© Lionel Beck - North Yorkshire - UK Pearls of Wisdom from the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly “I don’t know how to turn a computer on and I’m proud of it”. “The most segregated hour of American life takes place on Sunday mornings.” "I fear the [2004 Presidential] election was an intelligence test that America failed." "Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW." "I don't believe that using a mobile while driving is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose- picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on." "My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters." "The President [George W Bush] is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy." "If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel, I want drilling rights on George Bush's head." "I am a Ford - not a Lincoln." "He's a rich pretty boy who pretends he gives a damn when he doesn't." "America wasn’t founded as a theocracy; America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state." "The only thing standing between me and fame is me." "There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know that we don't know." "Bush's real purpose, of installing quite quickly a pro-Western democracy in Baghdad with the support of a grateful liberated population, has proved to be a sad illusion." "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepreneur'." "Our nation must come together to unite." "Some of the bravest people that I see right now are the progressives in America. These people, who stand up against the Bush administration, are called anti-American and terrorists. It is the most dangerous administration." "They found more dangerous chemicals in Coca-Cola's Dasani mineral water than they did in the whole of Iraq." "It's been suggested that if I were to baptise and confirm them all we'd never see them again" "The trouble with our Texan Babtists is that we do not hold them under water long enough." "When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bibles and we had the Land. They said, Let us pray... and when we opened our eyes again we had the Bibles and they had the Land" "They laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. They're not laughing now." "I was ill, and my doctor asked me if I'd heard of faecal impaction. I said, ‘Yes, I've seen the film.’" "We're Americans, and we think if it wasn't invented here, it wasn't invented. A lot of problems could have been avoided if we had looked at other countries' experience that deregulated before us, like Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the U.K" "The one-time editor (Kelvin Mackenzie) said that I couldn't edit a bus ticket, failing to realise that bus tickets don't usually need editing." "Mothers put all this energy into controlling you from a distance. Why don't they run fucking Railtrack instead of ringing their daughters up every Sunday?". "I think our police are excellent, probably because I have not done anything that has occasioned being beaten up by these good men." "I am on two diets at the moment, because you don't get enough to eat with one." "We don't want to see these coal fields trampled into the ground." "Tony Blair is no longer Prime Minister of Britain - he is the foreign minister of the United States." "I've noticed that, since I dyed my hair blonde, people tend to speak to me a little more slowly." "Bush is the leader of the Church of Latter- Day Morons, and Blair is a twit! What about Mr Sharon, who has flouted UN orders? Why aren't we going to war with Israel?" “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” George W Bush  (US President 2000-2008)  Anita Roddick (Body Shop) (the late) Robin Cook (Former UK Foreign Secretary) speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Rev. David Clark Vicar of Thornton Dale, N.Yorkshire .. speaking on BBC Radio Apr 2004 about the problems caused by plague of (protected) bats in Ellerburn Church. William Cowper Brann (died 1898) Archbishop Desmond Tutu (South Africa).  (the late) Bob Monkhouse British Comedian (the late) Bob Monkhouse British Comedian Frank A Wolak Economics Professor, Stanford University (on the north American electricity crisis of August 2003) Janet Street-Porter Editor-at-large, The Independent Janet Street-Porter Editor-at-large, The Independent (the late) Sir Clement Freud former Liberal MP Peter Sissons BBC Newsreader Rodney Bickerstaff General Secretary of the National Union of Public Employees Nelson Mandela former President of South Africa Ann Widdecombe UK Conservative MP  (the late) Sir John Mortimer Novelist  Benjamin Franklin from Poor Richard’s Almanac 1735