Faux par-Malaprop-Oxymoron-Wise-Seismic

This thread is for notable sayings, quotations, or extracts from the media. These generally fall into the categories: faux par, Malaprop, oxymoron, wise, and seismic.

"Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever."
Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1889 (Edison often ridiculed the arguments of competitor George Westinghouse and Nicolai Tesla for AC power).

"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, March 1949.

"Radio has no future."
Lord Kelvin, Scottish mathematician and physicist, former president of the Royal Society, 1897.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?"
Associates of David Sarnoff responding to the latter's call for investment in the radio in 1921.

"Very interesting Whittle, my boy, but it will never work."
Cambridge Aeronautics Professor, when shown Frank Whittle's plan for the jet engine.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.

"The Americans are good about making fancy cars and refrigerators, but that doesn't mean they are any good at making aircraft. They are bluffing. They are excellent at bluffing."
Hermann Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, 1942.

"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys."
Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.

"Transmission of documents via telephone wires is possible in principle, but the apparatus required is so expensive that it will never become a practical proposition."
Dennis Gabor, British physicist and author of Inventing the Future, 1962.

"... good enough for our transatlantic friends ... but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men."
British Parliamentary Committee, referring to Edison's light bulb, 1878.

"Of course there has been deaths and injuries in boxing, but none of them serious."

(Mike Tyson)

A few newspaper headlines:

'Miners Refuse to Work after Death'

'Include Your Children when Baking Cookies'

'Enfield Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide'

'War Dims Hope for Peace'

'Chef Throws His Heart into Helping Feed Needy'

'Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge'

'Survivor of Siamese Twins Joins Parents'

'Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft'

'Iraqi Head Seeks Arms'

'Princess Diana Was Alive Hours Before She Died'

'Kids Make Nutritious Snacks'

'Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures'

'Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says'

A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster.

A coast guard spokesman commented,
"This sort of thing is all too common."

(The Times)

'The police said they shot Menezes because he was difficult to identify.'

(BBC TV News, November 2007- re the erroneous killing of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July 2005)

Extracts from letters written to the council by council house tenants in the UK (council houses are owned by the local government and rented to families):

1. It's the dogs mess that I find hard to swallow.

2. I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off.

3. I wish to complain that my father twisted his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage.

4. Their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence.

5. I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof.. I think it was bad wind the other day that blew them off.

6. My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand?

7. I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is coming away from the wall.

8. Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant.

9. I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.

10. 50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster, and 50% are just plain filthy.

11. The next door neighbour has got this huge tool that vibrates the whole house and I just can't take it anymore.

12. The toilet is blocked and we cannot bathe the children until it is cleared.

13. Will you please send a man to look at my water; it is a funny colour and not fit to drink.

14. Our lavatory seat is broken in half and now is in three pieces.

15. I want to complain about the farmer across the road. Every morning at 6am his cock wakes me up and it's now getting too much for me.

16. The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is unsightly and dangerous.

17. Our kitchen floor is damp. We have two children and would like a third, so please send someone round to do something about it.

18. I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night.

19. Please send a man with the right tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife..

20. I have had the clerk of works down on the floor six times but I still have no satisfaction.

21. This is to let you know that our lavatory seat is broke and we can't get BBC2 [TV].

22. My bush is really overgrown round the front and my back passage has fungus growing in it.