Clowning Quotes

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Statesmen are grocers, ambitious clowns.
Bozell The Clownhttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CountdownWithKeithOlbermann Referring to Ann Coulter:
Keith Olbermann
• Source: Wikiquote: "Keith Olbermann" (Catch Phrases: Throughout Olbermann's career, most prominently at ESPN, he has used repeated "catch phrases" to describe various situations. The sporting catch phrase has been at the core of the personality of ESPN's Sportscenter since its inception, with Olbermann being a leader in their creation and usage. Many of these have moved from his original application to sports, into his current program.)
I'm a clown with brush and color.
I'm gonna go home and spank the clown.
Static: (About Toyman's Clown robots) This clown posse really is insane!
I didn't realize this was a sad occasion. — Waiter at The Anxious Clown Restaurant
RUN AWAY FROM THE CIRCUS JOIN THE FORCES OF THE CLANDESTINE INSURGENT REBEL CLOWN ARMY
Boy: It's important to know and understand clown markings.
Slither: Your safety depends on it.
"Clown Markings"
A clown's makeup and character, that's all he has to sell. He loves and believes in that character.
Clowntime is over Time to take over While others just talk and talk Somebody's watching where the others don't walk.
Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.
The artist, like the idiot or clown, sits on the edge of the world, and a push may send him over it.
Courtesy of temper, when it is used to veil churlishness of deed, is but a knight's girdle around the breast of a base clown.
Temper
• Walter Scott, as quoted in "Gleanings from Many Minds" in The Guernsey magazine (October 1876)
• Source: Wikiquote: "Temper" (Quotes)
I realized that democracy is indivisible, or rather, that freedom is indivisible. There are many clown-democracies in the Arab world, which have nothing to do with freedom.
I have sometimes thought that all professional lectures on rationality should be delivered while wearing a clown suit, to prevent the audience from confusing seriousness with solemnity.
I am a rebel clown.
I am a buffoon in a platoon of fools.
I serve the children of the world
and live by the values of CIRCA
"I actually was class clown, but I don't know how that happened because I've never been considered an outwardly funny person — as the people in this room will attest."
Gilgamesh Wulfenbach: Oh! "Clowns" is the perfect word! Foolish creatures who cause a distraction, while the real players prepare!
Captain Vole: Votever hyu say, Meester "I'm so schmot I don't gotta make sense."
The clown company played by Atul Kumar, Kalki Koechlin, Sujay Saple, Neil Bhoopalam, Namit Das and Puja Sarup are outstanding in their role[s]. This is just outstanding casting by the director and The Company Theatre.
Great deeds and utterances are now so diluted with printer’s ink that we can no longer find a sage or saint. Our worthiest men are exhibited and bewritten until they are made as uninteresting as clowns.
Since the beginning of time tricksters (the mythological origin of all clowns) have embraced life's paradoxes, creating coherence through confusion — adding disorder to the world in order to expose its lies and speak the truth.
Hans Grovendraad, an honest clown, By cobbling in his native town, Had earned a living ever. His work was strong and clean and fine, And none who served at Crispin's shrine Was at his trade more clever.
Shoemaking
• Jan van Ryswick, Hans Grovendraad; translated from the French by F. W. Ricord.
• Source: Wikiquote: "Shoemaking" (Sourced, Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations: Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 705-06.)
Fiction is made of life/ Of earth and clay/ Of tears and laughter/ Of blood and sweat/ Hear them, the works of an author or a painter/ The singer and the clown/ Preserve the mystery of life.
Jon: Garfield, why aren't women attracted to me?
Garfield snatches Jon's coffee cup
Jon: Hey! That's my Binky the Clown cup! (Throws temper tantrum) MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE!
Garfield: I think I've isolated your problem.
(18 Nov 1991) http://garfield.com/comics/comics_archives_strip.html?1991-ga911118
I stand ready to deploy, engage, and use clown logic to change my enemies into friends and then into clowns.
I am a harbinger of freedom, fun, and friendship, the clown's way of life.
I am a rebel clown.
Frank Welker as Bulk in any episodes, Cici in Phantom of the grand ol' opry, Bubbles the Clown in Bubbles, Bubbles Everywhere, Pengy & Walle in Leave it to space beavers & Prince Pyjamarama in Ruse of the Rajah
For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters clown, To strengthen while one stands.
I was not made of common calf, Nor ever meant for country loon; If with an axe I seem cut out, The workman was no cobbling clown; A good jack boot with double sole he made, To roam the woods, or through the rivers wade.
Shoemaking
• Giuseppe Giusti, The Chronicle of the Boot.
• Source: Wikiquote: "Shoemaking" (Sourced, Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations: Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 705-06.)
I'm a big goofball. In Australia we call it a dag. … It's quite an affectionate term, but it means your basically a big goofball. I just love making a fool out of myself. I made my living as a clown at kids' parties for about three years.
That all from Adam first begun, None but ungodly Woolston doubts, And that his son, and his son's sons Were all but ploughmen, clowns and louts. Each when his rustic pains began, To merit pleaded equal right, 'Twas only who left off at noon, Or who went on to work till night.
Ancestors
• Matthew Prior, The Old Gentry.
• Source: Wikiquote: "Ancestors" (Sourced, Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations: Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 23-25.)
I introduced what I called "outside-in problem solving," which nowadays is called "top-clown." But I prefer outside-in because outside-in allows you to have many different viewpoints instead of a single top that you stupidly try to get to the bottom of, and things of that sort. Object oriented programming came out of that.
Wear the cap and the bells
And you'll rate all the great swells.

If you become a doctor, folks'll face you with dread.
If you become a dentist, they'll be glad when you're dead.
You get a bigger hand if you can stand on your head.
Be a clown, be a clown, be a clown.
Give 'em quips, give 'em fun And they'll happy to say you're A-1 If you become a farmer you've the weather to buck If you become a gambler you'll be stuck with your luck But Jack you'll never lack if you can quack like a duck Be a clown, be a clown, be a clown.
The quantitative investigations of Black on the burning of lime and magnesia alba, in which the balance (previously characterized by the French chemist Jean Rey as "an instrument for clowns") was applied at every turn, led to the rejection of a hypothetical "principle of causticity," and replaced it by a "sensible ingredient of a sensible body," fixed air.
Philip Astley was a horseman with a British dragoon regiment from about 1759 and at first was the sole performer in the Amphitheatre, specializing in riding with one foot on the saddle and one on the horse’s head while brandishing a sword. He gradually included other equestrians, acrobats, rope dancers, aerialists, clowns, and the first recorded circus freak show.
"Is Ron Paul a Bible-believing Christian that believes in the book of Genesis all the way to Revelation? I seriously doubt that, but compare him to these other clowns. Compare him to these other buffoons. Compare him to these other lying, blaspheming dogs. Am I a bad person for saying things like that? It's just true." Secrets (Volume 133) 25:10 August 2007
As much as people dismiss him (Dershowitz) as a clown and charlatan and roll their eyes ­ the fact of the matter is that he very effectively makes use of his Harvard pedigree ­ it is a distinguished university and he has an eminent chair of that university and he makes use of those credentials to lend credibility to his work
The character of a gentleman [I take it] may be explained nearly thus: A blackguard is a fellow who does not care whom he offends; a clown is a blockhead who does not know when he offends; A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.
It's the bane of existence for anyone in comedy. 'The photograph must be funny!' So the people coordinating the shoot throw rubber chickens at you, 20 at a time. Or put a feathered hat on you. Or give you a clown nose. Of course, all of this makes you depressed, so you wind up looking more like you're promoting A Long Day's Journey Into Night.
Be the poor silly ass
And you'll always travel first class.

Give 'em quips, give 'em fun,
And they'll pay to say you're A–1.
If you become a farmer, you've the weather to buck.
If become a gambler you'll be struck with your luck.
But jack you'll never lack if you can quack like a duck.
Be a clown, be a clown, be a clown.
There was Mark, whom I frightened into disguising himself in a clown's suit, so that nobody might suspect him to be a maker of literature: indeed, I frightened him so that he hid away the greater part of what he had made until after he was dead, and I could not get at him. That was a disgusting trick to play on me, I consider.
Clowns
• James Branch Cabell, on the role of Mark Twain, as a humorist as well as social critic, in The Judging of Jurgen (1920)
• Source: Wikiquote: "Clowns" (Quotes: Alphabetized by author or source )
You can forget the Little Donkey, the Rabbit, the Clown and all the other great pretenders, it's the Flea with the fast feet and fabulous control who gets closest to el Diego. He may not have the same the strutting confidence or the big mouth - in fact, he makes whispering Ted Lowe sound like a town crier - but there's definitely something about Messi.
Entire islands and groves of memory suddenly sprung up and I found myself face to face with a deeper awareness of what I can only describe as numerous versions of my singular self and my solitary destiny, pencil sketches of possibilities in which I saw myself as a clown, a poet, a slave, an orator, a prophet and a beggar and a healer and a warrior.
I was always a reluctant actor! I continue to be that. I announce a project, the camera rolls and I'm happy. I'm fortunate to be doing leading parts even now. Except for my mentor K. Balachander, for whom I can do even a walk-on part. When he directed his 100th film, I just walked in to do a small role. I just clowned around on camera.
Of obvious appeal to the humourless is the writer who comes on stage in a clown outfit or King Kong suit, with party hat and harem slippers, with banana skins and custard pies... It remains a sound rule that funny journalism can only flourish as the offshoot or sideline of something larger. No funny journalist who is that and nothing more will ever write anything lastingly funny.
Peter: Who wants to see me put 10 squirts of hot sauce on my taco? Who wants to see me put 20 squirts of hot sauce on my taco? Who wants to see me put this entire bottle of hot sauce on my taco?
Jason: (watching with Paige) Ah, the tears of a clown.
Andy: (off-panel) Peter, dear, sucking on the ice maker won't get it to work faster.
CIRCA aims to make clowning dangerous again, to bring it back to the street, restore its disobedience and give it back the social function it once had: its ability to disrupt, critique and heal society. Since the beginning of time tricksters (the mythological origin or all clowns) have embraced life's paradoxes, creating coherence through confusion — adding disorder to the world in order to expose its lies and speak the truth.
CIRCA aims to make clowning dangerous again, to bring it back to the street, restore its disobedience and give it back the social function it once had: its ability to disrupt, critique and heal society. Since the beginning of time tricksters (the mythological origin of all clowns) have embraced life's paradoxes, creating coherence through confusion — adding disorder to the world in order to expose its lies and speak the truth.
As a matter of survival I've created this anti-hero alter-ego, a guy in an ill-fitting suit—part humunculus and part clown. Yep, that's me alright … I could never relate to heroes. I have no interest in drawing heroic characters. It's not my thing, man. I'm more inclined toward the sordid underbelly of life. I find it more interesting to draw grotesque, lurid, or absurd pictures, and I especially enjoy depicting my fevered sexual obsessions.
"Tribe purist to the fullest If'n you ain't feelin' this track, then you're full of it Pull that li'l shit if you wanna, ya dig But you ain't gonna do me like you did those Kidz, and clown me Homage, comma, props Call it what you want, but I'm not gonna stop Record hit the store and I'm not gonna flop And if I do, well then it's fodder for the message boards tomorrow"
There [is] no little vigour and force added to words, when they are delivered in a neat and fine way, and somewhat out of the ordinary road, common and dull language relishing more of the clown than the gentleman. But herein also affectation must be avoided; it being better for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself, than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or inkhorn.
I'll give you an example — in Russia most of the hospitals don't have any pain medicine, they don't have any money. So if you're with kids with cancer, they can have metastases to the bone; which some say is the worst pain a human can experience. So a mother can be in a room with a child who hasn't stopped screaming in five months. ...85% of the time I walk in there as a clown they'll stop screaming."
We played game after game and at times it was almost impossible not to feel ludicrous. But they were all designed to help protesters defeat barriers — and police. Even the staunchest environmental protesters — some of whom come from the most far-flung fringes of society — regard the clowns with suspicion, as slightly untrustworthy anarchists. But then, almost everybody else was so earnest. There was a smattering of middle-aged, grey-haired folk, but many were cliches of "Swampy" — thin, vegan and humourless.
The busy chatter of the heat
Shrilled like a parakeet;
And shuddering at the noonday light
The dust lay dead and white

As powder on a mummy's face,
Or fawned with simian grace
Round booths with many a hard bright toy
And wooden brittle joy:

The cap and bells of Time the Clown
That, jangling, whistled down
Young cherubs hidden in the guise
Of every bird that flies;

And star-bright masks for youth to wear,
Lest any dream that fare
— Bright pilgrim — past our ken, should see
Hints of Reality.

With both lined up four abreast, she read me the cards. Poor drunkard of the tale. Two fortune-tellers dead. And a room full of bottles. The clown is drunk. And the cards of death wait on him. His snout is blue, and he looks like a bear. And the rag doll of death, with the clown flinging him by the arm, can't be loved by you, madness. Because he is drunk and has no river, or breakdown. Because they cork him in, unable to love him. Because stars no longer love him.
Clowns
• Giannina Braschi in "Book of Clowns and Buffoons" in Empire of Dreams (1994), p. 48
• Source: Wikiquote: "Clowns" (Quotes: Alphabetized by author or source )
I hate to admit and I don't wanna discourage anyone by saying the following but sincerity ain't mean shit in this world nоwadays and never gonna help you out with what you've been doing - either making music or playing basketball or even loving a woman cuz in music you have to turn pop in order to get the audience, in basketball you suppose to act a fool to be a clown to entertain and loving a woman is taken for granted and considered to be friendship —The Book Of Experience - 2013
The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army is looking for fools and rebels, radicals and rascals, tricksters and traitors, mutineers and malcontents to join its ranks.
You could be part of a fighting force armed with ruthless love and fully trained in the ancient art of clowning and non-violent direct action. You could learn ingeniously stupid tactics that baffle the powerful. You could uncover your inner clown and discover the subversive freedom of fooling.
You don't need to like clowns or soldiers, you just need to love life and laughter as much as rebellion.
The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army is looking for fools and rebels, radicals and rascals, tricksters and traitors, mutineers and malcontents to join its ranks.
You could be part of a fighting force armed with ruthless love and fully trained in the ancient art of clowning and non-violent direct action.''' You could learn ingeniously stupid tactics that baffle the powerful. You could uncover your inner clown and discover the subversive freedom of fooling.
You don't need to like clowns or soldiers, you just need to love life and laughter as much as rebellion.
The alien stood in shadow and he looked, Enoch thought, more than ever like the cruel clown. His lithe, flowing body had the look of smoked, tanned buckskin. The patchwork color of his hide seemed to shine with a faint luminescence and the sharp, hard angles of his face, the smooth baldness of his head, the flat, pointed ears pasted tight against the skull lent him a vicious fearsomeness. If one did not know him for the gentle character that he was, Enoch told himself, he would be enough to scare a man out of seven years of growth.
I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices — it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath — someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts … just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown .... [being given] free rein [by director Christopher Nolan was] fun, because there are no real boundaries to what The Joker would say or do. Nothing intimidates him, and everything is a big joke."
The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Huxley—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Darwin? . . . They are laughing at Nietzsche yet . . .
What was crucial to the partnership, it should be noted, is that Flavor Flav was a clown — in the tradition of the best black comics — yet he was a clown with consciousness, empowered with knowledge of self, an entirely different persona from the "Stepin Fetchit" and "Sambo" stereotypes of subservient and uncouth black Americans. Flavor Flav was and is a fool, but a fool on a mission. On the cover of Nation of Millions, he wears a gigantic clock as a medallion — a preposterous getup — yet it is designed to illustrate, through a comic medium, that time is indeed running out.
Ralph Nader’s the guy. If Ralph Nader had become president, we would not have had the problems. Everything he says is correct. He said, “Don’t tax food. Tax the stock market. Every time somebody trades stock, put another tax on it..." Every time you trade, they take a service fee, five bucks or something. That’s bullshit. The government should get it and give it to me while I live in my refrigerator box. I don’t mean me, I mean us undergrounds. Nader was right on. Everything he said was right on and the media treated him like a clown. The media treated him worse than they treat Troma.
My own pseudo-conclusion: That we've been damned by giants sound asleep, or by great scientific principles and abstractions that cannot realize themselves: that little harlots have visited their caprices upon us; that clowns, with buckets of water from which they pretend to cast thousands of good-sized fishes have anathematized us for laughing disrespectfully, because, as with all clowns, underlying buffoonery is the desire to be taken seriously; that pale ignorances, presiding over microscopes by which they cannot distinguish flesh from nostoc or fishes' spawn, have visited upon us their wan solemnities. We've been damned by corpses and skeletons and mummies, which twitch and totter with pseudo-life derived from conveniences.
Being British in this part of the century meant living in the country that had Peter Cook in it. There are wits and there are clowns in comedy, I suppose. Peter was a wit, it goes without saying, but he was funny in an almost supernatural way that has never been matched by anyone I've met or even heard about. It wasn't to do with facial expression or epigrammatic wit, or cattiness or rant or anger or technique: he had funniness in the same way that beautiful people have beauty or dancers have line and grace. He had an ability to make people gasp and gasp and gasp for breath like landed fish.
'Who will wonder that Barbara had a headache, or that Barbara's mother was disposed to be cross, or that she slightly underrated Astley's, and thought the clown was older than they had taken him to be last night? Kit was not surprised to hear her say so--not he. He had already had a misgiving that the inconstant actors in that dazzling vision had been doing the same thing the night before last, and would do it again that night, and the next, and for weeks and months to come, though he would not be there. Such is the difference between yesterday and today. We are all going to the play, or coming home from it.'
If Imus had called me a "towheaded ho" or Al Sharpton a "nappy-headed ho," it would be what's known as "funny." (And if he called Anna Nicole Smith a "flaxen-headed ho," it would be "absolutely accurate.") But he attacked the looks and morals of utterly innocent women, who had done nothing to inject themselves into public debate. Imus should apologize to the Rutgers women — and those women alone — send them flowers, and stop kissing Al Sharpton's ring. This wasn't an insult to all mankind, and certainly not an insult to Al Sharpton. Now, if Imus had called the basketball players "fat, race-baiting black men with clownish hairstyles," well, then perhaps Sharpton would be owed an apology.
Ricketts, an accomplished performer and horseman, set-up in Philadelphia “at very considerable expense” an outdoor riding ring he called a “circus” at the corner of Twelfth and Market Streets, which he opened on April 3, 1793. This was the first complete circus in America, because it incorporated the elements of clowning, music, acrobatics, and horsemanship...In his eight-year career, he built at least twenty circuses, located in every major eastern American city, including several amphitheaters in Philadelphia and New York...called “The Father of the American Circus” he sold his horses and set sail for England in 1800. He and all hands were lost at sea, a final twist to the pattern of ill luck that had plagued his last years.
Think of it like this. When Burger King, if it closes down in the neighborhood, the McDonald's makes a lot more money because there's no competition. Without America competing for the sanity and safety of the Middle East, the terrorist threat will spread like a cancer, and those cancer cells are all throughout the region... We need to stop listening to the clowns in Washington. Dig deep for the courage and conviction to do the hard work that lies ahead so our kids don't have to. This is like winning this war in Iraq. We as a nation can do anything that we set our minds to. Why? Because we're Americans. We're winners. Because we're on the side of what is right and what is just.
The part that wasn't a jackpot was his baseball mound of red pubic hair that looked like it had literally been attached with a glue gun. I couldn't believe how much there was, and wondered how he had never heard of scissors, or--more appropriate for that kind of growth--hedge trimmers. I didn't understand what porn he was watching to not be aware of the trimming that was happening all across the world among his compatriots. I'm not a finicky person when it comes to pubic hair maintenance and I certainly don't expect men to shave it all off, leaving themselves to look like a hairless cat. That's even creepier then than seeing what Austin had, which could really only be compared to one thing: A clown in a leg lock.
He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry. He doesn't belong there. And for him to say, slaves have dignity. I mean, doesn't he know that slaves were in chains? That they were whipped on the back. If he saw the movie 12 Years as a Slave, you know, they were raped. And he says they had dignity as slaves or— My parents lost everything that they worked for, in the middle of their lives, in their thirties. His business, my father's business, our home, our freedom and we're supposed to call that dignified? Marched out of our homes at gun point. I mean, this man does not belong on the Supreme Court. He is an embarrassment. He is a disgrace to America.
Then, when President Nixon resigned, Ford succeeded to the Presidency. Ford was well meaning and amiable but had no abilities superior to his predecessor or successor. Thus, nothing was really accomplished about inflation or energy. Ford had the bad fortune to preside over the actual fall of South Vietnam in 1975, about which, with Congress determined to provide for no real help, he could do nothing. He also had the bad fortune to slip and fall in public more than once, which gave him a clownish reputation–that on top of the often repeated observation by Lyndon Johnson that Ford had played football without his helmet too much. All this, and the fact that Ford had pardoned President Nixon from any possible prosecutions, led to Ford losing the very close election in 1976.
Certainly Mr Eliot in the twenties was responsible for a great vogue for verse-satire. An ideal formula of ironic, gently "satiric", self-expression was provided by that master for the undergraduate underworld, tired and thirsty for poetic fame in a small way. The results of Mr Eliot are not Mr Eliot himself: but satire with him has been the painted smile of the clown. Habits of expression ensuing from mannerism are, as a fact, remote from the central function of satire. In its essence the purpose of satire — whether verse or prose — is aggression. (When whimsical, sentimental, or "poetic" it is a sort of bastard humour.) Satire has a great big glaring target. If successful, it blasts a great big hole in the center. Directness there must be and singleness of aim: it is all aim, all trajectory.
Why should I, in so vast an ocean of books whereby the minds of the studious are bemuddled and vexed; of books of the more stupid sort whereby the common herd and fellows without a spark of talent are made intoxicated, crazy, puffed up; are led to write numerous books and to profess themselves philosophers, physicians, mathematicians, and astrologers, the while ignoring and contemning men of learning: why, I say, should I add aught further to this confused world of writings, or why should I submit this noble and (as comprising many things before unheard) of this new and inadmissible philosophy to the judgment of men who have taken oath to follow the opinions of others, to the most senseless corrupters of the arts, to lettered clowns, grammatists, sophists, spouters, and the wrong-headed rabble to be denounced, torn to tatters, and heaped with contumely.
Centuries ago, when I first stood on that little boulevard stage in Paris — when I saw the happy faces, when I heard applause — I felt as if my body and soul had found their destiny; I felt as if every promise in my birth and childhood had begun its fulfillment at last. Oh, there were other actors, worse and better; other singers; other clowns; there have been a million since and a million will come after this moment. But each of us shines with his own inimitable power; each of us comes alive in his own unique and dazzling moment; each of us has his chance to vanquish the others forever in the eye of the beholder, and that is the only kind of accomplishment I can really understand: the kind of accomplishment in which the self-this self, if you will — is utterly whole and triumphant.
I had recklessly dared to do what I wouldn't dare to do today. The knight performs his morning prayer. When he is ready to pack up his chess set, he turns around, and there stands Death. 'Who are you?' asks the knight. 'I am Death.' Bengt Ekerot and I agreed that Death should have the features of a white clown. An amalgamation of a clown mask and a skull. It was a delicate and dangerous artistic move, which could have failed. Suddenly, an actor appears in whiteface, dressed all in black, and announces that he is Death. Everyone accepted the dramatic feat that he was Death, instead of saying, 'Come on now, don't try to put something over us! You can't fool us! We can see that you are just a talented actor who is painted white and clad in black! You're not Death at all!' But nobody protested. That made me feel triumphant and joyous.
Playing one character at a time, for months on end, didn’t properly exploit Williams’ unique gift of being everyone at once. His true model and mentor was not an Olivier or Brando but freeform comic Jonathan Winters, who also battled to call a truce with the manifold Genie geniuses in his head. … Why does a clown want to play Hamlet? Maybe because he thinks he is that melancholy soul whom others find amusingly odd. Williams dropped Mork’s na-nu na-nu and entered dramatic film with the lead in The World According to Garp. … Williams infused weird wonder in voice roles for animated features — not only Aladdin but Robots and Happy Feet. He was a cartoon, with all the characters, in a man’s body. … '''He could play anyone, but not just one: not “just” Robin Williams. All those voices in the head of this comic Hamlet must have told him it was time to be quiet. The rest is silence.
(After deciding that they wanted to join the circus)
Maxim: Hy tink hy iz de leading man type. Yah.
Ognian: Vots dot mean?
Maxim: Dot means hyu gets to kees de gurl.
Ognian: Hoo! Hy vant to be a leading man, too!
Maxim: Eediot. Hyu can't.
Ognian: Vy not?
Maxim: Dere's only vun leading man!
Ognian: Who sez?
Maxim: Iz obvious! If hyu gots two, dey lead in different directions!
Ognian: So vy hyu?
Maxim: Hy tink ov it first!
Ognian: Anyvay, dere vas two Heterodyne boyz!
Maxim: Say...hyu is right.
Ognian: Yah! Dot vay we both gets a gurl!
Maxim: I dunno. Zum ov de gurls dey keesed vos pretty scary.
Ognian: Anyvay, ve'd be keesing actresses. Und hyu know vot dey say about actresses!
Maxim: Vell, um, no.
Ognian: Yah, me neither. But hy bet ve find out if-
Dimo: Qviet, hyu eediots! If dey find out how irresistable ve iz to de vimmen, dey neffer let us join!
Master Payne and Abner: CLOWNS!
Change the Beat "One day, he plan to put in a runway With enough land for his own projects and gun play Section 8 penthouse, maid look like Faye Dunaway Alotta y'all assed out like gay runaways" "Great googly moogly, see that loogie? Yeah, but keep it on the D.L. Hughley You don't watch her, he might Houser like Doogie Just to cut her loosie like *swoosh* Mitsurugi Gooey gum drops, who he got his style from?" His pops, you gotta give the bum some props Ask ya sister, her beat box is more thicker DOOM, that nigga detox with malt liquor "Villain for hire, admire the sound Make sure The Price Is Right before he come on down!" Rappers be on some 'you. you. you.' Forgot who they talkin' to, too much pork stew." "They need to not come out wit nothin' new blew the whole shit up on some 'What this button do?'" "The way alotta clowns get down is unnatural This flows flipped like 'oranges, apples' Rhymes like limes to a Lemonade Snapple Leave her at the chapel, don't eat Scrapple"
Above all, the first act of Godspell must be about the formation of a community. Eight separate individuals, led and guided by Jesus (who is helped by his assistant, John the Baptist/Judas), gradually come to form a communal unit. This happens through the playing of games and the telling and absorption of lessons, and each of the eight individuals has his or her own moment of committing to Jesus and to the community. When Jesus applies clown make-up to their faces after "Save the People," he is having them take on an external physical manifestation that they are his disciples, temporarily separating them from the rest of society. But the internal journey of each character is separate and takes its individual course and period of time. Exactly when and why this moment of commitment occurs is one of the important choices each of the actors must make, in collaboration of course with the director. At the end of the first act, the audience is invited to join the community through the sharing of wine (or grape juice), mingling with the actors during intermission.
I find it difficult to forgive George W. Bush a lot of things — mostly having to do with not telling the truth about important public matters, and then pretending it was no big deal that he had mislead — and, come to think of it, that's pretty much my problem with Michael Moore, too … although one is a clown who makes movies and the other is, well, President of the United States. … we live in the age of the false dichotomy, an old propaganda trap (and logical fallacy) that says, for example: If you're not for the President's way of fighting terrorism (even if you'd like him to provide more information about what, exactly, that is), you are automatically assumed to be on the side of the terrorists; or, if you find fault with Michael Moore's methods, you must be on Bush's side. Of course, neither of these propositions is necessarily true. … You know how far the level of political discourse in American has fallen when people are asked to take the word of Dick Morris or Michael Moore at face value. So don't. And don't take my word for it. Do your own research.
In Philistia to make literature and to make trouble for yourself are synonyms,… the tumblebug explained. — I know, for already we of Philistia have been pestered by three of these makers of literature. Yes, there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until I was tired of it: then I chased him up a back alley one night, and knocked out those annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I chivvied and battered from place to place, and made a paralytic of him: and him, too, I labelled offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent. Then later there was Mark, whom I frightened into disguising himself in a clown's suit, so that nobody might suspect him to be a maker of literature: indeed, I frightened him so that he hid away the greater part of what he had made until after he was dead, and I could not get at him. That was a disgusting trick to play on me, I consider. Still, these are the only three detected makers of literature that have ever infested Philistia, thanks be to goodness and my vigilance, but for both of which we might have been no more free from makers of literature than are the other countries.…
It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What you do? You integrate it with cream; you make it weak. If you pour too much cream in, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it'll put you to sleep. This is what they did with the march on Washington. They joined it. They didn't integrate it; they infiltrated it. They joined it, became a part of it, took it over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. They ceased to be angry. They ceased to be hot. They ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all. You had one right here in Detroit — I saw it on television — with clowns leading it, white clowns and black clowns. I know you don’t like what I'm saying, but I’m going to tell you anyway. 'Cause I can prove what I'm saying. If you think I'm telling you wrong, you bring me Martin Luther King and A. Philip Randolph and James Farmer and those other three, and see if they'll deny it over a microphone.
So Anthony Burgess, contrary to popular mythology, was not after all a literary genius, a novelist of world-encompassing ambition, an essayist who assessed literary reputations with the final-word gravitas of a Recording Angel; nor was he a polymath and polyglot as we'd thought, a synthesiser of all mythologies, a walking compendium of modern thought, philosophy and theology, phrase and fable, a cigar-puffing, apoplectic Dr Johnson de nos jours, a monumental figure about whom it was said when he died in 1993, that (as Thackeray said about Swift) 'thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling'. Nope, we were all wide of the mark. Don't you hate it when you get these things completely wrong?....Seen through [Lewis's] eyes, Burgess was a mendacious, drunken, impotent, vain, emotionless, puffed-up, talentless clown who neglected his first wife as she spiralled fatally into alcoholism, who lived abroad to avoid paying tax, and nursed a sentimental chip on his shoulder about not being sufficiently respected by the British establishment....In the presence of a genuinely great man, something odd happens to you - you feel older and wiser, worldlier and cleverer, and pleased with yourself just for being in his company....He was the sort of man who made you feel like cheering just because he existed, and there's nobody remotely like him around today. There are, unfortunately, more than enough Roger Lewises.
I think the government is very often in ironic relation to itself. And that’s helpful. For example: we’re spending a great deal of money for this army we have, a very large army, beautifully equipped. We’re spending something on the order of twenty billions a year for it. Now, the whole point of an army is—what’s the word?—deterrence. And the nut of deterrence is credibility. So what does the government do? It goes and sells off its surplus uniforms. And the kids start wearing them, because they’re cheap and have some sort of style. And immediately you get this vast clown army in the streets parodying the real army. And they mix periods, you know, you get parody British grenadiers and parody World War I types and parody Sierra Maestra types. So you have all these kids walking around wearing these filthy uniforms with wound stripes, hash marks, Silver Stars, but also ostrich feathers, Day-Glo vests, amulets containing powdered rhinoceros horn... You have this splendid clown army in the streets standing over against the real one. And of course the clown army constitutes a very serious attack on all the ideas which support the real army including the basic notion of having an army at all. The government has opened itself to all this, this undermining of its own credibility, just because it wants to make a few dollars peddling old uniforms....
A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
In one point, and that too of more importance than is generally attached to it, the puritans of the two epochs bear a critical resemblance, namely, their hostility to rural and athletic sports: to those sports, which string the nerves and strengthen the frame, which excite an emulation in deeds of hardihood and valour, and which imperceptibly instill honour, generosity, and a love of glory, into the mind of the clown. Men thus formed are pupils unfit for the puritanical school; therefore it is, that the sect are incessantly labouring to eradicate, fibre by fibre, the last poor remains of English manners. And, sorry I am to tell you, that they meet with but too many abettors, where they ought to meet with resolute foes. Their pretexts are plausible: gentleness and humanity are the cant of the day. Weak men are imposed on, and wise men want the courage to resist. Instead of preserving those assemblages and those sports, in which the nobleman mixed with his peasants, which made the poor man proud of his inferiority, and created in his breast a personal affection for his lord, too many of the rulers of this land are now hunting the common people from every scene of diversion, and driving them to a club or a conventicle, at the former of which they suck in the delicious rudiments of earthly equality, and, at the latter, the no less delicious doctrine, that there is no lawful king but King Jesus.
Hague: I'd like to congratulate the Leader of the House on being the first female Labour member ever to answer Prime Minister's Questions. She must be proud, three decades on, to be following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher, who we on this side of the House and the Prime Minister so admire.
Harman: Well I thank him for his congratulations but I would ask him, why is he asking the questions today? Because he is not the Shadow Leader of the House - the Shadow Leader of the House is sitting next to him! Is this the situation in the modern Conservative Party; that women should be seen but not heard? And if I may, perhaps I could offer the Shadow Leader of the House a bit of sisterly advice: she should not let him get away with it!
Hague: Turning to domestic issues, I was going to be nice to the Rt. Hon. Lady - she has had a difficult week and she had to explain yesterday that she dresses in accordance with wherever she goes; she wears a helmet to a building site; wears Indian clothes to Indian parts of her constituency; presumably, when she goes to a Cabinet meeting, she dresses as a clown.
Harman: Well I would just start by saying that if I'm looking for advice on what to wear and what not to wear, the very last man I would look to for advice would be the man in the baseball cap!
Furthermore, the younger members of our society have for some time been in growing rebellion against paternal authority and the paternal state. For one reason, the home in an industrial society is chiefly a dormitory, and the father does not work there, with the result that wife and children have no part in his vocation. He is just a character who brings in money, and after working hours he is supposed to forget about his job and have fun. Novels, magazines, television, and popular cartoons therefore portray "Dad" as an incompetent clown. And the image has some truth in it because Dad has fallen for the hoax that work is simply something you do to make money, and with money you can get anything you want. It is no wonder that an increasing proportion of college students want no part in Dad's world, and will do anything to avoid the rat-race of the salesman, commuter, clerk, and corporate executive. Professional men, too—architects, doctors, lawyers, ministers, and professors—have offices away from home, and thus, because the demands of their families boil down more and more to money, are ever more tempted to regard even professional vocations as ways of making money. All this is further aggravated by the fact that parents no longer educate their own children. Thus the child does not grow up with understanding of or enthusiasm for his father's work. Instead, he is sent to an understaffed school run mostly by women which, under the circumstances, can do no more than hand out mass-produced education which prepares the child for everything and nothing. It has no relation whatever to his father's vocation.
Then Alfred laughed out suddenly,
Like thunder in the spring,
Till shook aloud the lintel-beams,
And the squirrels stirred in dusty dreams,
And the startled birds went up in streams,
For the laughter of the King.

And the beasts of the earth and the birds looked down,
In a wild solemnity,
On a stranger sight than a sylph or elf,
On one man laughing at himself
Under the greenwood tree—

The giant laughter of Christian men
That roars through a thousand tales,
Where greed is an ape and pride is an ass,
And Jack's away with his master's lass,
And the miser is banged with all his brass,
The farmer with all his flails;

Tales that tumble and tales that trick,
Yet end not all in scorning—
Of kings and clowns in a merry plight,
And the clock gone wrong and the world gone right
,
That the mummers sing upon Christmas night
And Christmas Day in the morning.

"Now here is a good warrant,"
Cried Alfred, "by my sword;
For he that is struck for an ill servant
Should be a kind lord.

"He that has been a servant
Knows more than priests and kings,
But he that has been an ill servant,
He knows all earthly things.

"Pride flings frail palaces at the sky,
As a man flings up sand,
But the firm feet of humility
Take hold of heavy land.

"Pride juggles with her toppling towers,
They strike the sun and cease,
But the firm feet of humility
They grip the ground like trees.

"He that hath failed in a little thing
Hath a sign upon the brow;
And the Earls of the Great Army
Have no such seal to show.

The Ballad of the White Horse
• Source: Wikiquote: "The Ballad of the White Horse" (Book IV : The Woman In The Forest: Alfred travelling as a common vagabond sympathises with the plight of the poor, and is humbled for his neglect of a menial task.)
All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children — in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the region of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world — those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this world there are so many of these common coarse people, who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes. Therefore, let Art always remind us of them; therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things — men who see beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy.
In the late 1980’s, film producer Joel Silver set his sights on developing Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ massively successful graphic novel Watchmen into a feature film with director Terry Gilliam. Rumors swirled at the time, and the 2005 Entertainment Weekly oral history of the project confirmed that Arnold Schwarzenegger was in line for Dr. Manhattan, Richard Gere showed interest, and Robin Williams, fresh off his role as a delusional but sprightly vagabond in Gilliam’s The Fisher King, could be tapped as Rorschach.
During the hellish development, which would bounce between studios and producers for decades until Zach Snyder’s film hit theaters five years ago, casting attention switched from Williams to Brad Dourif, allegedly due to wariness over fan perception that Williams was unsuitable for the part. Going in a direction away from a captivating comedic performer with overtones of chained darkness looked foolish when Michael Keaton proved an excellent Batman as that comic franchise dominated the box office. And that criticism seems even more baseless decades later, after Good Will Hunting, Insomnia, One Hour Photo, and many other films that proved Williams’ heft. Rorschach, a deeply haunted man with an ever-changing mask that doesn’t hide an unmistakable voice, now seems like it would have been a perfect fit.
There’s little point in rueing a missed opportunity from 25 years ago. But in the aftermath of Williams’ death at his Bay Area home yesterday, many people were quick to point to a moment in Watchmen when Rorschach sneeringly recites a grim joke about a depressed man who seeks help from a doctor, which now rings frighteningly true:
I heard a joke once. Man goes to doctor, says he's depressed. Life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says "Treatment is simple. The great clown, Pagliacci, is in town. Go see him. That should pick you up". Man bursts into tears. "But doctor", he says, "I am Pagliacci." Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.
Churches also have their problems with a Jesus whose only economics are jokes. A savior undermines the foundations of any social doctrine of the Church. But that is what He does, whenever He is faced with money matters. According to Mark 12:13 there was a group of Herodians who wanted to catch Him in His own words. They ask "Must we pay tribute to Caesar?" You know His answer: "Give me a coin – tell me whose profile is on it!." Of course they answer "Caesar's."
The drachma is a weight of silver marked with Caesar's effigy.
A Roman coin was no impersonal silver dollar; there was none of that "trust in God" or adornment with a presidential portrait. A denarius was a piece of precious metal branded, as it were, like a heifer, with the sign of the personal owner. Not the Treasury, but Caesar coins and owns the currency. Only if this characteristic of Roman currency is understood, one grasps the analogy between the answer to the devil who tempted Him with power and to the Herodians who tempt Him with money. His response is clear: abandon all that which has been branded by Caesar; but then, enjoy the knowledge that everything, everything else is God's, and therefore is to be used by you.
The message is so simple: Jesus jokes about Caesar. He shrugs off his control. And not only at that one instance… Remember the occasion at the Lake of Capharnaum, when Peter is asked to pay a twopenny tax. Jesus sends him to throw a line into the lake and pick the coin he needs from the mouth of the first fish that bites. Oriental stories up to the time of Thousand Nights and One Night are full of beggars who catch the fish that has swallowed a piece of gold. His gesture is that of a clown; it shows that this miracle is not meant to prove him omnipotent but indifferent to matters of money. Who wants power submits to the Devil and who wants denarri submits to the Caesar.
Punk: Well, I've had six days to watch that scene over and over and over, and as painful as it was to watch, as painful it was to experience, I saw something more painful. Something caught my eye that was ten times more painful than my arm being mangled inside of a ladder while Alberto wrenched on it with his cross-armbreaker; it was more painful than Alberto butchering the English language; it was more painful than watching Miz [demonstrates] make his own bad-guy face, and his pathetic attempts to sound like a tough guy—"really? really?"—it was more painful than sitting through two hours of Michael Cole commentary as he struggles to sound relevant. No, I continued to watch Monday Night Raw, and what I saw was old clown shoes himself, the Executive Vice President of Talent Relations and Interim Raw General Manager, John Laurinaitis accept an award on my behalf. This wasn't just any award, it was the Slammy Award for Superstar of the Year, being accepted by a guy who's never been a superstar of thirty seconds. I mean, who's he ever beat? And I'm not a hard guy to find, I've yet to receive said Slammy. So what...[turns around and notices] oh. Speak of the devil. No, no, no, don't apologize. Where's my Slammy at?
Laurinaitis: Punk, I mailed your Slammy to you, but with the holiday season, it may take a while to get to you. But if I were you, I'd be more worried about your championship match tonight than your Slammy.
Punk: Well, if I were you, I'd wish myself best of luck in my future endeavors. But I don't expect you to do that; in fact, you wouldn't do that, just like I'm not gonna lose the Title tonight. So when TLC is over with, you're still gonna have to put up with CM Punk as your WWE Champion.
Laurinaitis: You know what, Punk? I'm gonna be the bigger man right now, okay? I mean, after all, I am taller than you. Good luck tonight, and merry Christmas.
Punk: Johnny, luck's for losers.
Why should we care about Feynman? What was so special about him? Why did he become a public icon, standing with Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking as the Holy Trinity of twentieth-century physics? The public has demonstrated remarkably good taste in choosing its icons. All three of them are genuinely great scientists, with flashes of true genius as well as solid accomplishments to their credit. But to become an icon, it is not enough to be a great scientist. There are many other scientists, not so great as Einstein but greater than Hawking and Feynman, who did not become icons. ...
Scientists who become icons must not only be geniuses but also performers, playing to the crowd and enjoying public acclaim. Einstein and Feynman both grumbled about the newspaper and radio reporters who invaded their privacy, but both gave the reporters what the public wanted, sharp and witty remarks that would make good headlines. Hawking in his unique way also enjoys the public adulation that his triumph over physical obstacles has earned for him. I will never forget the joyful morning in Tokyo when Hawking went on a tour of the streets in his wheelchair and the Japanese crowds streamed after him, stretching out their hands to touch his chair. Einstein, Hawking, and Feynman shared an ability to break through the barriers that separated them from ordinary people. The public responded to them because they were regular guys, jokers as well as geniuses.
The third quality that is needed for a scientist to become a public icon is wisdom. Besides being a famous joker and a famous genius, Feynman was also a wise human being whose answers to serious questions made sense. To me and to hundreds of other students who came to him for advice, he spoke truth. Like Einstein and Hawking, he had come through times of great suffering, nursing Arline through her illness and watching her die, and emerged stronger. Behind his enormous zest and enjoyment of life was an awareness of tragedy, a knowledge that our time on earth is short and precarious. The public made him into an icon because he was not only a great scientist and a great clown but also a great human being and a guide in time of trouble. Other Feynman books have portrayed him as a scientific wizard and as a storyteller. This collection of letters shows us for the first time the son caring for his father and mother, the father caring for his wife and children, the teacher caring for his students, the writer replying to people throughout the world who wrote to him about their problems and received his full and undivided attention.
People ask what are my intentions with my films — my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct. I prefer to describe what I would like my aim to be. There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed — master builders, artists, labourers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.
Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God.
He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; 'eternal values,' 'immortality' and 'masterpiece' were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility. Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.
The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.
We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal. Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil — or perhaps a saint — out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts.
Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.
Punk: Because here is the truth about Las Vegas, here is the truth about the WWE is that it doesn't matter that if you're the best wrestler, it doesn't matter if you're the best talker, it doesn't matter if you're the best overall performer, it doesn't matter if you make the two clowns sitting to my left on commentary look like amateur hour. There is a glass ceiling and nobody is allowed to break it. That's the simple story of this place. The more popular you are, the more money you make. The more you people cheer for any given superstar, the more opportunities you're afforded. Why do you think a guy like John Cena, who has admittedly had the worst year of his career, gets title shot after title shot after title shot after title shot? Or why a lethal grappler, why a serious submission specialist like Daniel Bryan puts a smile on his face and settles himself, belittles himself with catchphrases. Or why a 400 pound monster, Brodus Clay, soils his hands by touching your filthy, ugly, little children to get in the ring so he can shuck and jive for you. Or why an invisible child, Little Jimmy, is better positioned on the flagship show Monday Night RAW than a workhorse like Tyson Kidd. If I— if I competed in Bruno Sammartino's era, I'd have been champion for 20 years, too. No, I'd have been champion for 30 years. Because wrestling one night a month at Madison Square Garden is easy. You never see a Hulk Hogan wrestle TLC matches against a superstar like Ryback. Because he had it easy. I wrestle physically demanding matches on free television, week in and week out. So much that my one year equals 30 of theirs. And I have attained this success, not— not because of you. I am successful not because of you. I am successful in spite of you. Now, I'm the most honest man in this building, I'm the most honest man in this company 'cause everybody else has got the same, old, tired crybaby story. They'll come out here and they'll say 'I do it for the people, I do it for all of you. Let's hear it for Tampa, Florida!' Here's some honesty. I watched Roddy Piper smash a coconut over Jimmy Snuka's head and I sure as hell didn't say 'Golly Gee! I can't wait to go electrify the people of Tampa Bay, Florida.' No! Because I don't care about the people of Tampa Bay, Florida. There's good guys and there's bad guys in this world and make no mistake about it, ladies and gentlemen, I am a bad, bad man and I can freely admit it. But Ric Flair will come out here and he'll cry his 182 year eyes out and say 'Oh, I did it for all of you'. [Crowd woos] Now they're wooing. Shawn Michaels can come out here and lose his smile and find his smile, but then in a— in a tearful Hall of Fame speech he'll say that his entire career was just to gain your acceptance. Then a man like Edge is forced to retire and he'll say that he misses competing for people like you. Now, these people, these men are either weak or they're dishonest and they're liars. It's either one or the other. But I— I'm neither weak nor dishonest. I'm the best in the world. Two types of people on this earth. Those born to be in the spotlight and those born to pay to see the people in the spotlight. Ladies and gentlemen, there's winner and losers. Guess which one you are. You're born to pay to see champions like me, it's not the other way round. And I'll be the first guy to come out here and admit it, I'm honest. I have never ever done this for any of you. There's superstars and there's nobodies. I am a superstar, you are all nobodies. And I'm a real superstar. Those real superstars, hell, if they're your friends, why don't they come out here and give you the millions and millions of dollars they earn? Why don't they lie in your pockets? 'Cause that's— that's not your position on earth.
I'm a rodeo clown. It takes great skill.
Clown niggas, you ain't got a chance at all
Though the clown is often deadpan, he is a connoisseur of laughter.
Clowns
Mel Gussow, about Avner Eisenberg in his broadway show Avner the Eccentric in The New York Times (21 September 1984)
• Source: Wikiquote: "Clowns" (Quotes: Alphabetized by author or source )
I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.
We are clowns because what else can one be in such a stupid world.
We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks — that's show business.
People like eccentrics and they will therefore leave me alone, saying that I am a "mad clown."
• Unsourced variant: I know everyone will say "Nijinsky has gone mad," but I don’t care because I have already played the mad man at home. That is what everyone will think, but they won’t put me in an insane asylum because I dance very well and give money to anyone who asks. People like eccentrics, so they will leave me alone and say I’m a mad clown. I like the mentally ill because I know how to talk to them. When my brother was in an insane asylum, I loved him and he could feel me. His friends liked me. I was eighteen then. I understood the life of a mentally ill person.
I would hope they would be our fellow artists, rather than trying to emulate or idolize clowns like us.
Well, enough clowning around. Perl is, in intent, a cleaned up and summarized version of that wonderful semi-natural language known as'Unix'.
Written in May 1819 - Full text online The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown'''...]]
If you love Barry Manilow, you're gonna love the Insane Clown Posse. Love 'em. They're exactly... well, they're not EXACTLY alike, but they're a little bit alike...
The three extreme kinds of schizophrenia are unmistakable: the haunted paranoid surrounded by his imaginary community of spies and assassins, the clownish, sometimes incontinent hebephrenic, and the frozen catatonic.
So close your eyes So close your mouth And do this all in time to the music That screams like a child in the back of your mind In a clown's saloon
Ryan Adams
Goodnight, Hollywood Boulevard
• Source: Wikiquote: "Ryan Adams" (Sourced, Song Lyrics: When you get the time
Sit down and write me a letter
When you're feeling better
Drop me a line
I wanna know how it all works out
I had a feeling we were fading out
I didn't know that people faded out
That people faded out so fast
I wanna show you all the things I got inside
But you know those parts of me died
Just like us they faded out
They faded out so fast
When there was love enough left to fix it
But there it is)
Picasso has a volatile, explosive presence. He seems to take art back to an earlier function, before the centuries of museums and masterpieces; he is the artist as clown, as conjurer, as master funmaker.
I was not withheld by any feeling that the joke was getting a little obvious; for an obvious joke is only a successful joke; it is only the unsuccessful clowns who comfort themselves with being subtle.
If you get tired of just hanging around Pick up a guitar, spin a web of sound And then you could be strung out all day With lovers and clowns Now I find myself still hanging around
Damn everything but the circus!...The average 'painter' 'sculptor' 'poet' 'composer' 'playwright' is a person who cannot leap through a hoop from the back of a galloping horse, make people laugh with a clown's mouth, orchestrate twenty lions.
They made porn movies, of my movies! Good Will Humping? It's okay... Wet Dreams May Cum? All right... Snatch Adams? That was scary. A clown with a strap-on. Popeye... I would watch that. "Ag-gag-gag-ga, I creamed me spinach!"
[The Joker is a] psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy. … Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.
Workers were occupied with the ancient task of trying to stay alive, which simply happened to require, in a consumer economy overwhelmingly based on the satisfaction of peripheral desires, a series of activities all to easily confused with clownishness.
Mr. Obama decided to attack us, Now you want to win votes by attacking Venezuela. Don't be irresponsible. You are a clown, a clown. Leave us in peace … Go after your votes by fulfilling that which you promised your people.
Mr. Obama decided to attack us, Now you want to win votes by attacking Venezuela. Don’t be irresponsible. You are a clown, a clown. Leave us in peace … Go after your votes by fulfilling that which you promised your people.
The clowns may look ridiculous — and they vow they are non-violent — but their mission is serious: to provide diversions to more vigorous protests and highlight what they see as the nonsense of non-thinking actions likely to damage the environment.
POEE is one manifestation of the DISCORDIAN SOCIETY about which you will learn more and understand less We are a tribe of philosophers, theologians, magicians, scientists, artists, clowns, and similar maniacs who are intrigued with ERIS GODDESS OF CONFUSION and with Her Doings.
And that is your tragedy, Jon. [imitating Stewart and affecting falsetto] Look at me! I'm a sad clown! I hate you! I need you! I hate you! I need you! I don't want you, but I need constant attention and reinforcement from you laughter!
What's this? he inquired, none too pleasantly. A circus? No, Julius. It's the end of the circus. I see. And these are the clowns? Foaly's head poked through the doorway. Pardon me for interrupting your extended circus metaphor, but what the hell is that?
I want to tell you that I was so damn mad when that Supreme Court had to come down. First, I didn't like the decision. Unbelievable, wasn't it? You know, those clowns we got on there, I tell you, I hope I outlive the bastards.
A truer description would have said that Feynman was all genius and all buffoon. The deep thinking and the joyful clowning were not separate parts of a split personality. He did not do his thinking on Monday and his clowning on Tuesday. He was thinking and clowning simultaneously.
Well let them take you for a clown And they're bound to bring you down. You got to make it through the world if you can. Think they're doing you wrong But you got here on your own. You got to make it through the world if you can.
This world was created from God's fear of solitude. In other words, us, the creatures, have no other meaning but to distract the Creator. Poor clowns of the absolute, we forget that we live dramas for the boredom of a spectator, whose claps have never reached the ears of a mortal.
Things are going to go wrong, and I think we are false to life if we don't portray it. But there is also the hope that some lucky clown is going to come along and stumble into the gold mine. And I think you are also entitled to hold out that hope.
Who's gonna love you when it all falls down? Who's gonna love you when your bankroll runs out? Who's gonna care when the novelty's over? When the star of the show isn't you anymore. Nobody cares when the tears of a clown fall down (I guess your mama never told you what goes around comes back around).
'''When you reach for a star Only angels are there And it's not very far Just a step on a stair Take a look at those clowns And the tricks that they play In the circus of life Life is bitter and gay There are clowns in the night Clowns everywhere See how they run Run from despair …
The original Golden Dawn was not always as serious as it should have been. Mathers was a clown, and Yeats was just a romantic trying to deceive himself. Most of them were interested in personal power, and it ended up by destroying them. The aim of our group is the scientific exploration of the hidden powers of the human mind.
Now if there's a smile on my face, It's only there tryin' to fool the public, But when it comes down to foolin' you; Now honey, that's quite a different subject. But don't let my glad expression Give you the wrong impression. Really I'm sad. I'm sadder than sad. You're gone and I'm hurtin' so bad. Like a clown I pretend to be glad.
I don't have time for these clowns. I don't have time for their judgement and their stupidity. They lay down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children and just look at their loser lives and then look at me and they say 'I can't process it'. Well no, and you never will. Stop trying, just sit back and enjoy the show.
You should view Internet arguments as a really crummy fighting game: only the utter idiots bother pressing the "block / defend" button. While your enemy cowers in a corner with their arms raised above their face to futilely protect them, real men pull off complex 408-move combos that involve transforming into a fiery phoenix of doom and releasing unrelenting waves of liquid napalm Satan clown death upon them.
A humbly poetic, gently clownlike, supremely innocent, and illimitably affectionate creature (slightly resembling a child's drawing of a cat, but gifted with the secret grace and obvious clumsiness of a penguin on terra firma) who is never so happy as when egoist-mouse, thwarting altruist-dog, hits her in the head with a brick. Dog hates mouse and worships "cat", mouse despises "cat" and hates dog, "cat" hates no one and loves mouse.
E. E. Cummings
• Source: Wikiquote: "E. E. Cummings" (Quotes: The typography of some of these quotes may seem incorrect: it probably isn't. Outside of some bolding for emphasis of well noted or notable statements, and a few marks of ellipsis "…" for gaps, Cumming's often-odd original typography has been retained, so much as possible, in many of the quotes, including where punctuation marks between words are often used without any spaces., A Foreword to Krazy (1946): First published as the Foreword to a collection of Krazy Kat comic strips (1946), later published in A Miscellany Revised (1965))
Here is music turned deliberately inside out in order that nothing will be reminiscent of classical opera, or have anything in common with symphonic music or with simple and popular musical language accessible to all...Here we have "leftist" confusion instead of natural human music. The power of good music to infect the masses has been sacrificed to a petty-bourgeois, "formalist" attempt to create originality through cheap clowning. It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly.
To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action when there is more reason to fear than to hope. 'Tis the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket. And though I am but a clown, or a bumpkin, as you may say, yet I would have you to know I know what is what, and have always taken care of the main chance...
Reykjavik did not sour the Reagan—Gorbachev relationship. Indeed Gorbachev trusted Reagan more from that time onwards, and the way he spoke about him was much more respectful after Reykjavik than before. Chernyaev cites an instance not long before the Reykjavik summit in which a prominent Western politician, in a meeting with Gorbachev, described Reagan as "fool and a clown", to which Gorbachev responded that it was pity that such a person should be at head of a superpower. After Reykjavik, Chernyaev never heard Gorbachev even in private express or agree with such sentiments concerning Reagan.
To Harriet Harman. "Before turning to domestic issues, I was going to be nice to the right hon. and learned Lady. She has had a difficult week. She had to explain yesterday that she dresses in accordance with wherever she is going: she wears a helmet on a building site, she wears Indian clothes in the parts of her constituency with a large representation of Indian people, so when she goes to a Cabinet meeting, she presumably dresses as a clown. As I said, I was going to be nice to her before her previous response."
The home in an industrial society is chiefly a dormitory, and the father does not work there, with the result that wife and children have no part in his vocation. He is just a character who brings in money, and after working hours he is supposed to forget about his job and have fun. Novels, magazines, television, and popular cartoons therefore portray "Dad" as an incompetent clown. And the image has some truth in it because Dad has fallen for the hoax that work is simply something you do to make money, and with money you can get anything you want.
It was a summer day in 1941. The circus had just arrived in the tiny town of Brookfield, New York. Spectators flocked to see the wire-walkers, the tramp clowns -- if they were lucky, the human cannonball. They also came to see the strongman, Johnny "Bull" Walker, a brawny bully who'd pin you for a dollar. ...Now, the strongman hadn't told anyone, but he was actually a third-year medical student. He toured with the circus during summers to pay tuition ...over the next five decades, he'd draw on these dueling identities to forge a whole new way to think about pain. It would change modern medicine; so much so, that decades later, Time magazine would call him pain relief's founding father.
Attack. When I first heard that word, my gut reaction was, "oh shit". Does that surprise you? Of course it does. You probably expected "the brass" to be just champing at that bit, all that blood and guts, "hold 'em by the nose while we kick 'em in the ass" crap. I don't know who created the stereotype hard-charging, dim-witted, high school football coach of a general officer. Maybe it was Hollywood, or the civilian press, or maybe we did it to ourselves, by allowing those insipid, egocentric clowns- the MacArthurs and Halseys and Curtis E. LeMays- to define our image to the rest of the country. Point is, that's the image of those in uniform, and it couldn't be further from the truth.
He was drawn to the centers of learning to announce his startling philosophy; from most he was curtly expelled... He was contradictory, capricious, often insufferable: his moods could flash abruptly from antic lampooning to raw invective, from wild exhilaration to fierce bitterness, from clownishness to a blackdog melancholy. "Gay in sorrow, sorrowful in gaiety," he said of himself, and the contraries of the tempestuous Bruno survive in his writings, where exalted and discerning passages seem to bob and dip in great waves of bombast... Controversial and largely dismissed in his lifetime, Bruno fared no better after his death. If his ideas were disputed, so was his martyrdom. For centuries, rumor and doubt shrouded the terrible fire in the Campo dei Fiore and as late as 1885 there are references to the "legends" of Bruno's burning at the stake... Only in the twentieth century has Bruno begun emerging from his long neglect into prominence.
When I started meditating, I was filled with anxieties and fears. I felt a sense of depression and anger. I often took out this anger on my first wife. After I had been meditating for about two weeks, she came to me and said, "What's going on?" I was quiet for a moment. But finally I said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "This anger, where did it go?" And I hadn't even realized that it had lifted. I call that depression and anger the Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity. It's suffocating, and that rubber stinks. But once you start meditating and diving within, the clown suit starts to dissolve. You finally realize how putrid was the stink when it starts to go. Then, when it dissolves, you have freedom. Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they are like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They are like a vise grip on creativity. If you're in that grip, you can hardly get out of bed, much less experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You must have clarity to create. You have to be able to catch ideas.
Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken.
He is no clown that drives the plow, but he that doth clownish things.
A willing heart adds feather to the heel, And makes the clown a winged Mercury.
Vulgarity is a necessary part of a complete author's equipment; and the clown is sometimes the best part of the circus.
My name is L and I'm from a part of town where clowns, Get beat down and all you hear is gunshot sounds
Be a clown, be a clown,
All the world loves a clown.
Act the fool, play the calf,
And you'll always have the last laugh.
'''''Be a clown, be a clown, All the world loves a clown.''' Act the fool, play the calf, And you'll always have the last laugh.''
''Be a clown, be a clown, All the world loves a clown.''' Act the fool, play the calf, And you'll always have the last laugh.'''''
As you see [filmmaking] makes me into a clown. And that happens to everyone – just look at Orson Welles or look at even people like Truffaut. They have become clowns.
Film
• Werner Herzog Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980).
• Source: Wikiquote: "Film" (Quotes: Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author, E - H)
As you see [filmmaking] makes me into a clown. And that happens to everyone — just look at Orson Welles or look at even people like Truffaut. They have become clowns.
I remember in the circus learning that the clown was the prince, the high prince. I always thought that the high prince was the lion or the magician, but the clown is the most important.
The fears of children were simpler and usually more powerful. The fears of children could often be summoned up in a single face... and if bait were needed, why, what child did not love a clown?
That inescapable animal walks with me, Has followed me since the black womb held, Moves where I move, distorting my gesture, A caricature, a swollen shadow, A stupid clown of the spirit's motive, Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness, The secret life of belly and bone.
Over the past thirty years, Ionesco has been called a “tragic clown,” the “Shakespeare of the Absurd,” the “Enfant Terrible of the Avant-Garde,” and the “Inventor of the Metaphysical Farce” — epithets that point to his evolution from a young playwright at a tiny Left Bank theater to an esteemed member of the Académie Française.
What is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? And what is it that will make it possible to spend twenty billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it was good old American know how, that's what, as provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher von Braun!
From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, We'll lead you to the stately tent of war, Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine Threatening the world with high astounding terms, And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword. View but his picture in this tragic glass, And then applaud his fortunes as you please.
You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.
Yes, there is a conspiracy, in fact there are a great number of conspiracies that are all tripping each other up. And all of those conspiracies are run by paranoid fantasists and ham-fisted clowns. If you are on a list targeted by the CIA, you really have nothing to worry about. If however, you have a name similar to somebody on a list targeted by the CIA, then you are dead.
Everyone goes to the 'Grands-Boulevards' (in Paris, ed.) and let himself loose… …Do not picture these in costume, they are not for the most part… …perhaps a clown with a big nose, or two girls with bare necks and short skirts… …the parade of the queens of the halls (markets) is also one of the events… …Some are pretty but look awkward in their silk dresses and crowns, particularly as the broad sun displays their defects – perhaps a neck too thin or a painted face which shows ghastley white in the sunlight.
Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ's sakes! … We were sitting around one night... who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said "This bullshit's got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get money." He says, "I want to get rich". And somebody said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become Elmer Gantry! You'll make a fortune!" He says, "I'm going to do it."
Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ's sakes! … We were sitting around one night … who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said "This bullshit's got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get money." He says, "I want to get rich". And somebody said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become Elmer Gantry! You'll make a fortune!" He says, "I'm going to do it."
One day, he plan to put in a runway With enough land for his own projects and gun play Section 8 penthouse, maid look like Faye Dunaway Alotta y'all assed out like gay runaways" ...Gooey gum drops, who he got his style from, his pops? you gotta give the bum some props ask ya sister, her beat box is more thicker Doom, that nigga detox with malt liquor Villain for hire, admire the sound Make sure The Price Is Right before he come on down!" ...The way alotta clowns get down is unnatural This flows flipped like 'oranges, apples' Rhymes like limes to a Lemonade Snapple Leave her at the chapel, don't eat Scrapple
You're pretty strong... for some clown who thinks he's Batman.
Last words in Batman media
• Who: Mr. Fixx
• Source: Batman Beyond
• Character is battling Terry McGinnis, the new Batman, in a submarine. Terry responds with "I am Batman!" before pushing him into a control pad to stun him. The sub soon goes critical and sinks, taking Mr. Fixx with it.
• Source: Wikiquote: "Last words in Batman media" (Television)
He is killer and clown, big-hearted buffoon and strutting martinet.
The writer’s job is the job of a clown …the clown who also talks about sorrow.
I'm one of the more pessimistic cats on the planet. I make Van Gogh look like a rodeo clown.
What passed for society was a loud, giddy whirl of thieves and pretentious hustlers, a dull sideshow full of quacks and clowns and philistines with gimp mentalities.
A Devil with a crucifix Brimstone and fire He needs another carnal fix To take him higher and higher Now Jimmy, he got busted With his pants down Repent ye wretched sinner Self righteous clown
Animals aren’t actors, spectacles to imprison and gawk at, or circus clowns. Yet thousands of these animals are forced to perform silly, confusing tricks under the threat of physical punishment; are carted across the country in cramped and stuffy boxcars or semi-truck trailers; are kept chained or caged in barren, boring, and filthy enclosures; and are separated from their families and friends—all for the sake of human “entertainment.” Many of these animals even pay with their lives.
I've been deceived by the clown inside of me. I thought that he was righteous but he's vain.
'''''Take a look at those clowns And the tricks that they play''' In the circus of life Life is bitter and gay''
Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd, Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd.
He dressed up like a clown for them With his face paint white and red. And on his best behavior In a dark room on the bed, He kissed them all.
Take a look at those clowns And the tricks that they play In the circus of life Life is bitter and gay:There are clowns in the night Clowns everywhere See how they run Run from despair
Circus
• Kate Bush in: The Magician (of Lublin), a song written for the soundtrack of The Magician of Lublin (1979), based on the 1960 novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer
• Source: Wikiquote: "Circus" (Quotes: Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author, A - F)
Take a look at those clowns And the tricks that they play In the circus of life Life is bitter and gay There are clowns in the night Clowns everywhere See how they run Run from despair …
While the children laughed I was always afraid Of the Smile of the clown So I close my eyes Till I can't see the light And I hide from the sound We're two of a Kind Silence and I We need a chance to talk things over Two of a kind Silence and I
Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung.
Man is an obstacle, sad as the clown (Oh by jingo) So hold on to nothing, and he won't let you down.
As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
If we only have love We will never bow down We'll be tall as the pines Neither heroes nor clowns. ''' If we only have love Then we'll only be men ''And we'll drink from the Grail To be born once again; Then with nothing at all But the little we are We'll have conquered all time All space, the sun, and the stars!'''''
''Don't you love farce? My fault I fear. I thought that you'd want what I want. Sorry, my dear. But where are the clowns? '''Quick, send in the clowns. Don't bother, they're here.'''''
"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill. "Yes, sir, a clown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off." "You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them." "Well, I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks."
This used to be a funhouse, But now it's full of evil clowns. It's time to start the countdown. I'm gonna burn it down down down; I'm gonna burn it down.
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod.Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown
:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
''Isn't it rich? Are we a pair? Me here at last on the ground, You in mid-air. '''Send in the clowns.'''''
Charlie Brown Charlie Brown He's a clown That Charlie Brown He's gonna get caught Just you wait and see Why is everybody always pickin' on me?
Well I don't know why I came here tonight. I got the feeling that something ain't right. I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair, And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs. Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, Stuck in the middle with you.
"These Macedonians," said he, "are a rude and clownish people, that call a spade a spade."
Plutarch
• 39 Philip
• Source: Wikiquote: "Plutarch" (Quotes, Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders: Quotes reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).)
I remain just one thing, and one thing only — and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
"I am delighted at Des's support in these elections. And thank him for his rewrite of the lyrics of Send in the Clowns which we are planning to sing at our South East conference."
You never turned around to see the frowns, on the jugglers and the clowns when they all did, tricks for you.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown.
Nightingales
• John Keats, To a Nightingale.
• Source: Wikiquote: "Nightingales" (Sourced, Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations: Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 557-59.)
I don't want to be called "the greatest" or "one of the greatest". Let other guys claim to be the best. I just want to be known as a clown because to me, that's the height of my profession. It means you can do everything — sing, dance and, above all, make people laugh.
The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Is it any wonder why Princes & Kings / Are clowns that caper in their sawdust rings / When ordinary people who are like you and me / Are the builders of their destiny.
(25 October 1975) Minister: Chuckles the Clown brought pleasure to millions. The characters he created will be remembered by children and adults alike: Peter Peanut, Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo, Billy Banana, and my particular favorite, Aunt Yoo Hoo. And not just for the laughter they provided—there was always some deeper meaning to whatever Chuckles did. Do you remember Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo's little catch phrase? Remember how, when his arch rival Señor Kaboom hit him with a giant cucumber and knocked him down, Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo would always pick himself up, dust himself off, and say, "I hurt my foo-foo"? Life's a lot like that. From time to time we all fall down and hurt our foo-foos. If only we could deal with it as simply and bravely and honestly as Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo. And what did Chuckles ask in return? Not much. In his own words, "A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants."
Billo, the Clown http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bill%20O%20The%20Clown
Keith Olbermann
• Source: Wikiquote: "Keith Olbermann" (Catch Phrases: Throughout Olbermann's career, most prominently at ESPN, he has used repeated "catch phrases" to describe various situations. The sporting catch phrase has been at the core of the personality of ESPN's Sportscenter since its inception, with Olbermann being a leader in their creation and usage. Many of these have moved from his original application to sports, into his current program.)
When a Jackson fan dressed as a clown declines to be interviewed by Triumph: -Triumph: "Oh, I understand. You wouldn't want to compromise your dignity!"
"Our lives teach us who we are." I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own — and such descriptions have been raining down on me, from security advisers, governments, journalists, Archbishops, friends, enemies, mullahs — then you might as well be dead. Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to … my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art. This turbulent sea was the sea outside my bedroom window in Bombay. It is the sea by which I was born, and which I carry within me wherever I go.
"Free speech is a non-starter," says one of my Islamic extremist opponents. No, sir, it is not. Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

End Clowning Quotes