Christopher Buckley Quotes

That's the beauty of argument, if you argue correctly, you're never wrong.

How many times had those awful words - "I know what I'm doing" - been uttered throughout history as prelude to disaster?

Oil they would buy from anyone. From Satan.

Nothing raises the national temperature more than a VACANCY sign hanging from the colonnaded front of the Supreme Court.

Women might just have something to contribute to civilization other than their vaginas".

You never remember who came to the funeral, but you never forget who didn’t.

People believe unbelievable things because it's self-flattering to think that you are intellectually daring enough to accept what others find preposterous.

Necessity is the motherfucker of invention.

The only thing that had truly stuck in Sherman's mind about Christopher Marlowe, after nine years at Buckley, four years at St. Paul's, and four years at Yale, was that you were, in fact, supposed to know who Christopher Marlowe was.

Perhaps, after all, the most beautiful words in the language are I’m sorry.

They embraced and parted. They never saw each other again.

Women might just have something to contribute to civilization other than their vaginas. —CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY, Florence of Arabia

Justices look solemn in their formal black robes, but every so often they like to have a little fun by taking on a strange case, or overturning a presidential election, that sort of thing.

In our corrupt times, the virtue of a Pontiff is commended when he does not surpass the wickedness of other men. —Francesco Guicciardini, History of Italy, 1561

I looked at Mum and realized -- twang! -- that she was telling an untruth. A big untruth. And I remember thinking in that instant how thrilling and grown-up it must be to say something so completely untrue, as opposed to the little amateur fibs I was already practiced at -- horrid little apprentice sinner that I was --like the ones about you'd already said your prayers or washed under the fingernails. Yes, I was impressed. I too must learn to say these gorgeous untruths. Imaginary kings and queens would be my houseguests when I was older.

Gore Vidal, for instance, once languidly told me that one should never miss a chance either to have sex or to appear on television. My efforts to live up to this maxim have mainly resulted in my passing many unglamorous hours on off-peak cable TV. It was actually Vidal's great foe William F. Buckley who launched my part-time television career, by inviting me on to Firing Line when I was still quite young, and giving me one of the American Right's less towering intellects as my foil. The response to the show made my day, and then my week. Yet almost every time I go to a TV studio, I feel faintly guilty. This is pre-eminently the 'soft' world of dream and illusion and 'perception': it has only a surrogate relationship to the 'hard' world of printed words and written-down concepts to which I've tried to dedicate my life, and that surrogate relationship, while it, too, may be 'verbal,' consists of being glib rather than fluent, fast rather than quick, sharp rather than pointed. It means reveling in the fact that I have a meretricious, want-it-both-ways side. My only excuse is to say that at least I do not pretend that this is not so.

There is no point in arguing if you are not susceptible to reason. Embrace your cynicism. Hug it.

In cyberspace, everyone can hear you scream.

Let's look at this rationally...We've got a doctor who may kill him, an Attorney General who wants to declare him bananas, and a Defense Secretary who wants me to start World War III...First, we ruled out starting World War III. We were down to killing the President or having him carted off by the men in white coats...

A twenty-minute eulogy, unless composed by a) William Shakespeare, b) Winston Churchill, or c) Mark Twain, is sixteen minutes too long. Technical note: It is better to tell a eulogist to speak for four minutes not five minutes. “Five minutes” to the modern ear sounds like “around five minutes,” whereas “four minutes” means “four minutes.

Why should you give up God because of gunpowder? Since the world began, God in his wisdom has given us tools with which to slaughter each other. Jawbones of asses. Slings. Swords. Crossbows. Why shouldn’t he give us gunpowder?

You could drink hard liquor in the middle of a school day without people assuming you were an alcoholic underachiever. Strange how in America in the 1950s, at the height of its industrial and imperial power, men drank double-martinis for lunch. Now, in its decline, they drank fizzy water. Somewhere something had gone terribly wrong.

Ronald Reagan used to say that the nine scariest words in the English language were ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.

Speechwriters are fundamentally Calvinist: They become nervous if their principals exhibit free will and depart from the prepared text.

Oderint dum metuant.” “You’re going to have to translate that for me. I didn’t go to Gratin.” “It’s Groton. Means ‘Let them hate, so long as they fear.’ Cato.

It’s the fate of many propositions,” Terry said, “to begin as heresies and end as truths. I read that somewhere, anyway.

Once they’re both gone, your parents’ house instantly turns into a museum.

I was an only child with a lot of time to kill. I suspect a lot of writers are only children, or only children become writers because it's a way of being alone.

It was—unthinkable: three of the most powerful men in Europe—the world—the Pope, the Emperor Maximilian, and Albrecht—all wanted Luther tied to a stake and burned. Yet each time they reached out to light the fire, Luther snatched the torch from their hands and set fire to their own robes. How was a mere monk able to do this? Because he was protected by the Elector Frederick, who declined to hand over one of his Saxon subjects to other authority. What did Frederick have to gain by shielding Luther?

Rudy Giuliani, the president’s former personal attorney, was now living in the Julian Assange suite at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. While changing planes at Heathrow, Rudy was tipped off that the Justice Department had issued a warrant for his arrest for injurious punditry and pernicious legal representation.

Actual class struggles apart, one of the aesthetic ways you could prove that there was a class system in America was by cogitating on the word, or acronym, 'WASP.' First minted by E. Digby Baltzell in his book The Protestant Establishment , the term stood for 'White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.' Except that, as I never grew tired of pointing out, the 'W' was something of a redundancy (there being by definition no BASPs or JASPs for anyone to be confused with, or confused about). 'ASP,' on the other hand, lacked some of the all-important tone. There being so relatively few Anglo-Saxon Catholics in the United States, the 'S' [sic] was arguably surplus to requirements as well. But then the acronym AS would scarcely do, either. And it would raise an additional difficulty. If 'Anglo-Saxon' descent was the qualifying thing, which surely it was, then why were George Wallace and Jerry Falwell not WASPs? After all, they were not merely white and Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, but very emphatic about all three things. Whereas a man like William F. Buckley, say, despite being a white Irish Catholic, radiated the very sort of demeanor for which the word WASP had been coined to begin with. So, for the matter of that, did the dapper gentleman from Richmond, Virginia, Tom Wolfe. Could it be, then, that WASP was really a term of class rather than ethnicity? Q.E.D.

Block of Death. Just inside the door on the left is the room where they held the proceedings. Jarek remarks that the SS officer who sentenced five thousand Poles here to die was still alive last year, living in Germany, age ninety-two. We ask why. He shrugs. At the far end on the corridor, on the left, looking out into the courtyard, is the room where the condemned were stripped and held. An illustration depicts a naked girl holding on to her mother’s legs as the SS guard comes for them. High on the wall, a prisoner scratched graffiti, a name and the date and the words, “Sentenced to die.” Beneath that is the date of the next day and the words, “I’m still here.

You do this pronoun shift. You may not even be aware of it. If it’s a ‘bold idea,’ it’s ‘ours.’ If it’s a ‘nutty idea,’ it’s ‘yours.’” “Grammar Nazi. Would it be enough to say I want to be president to . . .” “I’m listening.” Randy said, “I was about to say, ‘To give something back,’ but it sounds so pathetic. What it really boils down to is, I’d like to be in charge for just five minutes. Balance the books. Get us out of debt. Be nice to our friends, tell our enemies to fuck off. Clean up the air and water. Throw corporate crooks in the clink. Put the dignity back in government. Fix things. What else . . .? Can’t have Arabs blowing up our buildings, certainly, but I now know that we don’t need to be sending armies everywhere. Among other things, it’s expensive. . ..” “I’m sorry, were you talking? I went to sleep after ‘balance the books.

yourself.” “Maybe we should analyze it. Maybe a little discovery is in order.” “Maybe a little getting under the covers is in order. Baby?” “Yes?” “Are you going to take off your overcoat? Feels like making it with a flasher.” “Good point. Jesus, Pep,” he sighed soulfully. “Keep taking off the coat. That’s it. Now how about the jacket? There you go. . . .” “Six months ago I was happily married.” Pepper rolled her eyes. “Married, okay. Happily? Let’s look at it. But could we maybe be in the now instead of the then?” “Sorry, I’m so damned awkward sometimes. Do you like the top or the bottom?” Pepper stared. “This ain’t summer camp, and I ain’t a bunk bed. Now look here, Chiefy, we are two grown adults, we are colleagues, we have discovered a mutual attraction. We are neither of us cheating on anyone, inasmuch as our spouses filed for divorce. We are both heterosexual—” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “It’s a statement of fact intended to differentiate myself from your prior partner for the purpose of putting you at ease so as to . . . oh, c’mere . . . initiate foreplay . . .

But why would I give my watch, my precious watch and fob, to a—Russian who-re?” “Two Russian who-res. Perhaps to avoid being beaten to death by two very large Russian pimps.

The corporal’s morale is excellent verging on sublime, sir.

The corporal also reads glossy magazines,” Cass said. “When not composing Shakespearean-quality media advisories pertaining to our mission here. Sir.

Give me smart, young, and angry and I’ll move the world.

Come on, Terry. Forgotten what it’s like to be young and angry?” Terry shrugged. “I’m middle-aged and angry. With good Scotch, I can deal with the anger.

So we’ve gone from ‘Don’t trust anyone over thirty’ to ‘Don’t drink any Scotch under thirty’? Is this what’s become of your revolution?

No one likes lawyers until you need one, at which point they assume the raiment of knights.

What a country, America. A lunatic asylum, without enough attendants or tranquilizers.

On little evidence, Christopher Buckley assured us that Obama possessed “a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect.” For some, proof of Obama’s godhead became almost physical — a “perfectly creased pant” for David Brooks, a tingling leg for Chris Matthews. For Evan Thomas he was a “sort of God”; for one blue-chip historian he was the smartest man with the highest IQ ever running for the presidency. And on and on, as huge crowds acted as if they were watching Paul McCartney on tour in 1966. After the election, there was real apprehension that the country might not make it for the two and a half months until an elected Obama could take power.

One advantage to being overweight is that it enhances stomping.

The corporal was not having sex with the congressman in a minefield.