Something completely different

I've long felt this quote from Groucho Marx is one of the single most clever things ever said in the English language:

Time flies like an arrow;
fruit flies like a banana.

It's funny because your brain reaches the end and then tries to reinterpret each half in terms of the other, and hilarity ensues at the resulting mental images.  But what's truly brilliant is that nearly every corresponding word and phrase in the two clauses changes its function—verbs becomes nouns, prepositional phrases becomes verb phrases, and so on.  It's hard to imagine a more compact sentence with more mutability, and especially one that manages to be a good joke at the same time.  You've got to hand it to Groucho; the dude was not just funny, but smart.

Are there any outstanding bits of human cleverness you'd like to share?

Comments

[SteveB]

Well, there's Dorothy Parker's "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."

[John Caruso]

That's funny because I was expecting Dorothy Parker, but not that quote (which I'm not sure was actually Dorothy Parker...).

[Rojo]

All of mine are quite likely apocryphal, misquoted, and/or misattributed, but I haven't eaten yet today and don't feel like looking 'em up.

1.)"If you laid every Vassar girl in a row, they'd certainly enjoy it."

-Mary McCarthy?

(And don't tell anyone I went to Vassar. Shhhh!)

2) Q: Sir, what do you think of the French Revolution
Zhou En Lai: It's too early to tell.

3) Q: Sir, what do you think of Western Civilization?
Mahatma Gandhi: It would be nice.

[Save the Oocytes]

I have a bunch of quotes I like, but not all of them match the cleverness criterion you're going for. Oh well, here goes.

"Illusions aren't worthless; they're at the heart of most relationships."
—a blog commenter whose name I've forgotten

"Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their worst motives, will somehow produce the most good."
—Bill Blum

"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."
"You can't say that civilization don't advance; for in every war they kill you a new way."
"There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."
—Will Rogers

"If religion is the opiate of the masses, then the Democratic Party is the methadone of those who have learned to use a Web browser."
—Michael J. Smith at Stop Me Before I Vote Again

[Save the Oocytes]

GONE, ALL GONE

Do you still have the adorable crayon drawings you made in kindergarten? I don’t. Not a one. Which means that at one point, many years ago, the following thoughts must’ve gone through my mother’s mind: “Hmm, what’s this? Oh, I see. It’s that irreplaceable drawing by my firstborn son … the one he proudly brought home from school. I’ll just put this in the garbage.” Then, as time went by: “Oh, another one of my child’s drawings. What is it that I do with these again? Oh, yes — I throw them in the trash. That’s right.” Eventually, her brain probably got it down to “Art — Son — Trash.” And on the days when my mom was sick, and didn’t get around to throwing my artwork away, my dad would do it.

I’m not bitter. I know they had good reasons for discarding virtually everything I ever drew, wrote, collected or pasted together during my one and only childhood. I love my parents. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for them.

— George Meyer, in Army Man

"If Jesus had lived today, instead of having little crosses around our necks, we'd have little electric chairs around our necks."
—Dick Gregory

"Presented to Donatella Marazziti, Alessandra Rossi, and Giovanni B. Cassano of the University of Pisa, Italy, and Hagop S. Akiskal of the University of California, San Diego, for their discovery that, biochemically, romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder."
—citation for the 2008 Ig Nobel award in chemistry

[Save the Oocytes]

"It's called 'the American Dream' because you have to be asleep to believe it."
—George Carlin

"It is with much embarrassment that I have returned alive"
—Shoichi Yokoi

"They hate us because we kill them."
—Arthur Silber concisely answers that question Americans had after 9/11

"The trouble with growing older is that it gets progressively tougher to find a famous historical figure who didn't amount to much when he was your age"
—Bill Vaughan

"If there was no religion men with poor impulse control would have to invent it."
— —a Wikipedia user

"The Washington pundit corps resembles nothing so much as monkeys screaming over a handful of bananas while the zoo is burning down."
—DBK

"I mean, come on -- the GOP death machine could prop up the corpse of Augusto flicking Pinochet and get 35 percent."
—Bob Harris on Hillary Clinton

"How the World Works does its best to resist the urge to make fun of Wall Street Journal editorials. It's not that it's too easy. It's just unseemly, like taunting a patient suffering from Alzheimer's disease for his forgetfulness."
—Andrew Leonard

[Save the Oocytes]

Times are tough for rich people who aren't completely insane. They understand the insane rich are ascendant and well on their way to destroying everything. In fact, this is probably the longest-running debate in American history:

Insane Rich: Let's kill everyone and take their money!
Non-Insane Rich: I like the way you think. I really do. But if we keep them alive and working for us, we'll make even more money in the long run.
Insane Rich: You communist!

—Jonathan Schwarz

"They say with any addiction you have to hit bottom. Death may be taking it too far."
—Roger Ebert

"'The Devil's Widow' was a movie I wanted to see because I saw Roddy McDowall, the director, on a TV talk show about three years ago and he was talking about it. He said he made it because he wanted to make a tribute to Ava Gardner, and the movie was a gesture of love. I hope Ava Gardner appreciated it. The movie was finished two years ago but has only been released now because it took the brains in the promotion department all that time to figure out that the movie's original title, 'Tam Lin,' sounded like a Cantonese restaurant. 'The Devil's Widow,' I am sure you will agree, is a title with a lot more class, although I, for one, did not even know the Devil was dead. I guess he got lonely after God passed on."
—Ebert again

"That is all of the story you will hear from me, although to fan your interest, I will note that Gael Garcia Bernal, an actor who is turning out to be as versatile as Johnny Depp, portrays a drag queen in the movie, and does it so well that if he had played Hephaistion, Alexander would have stayed at home in Macedonia, and they could have opened an antique shop, antiquities being dirt cheap at the time."
—Ebert once more

[Save the Oocytes]

"what's that one disorder called when a person looks like a kid all their life"
"infant death"
—somewhere on IRC

"The only way a reporter should look at a politician is down."
—H. L. Mencken

"Do you feel you’ve learnt by your mistakes here?"
"I think I have, yes, and I think I can probably repeat them almost perfectly."
—Arthur Streeb-Greebling from Yes Minister

"It is the business of the Sorbonne to discuss, of the Pope to decide, and of a mathematician to go straight to heaven in a perpendicular line."
—Jacques Ozanam

"Oh, I love TV. I just wish it were better."
—William H. Macy

"What I do with my money is between me, God, and the IRS."
—Cadroople and Cadraple"

"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."
—Irina Dunn(?)

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."
—Samuel Clemens

"Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill."
—Calvin Ashmore

"Life is hard. After all, it kills you."
—Katharine Hepburn

Barbara Walters: "So, Kate, do you even own a skirt?"
Katharine Hepburn: "I own one, Barbara. I shall wear it to your funeral."

"Academic respectability is a form of second-handedness on a par with the type of respectability sought by the kid who steals a pair of Nikes to impress his friends."
—not sure where

[Save the Oocytes]

Sorry, that was excessive.

[John Caruso]

Rojo: Yeah, those are two of my favorites as well.

StO: A full dump of the quote file, excessive? Not at all! (Three Roger Ebert quotes is a much closer call, though.)

I'm still surprised nobody's mentioned the (alleged) Dorothy Parker quote I'm secretly holding back.

[Rosemary Molloy]

A good dog is a stuffed dog.
--Me

[John Caruso]

I'm afraid dogs are the unofficial mascot of this site, Rosemary, so I'm going to have to take another Groucho quote instead:

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

[Save the Oocytes]

That wasn't the whole quote file at all, unfortunately.

[Kevin Wohlmut]

Here's a bunch:

http://www.wohlmut.com/kevin/Quote/QuoteGen.htm .

[Kevin Wohlmut]

A few specific favorites from above:

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." --DOM HELDER CAMARA

"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost." --J.R.R. TOLKIEN

"One can always count on Americans to do the right thing ...after they've tried everything else." --attributed to WINSTON CHURCHILL

"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand.
It is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy." --WENDELL BERRY

[Save the Oocytes]

Speaking of Dorothy Parker, I heard that after one of her suicide attempts, one of her friends told her, "If you keep this up, you're going to hurt yourself."

[John Caruso]

Speaking of speaking of Dorothy Parker, here's what I've been holding out. Which, if it's accurate and especially if it's extemporaneous, is one of the pinnacles of human cleverness.

Thanks to everyone who's shared (so far...).

[Duncan]

I've always loved that one, John, and I've used it too. But I think my favorite Parker line may be what she wanted, according to Lillian Hellman, to be put on her tombstone:

If you can read this, you're too close.