the North Pole, and they are the explorers of love. — Maureen Johnson

Imagine considering every moment as a potential time of communion with God. By the time your life is over, you will have spent six months at stoplights, eight months opening junk mail, a year and a half looking for lost stuff (double that number in my case), and a whopping five years standing in various lines.7Why don't you give these moments to God? By giving God your whispering thoughts, the common becomes uncommon. Simple phrases such as "Thank you, Father," "Be sovereign in this hour, O Lord," "You are my resting place, Jesus" can turn a commute into a pilgrimage. You needn't leave your office or kneel in your kitchen. Just pray where you are. Let the kitchen become a cathedral or the classroom a chapel. Give God your whispering thoughts. — Max Lucado

In 2000, just before the first dot-com bubble burst, it cost a whopping $5 million to launch a tech startup. — Peter Diamandis

A prominent mention in The Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago garnered me a whopping 40 visitors. — Steve Rubel