Quotable Quotes

Here's a list of my favorite quotes. I apologize if some of them do not match their originals ad verbatim.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

- Provenance uncertain but attributed to Mark Twain in the opening credits of the movie adaptation of Michael Lewis's "The Big Short". 

"There are some things more important than money."

"Most things are more important than money, but you need money to accomplish all of them."

- pp 211-212, "the whole truth" by David Baldacci

"What's your take on Champ Pollion? Let me guess, he was first in his class at MIT."

"No, he actually was second in his class at the Indian Institute of Technology, a school many in the field consider even more prestigious."

- pp 118-119, "Simple Genius" by David Baldacci, 2007

Q: If you are so smart, why are you not rich? - Wall Street Bond Trader to a Harvard Professor
A: If you are so rich, why are you not smart? - Reply from the Harvard Professor

Middle initials, like in Jesus H. Christ, Harry S. Truman, often mean nothing. They are there only to decorate the name ... like the I in CIA.

Sign in a nouveau riche bar: Better nouveau than never.
 

Al Capone: You can do a lot more with a smile and a gun than with a smile alone.
 

Empathy: (Bruce) Springsteen doesn't know what a 40-hour workweek feels like, but he knows how a 40-hour workweek makes you feel.
 

Michael Schumacher is so successful that the only exciting part of the race is the one that happens behind him.
 

WalMart is the #1 company on the FORTUNE 500 list. So it's BIG. So big that if the pilferage from Wal-Mart were incorporated into a separate company, that company would rank 276 on the FORTUNE 500 list.
 

Mark Zuckerberg’s $46.5B loss on metaverse is so huge it would be a Fortune 100 company were it incorporated as a separate company.
 

New York City Subway crime increased 12% in 2005. But, if you take away iPod related crimes, the crime rate actually dropped 8%.
 

I'm a lawyer. But I'm not your lawyer.

- Email from Legal Counsel of MailChimp re. CAN-SPAM Act and its implications for bulk email users.
 

Not only does crime pay, it’s just the cost of doing business.

- FORTUNE magazine, closing line of article reporting on the $200M fine slapped on Archer Daniels Midland for lysine price fixing.