DON’T ASK

You Asked For It (according to my previous post) — but this post is a different story, so….

 

By a weird coincidence, ASK ME NO QUESTIONS AND I’LL TELL YOU NO LIES (a quote attributed to 18th century Irish novelist, playwright and poet Oliver Goldsmith) is my springboard for this post of “Don’t Ask” quotes — thus sparing you the fate of my last post, which subjected you to some questionable poems.

Let’s plunge right in with perhaps the most famous DON’T ASK quote (at least in America):

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” –John F. Kennedy

Here’s another famous one (in jazz circles), leveled at squares:

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.” –Louis Armstrong

If you have a humorous bone in your body, the next three should bring a smile to your face:

“Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask, Why me? Then a voice answers, Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up.” –Charles M. Schulz

“Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people see things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.” –George Carlin

“When your mother asks, “Do you want a piece of advice?’, it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.” –Erma Bombeck

Now for some serious stuff:

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.” –Saint Augustine

“If you ask me whether the election of Barack Obama is the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream, I say, ‘No, it’s just a down payment.” –John Lewis

To close, here’s a quote I like which is a stretch to fit the category, but since it’s the birthday of the author, don’t ask me to re-think its inclusion here:

“Thinkers think and doers do. But until the thinkers do and the doers think, progress will be just another word in the already overburdened vocabulary.” –Francois de La Rochefoucauld (9/15/1613–3/17/1680)

I think that does it for now. How’s that for progress?