Free 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said by Ross Petras Page B

to survive, recover, and win and that our way of life, including free enterprise, the oil industry, and Socony Mobil Oil Company, can survive, recover, and win with it.
    Maxwell S. McKnight, security adviser to Mobil, speaking in 1963
On Modern Art, Hitler’s Sensitivity to:
    Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and pastures blue ought to be sterilized.
    Adolf Hitler, painter of stiff, inhuman cityscapes and sponsor of the Aryan art movement which lost popularity after April 1945
On Modernity:
    Let’s bring it up to date with some snappy nineteenth-century dialogue.
    movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn
On Money:
    In the prosecution of the present war, every man ought to be ready to give his last guinea to protect the remainder.
    Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Parnell, in the Irish House of Commons, 1795, during a debate on the leather tax
On Money, Earning:
    The directors’ fees have been hardly earned.
    the chairman of a brewery trying (and failing) to defend his board of directors and a poor balance sheet
On Money, Finding a Million Dollars in the street:
    I’d find the fellow who lost it, and if he was poor, I’d return it.
    Yogi Berra, answering Casey Stengel’s question, “What would you do if you found a million dollars?”
On Money, Value of:
    I’ll fight him for nothing if the price is right.
    Marlon Starling, WBA welterweight, talking about fighting the titlest Lloyd Honeyghan
On Motherhood, Sanctity of:
    That’s what [golf] really needs—some striking female to take over and become the next superstar. It would have been Nancy Lopez, but Nancy turned to motherhood and so has her body.
    Frank Chirkinian, producer for CBS Sports
On Mouth-Watering Names for Soft Drinks:
    Bite the wax tadpole.
    Coca-Cola name as originally translated into Chinese. It was changed to mean “May the mouth rejoice.”
On Movie Stars:
    He [Steve McQueen] must have made that before he died.
    Yogi Berra about a Steve McQueen film
On Movies with Sound, Bad Predictions About:
    Novelty is always welcome, but talking pictures are just a fad.
    Irving Thalberg, MGM prodution head in the late 1920s
On Music:
    Among the interrelated matters of a time and place, Muzak is a thing that fits in.
    chairman of the board of scientific advisers of Muzak, as quoted in Edwin Newman’s
Strictly Speaking
On Music:
    Muzak promotes the sharing of meaning because it massifles symbolism in which not few, but all, can participate.
    chairman of the board of scientific advisers of Muzak, as quoted in Edwin Newman’s
Strictly Speaking
On Music:
    [The U. S. Navy urgently] needs modern musicians.
    Michael Dukakis, 1988 Democratic presidential candidate, during a campaign speech. He meant munitions.
SPECIAL SECTION:
Samuel Goldwyn
    Samuel Goldwyn probably would have preferred to be remembered only as one of the founders of the Hollywood film industry. But Goldwyn’s mangled syntax has entered our language and culture, and along with
The Best Years of Our Lives
, for which he won an Oscar, Sam Goldwyn is remembered for such convolutions as his immortal:
    Any man who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
    Goldwyn was born in Poland but came to the United States early in his life, in time to help found the Hollywood film industry. Along with Jesse Lasky and Cecil B. De Mille, he organized the Jesse Lasky film company in 1916. Later he struck off on his own with the Goldwyn Production Company,which was then merged with Louis B. Mayer’s company to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, probably the most powerful Hollywood studio. Describing his own career, Goldwyn supposedly said:
    I was always an independent, even when I had partners.
    And so he went on to produce independently such classics as
Wuthering Heights
and
Guys and Dolls
.
    Along the way, he became famous for his “Goldwynisms,” which delighted the Hollywood community and, as with anything else in Hollywood that becomes successful, spawned hundreds of imitations. The question with a Goldwynism,