Cranks Quotes

There have always been hucksters, cranks and populists who see a brief rise in American politics, going back to William Jennings Bryan at the turn of the century. The body politic has a way of expelling these invaders. ~ Joseph Rago

I bring a poofy gray down jacket with me wherever I go. It's meant for winter, but I use it most in the summer, when everyone cranks up the air-conditioning. ~ Leslie Mann

I love to play my music. That's what my heart wants me to do is to play music, and I love doing that when I got my band and my crew and all those folks with me, and that whole thing cranks up; it's really something to enjoy. ~ Ronnie Milsap

Where misunderstanding dwells, misuse will not be far behind. No theory in the history of science has been more misused and abused by cranks and charlatans - and misunderstood by people struggling in good faith with difficult ideas - than quantum mechanics. ~ Sean Carroll

Cranks are much too important. They are part of the other America - Greil Marcus's old, weird America. A charlatan is a crank with a book deal and a radio program and a suit in federal court. A charlatan succeeds only in Idiot America. A charlatan is a crank who succeeds too well. A charlatan is a crank who's sold out. ~ Charles P. Pierce

The real threat from cranks is not that their customers might die
there is the odd case, although it seems crass to harp on about them - but that they systematically the public's understanding about the very nature of evidence. ~ Ben Goldacre

There is a strange idea abroad, held by all monetary cranks, that credit is something a banker gives to a man. Credit, on the contrary, is something a man already has. He has it, perhaps, because he already has marketable assets of a greater cash value than the loan for which he is asking. Or he has it because his character and past record have earned it. He brings it into the bank with him. That is why the banker makes him the loan. The banker is not giving something for nothing. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks. ~ Henri Bergson

I never felt at home. I stuck outIn New York City, especially in Greenwich Village, down among the cranks and the misfits and the one-lungers and the has-beens and the might've beens and the would-bes and the never-wills and the God-knows-whats, I have always felt at home. ~ Joseph Mitchell

A sure sign of a crisis is the prevalence of cranks. It is characteristic of a crisis in theory that cranks get a hearing from the public which orthodoxy is failing to satisfy. ~ Joan Robinson

Letterwriting is the natural outlet of the "odds." The busy-bodies, the idle, the perverted, the cranks, the feel-it-my-duties ... Also the plain depraved. They all write letters. It's their safe outlet, you see. They can be as interfering, as long-winded, as obscene, as pompous, as one-idea'd, as they like on paper, and no one can kick them for it. So they write. My God, how they write! ~ Josephine Tey

False hope," she said. "Guess that's better then no hope at all. ~ James Dashner

There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up fashionable untruths than unfashionable truths. ~ Bertrand Russell

Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Autodidacts tend to be cranks, obtuse and self-enclosed. A professor's most important role is to make you think with rigor: precisely, patiently, responsibly, remorselessly, and not only about your "deepest ingrained presuppositions," as my own mentor, Karl Kroeber, once wrote, but also about your "most exhilarating new insights, most of which turn out to be fallacious. ~ William Deresiewicz

It was probably no accident that it was the cripple Hephaestus who made ingenious machines; a normal man didn't have to hoist or jack himself over hindrances by means of cranks, chains and metal parts. Then it was in the line of human advance that Einhorn could do so much. ~ Saul Bellow

The humblest praise most, while cranks & malcontents praise least. Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible ~ C.S. Lewis

Thomas remembered the image of the Cranks at the windows back at the dorm. Like living nightmares, missing only a death certificate to make them official zombies. ~ James Dashner

Cranks live by theory, not by pure desire. They want votes, peace, nuts, liberty, and spinning-looms not because they love these things, as a child loves jam, but because they think they ought to have them. That is one element which makes the crank. ~ Rose Macaulay

We simulated the predator with livestock and the perennial grassland returned. Just put the whole back, and there it was. You'll find the scientific method never discovers anything. Observant, creative people make discoveries. But the scientific method protects us from cranks like me. ~ Allan Savory

He smirks and cranks his glorious smile up another notch so it's in full HD IMAX. ~ E.L. James

In front marched Egypt. The Duke of Egypt at their head, on horseback, with his counts on foot, holding his bridle and stirrups; behind them the Egyptians, men and women, in any order, with their young children yelling on their shoulders; all of them, duke, counts, common people, in rags and tinsel. Then came the kingdom of the argot, that is to say, every thief in France, graded in order of rank, the lowest going in front. Thus there filed past in column of four, in the various insignia of their grades in this strange academy, the majority crippled, some of them lame, others with only one arm, the upright men, the counterfeit cranks, the rufflers, the kinchincoves, the Abraham-men, the fraters, the dommerars, the trulls, the whipjacks, the prygges, the drawlatches, the robardesmen, the clapper-dogens; an enumeration to weary Homer. ~ Victor Hugo

Enlightened self-interest from those involved in hydrocarbons should lead to the support of technologies enabling the clean use of hydrocarbons, such as carbon capture and storage, and not to the defence of deniers and cranks. ~ Nicholas Stern

Everybody should espouse three or four harmless crank theories for the pure pleasure of having something harmless to be cranky about. And when a theory of this sort proves correct, it is a true moment for celebration. ~ Alexei Panshin

The doggy demolition began slowly. Clothes, hairbrushes, dishes, pens, wristwatch, toothbrush (yes, he'd reached it somehow) - anything I came in contact with became an object to chew, maul, consume. Toys, dog chews, or rawhides were scoffed at while he was alone; it had to be something of mine. He ate two remote controls, binoculars, a cherished baseball from high school, two belts, a computer mouse and keyboard, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and too many shoes to count. Even the shifter knob and window cranks in my Civic fell victim to Lou's teeth. Anything I handled eventually became dog food. ~ Steve Duno

Rose took my nose, I suppose. And it really blows ... Get it? It really blows. My nose. Taken by Rose. I suppose. ~ James Dashner

Dr. Arnold ... the admired reformer of public schools, came across some cranks who thought it a mistake to flog boys. Anyone reading his outburst of furious indignation against this opinion will be forced to the conclusion that he enjoyed inflicting floggings. ~ Bertrand Russell

Scientists willing to risk their reputations on higher dimensions soon found themselves ridiculed by the scientific community. Higher-dimensional space became the last refuge for mystics, cranks, and charlatans. ~ Michio Kaku

On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. An eccentric puts ice cream on steak simply because he likes it; should a crank do so, he would endow the act with moral grandeur and straightaway denounce as sinners (or reactionaries) all who failed to follow suit ... Cranks, at their most familiar, are a sort of peevish prophets, and it's not enough that they should be in the right; others must also be in the wrong. ~ Louis Kronenberger

Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death
in a cesspool. ~ Charles Bukowski

What's there to be scared about? A post-apocalyptic city with no government or security, surrounded by a desert and swarming with Cranks. I mean, come on. Don't be a sissy. ~ James Dashner

Although millions of Americans purr with pastel delusions of Mohandas K. Gandhi, those who actually live in the scrawny crank's homeland struggle to throw off the painful aftermath of his quackery. ~ Emmett Tyrrell

The Bolshevists would blow up the fabric with high explosive, with horror. Others would pull down with the crowbars and with cranks
especially with cranks ... Sweating, slums, the sense of semi-slavery in labour, must go. We must cultivate a sense of manhood by treating men as men. ~ David Lloyd George

More cranks take up unfashionable errors than unfashionable truths. ~ Bertrand Russell

I have been known as a crank, faddist, madman. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw to myself cranks, faddists, and madmen. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Americans by the very nature of the soft fat they collected around their brains along with all of their comforts, their total ignorance of historical meanings, their delusion that anarchists were either comic little men plotting nothings in a dark cellar or misunderstood cranks--how could Americans be taken seriously in a world of real politics? ~ Helen MacInnes

There is a strange idea aboard, held by all monetary cranks, that credit is something a banker gives to a man. Credit, on the contrary, is something a man already has. He has it, perhaps, because he already has marketable assets of a greater cash value than the loan for which he is asking. Or he has it because his character and past record have earned it. He brings it into the bank with him. That is why the banker makes him the loan. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Rose took my nose, I suppose," he repeated; the bubble of phlegm in his throat made a disgusting crackle. "And it really blows. ~ James Dashner

Old cranks have practiced all their lives, just as old saints have likewise practiced all their lives. They just practiced different life principles. ~ John Powell

I sent letters of enquiry to all persons whose names were given, and received not one reply. There are several ways of explaining. One is that it is probable that persons who have experiences such as those told of in this book, receive so many "crank letters" that they answer none. Dear me - once upon a time, I enjoyed a sense of amusement and superiority toward "cranks". And now here am I, a "crank", myself. Like most writers, I have the moralist somewhere in my composition, and here I warn - take care, oh, reader, with whom you are amused, unless you enjoy laughing at yourself. ~ Charles Fort

He cranks the condo's AC way down at night and still most mornings wakes up soaked, fetally curled, entombed in that kind of psychic darkness where you're dreading whatever you think of. ~ David Foster Wallace

We will have to remember where our cranks belong in our national life, so that they can resume their proper roles as lonely guardians of the frontiers of the national imagination, prodding and pushing, getting us to think about things in new ways, but also knowing that their place is of necessity a lonely and humble one. There is nothing wrong with a country that has people who put saddles on their dinosaurs. It's a wonderful show and we should watch them and applaud. We have no obligation to climb aboard and ride. ~ Charles P. Pierce

[English] fails me utterly when I attempt to describe what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end. ~ Donna Tartt

Sometimes tradition and habit are just that, comfortable excuses to leave things be, even when they are unjust and unworthy. Sometimes
not often, but sometimes
the cranks and radicals turn out to be right. Sometimes Everyone is wrong. ~ Matthew Scully

Attempting mischievous and salutary irritation of his peers ... Keynes may only succeed in becoming an academic idol of our worst cranks and charlatans - not to mention the possibilities of the book as the economic bible of a fascist movement. ~ Henry Calvert Simons

I am discounting reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos? ~ Stephen Hawking

The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.