Scorn (23 page)

 

Business and Economics

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
George Orwell

Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language we have jargons; instead of principles, slogans; and instead of genuine ideas, bright suggestions.
Eric Bentley

People of the same trade seldom meet together but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some diversion to raise prices.
Adam Smith,
The Wealth of Nations

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
John Kenneth Galbraith

An economist is someone who can't see something working in practice without asking whether it would work in theory.
Walter Wolfgang Heller, advisor to President Kennedy

An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.
Alfred A. Knopf

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
Laurence J. Peter

Economists have predicted nine out of the last five recessions.
Paul Samuelson

Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.
Lyndon B. Johnson

Economic forecasters were invented to make weather forecasters look good.
Irwin Stelzer

Why did nobody notice it?
Queen Elizabeth II to LSE Professor Luis Garicano asking how economists missed the global crash of 2008

Making predictions is difficult, especially about the future.
Sam Goldwyn

Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.
Sometimes attributed to Karl Marx

A fool and his money get a lot of publicity.
Al Bernstein

If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you only have to look at those to whom He gives it.
Maurice Baring

There is plenty of affordable housing. It is simply occupied by the wrong people. The problem in New York is not high rents but low income.
John Gilbert III, President, New York Landlords' Association

It is a social experience for most people. They want to meet the people in the queue.
David Mills, Chief Executive of the Post Office, defending Post Office queues, 2004

Overseas aid is a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
Peter Bauer

A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it.
Bob Hope

Never take financial advice from anyone in a tie.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.
John Kenneth Galbraith,
Annals of an Abiding Liberal

In any successful enterprise there must be an uneven number of directors and three is too many.
Giovanni Agnelli, founder of Fiat

It's easy to become a millionaire – start out as a billionaire, then buy an airline.
Richard Branson

The worst imaginable world would be one in which the leading expert in each field had total control over it.
Friedrich Hayek

Finding a businessman interested in the arts is like finding chicken shit in the chicken salad.
Alice Neel

Studying the science of yesteryear one comes upon such interesting notions as gravity, electricity, and the roundness of the earth – while an examination of more recent phenomena
shows a strong trend towards spray cheese, stretch denim and the Moog synthesizer.
Fran Lebowitz

I am going into space in a vehicle comprising three million parts – each supplied by the lowest bidder.
Anonymous American astronaut

 

Sport

When it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury.
Fran Lebowitz

I told him, ‘Son, what is it with you? Is it ignorance or apathy?' He said ‘Coach, I don't know and I don't care.'
Frank Layden

I wanted to have a career in sports when I was young, but I had to give it up. I'm only six feet tall, so I couldn't play basketball. I'm only 190 pounds, so I couldn't play football. And I have 20-20 vision, so I couldn't be a referee.
Jay Leno

It is remarkable that a fist-gnawingly dire England performance still has the power to shock, when in some ways this one had all the exquisite unpredictability of Norman
Wisdom approaching a banana skin in the immediate vicinity of a swimming pool … The England shirt is the precise opposite of a superhero costume, turning men with extraordinary abilities into mild-mannered guys next door.
Marina Hyde on the England football team

You can't see as well as these fucking flowers – and they're fucking plastic.
John McEnroe to a line judge at the US Open, 1980

A man whose chief ambition is to show his bravery in hunting foxes. A term of reproach used of country gentlemen.
Dr Johnson's dictionary entry for ‘Foxhunting'

They came to see me bat, not to see you bowl.
W.G. Grace, refusing to leave the crease after being bowled first ball. Attrib.

Which of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?
Vic Richardson, the Australian cricket team's vice-captain, after Douglas Jardine complained that one of the team had called him a ‘Pommy bastard' on the field

Don't bother shutting it, son, you won't be out there long enough.
Fred Trueman, to a new Australian batsman as he closed the gate leaving the Pavilion at Lords

A corpse with pads on.
Ian Wooldridge on Australian cricket captain Bill Lawry

The only fellow I've met who fell in love with himself at a young age and has remained faithful ever since.
Dennis Lillee on Geoff Boycott

You have done for Australian cricket what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen.
Telegram sent to Geoff Boycott

ROD MARSH: So how's your wife and my kids?
IAN BOTHAM: The wife's fine – the kids are retarded.
Exchange between Australian wicketkeeper Rod Marsh and England all-rounder Ian Botham

MARK WAUGH: Fuck me, look who it is. Mate, what are you doing out here? There's no way you're good enough to play for England.
JAMES ORMOND: Maybe not, but at least I'm the best player in my family.
Exchange between Australian cricketer Mark Waugh, whose brother Steve was also in the team, and England newbie James Ormond

Sure, I know where the press room is – I just look for where they throw the dog meat.
Martina Navratilova

Would you like me to bowl a piano and see if you can play that?
Mervyn Hughes to Graham Gooch

If you turn the bat over you'll get the instructions, mate.
Merv Hughes to Robin Smith

WARNE: I've been waiting two years for another chance at you.
CULLINAN: Looks like you spent it eating.
Exchange between Daryll Cullinan and Shane Warne as the former came out to bat.

The only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as players (more if they are moderately restless).
Bill Bryson on cricket

An ineffectual attempt to put an elusive ball into an obscure hole with implements ill-adapted to the purpose.
Woodrow Wilson on golf

Cricket – a game which the English, not being a spiritual people, have invented in order to give themselves some conception of eternity.
Lord Mancroft

This is great. When does it start?
Groucho Marx, watching a cricket match at Lord's

Oh God, if there be cricket in heaven, let there also be rain.
Alec Douglas Home

If defensive linemen's IQs were 5 points lower, they'd be geraniums.
Russ Francis on American football

Football is a game for trained apes.
Edward Abbey on American football

I looked in the mirror one day and I said to my wife ‘How many great coaches do you think there are?' She said ‘One less than you think.'
Joe Paterno

Whoever said, ‘It's not whether you win or lose that counts', probably lost.
Martina Navratilova

Most football players are temperamental. That's 90 per cent temper and 10 per cent mental.
Doug Plank on American football

American football makes Rugby look like a Tupperware party.
Sue Lawley

I'd run over my own mother to win the Super Bowl.
Joe Jacoby

To win, I'd run over Joe's mom, too.
Matt Millen

We can't run. We can't pass. We can't stop the run. We can't stop the pass. We can't kick. Other than that, we're just not a very good football team right now.
Bruce Coslet

Baseball is like a church. Many attend, few understand.
Leo Durocher

I never question the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes.
Leo Durocher

I have discovered in 20 years of moving around a ball park that the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats.
Bill Veeck

There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder what happens.
Tommy Lasorda

We don't need referees in basketball, but it gives the white guys something to do.
Charles Barkley

I am often mentioned in the same sentence as Michael Jordan. You know, ‘That Scott Hastings, he's no Michael Jordan.'
Scott Hastings

In my prime I could have handled Michael Jordan. Of course, he would be only 12 years old.
Jerry Sloan

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Emo Philips

Never fight ugly people – they have nothing to lose.
Wayne Kelly

Prize fighters can sometimes read and write when they start – but they can't when they finish.
Martin H. Fischer

Boxing is just show business with blood.
Frank Bruno

Me and Jake LaMotta grew up in the same neighbourhood. You wanna know how popular Jake was? When he played hide and seek, nobody ever looked for LaMotta.
Rocky Graziano

I'll beat him so bad he'll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.
Muhammad Ali

I've seen George Foreman shadow boxing, and the shadow won.
Muhammad Ali

Sure there's been injuries and deaths in boxing, but none of them serious.
Alan Minter

Lie down so I can recognise you.
Willie Pep

Anglers think they are divining some primeval natural force by outwitting a fish, a creature that never even got out of the evolutionary starting gate.
Rich Hall

It has always been my conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming.
John Steinbeck

Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.
Dave Barry

There he stands, draped in more equipment than a telephone lineman, trying to outwit an organism with a brain no bigger than a breadcrumb, and getting licked in the process.
Paul O'Neil on fishermen

I used to like fishing because I thought it had some larger significance. Now I like fishing because it's the only thing I can think of that probably doesn't.
John Gierach

I'm the best. I just haven't played yet.
Muhammad Ali on golf

Golf combines two favourite American pastimes: taking long walks and hitting things with a stick.
P.J. O'Rourke

Man blames fate for other accidents but feels personally responsible for a hole in one.
Martha Beckman

Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
Dave Barry

Golf is the only sport where a white man can dress like a black pimp and get away with it.
Robin Williams

The only decent people I ever saw at the racecourse were horses.
James Joyce

If you remove the gambling, where is the fun in watching a load of horses being whipped by midgets?
Ian O'Doherty

A major rugby tour by the British Isles to New Zealand is a cross between a medieval crusade and a prep-school outing.
John Hopkins

We've lost seven of our last eight matches. Only team that we've beaten was Western Samoa. Good job we didn't play the whole of Samoa.
Gareth Davies

I'd like to thank the press from the heart of my bottom.
Nick Easter

Rugby football is a game I can't claim absolutely to understand in all its niceties, if you know what I mean. I can follow the broad, general principles, of course. I mean to say, I know that the main scheme is to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line at the other end and that, in order to squelch this programme, each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in 14 days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench.
P.G. Wodehouse

Rugby is a good occasion for keeping 30 bullies far from the centre of the city.
Oscar Wilde

In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Football is a simple game; twenty-two men chase a ball for ninety minutes and at the end, the Germans win.
Gary Lineker

I wouldn't say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one.
Brian Clough

They say Rome wasn't built in a day, but I wasn't on that particular job.
Brian Clough

We talk about it for twenty minutes and then we decide I was right.
Brian Clough

Beckham? His wife can't sing and his barber can't cut hair.
Brian Clough

Ah yes, Frank Sinatra. He met me once, you know?
Brian Clough

When I go, God's going to have to give up his favourite chair.
Brian Clough

It's a huge honour to wear number seven at Liverpool. I think about the legends: Dalglish, Keegan, and that Australian guy.
Luis Suárez

A virgin.
Peter Crouch, when asked what he would be if he weren't a footballer

I hope I don't come across as bitter and twisted, but that man can rot in hell for all I care.
Roy Keane on Ireland manager Mick McCarthy

Mick, you're a liar … you're a fucking wanker. I didn't rate you as a player, I don't rate you as a manager, and I don't rate you as a person. You're a fucking wanker and you can stick your World Cup up your arse. The only reason I have any dealings with you is that somehow you are the manager of my country! You can stick it up your bollocks.
Roy Keane to Mick McCarthy, before being sent home from the 2002 World Cup in disgrace

I did want to nail him and let him know what was happening. I wanted to hurt him and stand over him and go: ‘Take that, you cunt.' I don't regret that. But I had no wish to injure him.
Keane on Alf-Inge Haaland, whom he tackled violently and injured in revenge for an incident years earlier. Haaland eventually retired from complications relating to the injury.

At the end of the day they need to get behind the team. Away from home our fans are fantastic, I'd call them the hardcore
fans. But at home they have a few drinks and probably the prawn sandwiches, and they don't realise what's going on out on the pitch. I don't think some of the people who come to Old Trafford can spell ‘football', never mind understand it.
Roy Keane on the fans of the club he played for, Manchester United

Fuck off back to France, you French motherfucker.
Alleged words of Crystal Palace fan Matthew Simmons to Eric Cantona, as Cantona walked off the pitch. Cantona responded with a flying kung-fu kick, for which he was later charged with assault and banned from football for 8 months.

He's six foot something, fit as a flea, good looking – he's got to have something wrong with him. Hopefully he's hung like a hamster – that would make us all feel better. Having said that, my missus has got a pet hamster at home, and his cock's massive.
Blackpool manager Ian Holloway on Cristiano Ronaldo

I write like a two-year-old and I can't spell. I can't work a computer. I don't even know what an email is. I've never sent a fax or a text message. I'm the most disorganised person in the world. I can't even fill in the team-sheet.
Harry Redknapp on himself

Do you think I would enter into a contract with that mob? Absolutely no chance. I would not sell them a virus.
Sir Alex Ferguson, in December 2008, on the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid. Ronaldo was sold the following summer for £80m.