Garrison Quotes

#1. Scripture doesn't promise that God will remove temptation, only that you'll be given strength to withstand it.

Garrison Keillor

#2. One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life. People who don't read are trapped in a mine shaft, even if they think the sun is shining.

Garrison Keillor

#3. The minimalist path is not about getting rid of everything and owning nothing, it is about living an integrated life in which everything has meaning and value because it is about your way of being.

Ela Garrison

#4. Too many of my fellow Christians voted for selfishness and for degradation of the beautiful world God created. I guess they figured that by the time the planet was a smoky wasteland, they'd be nice and comfy in heaven, so wotthehell.

Garrison Keillor

#5. We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.

Garrison Keillor

#6. Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze.

Garrison Keillor

#7. A good friend is a person who thinks you're one of the good eggs, even if he knows you're a little cracked.

Garrison Keillor

#8. With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.

William Lloyd Garrison

#9. Hospitality is the act of making people feel at home - when you wish they were.

Renee Garrison

#10. If you can't trust your can open, then what?

Garrison Keillor

#11. Eople (in Minnesota) avoid stupidity when possible, not wanting to be a $10 haircut on a 50 cent head.

Garrison Keillor

#12. Most men are prisoners at best, Who some strong habit every drag about Like chain and ball.

Garrison Keillor

#13. Bonnie and Clyde were almost like a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing 'the government's money.' I think that's a bit of why they were glorified.

Lane Garrison

#14. Wal-Mart is going in and slaughtering [small towns] just as we once killed the buffalo.

Garrison Keillor

#15. There is almost no marital problem that can't be helped enormously by taking off your clothes.

Garrison Keillor

#16. When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.

Garrison Keillor

#17. I feel it's so hard for young actors; It's a different world that they're coming up in; there's so much money to be made off of their personal lives, and people are bound and determined to make that money.

Garrison Keillor

#18. In proportion as we perceive and embrace the truth do we become just, heroic, magnanimous, divine.

William Lloyd Garrison

#19. Bravery and adventure! That's the ticket! Don't sit and gather moss. Get up, get out, do what you dream of doing, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, and you don't need to made that particular mistake again, but at least you won't get old wondering what if you had.

Garrison Keillor

#20. Satisfaction may be the goal of the common man; but it is the enemy of greatness

Garrison Wynn

#21. All the charges you enumerate have been made with one purpose in mind-to place our office on the defensive and make us waste valuable time answering allegations that have no basis in fact.

Jim Garrison

#22. To those who don't want the truth about Kennedy's assassination to become known, the very repetition of a charge lends it a certain credibility, since people have a tendency to believe that where there's smoke, there's fire.

Jim Garrison

#23. I love rhymes; I love to write a poem about New York and rhyme 'oysters' with 'The Cloisters.' And 'The lady from Knoxville who bought her brassieres by the boxful.' I just feel a sort of small triumph.

Garrison Keillor

#24. Action and adaptability create opportunity.

Garrison Wynn

#25. We thank you [the soldiers recently returned from the middle east] for your service.

Garrison Keillor

#26. I hear a little firecracker go off when you come up with a good rhyme.

Garrison Keillor

#27. It's not how you to come to Christ but how close you walk with him thereafter that is paramount.

Lakya M Garrison

#28. Second violins can play a concerto perfectly if they're in their own home and nobody's there.

Garrison Keillor

#29. You don't have to justify a beautiful stroke of good luck. Accept it. Smile and say thank you.

Garrison Keillor

#30. That's the news from Lake Woebegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

Garrison Keillor

#31. Thy key to being able to communicate and benefit from each other is to truly see you own value. That will allow you to see it more clearly in others.

Garrison Wynn

#32. Republicans are all about Old Glory and school prayer and the sanctity of marriage and the Fatherhood of God but when it comes to actually needing help from them, you shouldn't get your hopes up. They might send an ambulance or they might just send a Get Well card.

Garrison Keillor

#33. I've wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers' work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver.

Garrison Keillor

#34. It [slavery] has exercised absolute mastery over the American Church ... With the Bible in their hands, her priesthood have attempted to prove that slavery came down from God out of heaven. They have become slaveholders and dealers in human flesh.

William Lloyd Garrison

#35. What would people think?'
Jesus said that people think all sorts of things. The human mind is like a cloud of gnats. Constant motion. That's why you have to look at the heart.
'Oh,' said Grandpa.

Garrison Keillor

#36. The rich can afford to be progressive. Poor people have reason to be afraid of the future.

Garrison Keillor

#37. The ongoing changes in the distribution of global power and mounting global strife make it all the more imperative that America not retreat into an ignorant garrison-state mentality or wallow in self-righteous cultural hedonism

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#38. God is a great humorist. He just has a slow audience to work with.

Garrison Keillor

#39. When NASA started sending up astronauts, they discovered that ballpoint pens don't work in zero gravity. So they spent twelve million dollars and more than a decade developing a pen that writes under any condition, on almost every surface. The Russians used a pencil.

Garrison Keillor

#40. Some of us have a relentless urge to attempt what we can never be good at and neglect our true calling.

Garrison Keillor

#41. I think that you are only obliged to be a humorist from the age of 18 until you turn 30. Past the age of 30 I don't think there is any obligation to be clever at all.

Garrison Keillor

#42. There was no way to lock down, or tighten up, or Fail-Safe into Security Theater a race that covers 26.2 miles, a race that travels from town to town, a race that travels past people's houses. There was no way to garrison the Boston Marathon. Now there will be.

Charlie Pierce

#43. You learn this great lesson of life: it's not about me. It's just not. The matter of talent-which seemed so important to you when you were young-is not of great importance. We're simply a conduit. We take things out of the air into us and put them in the form of stories. That's pretty much it.

Garrison Keillor

#44. If you criticize others' ideas, they will almost never use yours no matter how good they are.

Garrison Wynn

#45. We are what we repeatedly do but we can be perceived by what we repeatedly say.

Garrison Wynn

#46. Humor needs to come in under cover of darkness, in disguise, and surprise people.

Garrison Keillor

#47. I loved feeling special. I hated feeling special.

Garrison Keillor

#48. Nothing that readers say or do strikes me as a nuisance. Anyone who cracks open a book of mine is, to me, a gem.

Garrison Keillor

#49. The truth will set you free: believability will give you credibility.

Garrison Wynn

#50. Until as recently as November of 1966, I had complete faith in the Warren Report. Of course, my faith in the Report was grounded in ignorance, since I had never read it.

Jim Garrison

#51. You don't want to get that sort of sound in your writing that boing that gives you away.

Garrison Keillor

#52. Ralph Stanley is like an uncle to us and now that all my uncles are gone, Ralph's singing is even more precious. This album of classic folk songs is one of his best.

Garrison Keillor

#53. Sing your song; don't let the bastards get you down.

Garrison Keillor

#54. The living wander away, we don't hear from them for months, years - but the dead move in with us to stay.

Garrison Keillor

#55. In the end, crime doesn't pay.

Lane Garrison

#56. We'd all be alot happier if we'd stop assuming we're supposed to be happy.

Garrison Keillor

#57. Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.

William Lloyd Garrison

#58. I asked Darrell Royal, the coach of the Texas Longhorns, why he didn't recruit me and he said: 'Well, Walt, we took a look at you and you weren't any good.'

Walt Garrison

#59. Sir!" Alban came to rigid attention as his feet smacked the floor and saluted. "Centurion Alban reporting to the garrison commander, sir!" "I

Janette Oke

#60. I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.

William Lloyd Garrison

#61. Let Southern oppressors tremble-let their secret abettors tremble-let their Northern apologists tremble-let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.

William Lloyd Garrison

#62. Sex is good, but not as good as fresh sweet corn.

Garrison Keillor

#63. You young people learned spelling by the 'Close Enough' method.

Garrison Keillor

#64. Take care of your friends. Because there will come a time when you'll be no good to anyone, and the only reason for people to talk to you will be sheer habit.

Garrison Keillor

#65. One day Donald Trump will discover that he is owned by Lutheran Brotherhood and must re negotiate his debt load with a committee of silent Norwegians who dont understand why anyone would pay more than $120.00 for a suit.

Garrison Keillor

#66. God writes a lot of comedy ... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.

Garrison Keillor

#67. Never insult a writer. You may find yourself immortalized in ways you may not appreciate.

Garrison Keillor

#68. Writing is the main gig and teaching and performing are sidelines, an excuse for not writing more. Working on a novel and on an opera make me seriously want to retire and find a volunteer job as a docent at the zoo explaining to schoolchildren where frogs go in the winter.

Garrison Keillor

#69. All fiction comes from a little bit of reality, otherwise it would have no relevance. The fun is in innovation, take something real like this fair, and make it something larger than life.

Garrison Keillor

#70. If Germany won it would change the course of our civilization and make the United States a military nation [and] it would check his policy for a better international ethical code

Woodrow Wilson

#71. Humor has to surprise us; otherwise, it isn't funny. It's a death knell for a writer to be labeled a humorist because then it's not a surprise anymore.

Garrison Keillor

#72. Beauty isn't worth thinking about. What's important is your mind. You don't want a fifty-dollar haircut on a fifty-cent head. - Garrison Keillor, American humorist

Habib Sadeghi

#73. If the marriage needs help, the answer almost always is have more fun. Drop your list of grievances and go ride a roller coaster.

Garrison Keillor

#74. You've got work to do. Don't put this off. And don't take the long view, here. You know? Life is today and tomorrow and- and if you're lucky, next week.

Garrison Keillor

#75. Give guilt - the gift that lasts forever.

Garrison Keillor

#76. America of the future will be all malls connected by interstates. All because your parents no longer can their own tomatoes.

Garrison Keillor

#77. It's rather naive, apart from being ethically objectionable, to assume that our investigators travel around the country with bags of money trying to bribe witnesses to lie on the witness stand. We just don't operate that way.

Jim Garrison

#78. Those people on daytime TV talking about how their parents never gave them the positive feedback they needed and that's why they shot them- those are not Minnesotans.

Garrison Keillor

#79. The CIA could not face up to the American people and admit that its former employees had conspired to assassinate the President; so from the moment Kennedy's heart stopped beating, the Agency attempted to sweep the whole conspiracy under the rug.

Jim Garrison

#80. I longed for the pitter-patter of little feet, so I got a dog. It's cheaper, and you get more feet.

Garrison Keillor

#81. The compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.

William Lloyd Garrison

#82. We are the friends of reform; but that is not reform, which, in curing one evil, threatens to inflict a thousand others.

William Lloyd Garrison

#83. Sex is not a mechanical act that fails for lack of technique, and it is not a performance by the male for the audience of the female; it is a continuum of attraction that extends from the simplest conversation and the most innocent touching through the act of coitus.

Garrison Keillor

#84. Garrison had spent decades defending the agitation of public opinion both as a necessary, permanent feature of democracy and as an effective way to change politics in a democracy from the outside.

W. Caleb McDaniel

#85. Life itself is brief, and that is what charges the day with such ridiculous beauty.

Garrison Keillor

#86. Before you can have great employees you have to put them in a position to create their own future.

Garrison Wynn

#87. How many pessimists does it take to change a lightbulb? Never mind. Nobody would get the joke anyway.

Garrison Keillor

#88. A man can't eat anger for breakfast and sleep with it at night and not suffer damage to his soul.

Garrison Keillor

#89. Humor is not a trick, not jokes. Humor is a presence in the world - like grace - and shines on everybody.

Garrison Keillor

#90. The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose.

Garrison Keillor

#91. I have much to say about the pain I've felt and seen inside of prison. It has been an eye-opening and harrowing experience.

Lane Garrison

#92. It's confidence; it has to be something good about getting old. One of the things is that you just don't stress about some stuff that made you so worried.

Garrison Keillor

#93. Lake Wobegon, the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve.

Garrison Keillor

#94. As for family values, they are whatever they are - some families are tight, others are blown away like dandelion puffs. A main value in Minnesota is still: don't waste my time, don't B.S. me, I wasn't born yesterday.

Garrison Keillor

#95. The keys of a fortress are always well worth the retirement of the garrison when it is resolved to yield only on those conditions. On this principle it is always wiser to grant an honorable capitulation to a garrison which has made a vigorous resistance than to risk an assault.

Napoleon Bonaparte

#96. Goals are like the gas in your car, you may go in many different directions after you fill up, but with out the gas you are not going anywhere

Garrison Wynn

#97. Knowledge is not power; Implementation is power

Garrison Wynn

#98. People always are encouraging about a terrible loss, so that sometimes the loser would like to strangle them.

Garrison Keillor

#99. I cannot tolerate my bad behavior in another person for 10 seconds

Garrison Wynn

#100. Spending time in a church does not make you religious, any more than spending time in a garage makes you a car.

Garrison Keillor