Top 62 Quotes & Sayings by Tom Noddy

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American entertainer Tom Noddy.

Last updated on November 21, 2024.

Tom Noddy is the stage name of Tom McAllister, an American entertainer whose television performances of "Bubble Magic" with soap bubbles in the early 1980s led to a book deal and "Bubble Festivals" at science centers across America. He is the originator of a large number of bubble magic tricks now performed by entertainers around the world.

American - Entertainer

Source: Wikipedia

Bubble cubes are central to what I do.

Tom Noddy

Bubbles are weird things. They're not fragile. They're infinitely flexible. They're not what we think they are.

Tom Noddy

Bubbles are incredibly basic. We think of them in that way just because they're a kid's toy. But I think it's more basic than childhood, something primal - the liquid, the flow, the shapes. We were liquid at one point in our development.

Tom Noddy

It's an electrical network, isn't it? It's molecules in space... and they're linked to each other electrically. Which is to say, one end of a soap molecule is attracted to a nearby water molecule electrically. The bubble is this network. The whole thing is inter-dependent.

Tom Noddy

I'm just a guy entertaining people and telling the truth and teaching them science.

Tom Noddy

I enjoy the beauty of the bubble, they're fluid and yet they have these geometric shapes so they do surprising things - two spheres become a single sphere - it's what bubbles do.

Tom Noddy

My initial attraction was just the beauty. The colors were so beautiful, the spheres were so nearly perfect.

Tom Noddy

If you look at the soap bubbles in the sink when you're doing dishes, you'll see the incredible diversity of shapes in there. There are cubes in there; there are decahedrons and tetrahedrons; there are odd, irregular shapes without names, you know.

Tom Noddy

It's hard to blow an ugly bubble.

Tom Noddy

There is a lot of science in bubbles. They are just like our weather system. The earth is, in effect, trapped inside a liquid sphere, the troposphere, where our weather forms. The bright colors on the outside of a bubble are just varying thicknesses of bubble, just like the varying thicknesses of clouds.

Tom Noddy

First I got a yo-yo. I got good and then I got bored. Next I got one of those wooden paddles with a rubber ball at the end of an elastic band. I got good and then I got bored. Then I tried bubbles. I got good but I never got bored.

Tom Noddy

I love to make a living from blowing bubbles.

Tom Noddy

Bubbles are round for the same reason that planets are spherical. The universe itself is like bubbles.

Tom Noddy

I've never been jailed for a crime of violence.

Tom Noddy

I was in my hippie stage. It was tough for my father. First it was the long hair, then the bubbles.

Tom Noddy

Bubbles are very simplified versions of some of the basic laws of the universe.

Tom Noddy

I think the best thing about a bubble is that it pops and is gone. That is what makes it so precious.

Tom Noddy

If you blow enough bubbles, after a while you sort of get into it.

Tom Noddy

I took a job at a factory in New Jersey to try to save money to go to Europe. When I took the job, I set a date for quitting. I was going to hitchhike around, be a hippie, see the world. I just wanted to be responsible long enough to get up the money to get there and trip around.

Tom Noddy

I didn't want to go out at night and spend my money in bars and stuff like that, so when I came home at night, I just wanted to entertain myself.

Tom Noddy

Bubbles are just a little liquid soap and a breath of air.

Tom Noddy

The only thing bubbles care about is wet and dry.

Tom Noddy

I've been called a career hippie. I like that, I like that a lot.

Tom Noddy

I've never blown an ugly bubble. Never. They're all beautiful. They're like jewels, transient jewels.

Tom Noddy

I was never very good at stopping crowds. I started blowing bubbles to attract people.

Tom Noddy

Bubbles are always new; you just can't find an old bubble.

Tom Noddy

I use ordinary soap bubbles, the dime-store stuff, two wands and a plastic straw.

Tom Noddy

Bubbles are one of the few things in life that we are allowed to break.

Tom Noddy

I have no time for a vacation.

Tom Noddy

I had to find a way to get off the streets because it was too windy. So I started organizing variety shows of street performers. I would rent a hall, cafe or bar so I could put on a show. I did that for years before the 'Tonight Show With Johnny Carson' heard about this odd thing I did with bubbles.

Tom Noddy

I was one of the poorest people in America.

Tom Noddy

When I blow the head off a glass of Guinness or eat a slice of white bread, there are so many bubbles!

Tom Noddy

I had dropped out of Memphis State University after two years because I felt the real world was too exciting.

Tom Noddy

There's never an ugly bubble.

Tom Noddy

We thought we completely understood bubbles when we were kids. But we didn't. Bubbles are these amazing things. It's just that people aren't paying enough attention.

Tom Noddy

I had no plans to become a responsible person.

Tom Noddy

I tried to do a puppet show on the streets, and I wasn't a very good street performer. But I found that I could stand in one place in Central Park and bounce a soap bubble on my arm, and I didn't have to gather a crowd for the puppet show. I had a crowd.

Tom Noddy

At 20 years old, I was better at playing with toys than I was as a kid.

Tom Noddy

When I do the dodecahedron with the science audiences, I'll point out that I can only do three of the five forms with bubbles, since bubbles only join at three-way corners. The two I can't do are the ones that represent water and air. That always gets a big laugh from the mathematicians. They see the irony in it.

Tom Noddy

The mid '70s was the golden age. A lot of things were being born on the street then, and there was a lot of experimentation.

Tom Noddy

I am not too interested in leaving the street people and joining the Establishment. I prefer street folks.

Tom Noddy

I love hands-on science and teaching the kids. I love to see kids experiment with things that they can make happen. Not just something you read the directions to and put it together that way. Things that can be constructed, something they can touch. What a great day when you can touch a child's mind with these ideas.

Tom Noddy

There is a dream on the street. I hear it constantly - finding a piece of land, raising food, building a house. I hear talk of hopelessness. The price of land, you know. Housing is impossible. They are trapped in a cycle. How can you ask for a job after you've been sleeping in the bushes all night?

Tom Noddy

If you stare at suds, you'll go crazy. But in soap suds, you'll find bubble cubes and many other forms. I just take those things, magnify them and sometimes blow smoke inside it so you can see it better.

Tom Noddy

I needed to entertain myself at home nights... I got a jar of bubbles.

Tom Noddy

The reason bubbles are spherical is that a sphere is the smallest, most economical form possible to contain a given volume.

Tom Noddy

When I went to college, I majored in anti-war demonstrations, you know? I mean, really!

Tom Noddy

I've never had much and I've never needed much. If I had only two bucks in my pocket, I knew I could spend it because I could always do another show of some kind, even on a sidewalk.

Tom Noddy

If you look at the Karamazov Brothers on TV, they're really small and the heart is taken out of their act. That's true for most variety acts. I'm an exception. When the camera comes in close and looks at those soap bubbles, you can really see what bubbles do.

Tom Noddy

The bubbles are thinner than wavelengths of light.

Tom Noddy

I'd do the Mount St. Helen's trick, where the smoke comes out of the top. I wouldn't even have to look at people. I'd hear that 'Ahhhh!'

Tom Noddy

I ended up living on Crete for eight months. I picked olives and did house painting and got broke.

Tom Noddy

I had this memory of being with my aunt, who I loved, you know, and watching her blow some bubbles in sunlight, and my heart fluttered when I watched her.

Tom Noddy

I walked the rainbow trail for a good number of years.

Tom Noddy

There's a brand, Mr. Bubble, that is sometimes called other things, like Mickey Mouse or other names. That's the stuff I use.

Tom Noddy

Bubbles have more colors than a rainbow.

Tom Noddy

Bubbles only break for a few different reasons, so if I can avoid those things, I can get a lot of things to happen.

Tom Noddy

I receive food stamps but I have never been on welfare.

Tom Noddy

I was really inspired by keeping alive these things of my childhood.

Tom Noddy

Mathematicians are stiff abstract guys. They'll tell you they don't need the physical world. But then when I show them my bubbles they're like little children.

Tom Noddy

Top 62 Quotes & Sayings by Tom Noddy

Related Authors