Sean O'Grady quotes

“The uncomfortable truth is that we all enjoyed the party far too much to query where all the booze was coming from. Now we seem intent on lynching the barman for letting us get drunk and attacking the Government for letting us get a hangover.”
-- Sean O'Grady

#Party Quotes #Hangover Quotes #Government Quotes

“They are a special breed-like normal accountants, but without the soppy sentimentality. These are the oncologists of market capitalism.”
-- Sean O'Grady

#Business Quotes #Special Quotes #Oncologists Quotes

“Sometimes I pick up the phone, listen to cold caller alias name, repeat it several times in an incredulous tone and then - bam! - pretend to recognise them. I ask them if they remember the hell of a time we had at the 1985 summer camp when we set fire to the wooden shed, and I keep making things up and go on and on until they end up terminating the call.”
-- Sean O'Grady

#Summer Quotes #Names Quotes #Fire Quotes

“Try to sell cold callers something and be very insistent. Works well. Also good for door-to-door sales people, especially if they're wearing poor shoes.”
-- Sean O'Grady

#Doors Quotes #Shoes Quotes #People Quotes

“I tell cold callers I'm very interested but a bit deaf, my hearing aid is not working properly and can they speak up. The idea is to deliberately miss-hear what they say, ask them to repeat, only louder, and see how loud I can get them to shout. After a while I say "I'm not really deaf" and was just wasting their time, as they were doing with me.”
-- Sean O'Grady

#Ideas Quotes #Missing Quotes #Hearing Quotes

“Consumerism has become a new religion, complete with its high priests at Which? and its fatwas against anyone with the temerity to try to sell anything at more than cost price ... It is a depressingly medieval outlook on economic life.”
-- Sean O'Grady

#Trying Quotes #Cost Quotes #Medieval Quotes

“I don't want to analyze myself or anything, but I think, in fact I know this to be true, that I enter the world through what I write. I grew up believing, and continue to believe, that I am a screw-up, that growing up with my family and friends, I had nothing to offer in any conversation. But when I started writing, suddenly there was something that I brought to the party that was at a high-enough level.”

“There are as many attitudes to cooking as there are people cooking, of course, but I do think that cooking guys tend - I am a guilty party here - to take, or get, undue credit for domestic virtue, when in truth cooking is the most painless and, in its ways, ostentatious of the domestic chores.”

“The main difference between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution was that the former was mostly the work of Communist party members and others who wanted to bring about socialism with a human face.”

“Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution perhaps the first modern political institution.”

“Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and PMS come to stay with you.”

“In the end, no single group will mean defeat for the Democrat and victory for the Republican in 2016. But President Obama's troubling legacy - a weakened coalition and growing ranks of alienated white voters - could mean a serious post-presidential hangover for Democrats.”

“Dieting on New Year's Day isn't a good idea as you can't eat rationally but really need to be free to consume whatever is necessary, moment by moment, in order to ease your hangover. I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second.”

“It's embarrassing ... you try to overthrow the government and you wind up on the Best Seller's List.”

“If you have a government that is elected, they need to do the hard work - because if they don't, they won't be around the next time the ballot box is open.”

“Public opinion in this country is everything.”