Dave Barry Quotes

I care about our young people, and I wish them great success, because they are our Hope for the Future, and some day, when my generation retires, they will have to pay us trillions of dollars in social security

The Olympic movement simply cannot allow the Russians to become estranged, because Russia is a vital part of the world sports community, in the sense of having nuclear missiles.

I had arrived at the airport one hour early so that, in accordance with airline procedures, I could stand around.

The problem with winter sports is that - follow me closely here - they generally take place in winter.

At certain times each year, we journalists do almost nothing except apply for the Pulitzers and several dozen other major prizes. During these times you could walk right into most newsrooms and commit a multiple axe murder naked, and it wouldn't get reported in the paper because the reporters and editors would all be too busy filling out prize applications.

Aside from Velcro, time is the most mysterious substance in the universe.

Kids have *_____ never* taken guidance from their parents. If you could travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.

It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.

The simple truth is that balding African-American men look cool when they shave their heads, whereas balding white men look like giant thumbs.

Without computers, the government would be unable to function at the level of effectiveness and efficiency that we have come to expect. . . . Today's government uses computers which are capable of cranking out millions of documents per day without any regard whatsoever for their content, thereby freeing government employees for more important responsibilities, such as not answering their phones.

Reporters aren't stupid. We were standing around talking about which of the 900 health-care proposals that nobody's going to accept is that day's hot news. They know how silly that is. But that's what they do.

The old system of having a baby was much better than the new system, the old system being characterized by the fact that the man didn't have to watch.

Technology is constantly improving our lives. Look at the cellular telephone. Just ten years ago, virtually nobody was able to get into a car crash caused by trying to steer and dial at the same time; today, people do this all the time.

Your guess is as good as mine. Better probably, because you haven't had four beers.

That is the Wasp, yes. But it was captured by Black Stache, and he’s coming for this ship now.” “And how do you know that?” asked Slank. “Did a seagull tell you?” This brought chuckles from the crew. Something like that, thought Peter.

Motto of the U.S. airline industry - "We're Hoping to Have a Motto Announcement in About an Hour."

Headbangers' are people who like heavy-metal music, which is performed by skinny men with huge hair who stomp around the stage, striking their instruments and shrieking angrily, apparently because somebody has stolen all their shirts.

Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

One night in Tokyo we watched two Japanese businessmen saying good-night to each other after what had clearly been a long night of drinking, a major participant sport in Japan. These men were totally snockered, having reached the stage of inebriation wherein every air molecule that struck caused them to wobble slightly, but they still managed to behave more formally than Americans do at funerals.

Spain travel tip: If bathroom genders are indicated by flamingos, the boy flamingo is the one with a hat. I learned this the hard way.

I feel like I have more experience with publishing humor than pretty much any editor I'm going to be dealing with so sometimes I'll get a little bit nuts if I write something I know is good a certain way, and some editor because of some restriction he has and wants to change it that I know is going to make it less funny that'll piss me off and then I'm inclined to go, "Well, hey I've been doing this a long time, maybe you should..." That doesn't happen that often, but I'm more likely to say that now than I would have been a long time ago. Because dammit, I'm infallible!

Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.

The best way to understand this whole issue is to look at what the government does: it takes money from some people, keeps a bunch of it, and gives the rest to other people.

Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according to everybody is the 'most reliable Windows ever.' To me, this is like saying that asparagus is 'the most articulate vegetable ever.'

All of us are born with a set of instinctive fears - of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, of speaking before a Rotary Club, and of the words "Some Assembly Required".

I love the resource of the Internet. I use it all the time. Anything I'm writing - for example, if I'm writing a scene about Washington D.C. and I want to know where this monument is, I can find it right away, I can get a picture of the monument, it just makes your life so much easier, especially if you're writing fiction. You can check stuff so much quicker, and I think that's all great for writers.

I'm not the only taxpayer who has no idea what he's sending to the IRS. This year, only 28 percent of all Americans will prepare their own tax returns, according to a voice in my head that invents accurate-sounding statistics.

Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages

The Internet "browser"... is the piece of software that puts a message on your computer screen informing you that the Internet is currently busy and you should try again later.

Never trust anything you read in a travel article. Travel articles appear in publications that sell large, expensive advertisements to tourism-related industries, and these industries do not wish to see articles with headlines like: URUGUAY: DON'T BOTHER.

There are also a number of humans living up there (Canada), and in many ways they have a lifestyle quite similar to ours, including such traditional American activities as driving Japanese cars.

England is a very popular foreign country to visit because the people there speak some English.

If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would have made them cute and furry.

Generally the pythons are better than anything else at killing.

The Hawaiian Islands were discovered by hardy Polynesian sailors, who crossed thousands of miles of open ocean in primitive canoes, braving violent storm-tossed seas for months at a time. My family and I arrived by modern commercial aviation, which was infinitely worse.

In my experience, you run into trouble when you ask a group of beer-drinking men to perform any task more complex than remembering not to light the filter ends of cigarettes.

Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth.

The places where trails do not exist are not well marked.

The universe has fascinated mankind for many, many years, dating back to the very earliest episodes of Star Trek, when the brave crew of the Enterprise set out, wearing pajamas, to explore the boundless voids of space, which turned out to be as densely populated as Queens, New York. Virtually every planet they found was inhabited, usually by evil beings with cheap costumes and Russian accents, so finally the brave crew of the Enterprise returned to Earth to gain weight and make movies.

Your federal government needs your money so that it can perform vital services for you that you would not think up yourself in a million years.

I still think of myself as a newspaper guy and you live by deadlines in the newspaper world, so, they don't really give you any excuses. At the paper they never say, "Well, we just won't have Tuesday's paper come out, we'll just bring Tuesday's paper out on Wednesday, so go ahead, take all the time you need." They come out with that paper regardless.

You must prepare yourselves, young people, because Uncle Dave's generation is getting old. We are almost ready to go to the retirement home to spend the rest of our days tapping our bedpans rhythmically in time to "easy listening" rock 'n' roll. We must pass the torch on to you, and you must grasp it, ideally by the end that is not on fire.

Until I became a parent, I thought children just naturally knew how to catch a ball, that catching was an instinctive biological reflex that all children are born with, like knowing how to operate a remote control or getting high fevers in distant airports.

RAM: This gives guys a way of deciding whose computer has the biggest, studliest memory. That's important, because the more memory a computer has, the faster it can produce error messages.

A long memory is the most subversive idea in America. A tautology is a thing which is tautological. A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention. If your kids look like you, it's hereditory. If they look like the neighbor, it's the environment. Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

...and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a fact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and obtained offices with nice views,are constantly being shoved out the window head first, without so much as a pension plan,by younger hotshot cells moving up from below.

The trouble is, you cannot grow just one zucchini. Minutes after you plant a single seed, hundreds of zucchini will barge out of the ground and sprawl around the garden, menacing the other vegetables. At night, you will be able to hear the ground quake as more and more zucchinis erupt.