Gaff Quotes

I know the human being and fish can co-exist peacefully.

Without the fear of occasional gaffes, the willingness to be perfectly imperfect, and the heart of a child who creates chaos first thing in the morning for a parent; you are not allowing our inner child to grow. You grow in pain, not in years, and you must cross the bridge without knowing of the pain, the tears, or the trials and tribulations that you will come to have to face, but sweet child of mine, stay the happy child of mine.

By the Angel, this place is barely better than a penny gaff,” Gideon said. “Gabriel, don’t look at anything unless I tell you it’s all right.

I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.

She had destroyed whatever was between us by making a profound gaffe: She met me.

It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago

Even the few serious crimes that did occur received no particular attention in the news. For well-bred people do not, after all, care to read about the social gaffes of others.

Our best chance of contentment lies in taking up the wisdom offered to us in coded form through our coughs, allergies, social gaffes, and emotional betrayals, and avoid the ingratitude of those who blame the peas, the bores, the time, and the weather.

When the President does it , that means that it is not illegal.

I love California; I practically grew up in Phoenix.

Studies have shown that we are often so worried about failure that we create vague goals, so that nobody can point the finger when we don’t achieve them. We come up with face-saving excuses, even before we have attempted anything. We cover up mistakes, not only to protect ourselves from others, but to protect us from ourselves. Experiments have demonstrated that we all have a sophisticated ability to delete failures from memory, like editors cutting gaffes from a film reel—as we’ll see. Far from learning from mistakes, we edit them out of the official autobiographies we all keep in our own heads.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle-as we did in the OJ trial-or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina-or as a fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time.

If it [talent] isn’t strong enough to take the gaff of real training, then it’s not worth much.

Well,' she said, adjusting a pot lid, 'I have my family of origin, which is you and Mom. And then Jaime's family, my family of marriage. And hopefully, I'll have another family, as well. Our family, that we make. Me and Jaimie.' Now I felt bad, bringing this up so soon after Jamie's gaffe. 'You will,' I said. She turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. 'I hope so. But that's just the thing, right? Family isn't something that's supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They're born, they die. It's always evolving, turning into something else. even that picture of Jamie's family was only the true representation for that one day. But the next , someone had probably changed. It had to.' ... Later, when the kitchen had filled up with people looking for more wine, and children chasing Roscoe, I looked across all the chaos at Cora, thinking that of course you would assume our definitions would be similar, since we had come from the same place. But this wasn't actually true. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone's eyes. Our definitions were as different as we were ourselves.

The country was lumbering towards election day. Strike turned in early on Sunday and watched the day's gaffes, counterclaims and promises being tabulated on his portable TV. There was an air of joylessness in every news report he watched. The national debt was so huge that it was diffcult to comprehend. Cuts were coming, whoever won; deep, painful cuts; and sometimes, with their weasel words, the party leaders reminded Strike of the surgeons who had told him cautiously that he might experience a degree of discomfort; they who would never personally feel the pain that was about to be inflicted.

But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies.

The Galvanick Lucipher is of antique design. Ghnxh, who is about a hundred years old, can only smile in condescension at Waterhouse's U.S Navy flashlight. In the sotto voce one might use to correct an enourmous social gaffe, he explains that the galvanic lucifer is of such a superior design as to make any further reference to the Navy model a grating embarrassment for everyone concerned.

For well-bred people do not, after all, care to read about the social gaffes of others.

Emotionally immature people are annoyed by other people’s differing thoughts and opinions, believing everyone should see things their way. The idea that other people are entitled to their own point of view is beyond them. They may be prone to making social gaffes because they don’t have enough awareness of other people’s individuality to avoid being offensive.

By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low. But my care with words raised another issue on the campaign trail: I was just plain wordy, and that was a problem. When asked a question, I tended to offer circuitous and ponderous answers, my mind instinctively breaking up every issue into a pile of components and subcomponents. If every argument had two sides, I usually came up with four. If there was an exception to some statement I just made, I wouldn’t just point it out; I’d provide footnotes. “You’re burying the lede!” Axe would practically shout after listening to me drone on and on and on. For a day or two I’d obediently focus on brevity, only to suddenly find myself unable to resist a ten-minute explanation of the nuances of trade policy or the pace of Arctic melting. “What d’ya think?” I’d say, pleased with my thoroughness as I walked offstage. “You got an A on the quiz,” Axe would reply. “No votes, though.

A poor grasp of dead reckoning may have led Christopher Columbus to North America instead of India, a navigational error of about eight thousand miles.

Our fix-it-itis is not a simple social gaffe but the evidence of a deep blind spot born with the help of the market. We are educated about illness by television commercials... A puzzle like me that cannot be solved is a point of discomfort, a disjuncture, a black hole... My body is a discomfort, a burr in the hide of the marketplace itself, a reminder that not all pain can be treated with a purchase.

— Ma voi donne, possibile che siete sempre attratte dalle menomazioni ? Insomma, uno si fa un mazzo tanto così per sembrare promettente, affidabile, convinto delle cose che dice; studia, lavora, fa carriera, va in palestra, si veste alla moda, si rovina la vita insomma, e poi che cosa gli confidate quando decidete di dargliela? «Non mi piacciono gli uomini belli»; «La tua pancia mi dà sicurezza»; «Le tue gaffes sono adorabili»... E che palle. Almeno ditelo prima.

My staff’s biggest fear was that I’d make a “gaffe,” the expression used by the press to describe any maladroit phrase by the candidate that reveals ignorance, carelessness, fuzzy thinking, insensitivity, malice, boorishness, falsehood, or hypocrisy—or is simply deemed to veer sufficiently far from conventional wisdom to make said candidate vulnerable to attack. By this definition, most humans will commit five to ten gaffes a day, each of us counting on the forbearance and goodwill of our family, co-workers, and friends to fill in the blanks, catch our drift, and generally assume the best rather than the worst in us.

gaff

the old man thought that a gaff and a harpoon were needless temptations to leave in a boat.

The voting public was tired of careful and carefully packaged candidates. My reputation as a “gaffe machine” was no longer looking like a weakness. The public could see that

First, from this side of the twentieth century, après strip malls, fast-food franchises, glass boxes, housing projects, and other architectural gaffes, it’s fun to look back on this dilemma of to-column-or-not-to-column, because honestly, the only question most Americans ask about a new building at this point is basically: Is it a soul-sucking eyesore of cheap-ass despair? It’s not? Whew.

Gabrielle opened the fridge, which was held shut with a strip of gaff tape, and pulled out sliced white bread, margarine and plastic cheese. It was the only time Lenny had seen ants running out of a fridge.

I watched as she darted at him, all ebony feathers and gaffs shining silver in the brazier’s light. As always, she went straight for his face. He grunted, swiping at her and missing. The man’s eyes were protected by the mask, however, so she couldn’t find any purchase where her small, wicked blades would do any harm. As smoke billowed and filled the room, he reached up and caught her by the wing as she clawed and pecked at his face. Then, I heard her squawk but saw her no more. “Scoun—!

Sometimes I think I’ve made so few mistakes that the public can remember all of them, in contrast to certain male politicians whose multitude of gaffes and transgressions gets jumbled in the collective imagination, either negated by one another or forgotten in the onslaught.

The moral? To recognize that our best chance of contentment lies in taking up the wisdom offered to us in coded form through our coughs, allergies, social gaffes, and emotional betrayals, and to avoid the ingratitude of those who blame the peas, the bores, the time, and the weather.

She’d missed this. They had all missed this. It will go down as the biggest gaffe of her career. Why had they not looked more closely at Marion Cooke earlier? She’d seemed a credible witness, saying she’d seen Avery get into Ryan Blanchard’s car. And the whole time Avery had been held captive in her basement.

But Bachmann’s efforts to strut her IQ were undermined by gaffes galore. In New Hampshire, she hailed the state for being “where the shot was heard round the world in Lexington and Concord.” (That blast emanated from Massachusetts.) On June 27, the day of her official announcement in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, Bachmann proclaimed in a Fox News interview that “John Wayne was from Waterloo.” (Wayne was in fact from Winterset, Iowa; serial killer John Wayne Gacy was from Waterloo.) From now on, her son Lucas razzed his mother, “you can’t say George Washington was the first president unless we Google that shit first.

~Enueg II world world world and the face grave cloud against the evening de moriturus nihil nisi and the face crumbling shyly too late to darken the sky blushing away into the evening shuddering away like a gaffe veronica mundi veronica munda give us a wipe for the love of Jesus sweating like Judas tired of dying tired of policemen feet in marmalade perspiring profusely heart in marmalade smoke more fruit the old heart the old heart breaking outside congress doch I assure thee lying on O'Connell Bridge gogglin at the tulips of the evening the green tulips shining round the corner like an anthrax shining on Guinness's barges the overtone the face too late to brighten the sky doch doch I assure thee

He dribbles a lot and the opposition don't like it—you can see it all over their faces.

If Lincoln were alive today he'd be turning over in his grave.

I took the initiative in creating the Internet

Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs

We've got to stand with our North Korean allies.

Eisenhower and Patton, old friends and figures crucial to the Allies' upcoming success, conferred over yet another gaffe on Patton's part that could have cost him his command. Patton's head is on Ike's shoulder in gratitude, but the scene is rescued from being completely maudlin by Eisenhower's internal question as to whether Patton wears his ever-present helmet to bed.

Since populist movements have achieved an influence beyond their numbers, fixing electoral irregularities such as gerrymandering and forms of disproportionate representation which overweight rural areas (such as the US Electoral College) would help. So would journalistic coverage that tied candidates’ reputations to their record of accuracy and coherence rather than to trivial gaffes and scandals. Part of the problem, over the long term,

Democrats can cackle all they want about the gaffe-prone Romney’s elitist cultural insensitivity in Jerusalem. Their hero Obama is no more willing to acknowledge and question the racial Darwinism that substitutes culture for genes than he is to recognize and criticize Israel’s racist oppression of the Palestinians. He at once embodies, epitomizes, and embraces that cultural white supremacism in a way that does no small damage to non-white prospects at home and abroad.

It is possible to use that with people, but the result is often rather clumsy. While the linguists that are working on this problem is not quite wrong, it doesn’t sound as good as the linguists who are working on this problem. Prefer who with people.

And if I was seen as temperamentally cool and collected, measured in how I used my words, Joe was all warmth, a man without inhibitions, happy to share whatever popped into his head. It was an endearing trait, for he genuinely enjoyed people. You could see it as he worked a room, his handsome face always cast in a dazzling smile (and just inches from whomever he was talking to), asking a person where they were from, telling them a story about how much he loved their hometown (“Best calzone I ever tasted”) or how they must know so-and-so (“An absolutely great guy, salt of the earth”), flattering their children (“Anyone ever tell you you’re gorgeous?”) or their mother (“You can’t be a day over forty!”), and then on to the next person, and the next, until he’d touched every soul in the room with a flurry of handshakes, hugs, kisses, backslaps, compliments, and one-liners. Joe’s enthusiasm had its downside. In a town filled with people who liked to hear themselves talk, he had no peer. If a speech was scheduled for fifteen minutes, Joe went for at least a half hour. If it was scheduled for a half hour, there was no telling how long he might talk. His soliloquies during committee hearings were legendary. His lack of a filter periodically got him in trouble, as when during the primaries, he had pronounced me “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” a phrase surely meant as a compliment, but interpreted by some as suggesting that such characteristics in a Black man were noteworthy. As I came to know Joe, though, I found his occasional gaffes to be trivial compared to his strengths. On domestic issues, he was smart, practical, and did his homework. His experience in foreign policy was broad and deep. During his relatively short-lived run in the primaries, he had impressed me with his skill and discipline as a debater and his comfort on a national stage. Most of all, Joe had heart. He’d overcome a bad stutter as a child (which probably explained his vigorous attachment to words) and two brain aneurysms in middle age.

Note in particular that a noun denoting a group of people takes which, not who. You cannot write *the battalion who had captured the fortress because a battalion, though composed of people, is not itself a person: write the battalion which had captured the fortress.

If you’re all worked up about the law, there’s a game upstairs right now. Gambling’s still against the law, so you can start right here where it’s convenient. And when you’re finished, there’s some other things. I can tell you about who’s stealing leather over to the Tucker Tannery, and who’s cutting and selling it, too. Unless maybe you already know. And then you can go after Old Man Tucker himself and jail his ass for all that shit in the crick that’s making the whole county sick. You could clean up the whole town, Gaff. Be a regular goddamn hero instead of chasing around the goddamn county after unfortunate retards like Billy that nobody cares nothing about until there’s trouble.

There was another inspiring moment: a rough, choppy, moonlit night on the water, and the Dreadnaught's manager looked out the window suddenly to spy thousands of tiny baitfish breaking the surface, rushing frantically toward shore. He knew what that meant, as did everyone else in town with a boat, a gaff and a loaf of Wonder bread to use as bait: the stripers were running! Thousands of the highly prized, relatively expensive striped bass were, in a rare feeding frenzy, suddenly there for the taking. You had literally only to throw bread on the water, bash the tasty fish on the head with a gaff and then haul them in. They were taking them by the hundreds of pounds. Every restaurant in town was loading up on them, their parking lots, like ours, suddenly a Coleman-lit staging area for scaling, gutting and wrapping operations. The Dreadnaught lot, like every other lot in town, was suddenly filled with gore-covered cooks and dishwashers, laboring under flickering gaslamps and naked bulbs to clean, wrap and freeze the valuable white meat. We worked for hours with our knives, our hair sparkling with snowflake-like fish scales, scraping, tearing, filleting. At the end of the night's work, I took home a 35-pound monster, still twisted with rigor. My room-mates were smoking weed when I got back to our little place on the beach and, as often happens on such occasions, were hungry. We had only the bass, some butter and a lemon to work with, but we cooked that sucker up under the tiny home broiler and served it on aluminum foil, tearing at it with our fingers. It was a bright, moonlit sky now, a mean high tide was lapping at the edges of our house, and as the windows began to shake in their frames, a smell of white spindrift and salt saturated the air as we ate. It was the freshest piece of fish I'd ever eaten, and I don't know if it was due to the dramatic quality the weather was beginning to take on, but it hit me right in the brainpan, a meal that made me feel better about things, made me better for eating it, somehow even smarter, somehow . . . It was a protein rush to the cortex, a clean, three-ingredient ingredient high, eaten with the hands. Could anything be better than that?

September 22d, when, upon coming on deck at seven bells in the morning, we found the other watch aloft throwing water upon the sails; and, looking astern, we saw a small clipper-built brig with a black hull heading directly after us. We went to work immediately, and put all the canvas upon the brig which we could get upon her, rigging out oars for extra studding-sail yards, and continued wetting down the sails by buckets of water whipped up to the mast-head, until about nine o’clock, when there came on a drizzling rain. The vessel continued in pursuit, changing her course as we changed ours, to keep before the wind. The captain, who watched her with his glass, said that she was armed, and full of men, and showed no colors. We continued running dead before the wind, knowing that we sailed better so, and that clippers are fastest on the wind. We had also another advantage. The wind was light, and we spread more canvas than she did, having royals and sky-sails fore and aft, and ten studding-sails; while she, being an hermaphrodite brig, had only a gaff topsail aft. Early in the morning she was overhauling us a little, but after the rain came on and the wind grew lighter, we began to leave her astern. All hands remained on deck throughout the day, and we got our fire-arms in order; but we were too few to have done anything with her, if she had proved to be what we feared. Fortunately there was no moon, and the night which followed was exceedingly dark, so that, by putting out all the

It has been said, in a tone of reproach, that Machiavelli makes no attempt *to persuade'. Certainly he was no prophet. For he was concerned first of all with truth, not with persuasion, which is one reason why his prose is great prose, not only of Italian but a model of style for any language. He is a partial Aristotle of politics. But he is partial not because his vision is distorted or his judgment biased, or because of any lack of moral interest, but because of his sole passion for the unity, peace, and prosperity of his country. What makes him a great writer, and for ever a solitary figure, is the purity and single-mindedness of his passion. No one was ever less Machiavellian' than Machiavelli. Only the pure in heart can blow the gaff on human nature as Machiavelli has done. The cynic can never do it; for the cynic is always impure and sentimental. But it is easy to understand why Machiavelli was not himself a successful politician. For one thing, he had no capacity for self-deception or self-dramatization. The recipe dors ton sommeil de brute is applied in many forms, of which Calvin and Rousseau give two variations; but the utility of Machiavelli is his perpetual summons to examination of the weakness and impurity of the soul. We are not likely to forget his political lessons, but his examination of conscience may be too easily overlooked.

Patton had been a reflective man, an extraordinarily well-read student of wars and military leaders, ancient and modern, with a curiosity about his war to match his energy. No detail had been too minor or too dull for him, nor any task too humble. Everything from infantry squad tactics to tank armor plate and chassis and engines had interested him. To keep his mind occupied while he was driving through a countryside, he would study the terrain and imagine how he might attack this hill or defend that ridge. He would stop at an infantry position and look down the barrel of a machine gun to see whether the weapon was properly sited to kill counterattacking Germans. If it was not, he would give the officers and men a lesson in how to emplace the gun. He had been a military tailor’s delight of creased cloth and shined leather, and he had worn an ivory-handled pistol too because he thought he was a cavalier who needed these trappings for panache. But if he came upon a truck stuck in the mud with soldiers shirking in the back, he would jump from his jeep, berate the men for their laziness, and then help them push their truck free and move them forward again to battle. By dint of such lesson and example, Patton had formed his Third Army into his ideal of a fighting force. In the process he had come to understand the capabilities of his troops and he had become more knowledgeable about the German enemy than any other Allied general on the Western Front. Patton had been able to command with certainty, overcoming the mistakes that are inevitable in the practice of the deadly art as well as personal eccentricities and public gaffes that would have ruined a lesser general, because he had always stayed in touch with the realities of his war.

There is considerable psychological value in holding this view, because it reinforces the true believer’s conviction that his ideology is sound and just, and the reason his political beliefs have not triumphed is that dark and sinister forces oppose them. This mental mechanism is an escape hatch for unwelcome facts and evidence that would otherwise undermine the faith of the follower: Should his favorite candidate or conservative hero commit a serious gaffe or become enmeshed in a scandal, he can rationalize the negative information by saying to himself that it is all a plot by the media to make conservatives look bad. Sometimes Republican candidates rise in the estimation of Republican primary voters in the wake of a scandal, as we saw with Newt in South Carolina, because being attacked by the liberal media octopus is a sure sign that you are on the right side.

La chance nous sourit tous les matins, le bonheur nous accueille tous les soirs, et on s'en rend pas compte. On s'y habitue et on pense que ce sera tous les jours ainsi. On fait pas gaffe à ce que l'on possède puis, hop ! D'un claquement de doigts, on s'aperçoit que l'on a tout faux. Parce qu'on croit avoir décroché la lune, on veut croquer le soleil aussi, et c'est là que l'on se crame les ailes

Which makes it even weirder that Tommy still managed to fuck up the line in his script. No one involved in The Room had caught this gaffe, because no one but I had any idea how much James Dean meant to Tommy. (Meanwhile Tommy’s version of the line has a hundred times more hits on YouTube than James Dean’s version, which quite frankly makes me feel like I’m being torn apart.)

In the heat of the 2000 election, then Governor George W. Bush of Texas made an off-the-cuff statement that we ought to take the log out of our own eye before calling attention to the speck in the eye of our neighbor. The New York Times reported the remark as a minor gaffe -- what it termed "an interesting variation on the saying about the pot and the kettle."The reporter -- actually a fine and balanced journalist -- did not recognize the biblical reference. Neither did his editors. And this, of course, was not an obscure biblical reference. Not only is it found in the red letters of the New Testament, it is taken from the Sermon on the Mount.

Grief could be a wonderfully terrible thing. Wonderful because it meant you’d loved someone deeply—and that was a gift. But terrible because you’d lost that person and now you only had memories to hold onto.

Taking things too personally can be a sign of either narcissism or low self-esteem. Both traits cause problems in relationships because they lead people to constantly seek reassurance from others. In addition, people who take things personally often feel that they’re being evaluated, seeing slights and criticisms where they don’t exist. This kind of defensiveness consumes relationship energy like a black hole. In contrast, emotionally mature people understand that most of us can put our foot in our mouth at times. If you say you misspoke, they won’t insist on a postmortem to uncover potential unconscious negativity toward them. They can see a social gaffe as a mistake, not a rejection. They’re realistic enough to not feel unloved just because you made a mistake.

As you build things, whether they’re train tracks, or bookshelves, or relationships, or essays that you’ve written for classes, the endowment effect gaffs the scale even more, further escalating our commitment to failing causes.

They Don’t Take Everything Personally Emotionally mature people are realistic enough to not be offended easily and can laugh at themselves and their foibles. They aren’t perfectionistic and see themselves and others as fallible human beings, doing the best they can. Taking things too personally can be a sign of either narcissism or low self-esteem. Both traits cause problems in relationships because they lead people to constantly seek reassurance from others. In addition, people who take things personally often feel that they’re being evaluated, seeing slights and criticisms where they don’t exist. This kind of defensiveness consumes relationship energy like a black hole. In contrast, emotionally mature people understand that most of us can put our foot in our mouth at times. If you say you misspoke, they won’t insist on a postmortem to uncover potential unconscious negativity toward them. They can see a social gaffe as a mistake, not a rejection. They’re realistic enough to not feel unloved just because you made a mistake.

I’ve been pretty much of a sap in my day,” he said. “I’ve played around a lot, and I’ve wasted a lot of money that I ought to have saved. But I’ve learned something. I’m getting wise to myself at last. Let me give you a tip, Lou. The best advice that I can give you or anyone else can give you is just this: ‘Save your money.’ 

Don’t mind the cheers,” he said. “They don’t mean anything. In this business we’re in, you hear cheers one day and jeers the next. You’re a good fellow as long as you’re playing a great game, but the minute you slip, they forget all about your good plays. But there’s one thing they can’t take away from you. That’s the money you save, and if you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll start in salting it away right now. Get your pile while it comes easy. Someday the going will be tough, and then you’ll be sorry if you haven’t saved what you should. Just take a tip from me. I know.

As I said before, that’s the best advice I’ve ever had since I’ve been playing baseball. I don’t believe in being a tightwad or a miser or anything like that. But baseball is a profession, and it’s up to me and all the rest of us to make the most of our profession while we can.

Il cretino non parla neppure, sbava, è spastico. Si pianta il gelato sulla fronte, per mancanza di coordinamento. Entra nella porta girevole per il verso opposto." "Come fa?" "Lui ci riesce. Per questo è cretino. Non ci interessa, lo riconosci subito, e non viene nelle case editrici. Lasciamolo lì." "Lasciamolo." "Essere imbecille è più complesso. È un comportamento sociale. L'imbecille è quello che parla sempre fuori del bicchiere. "In che senso?" "Così". Puntò l'indice a picco fuori del suo bicchiere, indicando il banco. "Lui vuol parlare di quello che c'è nel bicchiere, ma com'è come non è, parla fuori. Se vuole, in termini comuni, è quello che fa la gaffe, che domanda come sta la sua bella signora al tipo che è stato appena abbandonato dalla moglie. Rendo l'idea?" "Rende. Ne conosco." "L'imbecille è molto richiesto, specie nelle occasioni mondane. Mette tutti in imbarazzo, ma poi offre occasioni di commento. Nella sua forma positiva, diventa diplomatico. Parla fuori del bicchiere quando la gaffe l'hanno fatta gli altri, fa deviare i discorsi. Ma non ci interessa, non è mai creativo, lavora di riporto, quindi non viene a offrire manoscritti nelle case editrici. L'imbecille non eice che il gatto abbaia, parla del gatto quando gli altri parlano del cane. Sbaglia le regole di conversazione e quando sbaglia bene è sublime. Credo che sia una razza in via di estinzione, è un portatore di virtù eminentemente borghesi. Ci vuole un salotto Verdurin, o addirittura casa Guermantes. Leggete ancora queste cose voi studenti?" "Io sì." "L'imbecille è Gioacchino Murat che passa in rassegna i suoi ufficiali e ne vede uno, decoratissimo, della Martinica. 'Vous êtes nègres?" gli domanda. E quello: "Oui mon général!". E Murat: "Bravò, bravò, continuez!" E via. Mi segue? Scusi ma questa sera sto festeggiando una decisione storica della mia vita. Ho smesso di bere. Un altro? Non risponda, mi fa sentir colpevole. Pilade!" "E lo stupido?" "Ah. Lo stupido non sbaglia nel comportamento. Sbaglia nel ragionamento. È quello che dice che tutti i cani sono animali domestici e tutti i cani abbaiano, ma anche i gatti sono animali domestici e quindi abbaiano. Oppure che tutti gli ateniesi sono mortali, tutti gli abitanti del Pireo sono mortali, quindi tutti gli abitanti del Pireo sono ateniesi." "Che è vero." "Sì, ma per caso. Lo stupido può anche dire una cosa giusta, ma per ragioni sbagliate.

If a politician can come across as likable—as nice, genuine, and friendly—she’s won most of her votes already. That initial appraisal will spread and elevate all other appraisals. Gaffes will be forgiven.

The Cuban Missile Crisis. It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure.

Cradling her in his arms, Arik enjoyed the moment. A moment that went on for a while until he felt compelled to ask, “Are you okay?” She stirred against him. Her head tilted far enough for him to see the lazy smile she shot him. “Better than okay.” She wiggled in his arms, and he let her down, hiding his smug satisfaction as she wavered on wobbly legs, a smugness that faded when she said, “That sure beats waking up to Frosted Flakes and milk.” Did she really compare him to— “Processed cereal?” He shuddered. “Don’t tell me you eat that stuff.” “All the time. I like it. It’s fast and easy. Who doesn’t like a bowl of sugar to perk them up in the morning?” “Not me. A lion needs real food.” “Lion? Someone’s got a messed-up opinion of himself,” she teased, not realizing his verbal gaffe. “Although I’ll admit you do kind of remind me of an animal with some of the noises you make.” If she only knew those noises were just the tip of his furry, perfectly tufted tail. “So sue me for being a man who expresses himself vocally when aroused. But I warn you, sue me at your own peril. I have the best lawyer in town on retainer.” “If you ask me, your money would be better spent with a psychiatrist for your ego problem.” “Admit it, my supreme confidence is sexy.” “No, it’s disturbing, but lucky for you, your butt is awesome.

At the turn of the twentieth into the twenty-first century, Almack’s like clubs exist in forums such as Davos[8], Cannes[9] and the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference[10]. Of course, gatherings in the twenty-first century such as the Davos one are meant for the rich and powerful to collectively strategize on how the world growth engine can be kept going full throttle so that their personal fortunes and status can keep increasing. But attend one and it is obvious that rules of etiquette and protocol have to be observed to fit in and be accepted. God help you if you don’t know how to swirl your cognac, delicately sniff at the goblet and pretend you know the vintage. A worse gaffe would be picking up the wrong fork at a sit-down dinner.

The Jackson gaffe, with its Oedipal violence (“I want to cut his nuts out”), is especially poignant because it goes to the heart of a generational conflict in the black community, concerning what we will say in public and what we say in private. For it has been a point of honor, among the civil rights generation, that any criticism or negative analysis of our community, expressed, as they often are by white politicians, without context, without real empathy or understanding, should not be repeated by a black politician when the white community is listening, even if (especially if) the criticism happens to be true (more than half of all black American children live in single-parent households).

dissociate, disassociate Both are possible, but dissociate is more usual, and is recommended.

it is impossible to use that if the relative clause is non-restrictive – that is, if it does not serve to identify the thing under discussion, but only serves to provide more information about that thing. So, you must write the Suez Canal, which was opened in 1869, and you cannot write *the Suez Canal, that was opened in 1869.

A series of gaffes and local scandals have not helped. Last year, the UKIP parliamentary candidate for nearby Dover, David Little, posted a spoof UKIP map of the world on Facebook that renamed Africa “Bongo-Bongo Land.

I’ve made much worse gaffes, like the time I accidentally spilled hot soup on a Nobel laureate’s lap and then set fire to his kitchen.

Then there is the matter of the presidential untruths. The problem is not just that Barack Obama says things that are untrue but that he lies about what Barack Obama has said. He brags that he set red lines, but then he says it was the U.N. had set red lines. He boasts of pulling out every U.S. soldier from Iraq but then alleges that President Bush, the Iraqis, or Maliki did that. He claims that ISIS are Jayvees but then claims they are serious. But his prevarication too is habitual and was known in 2008 when it was discovered that he had simply misled the nation about his relationships with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. He had no desire, in the transparent manner of John Kerry, Al Gore, John McCain, or George W. Bush, to release his medical records or college transcripts. If Americans find their president ill-informed, there was no record that he was informed in 2008. His gaffes were far more frequent than those of Sarah Palin, who knew there were 50 states.

As a journalist, I can also now understand his (Patrick O'Brian's)idea that the Q&A is not particularly civilized — let alone a sports media press scrum. The formats don’t necessarily further understanding between two people. It is not always true conversation — a discussion that unearths nuggets of insight. It too often seems like interviewers are running through a pre-fab checklist, looking for a Tweetable quote, trolling for a gaffe, or ticking off pre-conceived points like those on a medical checklist at the doctor’s office. It can feel invasive, like a trip to the proctologist — in front of an audience.

My faith is why we’re here. Let’s see what happens.

The pixie witch vexes us all. We can’t control her. We can’t even influence her.

It contradicted their training. An unreferenced speculation proven incorrect in an Omni’s monograph was a gaffe that could result in termination.

For better or for worse (for much worse, in my estimation), it foreshadowed the media’s addiction to “gaffe” coverage—easily digestible gotcha moments that guarantee eyeballs, usually at the expense of more complex issues.

We all were collectively responsible for the gaffes, but the acceptor found guilty

A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say.

Oserais-je dire que ce moment passé chez Gabriel Liiceanu fut intense ? Sans doute tombait-il à pic pour corriger une impression désastreuse qui guette tout visiteur débarquant à Bucarest. Ce peuple immature et déboussolé, ce cortège de rumeurs et de gaffes, cet « archaïsme » de la Roumanie lobotomisée par son « conducător », tout cela nous inclinerait, pour un peu, à oublier la saisissante densité de la culture et de la littérature roumaines dont mille écrits témoignent. Cette sagesse des catacombes qui, dans ce théâtre de mensonges et de gesticulations, fit de chaque écrivain retiré à l'intérieur de lui-même le vrai «gardien du sens». L'expression est de Michel Serres mais, Liiceanu en convient, elle traduit bien la réalité roumaine. Une réalité enténébrée au-dehors mais sauvée du dedans par ces créateurs ermites, réfugiés hors de la politique imprécatoire.

There’s a homeless guy hanging around outside. He’s wearing two or three ragged coats and a sweat-stained Captain America baseball cap. Any other day, I might feel sorry for him, but today I eye him like he’s a napping T. rex. He mistakes my look for sympathy and heads my way. Or maybe he’s a Shoggot lookout and I’m going to get to shoot someone after all. He holds out a grimy, callused hand in my direction and we lock eyes. I should be able to read him this close and know whether the homeless look is a gaff or not. But I can’t get a lock on him. His mind is going in a dozen directions at once, which tracks for some of the wilder Shoggots. I keep my eyes on his, giving him my best Lee Van Cleef narrow-eyed stare. Soon, his eyes twitch away. He pulls back his hand and limps behind a parking meter, like he thinks I won’t be able to see him there.

Anirul stiffened. “My future husband—and even the Golden Lion Throne itself—are secondary to our breeding program.” “Of course you’re right.” Margot nodded in resignation, as if shocked at her own gaffe. “But how should we proceed?” “We begin with a message to Leto.

During my time at the club our recruiters and administration would say that with good choices came bad, but most of the gaffes that really hurt came well before I arrived.

We all sprang from apes, but you didn't spring far enough.

You're so fake, Barbie is jealous.

Shut up, you'll never be the man your mother is.

Fake hair, fake nails, fake smile. Are you sure you weren't made in China?

You need to shut your mouth 'cause all your stupidity is leaking out. Have you been shopping lately?

Who's Who

You're kinda like Rapunzel except instead of letting down your hair you let down everyone in your life.

One of my main fears during the Trump administration was that Trumpism would outlast Trump. Frankenstein's monster had escaped the lab and turned on its masters. Hate and fear still sell. They work. They feed a 24/7 news cycle. They prey on rage and pain and ignorance and loss. They have a fertile playground. All hate needs is a new host, a new avatar, someone who is more polished, more competent, less prone to gaffes, and not compromised by debt or self-destructive tendencies. We all have to rise up together and stop this because it will affect our present and future generations.

His most glorious gaffes were mind-bending adventures that challenged the linear nature of time: “I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future”; “The future will be better tomorrow”; “The real question for 1988 is whether we’re going to go forward to tomorrow or past to the… to the back”; and “The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.” Quayle’s verbal contortions would have killed a lesser man, but he remained unbowed. “I stand by all the misstatements that I’ve made,” he declared.

If laughter is the best medicine, your face must be curing the world.

I’d been constipated or spilled coffee on my pants. Sometimes I think I’ve made so few mistakes that the public can remember all of them, in contrast to certain male politicians whose multitude of gaffes and transgressions gets jumbled in the collective imagination, either negated by one another or forgotten in the onslaught. The less you screw up, the more clearly the public keeps track of each error.

Examples of elision in Mexican Spanish abound—pa’ instead of para (for), apá instead of papá (father), SanTana instead of Santa Ana, pos instead of pues (well), and my supposed gaffe.

Gaffes like that render his account almost worse than useless,

pressures and intense learning curve It takes time to get up to speed on the content of your new position, and yet business and markets cannot slow down and wait for you to catch up. Decisions still need to be taken and, consequently, the pressure can build up and will need to be managed in order to stay operating effectively. Being overwhelmed with immediate fire-fighting and task-driven priorities It would be tempting to get busy and dive into the immediate business tasks and issues. But you need to have the strength of character to step back and take time out to look at the big picture: what tasks should you continue, what should you stop, and what should you start? Need to invest energy in building new networks and forging new stakeholder relationships There is no point in having the right vision and strategy in isolation of bringing people with you. The culture may be dense and slow-moving – people may be resistant to the changes you bring. Invest early in the influencer and stakeholder network. Dealing with legacy issues from the predecessor Depending on the quality of your predecessor, your unit may or may not have a good reputation, and your team may have developed poor habits, behaviours and disciplines that will take time to address. Or you may have to endure the scenario of filling the shoes of a much-loved predecessor, and being initially resented as the new guy whose mandate is to change how things have always been done before. Challenges on inheriting or building a team and having to make tough personnel decisions Don’t expect underperformers to have been weeded out prior to your arrival. A key task in your first 100 days will be to assess the quality of your team: who stays, who goes and what fresh talent is needed on board. Unfortunately, your best talent is possibly now de-motivated and resentful – and consequently underperforming – because they applied unsuccessfully for your job. For external appointments, a lack of experience of the new company culture may lead to inadvertent gaffes and early political blunders – all of which can take time to recover From the innocuous to the significant, everything you do is being judged as indicative of your character. Checking your smart device during a meeting may deeply offend your new role stakeholders who may judge that action as an indication that you are brash, uninterested and arrogant. You will need to be on ‘hyper alert’ to consciously pick up clues on the acceptable norms and behaviours in your new culture. Getting the balance right between moving too fast and moving too slowly Newly appointed people sometimes panic and this can result in either doing too much (scattergun approach, but not tackling the core issues) or doing too little (‘I’ll just listen and learn for the first three months, and then decide what to do’). Neither extreme cuts it. Find the right balance.

The woman beside him was shivering, her arms clasped around herself, her knees drawn up. “Sorry,” he said. “The heater in the old whore takes a long time to warm up.” A second after he spoke, he remembered he was talking to a priest. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, caught himself, then blurted out, “Christ!” at his own stupidity before he could help it. He hung his head, laughing and groaning at the same time. “You! Swearing in front of a priest!” She pointed her finger at his chest. “Drop and gimme twenty!” He stared at her, not sure he was hearing right. She smiled slowly, her eyes half-closing. “Gotcha.

a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth