Selected response quotes

1. Calumnies are answered best with silence.

2. This is not a reaction against a negative world. It's a response to a negative world.

3. If your house is burning, wouldn't you try and put out the fire?

4. When the dog is repeatedly teased with the sight of objects inducing salivary secretion from a distance, the reaction of the salivary glands grows weaker and weaker and finally drops to zero.

5. There live a great man named Joe who was belittled by a loudmouth foe. While his rival would taunt and tease Joe silently bore the stings. And then fought like gladiator in the ring.

6. I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

7. There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters?

8. Today we have done what we had to do. If necessary, we shall do it again. It gives me no pleasure to say that, and I wish it were otherwise... When our citizens are abused or attacked anywhere in the world on the direct orders of a hostile regime, we will respond so long as I'm in this Oval Office...Despite our repeated warnings, Qadhafi continued his reckless policy of intimidation, his relentless pursuit of terror. He counted on America to be passive. He counted wrong.

9. Religion...is a man's total reaction upon life.

10. The music reached us. Clumsily, stumbling over our own roots, rustling our leaves in answer, we moved, we followed.

11. The Terrorists brought us to our knees, but not in the way they intended to. They brought us to our knees and united us all in prayer.

12. She looked at him sadly. 'Whatever it was,' she said, 'I suffered a great deal.' He answered philosophically: 'Existence is thus!'

13. Ed: Rip up the streets? HST: With jackhammers. Ed: With jackhammers?

14. When people attack me, I attack back.

15. She pays him in his own coin.

16. The politician has a right to defend his dignity. I ignored the first wave of invectives, but the second one was too much, I couldn't have handled it and I had said in hard (but for the street - where I was - soft) words that he should go.

17. I haven't been wounded, but I can still feel that hit. I will not tolerate such behaviour.

18. Is 'I hope you all die a painful death' too strong?

19. I am yours. If you feed me garbage, I will sing a song of garbage. This is a hymn.

20. [Hegemony or Survival describes] a world in which, chronology be damned, 9/11 seems like an understandable response, if not justifiable one, to our attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. --Carlin Romano, September 23, 2006 [236]

21. How kind of them. I wish, and they deliver.

22. One time I was in the men's room of the bar and there was a guy at the urinal. He was kind of drunk, and said to me in a mean-sounding voice, 'I don't like your face. I think I'll push it in.' I was scared green. I replied in an equally mean voice, 'Get out of my way, or I'll pee right through ya!'

23. Although I may not be a lion, I am a lion's cub, and inherit many of his qualities; and as long as the King of France treats me gently he will find me as gentle and tractable as he can desire; but if he be rough, I shall take the trouble to be just as troublesome and offensive to him as I can.

24. I believe that by judging EPA's actions-not just our promise to do what's right, but our work in sampling and cleaning up whatever should be cleaned up-the community will recognize that we are worthy of their trust. [Correction: This quote should be attributed to Michael G. Brown of the U.S. EPA. He made the statement about EPA's on-going efforts to test for and clean up chemicals of potential concern from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, should those chemicals be present at levels exceeding the Agency's risk threshholds.]

25. I didn't have a problem with the evacuations in Mississippi or Alabama. They were doing it. Jeb Bush had already ordered evacuations through the Keys as Katrina was making its way through that area. My mistake was in recognizing that, for whatever reason that we might want to discuss later, but for whatever reason, Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco were reticent to order a mandatory evacuation. And if I, Mike Brown, as an individual could have done something to convince them that this was the big one, and they needed to order a mandatory evacuation, I would have done it... My biggest mistake was not recognising by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional.

26. [Not] bloody likely, and I haven't got two million pounds!

27. With Hillary at her side, Suha Arafat made the deliberately false allegation that 'Our [Palestinian] people have been submitted to the daily and intensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children.' Mrs. Arafat also accused Israel of contaminating much of the water sources used by Palestinians with 'chemical materials' and poisoning Palestinian women and children with toxic gases. Instead of reacting with outrage, Hillary Clinton sat by silently - and gave her a hug and a kiss when she finished speaking. Later, many hours after the event, and only after a media furor put her on the spot for what many view as a bit more than a mere political 'faux pas', Mrs. Clinton called on 'all sides' to refrain from 'inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations' - including Israel, whose leaders made no such accusations. Glossing over this remarkably repugnant affair, Mrs. Clinton has yet to specifically contradict and denounce the monstrous lies uttered by Yasser Arafat's wife in her presence.

28. Errr I didn't see it.

29. I'm working on that.

30. Jack Benny: I'm thinking it over.

31. What do you ever add to the fucking preceedings? You've got one answer for everything, 'Pussy, Man'.

32. The protection he relied on for nearly thirty years was based on just two things. The same two things anybody uses to protect against any danger. The same way a nation protects itself against an enemy missile, the same way an apartment dweller protects himself against a burglar, the same way a boxer guards against a knockout blow. Detection and response. Stage one, stage two. First you spot the threat coming in, and then you react to it.

33. Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

34. Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.

35. How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.

36. I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.