Nerja Today

Outbreaks of Foot in Mouth

We all say daft things from time to time, make statements of the bleedin' obvious or make predictions we later regret or which come back to haunt us. Others tend to make a habit of it!

The future will be better tomorrow.
Dan Quayle

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed.
The Duke of Edinburgh to British students in China during a 1986 state visit.

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.
Donald Rumsfeld - This comment before the war in Iraq won the US Secretary of Defence the 2003 Award for Gobbledygook from the Plain English Campaign.

For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it.
George W. Bush

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, October 16, 1929.

Whatever happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping.
Frank Knox, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, on December 4, 1941.

Airplanes are interesting toys, but they have no military value.
Marshal Ferdinand Foch in 1911.

I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.
Dan Quayle

Rural Americans are real Americans. There's no doubt about that. You can't always be sure with other Americans. Not all of them are real.
Dan Quayle

It doesn't matter what he does, he will never amount to anything.
Albert Einstein's teacher to his father, 1895.

We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
Western Union internal memo, 1876.

It will be years - not in my time - before a woman will become Prime Minister.
Margaret Thatcher, 1974.

Radio has no future.
Lord Kelvin, Victorian physicist and President of the Royal Society, c. 1897.

Theoretically, television may be feasible, but I consider it an impossibility--a development which we should waste little time dreaming about.
Lee de Forest, 1926, inventor of the cathode ray tube.

We have a saying in Iran: "The dogs bark but the caravan continues." People can bark and it will not bother us. Why should it.
The Shah of Iran, in 1979.

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Bill Gates, 1981.

My fellow Americans I'm pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.
Ronald Reagan, said by the US President during a microphone test in 1984.

I get to go to a lot of famous places, like Canada.
Britney Spears, on the good parts of being famous.

Do you have blacks, too?
George W. Bush, to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, November 2001

Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.
George W. Bush

Home is important. It's important to have a home.
George W. Bush

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them.
George W. Bush

I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
George W. Bush

I know how hard it is to put food on your family.
George W. Bush

I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right.
George W. Bush

I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here.
George W. Bush, speaking at President's Economic Forum, Waco, Texas, August 2002

I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating.
George W. Bush

I think war is a dangerous place.
George W. Bush

I understand small business growth. I was one.
George W. Bush

If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow.
George W. Bush

I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.
George W. Bush, aboard Air Force One, June 2003

I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being President.
George W. Bush, as quoted in Bob Woodward's Bush at War

I'm the master of low expectations.
George W. Bush, aboard Air Force One, June 2003

The Duke of Edinburgh gave another foot-in-mouth display when he asked a Tamil priest about any links to the militant fighters the Tamil Tigers, during a visit to a Hindu temple with the Queen on her Golden Jubilee tour.

British women can't cook.
The Duke of Edinburgh

 'How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?'.
The Duke of Edinburgh speaking to a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland,

'Still throwing spears?'
Duke of Edinburgh to an Australian Aborigine during a visit in March 2002)

'Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.'
Duke of Edinburgh during the 1981 recession

'If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?'
Duke of Edinburgh in 1996, amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting

'It looks as if it was put in by an Indian.'
Duke of Edinburgh in 1999, referring to an old-fashioned fuse box in a factory near Edinburgh

'Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf.'
Duke of Edinburgh in 1999, to young deaf people in Cardiff, referring to a school's steel band

'They must be out of their minds.'
Duke of Edinburgh in 1982, in the Solomon Islands, after being told that the annual population growth was only 5%

'You are a woman, aren't you?'
Duke of Edinburgh in 1984, in Kenya, to a native woman who had presented him with a small gift

If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it
Duke of Edinburgh at a 1986 World Wildlife Fund meeting

'Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world.'
Duke of Edinburgh in 1991, in Thailand, after accepting a conservation award

'Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease.'
Duke of Edinburgh in 1992 in Australia, when asked to stroke a Koala bear

'You can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly'
Duke of Edinburgh in 1993, to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary

'Aren't most of you descended from pirates?'
Duke of Edinburgh in 1994, to an islander in the Cayman Islands

'You managed not to get eaten, then?'
Duke of Edinburgh in 1998, to a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea