Baron Munchausen Quotes

Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever.

If the Baron meets with a parcel of negro ships carrying whites into slavery to work upon their plantations in a cold climate, should we therefore imagine that he intends a reflection on the present traffic in human flesh? And that, if the negroes should do so, it would be simple justice, as retaliation is the law of God! If we were to think this a reflection on any present commercial or political matter, we should be tempted to imagine, perhaps, some political ideas conveyed in every page, in every sentence of the whole. Whether such things are or are not the intentions of the Baron the reader must judge.

In the final round of the game, if your company has admitted women to the play, I do not recommend that you vote for your paramour, or for the member of the company who has taken your fancy. In my experience it rarely leads to success; and your fellows will notice and make fun of your noble gesture for weeks.

Some travellers are apt to advance more than is perhaps strictly true; if any of the company entertain a doubt of my veracity, I shall only say to such, I pity their want of faith, and must request they will take leave before I begin the second part of my adventures, which are as strictly founded in fact as those I have already related.

Baron von Munchausen (1720–97) was a real person who had fought as a soldier in Russia. On his return home he told stories about his exploits that nobody believed. These included riding on a cannonball, taking a brief trip to the moon, and escaping from a marsh by pulling himself out by his own hair. This latter feat is impossible, for the upward force on the Baron’s hair would have been cancelled out by the downward force on his arm. It’s a nice idea, though, and von Munchausen’s preposterous principle was later taken up by Americans, but instead of talking about hair, the Americans started in the late nineteenth century to talk of pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. What’s impossible in physics is possible in computing, and a computer that’s able to load its own programs is, metaphorically, pulling itself up by its own bootstraps. In 1953 the process was called a bootstrap. By 1975 people had got bored with the strap, and from then on computers simply booted up.

The Muscovites, desirous of being heard across the river announced the prices of their furs in a loud voice; but the cold was so intense that their words were frozen in the air before they could reach the opposite side. Hereupon the Poles lighted a fire in the middle of the river, which was frozen into a solid mass; and in the course of an hour the words which had been frozen up were melted, and fell gently upon the further bank, although the Muscovite traders had already gone away.

Gadzooks you plagiaries of truth, for twas foreseen by mine own eyes that this world is flat and straddled by two platypus's being ridden by a sea horse........

Milner simply cannot have really existed, except perhaps in a tale by Baron von Munchausen. And yet there he stood at the Scarborough races, looming gigantically over the wee mannikin Wilberforce.

Baron Munchausen : Gentlemen! Don't you think it would be a good idea to silence those enemy cannons? Gunner : No, sir. Baron Munchausen : No? Gunner : It's Wednesday.

He was a mixture of Adolf Hitler, Charlie Chaplin and Baron Munchausen. In short, he was a con man.