Quotations

Cole Porter: "Experiment" (from "Nymph Errant," 1933)

Before you leave these portals

To meet less fortunate mortals,

There's just one final message

I would give to you.

You all have learned reliance

On the sacred teachings of science,

So I hope, through life, you never will decline

In spite of philistine

Definace

To do what all good scientists do.

Refrain

Experiment.

Make it your motto day and night.

Experiment

And it will lead you to the light.

The apple on the top of the tree

Is never too high to achieve,

So take an example from Eve,

Experiment.

Be curious,

Though interfering friends may frown.

Get furious

At each attempt to hold you down.

If this advice you always employ

The future can offer you infinite joy

And merriment,

Experiment

And you'll see

Dick Armey: “Barney Fag,” 1995

During a 1995 radio interview, Dick Armey of Texas, the Republican Majority leader, discussed a book that he had written about freedom: "I like peace and quiet, and I don't have to listen to Barney Fag -- Barney Frank -- haranguing in my ear because I made a few bucks off a book I worked on."

Jerry Falwell: "I point the finger," 2001

In response to the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center: "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularise America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "

Barney Frank: "Miss America," 2008

Asking the Republican White House to support more government intervention to help homeowners at risk of foreclosure is "like asking me to judge the Miss America contest -- if your heart's not in it, you don't do a very good job."

Charlotte Roche: "feminism of the body, June 6. 2008

About her novel Wetlands, published in Germany: “It’s not feminist in a political sense, but instead feminism of the body, that has to do with anxiety and repression and the fear that you stink, and this for me is clearly feminist, that one builds confidence with your own body . . . .”

Gertrude Stein: "she was gay then," 1908-1912

"She told many then the way of being gay, she taught very many then ways they could use in being gay. She was living very well, she was gay then, she went on living then, she was regular in being ay, she always was living very well and was gay very well and was telling about little ways one could be learning to use in being gay, and later was telling them quite often, telling them again and again."