John Hodgman > Quotes

“Generally speaking, I think it is fair to say that I am a friend to the creatures of the Earth when I am not busy eating them or wearing them.”
― John Hodgman

“A stopped clock is correct twice a day, but a sundial can be used to stab someone, even at nighttime.”
― John Hodgman, More Information Than You Require

“Stories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. Where God is absent from the lives of all but the most blessed, the writer, of all people, replaces that ordering principle. Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.”
― John Hodgman

“I have learned that newborn infants roll their eyes around and move their heads and their arms in short jerky spasms. And if you homeschool them, they will stay this way forever.”
― John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise

“That which is hard to do is best done bitterly.”
― John Hodgman, More Information Than You Require

“We have all been empowered by the web: everyone with a keyboard can now effectively broadcast to a national audience. In a sense, it puts each of us on the same footing as the major media conglomerates, except for AOL, who now apparently own all our thoughts and teeth.”
― John Hodgman

“Houdini, the magician who debunked magic, could not bear to see the great rationalist [Arthur Conan] Doyle enchanted by ghosts and frauds. And so he did what any friend would: He set out to prove spiritualism false and rob his friend Doyle of the only comforting fiction that was keeping him sane. It was the least he could do.”
― John Hodgman, That is All

“This is not to say there are not Chicagoans. But I would suggest that they are a nomadic people, whose lost home exists only in their minds, and in the glowing crystal memory cells they all carry in the palms of their hands: a great idea of a second city, lit with life and love, reasonable drink prices at cool bars, and, of course, blocks and blocks of bright and devastating fire.”
― John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise

“Manly deeds, womanly hands.”
― John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise

“I still have a fondness for books. Many a time I will be antiquing, and I'll say, 'What's that old-timey curio over there? What is that, a candlestick telephone, one of those old pull-chain toilets? Oh no, it's a book. I used to help make those things! I will buy it and use it to decorate my chain of casual family-dining restaurants.”
― John Hodgman

“It’s been a tough couple of years for condescending nerds. And if bookstores fall, Jon, America will be inundated with a wandering, snarky underclass of unemployable purveyors of useless and arcane esoterica.”
― John Hodgman

“How to Win a Fight - Step 1: Always make eye contact. Step 2: Go ahead and use henchmen - these days it's unnecessary and frowned upon to fight your own battles, especially with so many henchmen out of work. Step 3: Run lots of attack ads - I have run about 500 attack ads this year, and I expect that I will buy even more air time next year, because my enemies are getting stronger.”
― John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise

“If you have not seen it, FOOTBALL is a game in which men shove one another back and forth for no reason. They do not choose how, when, or whom they shove. All that has been decided for them in advance. All they need to do is follow the orders given to them before the game, showing them where to run and how to violently deploy the meat of their bodies against the meat that is running at them. They are doing this in order to please one angry old man on the sidelines. This old man is called the "coach" or "yelling surrogate dad who will never be happy.”
― John Hodgman, That is All

“We all know he kept a bowl of live frogs by his resting slab in the Oval Office that he would snack on during meetings.”
― John Hodgman, More Information Than You Require

“Life may be miraculous in its unlikelihood in the universe, but it would be a fallacy to suggest that its rareness makes it inextinguishable.”
― John Hodgman, That is All