I love reading memorable quotations and I am particularly fond of humorous quotations. In this article I present a selection of humorous quotations focussing on education, science and technology. Readers can amuse themselves further by consulting several books of humorous quotations authored by Des MacHale and published by Mercier Press.
Education
"The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth which it prevents you from achieving." - Russell Green.
"The original Greek is of great use in elucidating Browning's translation of Agamemnon." - Robert Tyrell.
"I acquired such skill in reading Latin and Greek that I could take a page of either, and distinguish which language it was by merely glancing at it." - Stephen Leacock.
"University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East." - Henry Kissinger.
"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." - Henry Kissinger.
"There is no crisis to which academics will not respond with a conference." - Marvin Bressler.
"Dublin University contains the cream of Ireland - rich and thick." - Samuel Beckett.
"Question: Why are Professors like the Mafia?. Answer: Because they usually only kill their own." - Anonymous.
" `Whom are you?' he said, for he had been to night school." - George Ade.
"I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It's about Russia." - Woody Allen.
"I speak 12 languages - English is the bestest." - Stefan Bergman.
"I don't hold with bilingualism. English was good enough for Jesus Christ." - Ralph Melnyk.
"Those who can - do. Those who cannot - teach. Those who cannot teach become deans." - Thomas L. Martin.
"A lecture is a process by which the notes of the professor become the notes of the student without passing through the minds of either." - R.K. Rathbun.
"The average PhD thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to the other." - J.F. Dobie.
"A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad." - Theodore Roosevelt.
"Of course I know that knickers begins with a `k'. I've been to Oxford - it's one of the first things they teach you." - Alan Bennett.
"Like so many ageing college people, Pnin had long ceased to notice the existence of students on the campus." - Vladimir Nabokov.
"In school we had a name for guys trying to get in touch with themselves." - P.J. O'Rourke.
"The Royal Society is a collection of men who elect each other to office and then dine together at the expense of the Society to praise each other over wine and award each other medals." - Charles Babbage.
"There is nothing on earth, intended for innocent people, so horrible as a school. It is in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for example, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor." - George Bernard Shaw.
Science And Technology
"The telegraph is a kind of very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is mewing in Los Angeles. Radio operates in exactly the same way, except that there is no cat." - Albert Einstein.
"The Internet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhoea - massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it." - Gene Spafford.
"I used to think that the human brain was the most fascinating part of the body and then I realised, what is telling me that?" - Erne Philips.
"To say that a gram of plutonium could kill everyone on the planet is like saying that one drop of sperm could impregnate all of the women in China." - Tom Orth.
"I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not." - Fran Lebowitz.
"If there had been a computer in 1872 it would have predicted that by now there would be so many horse-drawn vehicles that the entire surface of the earth would be 10 feet deep in horse manure." - Karl Kapp.
"Biologically speaking, if something bites you, it is more likely to be female." - Desmond Morris.
"When you've seen one Redwood, you've seen `em all." - Ronald Reagan.
"Scientists have come up with a fantastic invention for looking through solid walls. It's called a window." - Richard Feynman.
"When I am in the company of scientists I feel like a shabby curate who has wandered by mistake into a drawing room full of Dukes." - W.H. Auden.
"If A is success in life then A equals X+Y+Z. X is work, Y is play, and Z is keeping your mouth shut." - Albert Einstein.
"To pray is to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy." - Ambrose Bierce.
"How do they get that non-stick stuff to stick to the frying pan?" - Steven Wright.
"Why don't they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff?" - Steven Wright.
"I have found a wonderful solution to Fermats' Last Theorem - but my train is leaving." - Graffito on wall of subway, New York.
William Reville is a Senior Lecturer in Biochem- istry and Director of Microscopy UCC.