Rube Goldberg Quotes

And uh, I'm glad that I still have my hands and my eyes to work with. ~ Rube Goldberg

I didn't write because in the corps I took mining engineering of all things and, you know, they, they graduate a mining engineer as a sort of an illiterate. ~ Rube Goldberg

Dr. S didn't notice. "Do you remember the cartoons of Rube Goldberg? An inventor of the most ludicrous contraptions. You know: a lever is pulled, causing a boot to kick a dog, whose bark motivates a hamster to run on a wheel which winds a pulley that raises a gate that releases a bowling ball and so on? Until, at the end, finally, the machine does something incredibly mundane, like making a piece of toast. Yes? Well, as it turns out, that's the world. All these incredibly complex, inscrutably intertwined Rube Goldberg machines that can only be seen in retrospect when something happens. ~ Adam Felber

If when you hear a song by OK Go you conjure up thoughts of a gigantic Rube Goldberg device or treadmills or drones or perfectly executed dance routines, then you know that this is a band that is masterful at coming up with amazingly creative music videos. ~ Rachel Martin

Behind each door of what-if lies an unanswerable question that unhinges an infinite Rube Goldberg machine of probabilities. The life we have is the only one we will ever know, and even that with tenuous certainty. ~ Maria Popova

A Rube Goldberg machine is, in its essence, a trial-and-error thing. ~ Adam Sadowsky

When I did sports cartoons, I used to uh, go to fights. ~ Rube Goldberg

It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls-as little as one may like to admit it, human experience tends, in a good many ways, to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one's sense of humor begins to reassert itself. ~ Stephen King

We trigger each other, it seems, some dysfunctional Rube Goldberg mousetrap, a laugh, then a slap, a razor gliding over a mirror, a glass filled, a glass emptied, a ball rolling down a length of pipe, a pipe filling up and overflowing with smoke. On our best days, we see each other for all that we are, and we find a way to make each other better. ~ Richard Thomas

There is only one reason people have children: they're programmed to. Whatever reasons they may have for it - selflessness, wanting to pass something on, having so much love to give - I don't believe they choose children any more than naked mole rats decide to start tunneling. Human beings are basically big complicated Rube Goldberg contraptions constructed by genes to copy themselves, and only as an unintended side effect build mosques, make screwball comedies, and launch interplanetary probes. ~ Meghan Daum

Yeah, yeah. I, I don't think I'm always right. But I don't think young people are always right, either. ~ Rube Goldberg

And, uh, I did that, and there was nothing more ridiculous to me than finding the weight of the earth because I didn't care how much the earth weighed. ~ Rube Goldberg

It was a Rube Goldberg disease. A change in the sequence of a gene caused the change in the sequence of a protein; that warped its shape; that shrank a cell; that clogged a vein; that jammed the flow; that racked the body (that genes built). ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Be your own dentist! ~ Rube Goldberg

If you stand up for your rights you'll be criticized, put through the ringer, dragged into court, arrested, pepper sprayed, sucked into an overcomplicated, Rube Goldberg bureaucracy the mistakes of which become your mistakes and which will drive you insane with stress. Wouldn't you rather be providing service with a smile? ~ Carl-John X. Veraja

Naturally, I'm conservative; I'm a Republican. I always was. ~ Rube Goldberg

america...is the interplay of three hundred million rube goldberg contraptions invented only yesterday ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Windows 95 is what Rube Goldberg would have designed if he'd studied cartooning at M.I.T. ~ Russell Baker

I didn't have any real art training, but when I was about twelve nad thirteen, another boy and I went to a sign painter's house every Friday night and took lessons. ~ Rube Goldberg

You have a pet theory, one you have been turning over for years, that life itself is a kind of Rube Goldberg device, an extremely complicated machine designed to carry out the extremely simple task of constructing your soul. ~ Kevin Brockmeier

Children are a quality of life ... when our children are happy, then we are better as human beings. ~ Whoopi Goldberg

I am where I am because I believe in all possibilities. ~ Whoopi Goldberg

Yeah, I'm a thief."
"Honey, that's such a turn-on."
He reached for her, and she jumped away.
"Stand down," Kate said. "My hands are lethal weapons."
Nick backed her against the wall and leaned into her. "I've go a better lethal weapon than you do," he said. "Wanna see it?"
"No!"
Good lord, she could feel his lethal weapon pressing against her belly. It was big and hard. And as much as she hated to admit it, his big, hard weapon was exactly what she needed. She looked down and gasped because it was so perfect.
"Is this for me?" she asked.
"Absolutely," he said. "Take it if you want it."
"I want it," she said. "I really, really want it."
It was a Toblerone bar. Giant size. ~ Janet Evanovich

Keep your hand moving. (Don't pause to reread the line you have just written. That's stalling and trying to get control of what you're saying.) ~ Natalie Goldberg

Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it ~ Natalie Goldberg

If your lost you might need to swim against the tide ~ Holly Goldberg Sloan

I was aware that I had to pay off things in a convincing emotional fashion, that I had to address the lingering plot points in some real tangible sense, and that I had to make this a self-contained novel, in case I'm run over by a bus tomorrow or in case there's no demand for anyone to ever see a sequel. (Two things that I hope don't happen, incidentally.) ~ Tod Goldberg

Miriam will never know what kind of dog attacked her, will imagine a Doberman or a German shepherd with snarling, angry teeth despite the fact she bears neither bite marks nor broken skin. It will never cross her mind that the dog was a beagle and that she was knocked over from a surprise more than force. The children of the house she fled will use the incident to convince their parents to keep the dog, which had been on the verge of being given away for its propensity to shit at the slightest hint of thunder it having been sequestered in the garage that night because of a stormy forecast. The family will never know what manner of burglar their fog deflected, will imagine a scruffy, heavy-set man with scars and a limp groping the family jewelery. It will never cross their minds that their intruder was am upper middle-class wife and mother of two who would have had eyes only for their Chinese teakettle. ~ Myla Goldberg

From my observation, the older you get, the more you like the word cozy.
That's why most of the elderly wear pants with elastic waistbands. If they wear pants at all. This may explain why grandparents are in love with buying grand kids pajamas and bathrobes. ~ Holly Goldberg Sloan

When photography was invented, people had to make room in their minds for the idea that the dead would always be visible. ~ Vicki Goldberg

All my cousins are almost old enough to start seeing my movies. I'm going to have some 'splainin' to do. ~ Evan Goldberg

If you don't look out for others, who will look out for you? ~ Whoopi Goldberg

I don't really view communism as a bad thing. ~ Whoopi Goldberg

The problem is we think we exist. ~ Natalie Goldberg

As writers we are always seeking support. First we should notice that we are already supported every moment. There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them. We should begin from this when we need support. There is the sunlight coming though the window and the silence of the morning. Begin from these. ~ Natalie Goldberg

Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.. ~ Natalie Goldberg

But it is one of these sort of mythologies about America and its intellectual history, that the right embraced this thing called social Darwinism, when it never did so. ~ Jonah Goldberg

You wrestle one night, get up the next morning and fly out to the next city. You try to work out, you try to get some food into you and, lo and behold, you have to go work again. You are living out of a suitcase. ~ Bill Goldberg

I won once [an Oscar]. So it can't be that racist. ~ Whoopi Goldberg

But this is the kind of ass-clownery that stems from the fact that all philosophy looks weird when you don't have one. ~ Jonah Goldberg

'Family Ties' was a very successful situation comedy. And, in almost every respect, it functioned on a day to day basis like a well-run, well conditioned basketball team. The show was performed live each week in front of a studio audience on Friday night. ~ Gary David Goldberg

We're all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young. ~ Jonah Goldberg

What is more likely? That tomorrow will be called 'Thursday' or that Maxine Waters will play the race card in her ethics investigation? ~ Jonah Goldberg

The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart. ~ Natalie Goldberg

It is good to pay attention to our dreams. For a period of a few weeks, write them down each morning. You don't have to do anything else. Just write them down. They have their own magic and will bleed into your waking life. While ~ Natalie Goldberg

I like to write scenes in the middle of the night. We could change every word of 'Family Ties' between Monday and Friday. ~ Gary David Goldberg

The cutthroat part of it is that professional wrestling has no union. There are a number of people that are taken advantage of on a daily basis. ~ Bill Goldberg

That dead feeling hits hard and permeates the first year. It comes back to test you often in the following years, but if you get through the first year, then you know about it. It will never have the power to defeat you again. ~ Natalie Goldberg

I honor English majors. It's a dumb thing to major in. It leads nowhere. It's good to be dumb, it allows us to love something for no reason. That's the best kind of love. ~ Natalie Goldberg

When I was a kid they didn't call it dyslexia. They called it you know, you were slow, or you were retarded, or whatever. What you can never change is the effect that the words 'dumb' and 'stupid' have on young people. I knew I wasn't stupid, and I knew I wasn't dumb. My mother told me that. If you read to me, I could tell you everything that you read. They didn't know what it was. They knew I wasn't lazy, but what was it? ~ Whoopi Goldberg

I shaved a lot off of a lot that I saw in that I like to be less is more and make everything count and not give anyone anything extra. I was what you see is what you got. It was organic. I came up with the persona. The persona is me, coupled together with a lot of my interests. ~ Bill Goldberg

You can see why the Marxist left would resist the idea that Hitler was a revolutionary. Because if he was, then either Hitler was a force for good, or revolutions can be bad. ~ Jonah Goldberg

It's good to go off and write a novel, but don't stop doing writing practice. ~ Natalie Goldberg

A lot of so-called rich, according to this legislation, make $250,000. That's a lot of money, but it is not rich. ~ Bernard Goldberg

Glenn had the good fortune of collapsing at his Steinway in the middle of the Goldberg Variations. [Wertheimer] claimed he'd been trying to collapse for years, without success. ~ Thomas Bernhard

Tibetan Buddhists say that a person should never get rid of their negative energy, that negative energy transformed is the energy of enlightenment, and that the only difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle. If we stop struggling and open up and accept what is, that neurotic energy naturally arises as wisdom, naturally informs us and becomes our teacher. ~ Natalie Goldberg

And endings are always the beginnings of something else. ~ Holly Goldberg Sloan

I grew up in a time when it would never have occurred to anyone to tell me there was anything I couldn't do. ~ Whoopi Goldberg

By this point, it was clear she wasn't interested in continuing the relationship. What publication on earth would continue a relationship with a writer who would refuse to discuss her work with her editors? What publication would continue to publish a writer who attacked it on TV? What publication would continue to publish a writer who lied about it - on TV and to a Washington Post reporter? ... It's true: Ann is fearless, in person and in her writing. But fearlessness isn't an excuse for crappy writing or crappier behavior. ~ Jonah Goldberg

It takes a lot of people to make a winning team. Everybody's contribution is important. ~ Gary David Goldberg

Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels. ~ Natalie Goldberg

heard in America's streets. Yiddish theaters are still drawing crowds, and off-color humor fueled by vaudeville, jazz, and burlesque is flourishing in the Jewish Riviera resorts of the Catskills. Jewish humor ~ Paul Goldberg

I am the American Dream. I am the epitome of what the American Dream basically said. It said you could come from anywhere and be anything you want in this country. That's exactly what I've done. ~ Whoopi Goldberg

There's an old adage in writing: 'Don't tell, but show.' Writing is not psychology. We do not talk 'about' feelings. Instead the writer feels and through her words awakens those feelings in the reader. The writer takes the reader's hand and guides him through the valley of sorrow and joy without ever having to mention those words. ~ Natalie Goldberg

There was no intellectual movement in American history called social Darwinism. The people who were supposedly the leaders of the social Darwinist movement never embraced something called social Darwinism. It didn't exist. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Having already funneled its students to their respective classrooms, the school's front hall was empty, its glass showcase in the same neglected spot outside the front office. ... She looked at it briefly, her eyes sweeping over the faces of students whose adult trajectories would lead them either to gloss over these moments or to spend their lives pining for their return. ~ Myla Goldberg

When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you. ~ Natalie Goldberg

Jim Cummings, Whoopie Goldberg & Cheech Marin make up this famous Disney threesome. ~ Alex Trebek

Just when you thought the mafia novel was dead, Tod Goldberg breathes new life into it. Gangsterland, the best mafia novel in years, is a dark, funny, and smart page-turning crime story. It's also a moving, thoughtful meditation on ethics, religion, family, and a culture that eats itself. I loved this book. ~ Sara Gran