John Kennedy Quotes

She went up to his bedroom door and listened to the wildly twanging bed springs as they reached a crescendo as they built toward a finale worthy of Grieg's 'In the Hall of the Mountain King ~ John Kennedy Toole

I should perhaps warn you that I am about to faint from anxiety and general depression, though. The film I saw last night was especially grueling, a teen-age beach musical. I almost collapsed during the singing sequence on surfboard. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery. ~ John Kennedy Toole

You have had presidential candidates over the last 30 years who would have had a very hard time getting nominated under the old system. One example is John Kennedy. ~ Michael Beschloss

Talc: You have been found guilty of misleading and perverting the young. I decree that you be
hung by your underdeveloped testicles until dead. ZORRO ~ John Kennedy Toole

Social Note: I have sought escape in the Prytania on more than one occasion, pulled by the attractions of some technicolored horrors, filmed abortions that were offenses against any criteria of taste and decency, reels and reels of perversion and blasphemy that stunned my disbelieving eyes, the shocked my virginal mind, and sealed my valve. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I suspect that I am the result of particularly weak conception on the part of my father. His sperm was probably emitted in a rather offhand manner. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Mrs. Reilly called in that accent that occurs south of New Jersey only in New Orleans, that Hoboken near the Gulf of Mexico. ~ John Kennedy Toole

But I knew the way the people in the town thought about things. They always had some time left over from their life to bother about other people and what they did. They thought they had to get together to help other people out, like the time they got together about the woman who let a colored man borrow her car and told her the best place for her was up north with all the other nigger lovers, and the time they got the veterans with overseas wives out. If you were different from anybody in town, you had to get out. That's why everybody was so much alike. The way they talked, what they did, what they liked, what they hated. If somebody got to hate something and he was the right person, everybody had to hate it too, or people began to hate the ones who didn't hate it. They used to tell us in school to think for yourself, but you couldn't do that in the town. You had to think what your father thought all his life, and that was what everybody thought. ~ John Kennedy Toole

This liberal doxy must be impaled on the member of a particularly large stallion! ~ John Kennedy Toole

Did you ever stop to thnk about all the people we kill? They're always people who tell us to live together in harmony and try to love one another: Jesus, Ghandi, Lincoln, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, John Lennon. They all said: 'Try to live together peacefully.' BAM! Right in the f
in head! Aparently we're not ready for that! ~ George Carlin

Mr. Gonzalez watched Mr. Zalatimo probing his long index finger high into one of his nostrils. What would this one do? His feet tingled with fear. ~ John Kennedy Toole

In my private apocalypse he will be impaled upon his own nightstick. ~ John Kennedy Toole

At the time of his death, John Kennedy had a national security establishment that was a writhing ball of snakes. ~ Charlie Pierce

Over the years I have become very good at getting out of things I don't want to do. ~ John Kennedy Toole

So we see that even when Fortuna spins us downward, the wheel sometimes halts for a moment and we find ourselves in a good, small cycle within a larger bad cycle. The universe, of course, is based upon the principle of the circle within the circle. At the moment, I am in an inner circle. Of course, smaller circles within this circle are also possible. ~ John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy won the first televised presidential debate among those watching it, while Richard Nixon won among those listening on the radio. ~ Susan Estrich

Perhaps I should have been a Negro. I suspect I would have been a rather large and terrifying one, continually pressing my ample thigh against the withered thighs of old white ladies in public conveyances a great deal and eliciting more than one shriek of panic. Then, too, if I were a Negro, I would not be pressured by my mother to find a good job, for no good jobs would be available. My mother herself, a worn old Negress, would be too broken by years of underpaid labor as a domestic to go out bowling at night. She and I could live most pleasantly in some moldy shack in the slums in a state of ambitionless peace, realizing contentedly that we were unwanted, that striving was meaningless. ~ John Kennedy Toole

...but who are we to question the motives of these giants of commerce whose whims rule the course of our nation. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Filth!' Ignatious shouted, spewing wet popcorn over rows. 'How dare she pretend to be a virgin. Look at her degenerate face. Rape her! ~ John Kennedy Toole

My corps of attorneys will contact you in the morning wherever it is that you carry on your questionable activities. I shall warn them beforehand that they may expect to see and hear anything. They are all brilliant attorneys, pillars of the community, aristocratic Creole scholars whose knowledge of the more surreptitious forms of living is quite limited. They may even refuse to see you. A considerably lesser representative may be sent to call upon you, some junior partner whom they've taken in out of pity. ~ John Kennedy Toole

My excellence confused them ~ John Kennedy Toole

Look at that. She think I got siphlus and TB and a hard-on and I gonna cut her up with a razor and lif her purse. Ooo-wee. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Do you think that I have a problem?" Ignatius bellowed. "The only problem that those people have anyway is that they don't like new cars and hairsprays. That why they are put away. They make the other members of the society fearful. Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions."
"Ignatius, that ain't true. You remember old Mr. Becnel used to live down the block? They locked him up because he was running down the street naked."
"Of course he was running down the street naked. His skin could not bear any more of that Dacron and nylon clothing that was clogging his pores. I've always considered Mr Becnel one of the martyrs of our age. The poor man was badly victimized. Now run along to the front door and see if my taxi has arrived." p.306 ~ John Kennedy Toole

This was the sort of girl who should be attending college, not ones like that dreadful Minkoff girl, that brutal and slovenly girl who had almost been raped by one of the janitors just outside of his office. Dr. Talc shuddered at the very thought of Miss Minkoff. In class she had Insulted and challenged and vilified him at every turn, egging the Reilly monster to join in the attack. He would never forget those two; no one on the faculty ever would. They were like two Huns sweeping down on Rome. Dr. Talc idly wondered if they had married each other. Each certainly deserved the other. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Movies, TV, sports, come and go, but what you stand for is what people remember. Mandela, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy are people who really stood for something and were willing to die for it. You don't see a whole lot of that any more. ~ Christopher Judge

Rock stars generally don't last in the Senate, starting with John Kennedy. Too much work, too slow, too little juice. Getting something accomplished takes a remarkable amount of tedious work. Rock stars who become senators either run for something else or retire on the job. They certainly don't make a mark. ~ Susan Estrich

There's a great book about John Kennedy and his relationship to civil rights called 'The Bystander.' The title alone suggests that he did as little as possible, any minimal critical effort, to really facilitate civil rights in the White House. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

We don't really know who killed Martin Luther King. We don't really know who killed Bobby Kennedy. We don't really know who killed John Kennedy. We don't really know who killed Tupac Shakur. ~ Cynthia McKinney

Like a bitch in heat, I seem to attract a coterie of policemen and sanitation officials. ~ John Kennedy Toole

...the nation as a whole has no contact with reality. That is only one of the reasons why I have always been forced to exist on the fringes of its society, consigned to the Limbo reserved for those who do know reality when they see it. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Having once been so high, humanity fell so low. What had once been dedicated to the soul was now dedicated to the sale. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I avoid that bleak first hour of the working day during which my still sluggish senses and body make every chore a penance. I find that in arriving later, the work which I do perform is of a much higher quality. ~ John Kennedy Toole

It would bring all of my latent anxieties to a head, and the result, I fear, would be very ugly indeed. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I'm old enough to remember John Kennedy sending a few advisers into Vietnam. I'm very worried we'll get in and we'll get mired down in something we don't have any idea what to do [with]. ~ Jim McDermott

The most intimidating world leader was Lyndon Johnson, who became U.S. President when John Kennedy was assassinated. He exulted in this power and liked to inspire fear. ~ Paul Johnson

Tears were coursing down the faces of Kennedy's moonstruck recruits. John Kennedy had inspired us with his vision. One by one, we left work to grieve in private. The flag was at half-staff in our hearts. ~ Gene Kranz

She appears to have been knocked a bit in her life already. Up rather than down. If she ever nears me, however, the direction will be reversed. ~ John Kennedy Toole

We musicians, like everyone else, are numb with sorrow at this murder, and with rage at the senselessness of the crime. But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. And with each note we will honor the spirit of John Kennedy, commemorate his courage, and reaffirm his faith in the Triumph of the Mind. ~ Leonard Bernstein

In other words, you want to become totally bourgeois. You people have all been brainwashed. I imagine that you'd like to become a success or something equally vile. ~ John Kennedy Toole

With the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I tried to end our little duel. I called out pacifying words; I entreated; I finally surrendered. Still Clyde came, my pirate costume so great a success that it had apparently convinced him that we were back in the golden days of romantic old New Orleans when gentlemen decided matters of hot dog honor at twenty paces ~ John Kennedy Toole

Every difficult work presents us with a choice of whether to judge the author inept for not being clear, or ourselves stupid for not grasping what is going on. Montaigne encouraged us to blame the author. An incomprehensible prose-style is likely to have resulted more from laziness than cleverness; what reads easily is rarely so written ... ~ John Kennedy Toole

Ignatius, what's all this trash on the floor?"
"That is my worldview that you see. It still must be incorporated into a whole, so be careful where you step. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I am thirty," Ignatius said condescendingly. "You got a job?" "Ignatius hasta help me at home," Mrs. Reilly said. Her initial courage was failing a little, and she began to twist the lute string with the cord on the cake boxes. "I got terrible arthuritis." "I dust a bit," Ignatius told the policeman. "In addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip." "Ignatius makes delicious cheese dips," Mrs. Reilly said. ~ John Kennedy Toole

You could tell by the way he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I am an anachronism. People realize this and resent it. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Myrna was not astigmatic; the lenses were clear glass; she wore the glasses to prove her dedication and intensity of purpose. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I was appalled that so meaningless a person would dare such effrontery. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Go dangle your withered parts over the toilet!' Ignatius screamed savagely. ~ John Kennedy Toole

All signs were pointing upward; his wheel was revolving skyward. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I thought that the vibrissae about my nostrils detected something unique while I was outside. ~ John Kennedy Toole

No wonder you've turned on me so savagely. I suspect that you are using me as a scapegoat for your own feelings of guilt. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Do you think that I want to live in a communal society with people like that Battaglia acquaintance of yours, sweeping streets and breaking up rocks or whatever it is people are always doing in those blighted countries? What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life. ~ John Kennedy Toole

It smells terrible in here.'
Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate. ~ John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy had so many different medical problems that began when he was a boy. He started out with intestinal problems ... spastic colitis. ~ Robert Dallek

Jail was preferable. There they only limited you physically. In a mental ward they tampered with your soul and worldview and mind. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Originally, John Kennedy was going to come speak, and then Lyndon Johnson. Because it was October of '62, neither made it because of the Cuban missile crisis. ~ David Maraniss

The only problem that those people have anyway is that they don't like new cars and hair sprays. That's why they are put away. They make the other members of the society fearful. Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Remember I'm from Dauphine Street. We useta put the kitchen chairs out on the banquette and set there till midnight sometimes waiting for the house to cool off. And the things the people down here say! Lord. ~ John Kennedy Toole

The murder of John Kennedy in broad daylight in the streets of an American city remains, to me, an unsolved crime. ~ Charlie Pierce

Here's an interesting form of murder we came up with: assassination. You know what's interesting about assassination? Well, not only does it change those popularity polls in a big fucking hurry, but it's also interesting to notice who it is we assassinate. Did you ever notice who it is? Stop to think who it is we kill? It's always people who've told us to live together in harmony and try to love one another. Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, John Lennon, they all said, "Try to live together peacefully." BAM! Right in the fucking head. Apparently we're not ready for that. ~ George Carlin

Do I believe the total perversion that I am witnessing? ~ John Kennedy Toole

Certainly I think the election of John Kennedy and all he stood for was one that really was an inspiration. ~ Birch Bayh

... perverts around the world will also band together to capture the military in their respective countries. In those reactionary countries in which the deviates seem to be having some trouble in gaining control, we will send aid to them as rebels to help them in toppling their governments. When we have at last overthrown all existing governments, the world will enjoy not war but global orgies conducted with the utmost protocol and the most truly international spirit, for these people do transcend simple national differences. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?" Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. "This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problems with you, but don't make the mistake of bothering me. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Psycho? The woman's senile. We had to stop at about thirty gas stations on the way over here. Finally I got tired of getting out of the car and showing her which was the Men's and which was the Women's, so I let her pick them herself. I worked out a system. The law of averages. I laid money on her and she came out about fifty-fifty. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Had that poor Reilly kook really been proud of Levy Pants? He had always said that he was. That was one good sign of his insanity. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Oh, Fortuna, blind, heedless goddess, I am strapped to your wheel,' Ignatius belched, 'Do not crush me beneath your spokes. Raise me on high, divinity. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. ~ John Kennedy Toole

If Obama's vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. ~ Jeff Greenfield

Canned food is a perversion,' Ignatius said. 'I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul. ~ John Kennedy Toole

You know,' Russell said, 'we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights, but not Lyndon Johnson.' There was a pause. A man was perhaps contemplating the end of a way of life he cherished. He was perhaps contemplating the fact that he had played a large role - perhaps the largest role - in raising to power the man who was going to end that way of life. But when, a moment later, Richard Russell spoke again, it was only to repeat the remark. 'We could have beaten Kennedy on civil rights, but we can't Lyndon. ~ Robert A. Caro

Like John Kennedy in 1960, Obama combines youth, vigor, and good looks with the promise of political change. Like Kennedy, he grew up in unusual circumstances that distance him from ordinary American life. ~ Virginia Postrel

Too long have I confined myself in Miltonic isolation and meditation. It is clearly time for me to step boldly into our society, not in the boring, passive manner of the Myrna Minkoff school of social action, but with great style and zest. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Please, go away!" Ignatius screamed. "You're shattering my religious ecstasy. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Ignatius, all at once you're your horrible old self. All at once I think I'm making a very big mistake. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I doubt very seriously whether anyone will hire me.'
What do you mean, babe? You a fine boy with a good education.'
Employers sense in me a denial of their values.' He rolled over onto his back. 'They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe. This was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Perhaps the experience can give my writing a new dimension. Being actively engaged in the system which I criticize will be an interesting irony in itself. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Despite everybody who has been born and has died, the world has just gone on. I mean, look at Napoleon -but we went right on. Look at Harpo Marx -the world went around, it didn't stop for a second. It's sad but true. John Kennedy, right? ~ Bob Dylan

The view that we know less than we thought we knew about how to change the human condition came, in time, to be called neoconservatism. Many ... , myself included, disliked the term because we did not think we were conservative, neo or paleo. (I voted for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and worked in the latter's presidential campaign.) It would have been better if we had been called policy skeptics; that is, people who thought it was hard, though not impossible, to make useful and important changes in public policy. ~ James Q. Wilson

What is your opinion of a society that considers "Turkey in the Straw" to be one of the pillars, as it were, of its culture? ~ John Kennedy Toole

Mothers got a hard road to travel, believe me. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Martyrdom is meaningless in our age. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy, ~ Joe Biden

Although the style of each varied in crudity, the subjects of the paintings were relatively similar: camellias floating in bowls of water, azaleas tortured into ambitious flower arrangements, magnolias that looked like white windmills. ~ John Kennedy Toole

a block that had moved into the twentieth century carelessly and uncaringly - and with very limited funds. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss. By the time we had left the swamps and reached those rolling hills near Baton Rouge, I was getting afraid that some rural rednecks might toss bombs at the bus. They love to attack vehicles, which are a symbol of progress, I guess. ~ John Kennedy Toole

What TV was to John Kennedy, Facebook is to Obama. ~ Daniel Lyons

My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?' ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

I want that Easter Ham. Where's my Thanksgiving Turkey? Miss Trixie snarled ~ John Kennedy Toole

When John Kennedy attempted to take the government back from the back from the robber barons, he was brutally murdered. The message to future US president and leaders across the world was clear: do as you're told, or die. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the last true president of the United States. And until the globalists are removed from power, we will never have another real one. ~ Alex Jones

We were children of the 1950s and John Kennedy's young stalwarts of the early 1960s. He told the world that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" in the defense of freedom. We were the down payment on that costly contract, but the man who signed it was not there when we fulfilled his promise. John Kennedy waited for us on a hill in Arlington National Cemetery, and in time we came by the thousands to fill those slopes with out white marble markers and to ask on the murmur of the wind if that was truely the future he had envisioned for us. ~ Joseph L. Galloway

The Soviet Constitution provides a key to the understanding of Soviet psychiatry. In the West, our tradition of human rights pits the citizen against the State. Very occasionally, a politician will, like John Kennedy, ask us to think what we can do for our country. But, in general, we have rights without any major duties other than the duty to obey the law. If I wish to live as a tramp or to devote my life to a study of butterflies, it's my business and my right to do so as long as I hurt no one else. The Soviet constitution proclaims a rather different relationship. The citizen is meant to be a productive member of the socialist community. If I choose to be a tramp or butterfly-maniac, I am hurting others because I am depriving the State of my labour. This is not necessarily bad, just odd given Western traditions. But being a 'parasite' is an actual crime much like being a vagrant was in Tudor England. ~ David Cohen

It's not your fate to be well treated," Ignatius cried. "You're an overt masochist. Nice treatment will confuse and destroy you. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I've seen in the country since John Kennedy. ~ John Irving

I really don't have the time to discuss the errors of your value judgements. ~ John Kennedy Toole

Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me? ~ John Kennedy Toole

Since the emergence of the Republican Party, only two Democratic presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, have been followed by Democrats, and both FDR and JFK died in office, so their successors ran as incumbents. ~ George Will

Oh my God! You're wearing your bowling shoes! Only you would wear bowling shoes to your child's sickbed. ~ John Kennedy Toole