Parrots Quotes

To secure the safety of the navigation of the Mississippi River I would slay millions. On that point I am not only insane, but mad ... I think I see one or two quick blows that will astonish the natives of the South and will convince them that, though to stand behind a big cottonwood and shoot at a passing boat is good sport and safe, it may still reach and kill their friends and families hundreds of miles off. For every bullet shot at a steamboat, I would shoot a thousand 30-pounder Parrots into even helpless towns on Red, Ouachita, Yazoo, or wherever a boat can float or soldier march. ~ William Tecumseh Sherman

Woodcutter. Cut my shadow from me. Free me from the torment of being without fruit. Why was I born among mirrors? Day goes round and round me. The night copies me in all its stars. I want to live without my reflection. And then let me dream that ants and thistledown are my leaves and my parrots. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

Sleeping Wrestler

You are a murderer
No you are not, but really a wrestler
Either way it's just the same
For from the ring of your entangled body
Clean as leather, lustful as a lily
Will nail me down
On your stout neck like a column, like a pillar of tendons
The thoughtful forehead
(In fact, it's thinking nothing)
When the forehead slowly moves and closes the heavy eyelids
Inside, a dark forest awakens
A forest of red parrots
Seven almonds and grape leaves
At the end of the forest a vine
Covers the house where two boys
Lie in each others arms: I'm one of them, you the other
In the house, melancholy and terrible anxiety
Outside the keyhole, a sunset
Dyed with the blood of the beautiful bullfighter Escamillo
Scorched by the sunset, headlong, headfirst
Falling, falling, a gymnast
If you're going to open your eyes, nows the time, wrestler ~ Mutsuo Takahashi

To be honest, owls aren't the brightest of birds, amazing as they are; parrots and crows are much smarter. It's all in the eyes: those magnificent piercing optics are what make all owls look like they are deep in concentrated scrutiny and steeped in long-lost knowledge. ~ Matt Sewell

Mercury starts barking
at a bunch of colourful parrots sitting in the bending fennel.
I let him off the leash,
and they twitter and fly away,
points
in a
moving constellation.

Dad used to say Aussie birds reminded him
of fish in the reef near his village,
Free, multicoloured, dreamlike. ~ Omar Musa

If you have no past or no future, which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide. But the cold reasoning mass of gray entrail in my cranium which parrots, 'I think, therefore I am,' whispers that there is always the turning, the upgrade, the new slant. And so I wait. ~ Sylvia Plath

I think airlines have been very much parrots. They'll just follow what everyone else is doing. Why change a model that they're happy in? And it takes someone like myself or Richard Branson who comes from outside the industry to say, 'Hey, let's try something new.' ~ Tony Fernandes

The family is on its way out; couples go next; then no more keeping cats or parrots. ~ Mason Cooley

The only animals I'm not comfortable with are parrots, but I'm learning as I go. I'm getting better and better at 'em. I really am. ~ Steve Irwin

The papers are portraying Rafa as a parrot, just like they did when they showed Graham Taylor as an onion ~ Bobby Gould

When I wake, it seems a little less hot than usual, so I'm worried I have a fever until light flashes behind the curtains and the sound of a detonation rolls in with a force that makes the windows rattle. As I step outside with a plastic bag over my cast, a stiff breeze pulls my hair away from my face, and I see the pregnant clouds of the monsoon hanging low over the city.
The rains have finally decided to come.
I sit down on the lawn, resting my back against the wall of the house, and light an aitch I've waited a long time to smoke. Suddenly the air is still and the trees are silent, and I can hear laughter from my neighbor's servant quarters. A bicycle bell sounds in the street, reminding me of the green Sohrab I had as a child. Then the wind returns, bringing the smell of wet soil and a pair of orange parrots that swoop down to take shelter in the lower branches of the banyan tree, where they glow in the shadows. ~ Mohsin Hamid

In the beginning, when Twaslitri (the Divine Artificer) came to the creation of woman he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after pro-found meditation, he did as follows: he took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of the creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sun-beams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldnesss of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kokila, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakravaka; and compounding all these together, he made woman and gave her to man.
(Written by scholars of the Vedic Age) ~ F.W. Bain

If you have discovered a truth, tell it first to a parrot! Every new truth needs an insistent repetition! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Now that Janet and Frances were older, Grandpa would let them visit him in his study, where the parrot lived. Grandpa came from a long line of parrot-keeping men, and Polly's predecessor, a white cockatoo, had fought with Wellington's armies in the Napoleonic Wars. Janet's father's earliest memories were of the astonishing oaths known to this bird, who was then a hundred and two years old and spoke in ripe gamey accents long since gone from the world of men. Grandpa believed that there must be a fair number of such long-lived birds in Scotland - even perhaps in England - and it would have been a fine thing to have them all gathered in a great dining hall, invoking ghostly midshipmen and dragoons, violent drinkers and merry rhymesters, perhaps even occasionally a lady of refinement. This, he said, would afford a historical experience of rare value; indeed, ancient parrots should be fêted and cultivated as true archivists. ~ Elspeth Barker

A turtle without a shell is a very strange thing. Even with shells, turtles are very strange things, with their miniature elephant's feet, parrot's beak and ludicrous tail.
-pg 30 ~ Albert Sanchez Pinol

. . .biographers tend to regard as character those elements of personality that remain constant, or nearly so, throughout. . .Like practitioners of fractal geometry, biographers seek patterns that persist as one moves from micro- to macro-levels of analysis, and back again.
. . .
It follows from this that the scale across which we seek similarity need not be chronological. Consider the following incidents in the life of Stalin between 1929 and 1940, arranged not by dates but in terms of ascending horror. Start with the parrot he kept in a cage in his Kremlin apartment. The dictator had the habit of pacing up and down for long periods of time, smoking his pipe, brooding, and occasionally spitting on the floor. One day the parrot tried to mimic Stalin's spitting. He immediately reached into the cage with his pipe and crushed the parrot's head. A very micro-level event, you might well say, so what?

But then you learn that Stalin, while on vacation in the Crimea, was once kept awake by a barking dog. It turned out to be a seeing-eye dog that belonged to a blind peasant. The dog wound up being shot, and the peasant wound up in the Gulag. And then you learn that Stalin drove his independently minded second wife, who tried to talk back to him, into committing suicide. And that he arranged for Trotsky, who also talked back, to be assassinated halfway around the world. And that he arranged as well the deaths of as many of Trotsky's associates that he could reach, ~ John Lewis Gaddis

Three rabbits, two cats, three parakeets, a dove, two parrots, three turkeys, two geese, a canary, and nine ducks at last count were just about what Noah had started with, and he never brought his animals into the house. ~ Bob Tarte

She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot ~ Mark Twain

I'm a big fan of parrots - I think they're fascinating creatures. Many of them live for longer than us humans and it's interesting to me the way they learn to mimic human voices even though they don't really comprehend what they're saying. ~ Derren Brown

I took another punch for the parrots. It's like boxing with the sun. Just watch the sparks FLY!!! ~ Jes Fuhrmann

The parrot holds its food for prim consumption as daintily as any debutante, [with] a predilection for pot roast, hashed-brown potatoes, duck skin, butter, hoisin sauce, sesame seed oil, bananas and human thumb. ~ Alexander Theroux

There's two types of people on this great Earth, the Doers and the Dreamers and they share one thing in common: Dreams. The dreamers demonstrates the ability to have an imagination.
The doers follows through their ability to fulfill their destiny through patience and perseverance. ~ Jes Fuhrmann

Then idiots talk ... of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such parrot gabble! What the deuce! ... But show me a good opportunity, show me something really worth being energetic about, and I'll show you energy. ~ Charles Dickens

If they'd wanted a nice parrot, they wouldn't have asked for me. ~ Gilbert Gottfried

I was still seeing pirates in my old way, as almost-imaginary, adventure-story people with parrots on their shoulders, rather than the kind who shoot cannons at parents. ~ Jaclyn Moriarty

A few monkeys and parrots were loose on the wreck, clambering hysterically toward nowhere. He saw several animals disappear into the flames. ~ David Quammen

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden's beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land. ~ Rumi

This temper had been passed down from his father, and his father in turn before that. Parents breed parrots. Only exceptional offspring grow their own bright plumage, capable of penetrating the dull grey down in which they are born covered. ~ David Whitehouse

O, girls! set your affections on cats, poodles, parrots or lap-dogs; but let matrimony alone. It's the hardest way on earth to getting a living. ~ Fanny Fern

They come and go, without the drowsy observer's participation, but are essentially different from dream pictures for he is still master of his senses. They are often grotesque. I am pestered by roguish profiles, by some coarse-featured and florid dwarf with a swelling nostril or ear. At times, however, my photisms take on a rather soothing flou quality, and then I see - projected, as it were, upon the inside of the eyelid - gray figures walking between beehives, or small black parrots gradually vanishing among mountain snows, or a mauve remoteness melting beyond moving masts. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

That parrot's non-co-operation with the cage, with its master, will live for ever because it looks upon renunciation, non-co-operation, as a joy. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

God likes a little humor, as is evidence by the fact that he made the monkeys, the parrot
and some of you people. ~ Billy Sunday

Haters, like parrots, talk much but cannot fly. Dreamers, like eagles, say nothing but conquer the skies. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

You know what I was thinking? [Ruthie] got so excited when she was spouting this ahistorical countertextual nonsense, and I caught myself thinking, 'What an idiot her teacher must be,' and thinking about her teacher made me realize - the kind of excitement she was showing as she mindlessly spouted back the nonsense she learned in college, that's just like the excitement some of my own students show. And it occurred to me that what we professors think of as a 'brilliant student' is nothing but a student who is enthusiastically converted to whatever idiotic ideas we've been teaching them."
"Self-knowledge is a painful thing," said Esther. "To learn that your best students are parrots after all. ~ Orson Scott Card

One of the parrots was very friendly with ... Master of the Robes. He used to feed it nuts. As it nibbled from his fingers, he used to stroke its head, at which the bird appeared to enter a state of ecstasy. I very much wanted this kind of friendliness and several times tried to get a similar response, but to no avail. So I took a stick to punish it. Of course, thereafter it fled at the sight of me. This was a very good lesson in how to make friends: not by force but by compassion. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven. ~ Emily Dickinson

What are we promoting in society? Well-behaved automatons that spew back what they learned in a book. That's not science. You can get a parrot to do that. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I had started by imitating a parrot, which is unusual, in that a parrot is supposed to imitate you. By taking the initiative you allow the parrot no alternative but to be itself, which proves again that attack is often the best defence. ~ Peter Ustinov

Parrots have gone a bit quiet since pirates have gone. ~ Karl Pilkington

For their size, crows are among the brainiest organisms on Earth, outclassing not only other birds (with the possible exception of parrots), but also most mammals. ~ Candace Savage

Sometimes, she said, she could recognize a place just by the quality of the light. In Lisbon, the light at the end of spring leans madly over the houses, white and humid, and just a little bit salty. In Rio de Janeiro, in the season that the locals instinctively call 'autumn', and that the Europeans insist disdainfully is just a figment of their imagination, the light becomes gentler, like a shimmer of silk, sometimes accompanied by a humid grayness, which hangs over the streets, and then sinks down gently into the squares and gardens. In the drenched land of the Pantanal in Mato Grosso, really early in the morning, the blue parrots cross the sky and they shake a clear, slow light from their wings, a light that little by little settles on the waters, grows and spreads and seems to sing. In the forests of Taman Negara in Malaysia, the light is like a liquid, which sticks to your skin, and has a taste and a smell. It's noisy in Goa, and harsh. In Berlin the sun is always laughing, at least during those moments when it manages to break through the clouds, like in those ecological stickers against nuclear power. Even in the most unlikely skies, Ângela Lúcia is able to discern shines that mustn't be forgotten; until she visited Scandinavia she'd believed that in that part of the world during the winter months light was nothing but the figment of people's imagination. But no, the clouds would occasionally light up with great flashes of hope. She said this, and stood up, adopting a ~ Jose Eduardo Agualusa

Sleep in my arms. Like a baby bird. Like a broom among brooms ... in a broom closet. Like a tiny parrot. Like a whistle. Like a little song. A song sung by a forest ... within a forest ... a thousand years ago. ~ Milan Kundera

A parrot's gift is to talk; an eagle's gift is to fly. I'd rather be an eagle. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The immature conscience is not its own master. It simply parrots the decisions of others. It does not make judgments of its own; it merely conforms to the judgments of others. That is not real freedom, and it makes true love impossible, for if we are to love truly and freely, we must be able to give something that is truly our own to another. If our heart does not belong to us, asks Merton, how can we give it to another? ~ Jon Katz

I can't deceive myself out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide. But the cold reasoning mass of gray entrail in my cranium which parrots "I think, therefore I am," whispers that there is always the turning, the upgrade, the new slant. And so I wait. What avail are good looks? To grab temporary security? What avail are brains? Merely to say "I have seen; I have comprehended? ~ Sylvia Plath

On Translating Eugene Onegin


1
What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring head,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I traveled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose--
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.


2
Reflected words can only shiver
Like elongated lights that twist
In the black mirror of a river
Between the city and the mist.
Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,
I still pick up Tatiana's earring,
Still travel with your sullen rake.
I find another man's mistake,
I analyze alliterations
That grace your feasts and haunt the great
Fourth stanza of your Canto Eight.
This is my task--a poet's patience
And scholastic passion blent:
Dove-droppings on your monument. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I've got nine kids, nine dogs, three grandkids - and one in the oven. And three parrots! ~ Michael Landon

Make then your forecasts, my lords Astrologers, with your slavish physicians, by means of those astrolabes with which you seek to discern the fantastic nine moving spheres; in these you finally imprison your own minds, so that you appear to me but as parrots in a cage, while I watch you dancing up and down, turning and hopping within those circles. ~ Giordano Bruno

I feel comfortable in Spanish, I chat like a parrot, but I don't have the confidence in Spanish that I do in English. ~ Sandra Cisneros

As we say in Berlin, there are many ways to bake a parrot. ~ Erik Spiekermann

Cant is the parrot talk of a profession. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Parrots mimic their owners. Their owners consider that a sign of intelligence. ~ Marty Rubin

Man stands in materialism; you and I are materialists. Our talking about God and Spirit is good; but it is simply the vogue in our society to talk thus: we have learnt it parrot-like and repeat it. ~ Swami Vivekananda

An indisputable event, my gallant Ned. Accordingly, people have proposed naming this devil fish Bouguer's Squid.

And how long was it? the Canadian asked. Didn't it measure about six metres? said Conseil, who was stationed at the window and examining anew the crevices in the cliff.

Precisely, I replied

Wasn't its head, Conseil went on, crowned by eight tentacles that quivered in the water like a nest of snakes?

Precisely.

Weren't its eyes prominently placed and considerably enlarged?

Yes, Conseil.

And wasn't its mouth a real parrot's beak but of fearsome size?

Correct, Conseil.

Well, with all due respect to master, Conseil replied serenely, if this isn't Bouguers Squid, it's at least one of his close relatives! ~ Jules Verne

Every unwanted animal ends up on my farm: alpacas and horses and dogs and cats and chickens and ducks and parrots and fish and guinea pigs. ~ Salma Hayek

The difference between bush and ladder also allows us to put a lid on a fruitless and boring debate. That debate is over what qualifies as True Language. One side lists some qualities that human language has but that no animal has yet demonstrated: reference, use of symbols displaced of in time and space from their referents, creativity, categorical speech perception, consistent ordering, hierarchical structure, infinity, recursion, and so on. The other side finds some counter-example in the animal kingdom (perhaps budgies can discriminate speech sounds, or dolphins or parrots can attend to word order when carrying out commands, or some songbird can improvise indefinitely without repeating itself), and gloats that the citadel of human uniqueness has been breached. The Human Uniqueness team relinquishes that criterion but emphasizes others or adds new ones to the list, provoking angry objections that they are moving the goalposts. To see how silly this all is, imagine a debate over whether flatworms have True Vision or houseflies have True Hands. Is an iris critical? Eyelashes? Fingernails? Who cares? This is a debate for dictionary-writers, not scientists. Plato and Diogenes were not doing biology when Plato defined man as a "featherless biped" and Diogenes refuted him with a plucked chicken. ~ Steven Pinker

Most of the time, I get auditions for deaf characters where the scene has them communicating in really convoluted ways, like reading lips from across the room when the other person's back is turned or having other people parrot what they say. ~ Shoshannah Stern

I've long suspected that one of the reasons why human beings haven't yet figured out how to carry on a conversation with bottlenosed porpoises, African gray parrots, et al. in their own language is quite simply that we're terrified of what they might say to us - not least because it's entirely possible that they'd be right. ~ John Michael Greer

All the unhallowed beauty I have found; All free - discordant shrills and form-defying wonders above ground, like writhen trees with draggled foliage struggling along the courses of wayback creeks; scarlet - and - green sky - streaking parrot - fires with parrot shrieks echo - shattering the shoulders of the hills; and desert - sunset - rage Rage for my mind, be clamant, do not cease you are my holiest habitat of peace. ~ Rex Ingamells

My intuition told me that it was the grass that was important.Now it glows parrot-green, cool as mint, soft as moss, lying there like a cashmere blanket. ~ W.P. Kinsella

I bought myself a parrot, but it did not say "I'm hungry", and so it died. ~ Mitch Hedberg

Perfection does not come from belief or faith. Talk does not count for anything. Parrots can do that. Perfection comes through the disinterested performance of action. ~ Swami Vivekananda

A respect for authority is the basis for most medical education. Students may become so used to memorising that they become prey to the illusion that the reason for learning to parrot lectures and textbooks is that they are the 'truth'. ~ Petr Skrabanek

Out of the sky, the birds, the parrots, the bells, silk, cloth, and drums, out of Sundays dancing, children's words and love words, out of love for the little fists of children, I will build a world, my world with round shoulders. ~ Aime Cesaire

All she saw, down in the cellar well beneath the stoop, was a light yellow feather with a tip of green. And she had never named him. Had called him "my parrot" all these years. "My parrot." "Love you. "Love you."
Did the dogs get him? Or did he get the message - that she said, "My parrot" and he said, "Love you," and she had never said it back or even taken the trouble to name him - and manage somehow to fly away on wings that had not soared for six years. ~ Toni Morrison

It is possible, of course, to operate with figures mechanically, just as it is possible to speak like a parrot: but that hardly deserves the names of thought. It only becomes possible at all after the mathematical notation has, as a result of genuine thought, been so developed that it does the thinking for us, so to speak. ~ Gottlob Frege

I think the best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, and discourse grow commendable in none only but parrots. ~ William Shakespeare

Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky
Until the ocean covers every mountain high
Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream
Always ~ Stevie Wonder

Most of us live for the critic, and he lives on us. He doesn't sacrifice himself. He gets so much a line for writing a criticism. If the birds should read the newspapers, they would all take to changing their notes. The parrots would exchange with the nightingales, and what a farce it would be! ~ William Morris Hunt

When eagles are silent, parrots begin to chatter. ~ Winston S. Churchill

Why our poet chose to give his 1958 hurricane a little-used Spanish name sometimes given to parrots) instead of Linda or Lois, is not clear. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

It reminds us that we are not called to be parrots, unquestioningly repeating whatever we learn from a favorite teacher. Instead, we are to exercise wisdom and discernment, continually asking questions, weighing answers, seeking understanding, and grounding our beliefs within the context of God's Word and the wisdom of Christian tradition. ~ Ann Spangler

By providing safe nesting sites, woodpeckers are thus keystone organisms for a vast assemblage of birds the world over, including many owls, parrots, parids, flycatchers. ~ Bernd Heinrich

You must know nothing before you can learn something, and be empty before you can be filled. Is not the emptiness of the bowl what makes it useful? As for laws, a parrot can repeat them word for word. Their spirit is something else again. As for governing, one must first be lowest before being highest. ~ Lloyd Alexander

People who've been through our educational system, they think they're thinking, when they're just repeating like parrots. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

Saturday was the fifth day of Flush's imprisonment. Almost exhausted, almost hopeless, he lay panting in his dark corner of the teeming floor. Doors slammed and banged. Rough voices cried. Women screamed. Parrots chattered as they had never chattered to widows in Maida Vale, but now evil old women merely cursed at them. Insects crawled in his fur, but he was too weak, too indifferent to shake his coat. All Flush's past life and its many scenes – Reading, the greenhouse, Miss Mitford, Mr Kenyon, the bookcases, the busts, the peasants on the blind – had faded like snowflakes dissolved in a cauldron. If he still held to hope, it was to something nameless and formless; the featureless face of someone he still called 'Miss Barrett'. She still existed; all the rest of the world was gone, but she still existed, though such gulfs lay between them that it was impossible, almost, that she should reach him still. Darkness began to fall again, such darkness as seemed almost able to crush out his last hope – Miss Barrett. ~ Virginia Woolf

Harvey wasn't interested in the clothes, it was the masks that mesmerized him. They were like snowflakes: no two alike. Some were made of wood and of plastic; some of straw and cloth and papier-mâché. Some were as bright as parrots, others as pale as parchment. Some were so grotesque he was certain they'd been carved by crazy people; others so perfect they looked like the death masks of angels. There were masks of clowns and foxes, masks like skulls decorated with real teeth, and one with carved flames instead of hair. ~ Clive Barker

The parrot's so funny. He imitates me and I don't even realize he's doing it. I'm walking around the house talking to myself and whistling and the next day he's said something I've said ... it's scary you know? ~ Mick Ralphs

India was a sensation. It was remarkable to see all those parrots flying about, the brilliant foliage and the brilliant sky. It was a tremendous pageant. I never noticed the poverty. ~ Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

I don't like that sort of school ... where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged ... where I have never seen among the pupils, whether boys or girls, anything but little parrots and small calculating machines. ~ Charles Dickens

She put him near the front door and a number of visitors were surprised that he would not answer to the name 'Polly', which is what all parrots were supposed to be called. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Animal hoarding was a dirty secret until hoarders appeared on our TV screens and showed how they are compelled to collect so many dogs, cats or parrots that the animals end up in cages only inches bigger than their own bodies. For life. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

That is a transgenic animal. If he escapes he may transmit his genes to other parrots. ~ Michael Crichton

The kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power, that is, in works and practice. God loves the 'doers of the word' in faith and love, and not the 'mere hearers,' who, like parrots, have learned to utter certain expressions with readiness. ~ Martin Luther

The eagle has ceased to scream, but the parrots will now begin to chatter. The war of the giants is over and the pigmies will now start to squabble. ~ Winston Churchill

I regard psychiatry as fifty percent bunk, thirty percent fraud, ten percent parrot talk, and the remaining ten percent just a fancy lingo for the common sense we have had for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, if we ever had the guts to read. ~ Raymond Chandler