Line #165 Quotes/SturgeonsLaw


1	[[foldercontrol]]
2
3	[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
4	->''Now [[ShakespeareanActors you could study Shakespeare]] and be quite elite\
5	And you can charm the critics [[MagnumOpusDissonance and have nuthin' to eat]]\
6	Just [[{{Slapstick}} slip on a banana peel]], the world's at your feet''
7	-->-- "Make 'Em Laugh", ''Film/SinginInTheRain''
8	[[/folder]]
9
10	[[folder:Literature]]
11	->''How many [[{{Tragedy}} dramas]] have you in France, {{s\|trawCritic}}ir?" said [[ThePollyanna Candide]] to the [[GrumpyOldMan Abbé]].\
12	"Five or six thousand."\
13	"What a number!" said Candide. "How many good?"\
14	"15 or 16" replied the other [critic].\
15	"What a number!" said [[TheEeyore Martin]].''
16	-->-- '''[[Creator/FrancoisMarieArouet Voltaire]]''', ''Literature/{{Candide}}''
17
18	->''"This much is known: For every rational line or forthright statement there are leagues of senseless cacophony, verbal nonsense, and incoherency."''
19	-->-- ''Literature/TheLibraryOfBabel''
20
21	->''"Honestly? The average cop is pretty darn good. But average is average. You think about what average usually gets you, and then you figure that half the people out there are below that average. That’s anywhere. Even here. And you can be better than average, while still [[PoliceAreUseless having a trend that isn’t so good.]]"''
22	-->-- '''Behaim''', ''Literature/{{Pact}}''
23
24	->"It is almost impossible to mention books in bulk without grossly over-praising the great majority of them. Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are. In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be 'This book is worthless', while the truth about the reviewer’s own reaction would probably be 'This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to.'"
25	-->-- '''Creator/GeorgeOrwell''', "Confessions of a Book Reviewer"
26	[[/folder]]
27
28	[[folder:Live-action TV]]
29	->"I think it may be the best thing I've written in years. It could also be utter and complete shit. But when I can't tell the difference, that's a good sign."
30	-->-- '''Tom Yates''', ''Series/HouseOfCardsUS''
31	[[/folder]]
32
33	[[folder:Music]]
34	->''Well now home entertainment was my baby's wish\
35	So I hopped into town for a satellite dish\
36	I tied it to the top of my Japanese car\
37	I came home and I pointed it out into the stars\
38	A message came back from the great beyond:\
39	There's fifty-seven channels and nothin' on''
40	-->-- '''Music/BruceSpringsteen''', "57 Channels (And Nothin' On")
41
42	->''Welcome to the internet, have a look around\
43	Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found\
44	We've got mountains of content - some better, some worse\
45	If none of it's of interest to you, you'd be the first.''
46	-->-- '''Music/BoBurnham''', "Welcome to the Internet"
47	[[/folder]]
48
49	[[folder:Newspapers]]
50	->''Jesse James is played by Creator/ColinFarrell, who turned on instant star quality in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar picture ''Tigerland'' (2001) and [[MoneyDearBoy turns it off here]]. That this movie got a theatrical push and ''Tigerland'' didn't is proof that American distribution resembles a crapshoot.''
51	-->--'''Creator/RogerEbert''' on ''American Outlaws'' (2001)
52	[[/folder]]
53
54	[[folder:Podcasts]]
55	->'''Jay:''' So, not only did they ''not'' want to make a Creator/JamesCameron/Creator/RidleyScott/Creator/SigourneyWeaver ''{{Film/Alien}}'' movie, they wanted to make a PG-13 ''Alien Vs. Predator'' [[LighterAndSofter kiddie movie.]]\
56	'''Rich:''' That's so missing the point. At least as far as the ''Predator'' movie goes.\
57	'''Jay:''' You know what? Whichever movie executive made that decision? From a financial point, it worked out, 'cause this was the most financially-successful movie in the series of movies.\
58	'''Rich:''' Are you kidding?\
59	'''Jay:''' I'm not kidding.\
60	'''Rich:''' Oh, now I'm sad. Everything about this movie is depressing.
61	-->-- ''WebVideo/HalfInTheBag'', ''Film/AVPAlienVsPredator'' rifftrack
62	[[/folder]]
63
64	[[folder:Stand-Up Comedy]]
65	->"[[Music/TheNotoriousBIG Biggie]], dead. [[Music/TupacShakur Tupac]], dead. Music/VanillaIce, ''still alive!''"
66	-->-- '''Creator/ChrisRock'''
67
68	->"We live in a world where Music/JohnLennon was murdered, yet Music/BarryManilow continues to put out fucking albums. God''dammit!'' If you're gonna kill somebody, have some fucking taste. I'll drive you to Music/KennyRogers' house."
69	-->-- '''Creator/BillHicks''', ''Dangerous''
70
71	->"[='=]''You ever go into the bathroom and everything is WET? The floor is wet! The counters are wet! Everything's wet!''[='=] Uh... could it be because people piss on the floor and wash their hands aggressively?"
72	-->-- '''Andy Kindler''' on Creator/DaneCook
73	[[/folder]]
74
75	[[folder:Video Games]]
76	->"sigh Novels nowadays are all basically copies of each other. Don't modern authors have any pride? Or are they naught but soulless mercenary hacks?"
77	-->-- NPC '''Satomi''', ''VideoGame/TokyoXanadu''
78	[[/folder]]
79
80	[[folder:Web Animation]]
81	->"Since the Internet is almost diametrically opposed to the notion of quality control, in recent years it's been a lot easier to just assume everything's shit until it can prove itself otherwise. I like to call it the [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush "Guantanamo Bay"]] approach to reviewing."
82	-->-- '''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation''', ''Mailbag Showdown''
83	[[/folder]]
84
85	[[folder:Web Original]]
86	->''After all, this is a business and you have to sell, sell, sell. And it most certainly worked. ''Rise of Arsenal'' outsold quality books like ''ComicBook/SecretSix'', ''ComicBook/TheUnwritten'', ''ComicBook/{{Daytripper}}'', ''ComicBook/SweetTooth'', and ''ComicBook/PowerGirl''. It proves that we haven’t set the bar terribly high for ourselves as fans, and we probably won’t be collectively challenging the industry to make our books any better, either.''
87	-->-- '''David Wolkin''' on ''[[ComicBook/GreenArrow The Rise of Arsenal]]'', [[http://comicsalliance.com/worst-comic-books-2010/ "The 5 Worst Comics of 2010"]]
88
89	->''{{Series/Coach}}'' was on for NINE SEASONS. NINE. Really? I think I saw it once and was like, oh, the theme is guys are funny cuz' they're stupid eye-roll and wow, Shelly Fabrares has some big, red hair. She was like the proto-[[{{WesternAnimation/Brave}} Merida]].''
90	-->-- '''[[http://dlisted.com/2015/03/27/are-there-that-many-coach-fans-out-there-who-needed-a-sequel/ J. Harvey]]''', "Are There That Many ''Coach'' Fans Out There Who Needed A Sequel?"
91
92	->''The Creator/{{Gallagher}} of our generation. Creator/DaneCook is a "comedian" that everyone seems to love despite his extreme mediocrity. His amazing lack of jokes combined with his ability to run around the stage like a five-year-old without his meds appeals to anyone without a soul or any knowledge of comedy. His trite and obvious observations contain no punchlines and often appeal to people with short attention spans.''
93	-->-- ''Website/UrbanDictionary''
94
95	->''"All those hours I could have been relaxing, or reading all these great books, or getting into shape, or working on side projects that I'm really excited about,"'' Richman said. ''"But instead I've been listening to overrated albums recommended to me by my asshole friends."''
96	-->-- ''Website/TheOnion'', [[http://www.theonion.com/articles/openminded-man-grimly-realizes-how-much-life-hes-w,19273/ "Open-Minded Man Grimly Realizes How Much Life He's Wasted Listening To Bullshit"]]
97
98	->''Many words have been spilled to attempt to explain what the hell happened. And it's genuinely difficult to explain...But setting aside the 'why' -- a topic that there's never going to be a clear cut answer for anyway -- the fact remains that in 1980, ''Series/BuckRogersInTheTwentyFifthCentury'' was immediately and directly more popular than ''Series/DoctorWho''. This fact, it must be noted, is downright depressing. Because ''Buck Rogers in the 25th Century'' is not even remotely a good show.''
99	-->-- '''[[http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/pop-between-realities-home-in-time-for-tea-24-quatermass-day-of-the-triffids-blakes-7-buck-rogers-in-the-25th-century-alien-sapphire-and-steel/ El Sandifer]]'''
100
101	->''Numerous cruises get canceled each year because there's not enough interest, including a horror cruise that would have included Music/AliceCooper, [[Creator/TonyTodd Candyman]], [[Creator/KaneHodder Kane "Jason" Hodder]], and director of ''Film/JohnDiesAtTheEnd'' Don Coscarelli. That cruise didn't sell enough tickets, but Paula Deen is booked through 2014. What a sick world we live in.''
102	-->-- ''{{Website/Cracked}}'', "[[http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-most-profoundly-depressing-celebrity-cruises/ The 7 Most Profoundly Depressing Celebrity Cruises]]"
103
104	->''Bad books become bestsellers all the time. And even more great books sell four copies and die a quick death. No one knows why...Anyone trying to figure out why is just a media fartsniffer trying to sell you on their supposedly brilliant ability to psychoanalyze 350 million Americans en masse.''
105	-->-- '''[[http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-feed/2015/02/50-shades-of-grey-drew-magar.html Drew Magary]]''', "Why You'll Probably Never Write Anything as Successful as ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey''"
106
107	->''"It's a bitter pill for some to swallow, but there really is a whole other America out there that they know nothing about, made up of people who watch ''Series/DuckDynasty'' and ''Series/HereComesHoneyBooBoo'' and ''Series/TeenMom'', who think of Fox News as a legitimate source of news, and who love Creator/JayLeno."''
108	-->-- ''Website/TheAgonyBooth'' [[http://www.agonybooth.com/tv/Tonight_Show_Will_Fallon_Outlast_Conan.aspx on]] ''Series/TheTonightShow''
109
110	->''The symbolism hurt just as bad as the financial loss: Not only did the bold, risky project get crushed at the American box office, it got crushed by ''Film/TheExpendables'', a cynical, pandering cash-grab that couldn't be a more generic-safe-bet-cookie-cutter-assembly-line blockbuster. After an experience like that, is it any wonder that ''any'' studio would suddenly reconsider betting on risky, "big idea" projects?"''''
111	-->-- '''Creator/BobChipman''' on ''Film/ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld'', [[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/3281-The-Numbers "The Numbers"]]
112
113	->''There's a good reason history has forgotten so many of these songs: ''NOW'' is a Whitman's Sampler of crap.''
114	-->-- '''Creator/NathanRabin''', [[http://www.avclub.com/articles/introduction,38249/ THEN That's What They Called Music]]
115
116	->''Go to Lionhead's ''Videogame/TheMovies'' site and blow a heart-sinking half-hour browsing some of its thousands of two-minute mediocrities. You'll confront the perennial problem with user-generated content: Most creators stink.''
117	-->-- '''[[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/issues/issue_68/396-Red-vs-Blue-Makes-Green.3 The Escapist]]'''
118
119	->''Art is speech, and democratic society has long understood that respecting freedom of speech exposes us to reams of stupid speech. That is a very small price to pay for the freedom to share thought and learn and grow as individuals and cultures.''
120	-->-- This [[http://fanhackers.transformativeworks.org/2013/12/meta-artistic-freedom-or-this-is-not-a-review-of-the-hobbit/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=meta-artistic-freedom-or-this-is-not-a-review-of-the-hobbit essay]] on artistic freedom
121
122	->''For most people, the big event of 1967 wasn't the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, with its Music/PinkFloyd performance and Creator/YokoOno art happening, but Steve and Elsie Tanner marrying in ''Series/CoronationStreet''. The big hit singles of 1967 weren’t psychedelic freak-outs but Music/PetulaClark and Music/EnglebertHumperdinck.''
123	-->-- '''Andrew''' of "[[http://mindlessones.com/ The Mindless Ones]]", reviewing ''Comicbook/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen: [[http://mindlessones.com/2011/08/07/the-league-of-extraordinary-gentlemen-century-1969-the-annocommentations-part-iii/ Century 1969]]''
124
125	->''Why do I read fan fiction?'' The basic reason is exactly the same reason I read anything—some of it is of astounding quality. I think fan fiction is often saddled with the image of being written solely by beginners and being uniformly terrible. But it’s like any other kind of fiction. You have beginners, you have the competent, you have the talented and experienced.
126	-->-- ''"[[http://scfrankles.deviantart.com/art/Fan-Fiction-for-the-Unconvinced-446162333 Fanfiction for the Unconvinced]]"'' by '''SCFrankles'''
127
128	->''"The true miracle of this movie is how accessible it is to people of all faiths. I've seen so many people say that they adore this movie, despite being atheist. And as a Christian who thinks 90% of Christian media is garbage, it's absolutely ''wonderful'' to see a movie tell a Biblical story with such respect, finesse, and faithfulness to the core of what made the original story ''so'' impactful."''
129	-->-- '''WebVideo/SchaffrillasProductions''' on ''WesternAnimation/ThePrinceOfEgypt'', "[[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BDJjfcRxfZI&pp=ygUjc2NoYWZmcmlsbGFzIHByb2R1Y3Rpb25zIGRyZWFtd29ya3M%3D Every DreamWorks Movie Ranked]]"
130	[[/folder]]
131
132	[[folder:Western Animation]]
133	->"79 episodes, about 30 good ones."
134	-->-- '''Fry''' on ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', "[[Recap/FuturamaS4E11WhereNoFanHasGoneBefore Where No Fan Has Gone Before]]"
135
136	->"Don't feel bad, Homer. Nine out of ten religions fail in their first year."
137	-->-- '''{{God}}''', ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E3HomerTheHeretic Homer the Heretic]]"
138	[[/folder]]
139
140	[[folder:Real Life]]
141	->''"Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense."''
142	-->-- '''UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli'''
143
144	->''"Everyone has a book inside them and, in most cases, that's exactly where it should remain."''
145	-->-- '''Creator/ChristopherHitchens'''
146
147	->''"The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn't get published. The average -- or only slightly above average -- detective story does."''
148	-->-- '''Creator/RaymondChandler''', ''The Simple Art of Murder''
149
150	->''"They say that 90% of TV is junk. But 90% of everything is junk."''
151	-->-- '''Creator/GeneRoddenberry'''
152
153	->"Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar... If the public likes you, you're good."
154	-->-- '''Creator/MickeySpillane'''
155
156	->''Unlike most writers, my competitive instinct -- though highly developed -- was never personal. That is to say, I have never begrudged another writer his success, but I have sometimes deplored the taste of the moment that has made what I thought bad work successful. Happily, since injustice is the rule, one is quite as apt to be its beneficiary as its victim.''
157	-->-- '''Creator/GoreVidal'''
158
159	->"At one stage I did set fire to a whole pile of disco records and declare that disco was dead. I think within a month there were three disco tracks in the top ten, so it wasn't a great gesture."
160	-->-- '''Peter Garrett''' of Music/MidnightOil, ''Long Way to the Top: Stories of Australian Rock & Roll''[[note]]Later on, he admits "I kind of like disco now".[[/note]]
161
162	->''The animes represent a wide body of entertainment which includes some good stuff, as well as an absolutely incomprehensible amount of shit. Like anything.''
163	-->-- '''Creator/AndrewHussie'''[[http://hussieformspring.tumblr.com/post/11910263285]]
164
165	->"Sometimes that Rhodes Scholarship is more of a weapon than an asset. I think he was just a little freaked out because ''Film/DumbAndDumber'' came out on the same weekend as ''Cobb'', and ''Cobb'' was his big swing for the fences and [[MagnumOpusDissonance that didn’t work out]], and that freaked him out a bit."
166	-->-- '''Creator/JimCarrey''' on difficulties working with Creator/TommyLeeJones
167
168	->"You can be less than mediocre and be a fucking movie star. I have respect for very few actors and actresses. Some of them get a lot of acclaim but just because their movie made $200 million at the box office; they still suck. I got no respect for them and I used to let them know it."
169	-->-- '''Creator/MickeyRourke'''
170
171	->"I've made 30-plus films over 20 years. And in my opinion, five of them are good."
172	-->-- '''Creator/RyanPhillippe'''
173
174	->''Ryan never mentions what his 5 'good' films are, but let's hop over to his Website/IMDb page and see if we can't figure out what 5 movies he's talking about. Clearly ''Film/MacGruber'' is #1.''
175	-->-- '''[[http://dlisted.com/2014/10/21/ryan-phillippe-has-only-made-5-good-movies-says-ryan-phillippe/ Michael K.]]''', in response to the above quote
176
177	->Series/{{ALF}}'', with its sassy alien puppet that ate cats and cracked wise, for a time, was one of the biggest shows in the world, but you'll never find anyone who can quote a single line or recall a memorable scene. Among the series that did survive as much-loved squares of the nostalgia quilt that we snuggle beneath, is a seeming aberration that could well have been consigned to the same dumpster containing the rotting, [[UncleTomfoolery racist]] corpse of [[Series/PerfectStrangers Balki Bartokomous.]]''
178	-->-- '''Stuart Millard''', ''So Excited, So Scared''
179
180	->''The internet does, as you say, provide opportunities to obtain information and an extremely wide variety of viewpoints. That's a good in itself. But there is a downside. The downside is that you are so flooded with material that unless you have an understanding of the world that is sufficient to allow you to be selective, you can be drawn into completely crazed cocoons of wild interpretation.''
181	-->-- '''Noam Chomsky''', 2007
182
183	->''When you see that many films, you realize that the odds are it doesn't favor with the Usefulnotes/{{Academy\|Award}}’s thoughts, it favors with the [[Usefulnotes/GoldenRaspberryAward Razzies]]' thoughts. A lot more crud gets out there than quality work.''
184	-->-- '''John Wilson''', [[http://awardswatch.com/news/interview-razzies-founder-john-wilson/ giving one reason why he created the]] Usefulnotes/GoldenRaspberryAward.
185	[[/folder]]

Context Quotes / SturgeonsLaw