The Wisdom of Hal

Some quotes from Hal, the father on Malcolm in the Middle:

(on phone) Yes, Mr. Jackson, there is a perfectly good reason why I did not come in to work today. Because, I decided that eight hours of joyless, mind-numbing crap just did not sound like much fun. (Pause.) Well, I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree.

You know those nature shows where a wasp paralyzes a caterpillar, then injects it full of larvae? It stays alive for weeks, completely aware, feeling every little bite as the larvae devour it from the inside. I sat in a cubicle every day envying that caterpillar, ’cause at least he got to be on TV.

Communities seek out a common enemy. If it wasn’t us, they’d all team up against someone else. Probably a minority.

Dewey, go easy on the orange juice. That stuff doesn’t grow on trees – wait, it does. So why is it so damn expensive?

If you try anything, anything, at all, I will be on you like a rainbow on an oil slick.

These are sleeping pills, Dewey. I simply told the doctor I’ve been up the past few nights, things aren’t going well with the wife, afraid I’m going to lose the house… Now don’t you worry, son. Those are just lies I told to get prescription drugs.

One man’s garbage is another man’s anniversary present.

And finally, one I just saw from Lois:

Fate is what you call it when you don’t know the name of the person screwing you over.

Just some thoughts to help you get through the day.

The Venerable Mr. Twain

I haven’t felt much like writing blog posts these past couple of days, so I’ve used a couple of stratagems in order to continue piling up the posts. One of them is to copy and paste quotes from other people. Well, I’ve been going over various quotes on the Mark Twain Quotation Page in the last couple of days and thought it might be time to share a few of Uncle Mark’s maxims. Here goes:

In re politicians:

Territorial Governors–are nothing but politicians who go out to the outskirts of countries and suffer the privations there in order to build up stakes and come back as United States Senators.
- Mark Twain’s Autobiography

No matter how healthy a man’s morals may be when he enters the White House, he comes out again with a pot-marked soul.
- quoted in My Father Mark Twain, Clara Clemens

History has tried hard to teach us that we can’t have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn’t be wise.
- New York Herald, 8/26/1876

In re politics:

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain

An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere.
- A Tramp Abroad

I’d like to personally have cards printed with the following on them and pass them out on street corners:

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained.
- Notebook, 1898

Facts:

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
- quoted by Rudyard Kipling in From Sea to Shining Sea

I never saw an author who was aware that there is any dimensional difference between a fact and a surmise.
- quoted in My Father Mark Twain, Clara Clemens

I think I’ll finish up with this one is for my wife, who works in the industry:

A railroad is like a lie–you have to keep building to it to make it stand. – Letter to the San Francisco Alta California, printed May 26, 1867

Update:  And cats:

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
- Notebook, 1894

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
- Pudd’nhead Wilson

A home without a cat–and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat–may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
- Pudd’nhead Wilson