Paul Goodman Quotes (24 Quotes)

Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface.

In America you can say anything you want - as long as it doesn't have any effect.

This is one of the most difficult retail businesses to be successful at because with most businesses, you buy finished goods, put them on the shelf and sell them, ... But in the flower business you are buying raw product, manufacturing the goods and then selling them, That's where you lose your shirt is the manufacturing, or assembling of arrangements.

Travel in foreign lands breaks speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and landscapes. It's less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own...

Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity.

It is said that if the owners of retail flower shops had to depend upon the shops to support their family financially, then half of them would close, ... It tends to be a second income source for people. It's pretty hard to make money at that small a volu

The organization of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by a mass media notoriously phony

All men are creative but few are artists.

What we're saying to people is 'Look, we'll wipe that (Internet access) cost out for you, but make your other calls through our service and we'll give you discounts (of 30 percent compared with standard British Telecom rates),

We're talking about one extra carnation, which is one of the cheapest flowers, and nobody ever puts in just one extra flower ... That's why it's so tough. Every arrangement has to be controlled for product going into it and the people who come into this business are not numbers people. They are creative so they've got an automatic resistance to doing what they need to do to make it profitable.

The way most people get into this business is they work for a flower shop, ... They learn the business by working for someone else. That's the American way.

The important thing about travel in foreign lands is that it breaks the speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and different landscapes. It is less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own reaction-formations.

Patience is drawing on underlying forces, it is powerfully positive, though to a natural view it looks like just sitting it out. How would I persist against positive eroding forces if I were not drawing on invisible forces And patience has a positive tonic effect on others because of the presence of the patient person, they revive and go on, as if he were the gyroscope of the ship providing a stable ground. But the patient person himself does not enjoy it.

Few great men could pass personal.

It rarely adds anything to say, "In my opinion" - not even modesty. Naturally a sentence is only your opinion; and you are not the Pope.

It's time for clarity - not more spin from Mr Blair.

When a village ceases to be a community, it becomes oppressive in its narrow conformity. So one becomes an individual and migrates to the city. There, finding others like-minded, one re-establishes a village community. Nowadays only New Yorkers are yokels.

For mankind, speech with a capital S is especially meaningful and committing, more than the content communicated. The outcry of the newborn and the sound of the bells are fraught with mystery more than the baby's woeful face or the venerable tower.

There is such a thing as food and such a thing as poison. But the damage done by those who pass off poison as food is far less than that done by those who generation after generation convince people that food is poison.

Desperate families have been waiting for government action on the CSA since its last chief executive was forced to resign.

It takes application, a fine sense of value, and a powerful community-spirit for a people to have serious leisure, and this has not been the genius of the Americans.

To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences . . .

Few great men would have got past personnel.

When the Devil quotes Scriptures, it's not, really, to deceive, but simply that the masses are so ignorant of theology that somebody has to teach them the elementary texts before he can seduce them