Here is an unsorted list of some of my favourite quotes, sayings, musings and questions. Some funny, some profound, some silly, some didactic. Don’t take them seriously, maybe mull some over, maybe smile. Attribution is given if known, no attribution is me.
- If you made $1,000,00 an hour for a regular 40-year working life, you would still be far from the richest person in the world.
- It is forbidden to kill unless you kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. [Voltaire]
- Boy, those French! They have a different word for everything. [Steve Martin]
- The spread of an epidemic is based on two factors. 1) How dense the population is. 2) How dense the population is. [anon]
- Land lines can have several phones on one number. Why not mobiles?
- I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member. [Groucho Marx]
- Why is “behind your back” not “in front of your back”?
- Charles Feeney gave away 99.975% of his US$8 billion, leaving only US$2 million for him. Why do we not know his name instead of miserly billionaires?
- Why do we have kilometres (km) but not megametres (Mm)?
- When you look at someone through rose coloured glasses, all of the red flags just look like flags. [Bojack Horseman]
- I tried to sue the airline for losing my luggage. I lost my case. [anon]
- Why is the Save icon a floppy disc?
- If the Save icon is a floppy disc, why isn’t the Font icon a daisy wheel?
- A life span of 80 years is about 1,000 months, 30,00 days, 700,00 hours, 3 billion heartbeats.
- The longest word that can be typed with one hand is outdated. No, no, it is stewardesses.
- I lost a fortune yesterday when the paper fell out of the cookie.
- A priest, an imam and a rabbit walk into a bar. The rabbit says “I think I’m an autocorrect”. [unknown]
- By mid-21st century, the world population will start to decline as the replacement rate drops below 2.1.
- When my kleptomania gets really bad, I take something for it. [anon]
- Married 47 years and never talked divorce. Murder, yes. Divorce, no. [Max Stummer]
- In a room with 23 people, there is a 50% chance of two having the same birthday. Actually 50.048%.
- My wife said I can be an idiot sometimes. Pretty cool of her to give me permission like that. [anon]
- Pavlov is having a pint in the pub. A phone rings. He runs out shouting “I forgot to feed the dog!” [anon]
- The moonwalk dance move was first done by Bill Bailey in the 1930’s, on film in 1955.
- Mankind nearly went extinct about 72k years ago in the Toba volcano event, with only 3-10k people left alive worldwide.
- The only job with no qualifications or interview is politician.
- Did Dunning and Kruger have confidence in their theory?
- Occam’s razor is attributed to William of Ockham in 4th century, but that’s just the simplest explanation.
- No matter how kind you are, German children will always be kinder. [anon]
- Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. Then when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes. [anon]
- I just found out that Albert Einstein was a real person. I thought he was a theoretical physicist. [anon]
- Mankind will bring down mankind because we can’t resist Pandora’s box.
- The Shift key gets its name from typewriters. It shifted down the typeslug assembly. Backspace moved the platen (and paper) back one space.
- As of 2025, 86% of the world’s adults have mobile phones, about 70% have smart phones.
- People in government are just elected citizens. They are not in power, they are in service. [anon]
- Apparently you can fool lots of people all of the time.
- Man addicted to drinking brake fluid says he can stop anytime he wants. [anon]
- When I raise my arms, the earth turns slower.
- A senior driving answers his phone. “The news says there’s a car going the wrong way on the hwy!” “It’s not just one car,” says Bob, “it’s hundreds of them!” [anon]
- When Canada takes over the world, you will all be sorry. [anon]
- A Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers and says “Five beers, please.” [anon]
- “Raise” and “raze” are homophones and antonyms. [C.M.]
- Einstein was afraid to check if he was awarded the Schrodinger prize for quantum mechanics.
- My wife is immature. I’ll be in the tub and she will come in and sink my boats. […]
- Someone once told me what the hippocampus does, but by the next day I had forgotten.
- 10 out of 9 out of people do not understand statistics, with a 2 sigma probability. [anon]
- The Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe.
- Juliet was 13 years old, Romeo was 15 or 16.
- Stop worrying, nobody gets out of this world alive. [Clive James]
- Two scientists walk into a bar. “I’ll have H2O,” says the first, “I’ll have H2O, too,” says the second. Bartender gives them both water because he is able to distinguish the boundary tones that dictate the grammatical function of homonyms in coda position, as well as pragmatic context. [C.M.]
- Idolizing a politician is like believing that the salesperson likes you. [anon]
- No one bought my autobiography. Story of my life. [anon]
- Misuse of words is literally everywhere.
- Now is not the time for anachronisms. [anon]
- Fiction is life with the dull bits left out. [Clive James]
- Africa is times larger than Greenland, regardless of Mercator projection maps.
- Botox the weight of a grain of rice can kill a quarter million people. (ref: 30mg/rice grain, LD50=1-3ng/kg)
- What was our internal monologue like before humans had language?
- People who didn’t need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn’t need people. [Terry Pratchett]
- The byproduct of cold fusion is gas for party balloons.
- Scriptures are the sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. [Ambrose Bierce]
- Even things that are true can be proved. [Oscar Wilde]
- Why do you turn a tap counter-clockwise for hot? All other controls are clockwise to increase.
- In 2025, estimates are that 80% of the world has never been in an airplane.
- Jesus was going to be named Gary until Mary stubbed her toe. [anon]
- Words that are not what they mean (heterological): Monosyllabic, phonetic, abbreviated, verb, hyphenated, palindrome, big, long, palindrome, ??
- Money can’t buy happiness. It allows you to do things that make you happy and remove stress from not having enough to live happily. It also attracts problems. (maxim)
- There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who know binary and those who don’t. [anon]
- A surrealist is in a café. He says to the waitress “I’d like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.” The waitress replies “I’m sorry but we’re out of cream. Would you like it with no milk?” [anon]
- In 1964 Toronto had the world’s first computerized traffic light system. Looks like it is still in use.
- If you are feeling seasick, try not to think of the boat going up and down, up and down, up and down. [anon]
- Why are films rated in revenue and not bums in seats? Why not percentage of population who saw it?
- Do anti-vaxers take any pills?
- In 1975, Charlie Chaplin got third place in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
- You could write a book about things that you can’t find online. [Maggie Stiefvater]
- Sadly, our society uses art to make money rather than use money to make art.
- Every dogma has its day. [Anthony Burgess, maybe]
- Imagine how excited barn owls were when we invented barns. [anon]
- St. Peter’s Square is keyhole shaped. Red Square is rectangular. Trafalgar Square is square.
- Why is wide screen 6:9 aspect ratio? NTSC was 4:3, maybe because 4^2=16:3^2=9
- Money is a temporary medium, not a commodity.
- Vincent van Gogh sold one picture in his life, to his brother.
- An electric car can take over three days to charge from a regular wall outlet.
- London taxi drivers spend 3-4 years learning The Knowledge, knowing the streets and numerous routes by memory. Verified in 2025 as still in effect.
- My math teacher called me average. How mean! [anon]
- Punctuation marks are important people. [anon]
- A recent study showed that fully half of Canadian doctors fall below the median level of care. 🙂
- What do you call the doctor who graduates last in their class? Doctor. [Dr. L.G.]
- Change the emphasized word every time you read the following. I never said we should fire him. [anon]
- A software tester walks into a bar. He/she orders a beer, 10 beers, -1 beers, 0^6 beers, = beers, ? beers…
- Opposite words: Always coming from take me down.
- In 2021, the Ontario government officially dropped fax. Fax caught on in late 1980’s after a postal strike.
- At the time of the pyramids, life expectancy in Egypt was 25.
- Because of Brave New World and Covid-19, non-Greeks are learning the Greek alphabet.
- Blood is thinner than money. [proverb & Margaret Atwood]