W C Field Quotes

I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.

It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.

I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.

I never hold a grudge. As soon as I get even with the son-of-a bitch, I forget it.

Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer.

I don't drink water. Fish fuck in it.

Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.

A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money

Fell in love with a beautiful blonde once. Drove me to drink. And I never had the decency to thank her.

I like children. If they're properly cooked.

A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.

Never try to impress a woman, because if you do she'll expect you to keep up the standard for the rest of your life.

Marry an outdoors woman. That way, if you have to throw her out into the yard for the night, she can still survive.

Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There's nothing like having a midget for a butler.

No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it's only a question of degree.

The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.

Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.

Take me down to the bar! We'll drink breakfast together!

You can't trust water: Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.

I always keep some whiskey handy in case I see a snake...which I also keep handy.

As W.C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.

You can fool some of the people some of the time -- and that's enough to make a decent living.

It is funnier to bend things than to break them.

Was I in here last night and did I spend a $20 bill? Oh, thank goodness... I thought I'd lost it.

Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream.

I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday.

Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and furthermore, always carry a small snake.

If I had to live my life over, I'd live over a saloon.

What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?

Anybody who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.

There's no such thing as a tough child - if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender.

Children should neither be seen nor heard from – ever again.

Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill.

I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.

Goddamn the whole fucking world and everyone in it except you, Carlotta!

When we have lost everything, including hope, life becomes a disgrace, and death a duty.

All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia

I've never hit a woman in my life. Not even my own mother.

Philadelphia, wonderful town, spent a week there one night

Just like my Uncle Charlie used to say, just before he sprung the trap: He said, "You can't cheat and honest man! Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump!

We’re flimflam artists. But remember, sonny, you can’t con people unless they’re greedy to begin with. W. C. Fields had it right. You can’t cheat an honest man.

Never give a sucker an even break.

The news of my death is greatly exaggerated.

Ain't fit for man nor beast

Don't be a luddy-duddy! Don't be a mooncalf! Don't be a jabbernowl! You're not those, are you?

Never trust a man who doesn't drink.

I'm free of all prejudices. I hate all people equally.

Here lies W.C.Fields. I'd rather be living in Philadelphia.

Drowned in a vat of whiskey... Oh Death, where is thy sting?

Always smile first thing in the morning. Might as well get it over with.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it. - W.C. Fields

He had a W.C. Fields twang and a nose like a prize strawberry.

You both love Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Hawthorne and Melville, Flaubert and Stendahl, but at that stage of your life you cannot stomach Henry James, while Gwyn argues that he is the giant of giants, the colossus who makes all other novelists look like pygmies. You are in complete harmony about the greatness of Kafka and Beckett, but when you tell her that Celine belongs in their company, she laughs at you and calls him a fascist maniac. Wallace Stevens yes, but next in line for you is William Carlos Williams, not T.S. Eliot, whose work Gwyn can recite from memory. You defend Keaton, she defends Chaplin, and while you both howl at the sight of the Marx Brothers, your much-adored W.C. Fields cannot coax a single smile from her. Truffaut at his best touches you both, but Gwyn finds Godard pretentious and you don't, and while she lauds Bergman and Antonioni as twin masters of the universe, you reluctantly tell her that you are bored by their films. No conflicts about classical music, with J.S. Bach at the top of the list, but you are becoming increasingly interested in jazz, while Gwyn still clings to the frenzy of rock and roll, which has stopped saying much of anything to you. She likes to dance, and you don't. She laughs more than you do and smokes less. She is a freer, happier person than you are, and whenever you are with her, the world seems brighter and more welcoming, a place where your sullen, introverted self can almost begin to feel at home.

Women are crazy about pets. They're just crazy. Pets have nothing to do with it.

It ain't what they call you; it's what you answer to.

Lastly, remember what W. C. Fields had to say on this point: “It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to.

I was in love with a beautiful blond once. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I'm indebted to her for.

Beds are dangerous. More people die in bed than anywhere else.

Women are like elephants to me. I like to look at 'em, but I wouldn't want to own one.

Waitress: Don't be so free with your hands. Fields: Listen honey, I was only trying to guess your weight.

remember what W. C. Fields had to say on this point: “It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it. —W. C. FIELDS

IF A THING IS WORTH HAVING, ITS WORTH CHEATING FOR.

As the wit W. C. Fields advised: 'If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. There is no point making a fool of yourself.' This advice is easy to give and difficult to put into practice, but as you build your strengths, sometimes making great progress, sometimes slipping back, take comfort from the fact that this is how a strong life is supposed to be lived.

To paraphrase W.C. Fields, the bastard drove me to drink and I forgot to thank him.

as credited to quoted by W, C. Fields I spent half my money on Gambling Alcohol and Wild Women, the other half I wasted

That boy doesn’t love a thing in this world anywhere near as much as he loves you, Lennie.

Then Lennon spots me. And she freezes. Relief hits me like a wave. Because if she didn’t care, if she were totally over me, Lennon wouldn’t be looking at me like I’m a ghost.

For the written record in this personal document, let me simply say to me, Groucho Marx, W. C. Fields, and Elaine May are indisputably funny, with S.J. Perelman the funniest human of my time on earth.

And then there was the sad sign that a young woman working at a Tim Hortons in Lethbridge, Alberta, taped to the drive-through window in 2007. It read, “No Drunk Natives.” Accusations of racism erupted, Tim Hortons assured everyone that their coffee shops were not centres for bigotry, but what was most interesting was the public response. For as many people who called in to radio shows or wrote letters to the Lethbridge Herald to voice their outrage over the sign, there were almost as many who expressed their support for the sentiment. The young woman who posted the sign said it had just been a joke. Now, I’ll be the first to say that drunks are a problem. But I lived in Lethbridge for ten years, and I can tell you with as much neutrality as I can muster that there were many more White drunks stumbling out of the bars on Friday and Saturday nights than there were Native drunks. It’s just that in North America, White drunks tend to be invisible, whereas people of colour who drink to excess are not. Actually, White drunks are not just invisible, they can also be amusing. Remember how much fun it was to watch Dean Martin, Red Skelton, W. C. Fields, John Wayne, John Barrymore, Ernie Kovacs, James Stewart, and Marilyn Monroe play drunks on the screen and sometimes in real life? Or Jodie Marsh, Paris Hilton, Cheryl Tweedy, Britney Spears, and the late Anna Nicole Smith, just to mention a few from my daughter’s generation. And let’s not forget some of our politicians and persons of power who control the fates of nations: Winston Churchill, John A. Macdonald, Boris Yeltsin, George Bush, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Hard drinkers, every one. The somewhat uncomfortable point I’m making is that we don’t seem to mind our White drunks. They’re no big deal so long as they’re not driving. But if they are driving drunk, as have Canada’s coffee king Tim Horton, the ex-premier of Alberta Ralph Klein, actors Kiefer Sutherland and Mel Gibson, Super Bowl star Lawyer Milloy, or the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Mark Bell, we just hope that they don’t hurt themselves. Or others. More to the point, they get to make their mistakes as individuals and not as representatives of an entire race.

Throughout their lives W.B. Yeats and C.G. Jung sought out precedents for, and affinities with, their visionary — their daimonic — standpoints. Between them they uncovered and studied just about every major proponent of our tradition. This is not surprising, because it is a feature of the tradition that it threads together all who discover it, to form a series of historical links. The alchemists called it the Aurea Catena, the Golden Chain; and to grasp one link is to be connected to all the others.

It is the simplest phrase you can imagine,” Favreau said, “three monosyllabic words that people say to each other every day.” But the speech etched itself in rhetorical lore. It inspired music videos and memes and the full range of reactions that any blockbuster receives online today, from praise to out-of-context humor to arch mockery. Obama’s “Yes, we can” refrain is an example of a rhetorical device known as epistrophe, or the repetition of words at the end of a sentence. It’s one of many famous rhetorical types, most with Greek names, based on some form of repetition. There is anaphora, which is repetition at the beginning of a sentence (Winston Churchill: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields”). There is tricolon, which is repetition in short triplicate (Abraham Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”). There is epizeuxis, which is the same word repeated over and over (Nancy Pelosi: “Just remember these four words for what this legislation means: jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs”). There is diacope, which is the repetition of a word or phrase with a brief interruption (Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) or, most simply, an A-B-A structure (Sarah Palin: “Drill baby drill!”). There is antithesis, which is repetition of clause structures to juxtapose contrasting ideas (Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”). There is parallelism, which is repetition of sentence structure (the paragraph you just read). Finally, there is the king of all modern speech-making tricks, antimetabole, which is rhetorical inversion: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” There are several reasons why antimetabole is so popular. First, it’s just complex enough to disguise the fact that it’s formulaic. Second, it’s useful for highlighting an argument by drawing a clear contrast. Third, it’s quite poppy, in the Swedish songwriting sense, building a hook around two elements—A and B—and inverting them to give listeners immediate gratification and meaning. The classic structure of antimetabole is AB;BA, which is easy to remember since it spells out the name of a certain Swedish band.18 Famous ABBA examples in politics include: “Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.” —Benjamin Disraeli “East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other.” —Ronald Reagan “The world faces a very different Russia than it did in 1991. Like all countries, Russia also faces a very different world.” —Bill Clinton “Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.” —George W. Bush “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” —Hillary Clinton In particular, President John F. Kennedy made ABBA famous (and ABBA made John F. Kennedy famous). “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind,” he said, and “Each increase of tension has produced an increase of arms; each increase of arms has produced an increase of tension,” and most famously, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Antimetabole is like the C–G–Am–F chord progression in Western pop music: When you learn it somewhere, you hear it everywhere.19 Difficult and even controversial ideas are transformed, through ABBA, into something like musical hooks.

But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else’s blessing (or even their comprehension) in order to make your own creative work. And always remember that people’s judgments about you are none of your business. Lastly, remember what W. C. Fields had to say on this point: “It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to.” Actually, don’t even bother answering. Just keep doing your thing.

If you work and do pure research in this industry as long as I have – and you actually pay attention and do your homework, then this naked and raw truth stands out -> The supplement world of cancer-fighters, CAD-preventers, health-promoters, magic-water – AND/OR - muscle-builders, fat-burners and weight-loss agents – all of them – already have an over-crowded mass grave-yard of previous magic bullets that would supposedly make your life and/or body better – Yes, so promising and heavily promoted “this” era – but so dead and gone the next – leaving in their wake a trail of mass-consumer confusion – but also leaving their actual intention -> a new generation of passive consumers – those who can’t differentiate the sizzle from the steak. Or as W.C. Fields put it so long ago – “There’s a sucker born every minute.” -> There isn’t a supplement on the planet that marks the difference between ‘health or ill-health’ – or between ‘fit or fat.’ - or between ‘results and stagnation.

In the 1970s, researchers conducted a study that pitted a moral incentive against an economic incentive. In this case, they wanted to learn about the motivation behind blood donations. Their discovery: when people are given a small stipend for donating blood rather than simply being praised for their altruism, they tend to donate less blood. The stipend turned a noble act of charity into a painful way to make a few dollars, and it wasn’t worth it. What if the blood donors had been offered an incentive of $50, or $500, or $5,000? Surely the number of donors would have changed dramatically. But something else would have changed dramatically as well, for every incentive has its dark side. If a pint of blood were suddenly worth $5,000, you can be sure that plenty of people would take note. They might literally steal blood at knifepoint. They might pass off pig blood as their own. They might circumvent donation limits by using fake IDs. Whatever the incentive, whatever the situation, dishonest people will try to gain an advantage by whatever means necessary. Or, as W. C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.

In a study of the components of lying,2 Harvard Business School professor Deepak Malhotra and his coauthors found that, on average, liars use more words than truth tellers and use far more third-person pronouns. They start talking about him, her, it, one, they, and their rather than I, in order to put some distance between themselves and the lie. And they discovered that liars tend to speak in more complex sentences in an attempt to win over their suspicious counterparts. It’s what W. C. Fields meant when he talked about baffling someone with bullshit. The researchers dubbed this the Pinocchio Effect because, just like Pinocchio’s nose, the number of words grew along with the lie. People who are lying are, understandably, more worried about being believed, so they work harder—too hard, as it were—at being believable.

There is a maid, demure as she is wise, With all of April in her winsome eyes, And to my tales she listens pensively, With slender fingers clasped about her knee, Watching the sparrows on the balcony. Shy eyes that, lifted up to me, Free all my heart of vanity; Clear eyes, that speak all silently, Sweet as the silence of a nunnery— Read, for I write my rede for you alone, Here where the city's mighty monotone Deepens the silence to a symphony— Silence of Saints, and Seers, and Sorcery. Arms and the Man! A noble theme, I ween! Alas! I can not sing of these, Eileen— Only of maids and men and meadow-grass, Of sea and fields and woodlands, where I pass; Nothing but these I know, Eileen, alas! Clear eyes that, lifted up to me, Free all my soul from vanity; Gray eyes, that speak all wistfully— Nothing but these I know, alas! R. W. C. April, 1896.

Even male children of affluent white families think that history as taught in high school is “too neat and rosy.” 6 African American, Native American, and Latino students view history with a special dislike. They also learn history especially poorly. Students of color do only slightly worse than white students in mathematics. If you’ll pardon my grammar, nonwhite students do more worse in English and most worse in history.7 Something intriguing is going on here: surely history is not more difficult for minorities than trigonometry or Faulkner. Students don’t even know they are alienated, only that they “don’t like social studies” or “aren’t any good at history.” In college, most students of color give history departments a wide berth. Many history teachers perceive the low morale in their classrooms. If they have a lot of time, light domestic responsibilities, sufficient resources, and a flexible principal, some teachers respond by abandoning the overstuffed textbooks and reinventing their American history courses. All too many teachers grow disheartened and settle for less. At least dimly aware that their students are not requiting their own love of history, these teachers withdraw some of their energy from their courses. Gradually they end up going through the motions, staying ahead of their students in the textbooks, covering only material that will appear on the next test. College teachers in most disciplines are happy when their students have had significant exposure to the subject before college. Not teachers in history. History professors in college routinely put down high school history courses. A colleague of mine calls his survey of American history “Iconoclasm I and II,” because he sees his job as disabusing his charges of what they learned in high school to make room for more accurate information. In no other field does this happen. Mathematics professors, for instance, know that non-Euclidean geometry is rarely taught in high school, but they don’t assume that Euclidean geometry was mistaught. Professors of English literature don’t presume that Romeo and Juliet was misunderstood in high school. Indeed, history is the only field in which the more courses students take, the stupider they become. Perhaps I do not need to convince you that American history is important. More than any other topic, it is about us. Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we arrived at this point. Understanding our past is central to our ability to understand ourselves and the world around us. We need to know our history, and according to sociologist C. Wright Mills, we know we do.8

David's Song of Thanks     8  f Oh give thanks to the LORD;  g call upon his name;          h make known his deeds among the peoples!     9 Sing to him, sing praises to him;         tell of all his wondrous works!     10 Glory in his holy name;         let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice!     11  i Seek the LORD and his strength;         seek his presence continually!     12  j Remember the wondrous works that he has done,          k his miracles and the judgments he uttered,     13 O offspring of Israel his servant,         children of Jacob, his chosen ones!     14 He is the LORD our God;          l his judgments are in all the earth.     15 Remember his covenant forever,         the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,     16 the covenant  m that he made with Abraham,         his sworn promise to Isaac,     17 which  n he confirmed to Jacob as a statute,         to Israel as an everlasting covenant,     18 saying,  o “To you I will give the land of Canaan,         as your portion for an inheritance.”     19 When you were  p few in number,         of little account, and  q sojourners in it,     20 wandering from nation to nation,         from one kingdom to another people,     21 he allowed no one to oppress them;         he  r rebuked kings on their account,     22 saying, “Touch not my anointed ones,         do my  s prophets no harm!”     23  t Sing to the LORD, all the earth!         Tell of his salvation from day to day.     24 Declare his glory among the nations,         his marvelous works among all the peoples!     25 For  u great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised,         and he is to be feared  v above all gods.     26 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,          w but the LORD made the heavens.     27 Splendor and majesty are before him;         strength and joy are in his place.     28 Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples,          x ascribe to the LORD glory and strength!     29 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;         bring an offering and come before him!      y Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; [2]         30 tremble before him, all the earth;         yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.     31  z Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice,         and let them say among the nations,  a “The LORD reigns!”     32  b Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;         let the field exult, and everything in it!     33 Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy         before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth.     34 Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;         for his steadfast love endures forever! 35 c Say also:     “Save us, O God of our salvation,         and gather and deliver us from among the nations,     that we may give thanks to your holy name         and glory in your praise.     36  d Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel,         from everlasting to everlasting!”  e Then all the people said, “Amen!” and praised the LORD.

Remember, a dead fish can float down stream, it takes a live one to swim against the current. W. C. Fields

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.” —W. C. Fields

Jim Jordan as Fibber McGee of 79 Wistful Vista, teller of tall tales, incurable windbag. Marian Jordan as Molly McGee, his long-suffering wife. Marian Jordan as Teeny, the little girl who dropped in frequently to pester McGee. Isabel Randolph in miscellaneous “snooty” parts, beginning Jan. 13, 1936, and culminating in her long-running role as the highbrow Mrs. Abigail Uppington. Bill Thompson as Greek restaurateur Nick Depopoulous, first heard Jan. 27, 1936. Bill Thompson in various con man roles, first named Widdicomb Blotto and later Horatio K. Boomer, mimicking W. C. Fields from the show of March 9, 1936. Bill Thompson as the Old Timer, beginning May 31, 1937. Bill Thompson as Wallace Wimple, henpecked husband and bird fancier, introduced April 15, 1941.

But whatever awkwardness it’s occasioned me is nothing compared to the suffocating societal pressure that women who don’t want children are subjected to. After all, there’s a sort of role model or template for a man who doesn’t want kids—the Confirmed Bachelor, roguish and irascible in the W. C. Fields tradition. At worst, we’re considered selfish or immature; women who don’t want to have children are regarded as unnatural, traitors to their sex, if not the species. Men who don’t want kids get a dismissive eye roll, but the reaction to women who don’t want them is more like: What’s wrong with you?

But remember, sonny, you can’t con people unless they’re greedy to begin with. W. C. Fields had it right. You can’t cheat an honest man.

As W. C. Fields once said, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again . . . then give up. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.

Nunca bebo agua, me preocupa que pueda convertirse en un hábito.

Come my flocks, my flower. I have some very definite pear-shaped ideas I'd like to discuss with thee.

Mr Stavely ( Fields ): That pill from Medicine Hat been here again? Mrs Stavely: Yes, and he wants his money. Drat his hide. He wants more money and if he don't get it he'll take our malamuts. He wont take old Bozo, my lead dog! Why not? 'Cause I et him.

When I tell you to go out and tell one of these palookas that I'm out, go out and tell 'em I'm out. Don't have these buzzards walk in on me. When I don't wanna see 'em I don't...don't look at me that way.

Hi tooti-pie. Everything under control?

Once the city gets into a ba-hoys sa-hystem, he loses the ha-hankerin' for the ca-hountry.

However, Pauling’s interest in these carotenoids and flavonoids was confined to their chemical structures and the influence of structure on optical properties; he did not address their health functions. In 1941 Pauling was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, or glomerulonephritis, which was at the time an often-fatal kidney disorder. On the advice of physicians at the Rockefeller Institute, he went to San Francisco for treatment by Thomas Addis, an innovative Stanford nephrologist. Addis prescribed a diet low in salt and protein, plenty of water, and supplementary vitamins and minerals that Pauling followed for nearly 14 years and completely recovered. This was dramatic firsthand experience of the therapeutic value of the diet. Revelations When Pauling cast about for a new research direction in the 1950s, he realized that mental illness was a significant public health problem that had not been sufficiently addressed by scientists. Perhaps his mother’s megaloblastic madness and premature death caused by B12 deficiency underlay this interest. At about this time, Pauling’s eldest son, Linus Jr., began a residency in psychiatry, which undoubtedly prompted Pauling to consider the nature of mental illness. Thanks to funding from the Ford Foundation, Pauling investigated the role of enzymes in brain function but made little progress. When he came across a copy of Niacin Therapy in Psychiatry (1962) by Abram Hoffer in 1965, Pauling was astonished to learn that simple substances needed in minute amounts to prevent deficiency diseases could have therapeutic application in unrelated diseases when given in very large amounts. This serendipitous and key event was critically responsible for Pauling’s seminal paper in his emergent medical field. Later, Pauling was especially excited by Hoffer’s observations on the survival of patients with advanced cancer who responded well to his micronutrient and dietary regimen, originally formulated to help schizophrenics manage their illness.19,20 The regimen includes large doses of B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, selenium, zinc, and other micronutrients. About 40 percent of patients treated adjunctively with Hoffer’s regimen lived, on average, five or more years, and about 60 percent survived four times longer than controls. These results were even better than those achieved by Scottish surgeon Ewan Cameron, Pauling’s close clinical collaborator, in Scotland. After a long and extremely productive career at Caltech,

I was the first comic in world history, so they told me, to pick fights with children.

Why that's a colossal fib. I'm a very kind person. I've never hurt man, beast or child. Except when I had to. I belong to the Bare-Hand-Wolf-Choker Association.

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.

W. C. Fields, used to say: “You can’t cheat an honest man.” Only the devious manipulator cannot resist the opportunity to believe the illusion that he is in control, that he can get away with it.