Top 1200 National Lampoon Quotes & Sayings

These transnationalists have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite's global operations

The White House released documents it claims validates the president's (National Guard) service ... When deciphered the documents showed that in a one-year period, 1972 and 1973, Bush received credit for nine days of active National Guard service. The traditional term of service then and now for the National Guard is one weekend a month and two full weeks a year, meaning that Bush's nine-day stint qualifies him only for the National Guard's National Guard. That's the National Guard's National Guard, an Army of None.

I read everything, including the labels on canned food. I'm a hopeless print addict, a condition alleviated only by daily meditation which breaks the linear-Aristotelian trance. National Lampoon, Scientific American are what I read most obsessively.

We have a media that goes along with the government by parroting phrases intended to provoke a certain emotional response - for example, "national security." Everyone says "national security" to the point that we now must use the term "national security." But it is not national security that they're concerned with; it is state security. And that's a key distinction.

We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product.

From National Lampoon, you go directly to Saturday Night Live, because it's a lot of the same people.

The proposed constitution, therefore, even when tested by the rules laid down by its antagonists, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal constitution; but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn, it is partly federal, and partly national; in the operation of these powers, it is national, not federal; in the extent of them again, it is federal, not national; and finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal, nor wholly national.

I had grown up as a feature writer, and basically my career had been in The National Lampoon and as a magazine editor, and I'd never been a reporter.

Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is. Like the national market for soap or automobiles and the enlarged arena of federal power, the national cash-in area for prestige has grown, slowly being consolidated into a truly national system.

When you say 'state' you mean 'national.' National Socialism. That is what Mussolini and Hitler did. National Socialism. State Capitalism. They've changed the name.

Whether Canada ends up as o-ne national government or two national governments or several national governments, or some other kind of arrangement is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion.

Harold Ramis and I together did the ‘National Lampoon Show’ off Broadway, ‘Meatballs,’ ‘Stripes,’ ‘Caddyshack,’ ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Groundhog Day.’ He earned his keep on this planet. God bless him.

Lampoon was a very collegial operation, though "collegial" usually means "friendly" and it wasn't that friendly. But we were tight, like a family.

Central Europe is full of little countries standing shoulder to shoulder with no window to the sea. They are like the passengers in a rush-hour train which has stopped between stations for three centuries. And they all hate one another. And they're all crushed together waving their national flags, clanking their national chains, jabbering their national language.

There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.

The Harvard Lampoon itself, which had a pretty stellar run in the '60s.

When I left the Lampoon, I went west to try that out, and discovered that I hated it.They were awful people turning out awful product .

We've seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They've become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they've lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society.

If the question is still asked why National Socialism combats the Jewish element in Germany so fanatically, the answer can only be, because National Socialism wishes to establish a real community of the people. Since we are National Socialists, we cannot permit an alien race to impose itself upon our working people as their leaders.

My point of view comes more from the literature I've read and the comedy of the era. When I was a kid, coming across National Lampoon Magazine, that was a big thing. I suddenly felt like there were other people that felt the way I did, and there was a way of expressing and communicating this worldview.

Those concerns of a national character-such as air and water pollution that do not respect state boundaries, or the national transportation system, or efforts to safeguard your civil liberties-must, of course, be handled on the national level.

Mercury pollution from power plants is a national problem that requires a national response

I thought Twitter was a joke. I really thought it was a gag. I thought it was like National Lampoon or the Onion.

I loved the old stories in National Lampoon, like the original story the movie Vacation was based on. I used to laugh at them until I cried.

I was very involved in political satire, and I'd been writing parody for 'Mad' and 'National Lampoon,' so I made up some strange story about Gerald Ford.

As a former writer for the 'National Lampoon,' I've probably contributed to the sea of sarcasm in which we live.

The revolution will survive. It does not rely solely on oil for its survival. There is a national will, there is a national idea, a national project.

I realised that a television show on political lampoon was one genre that was missing.

John Belushi infused Animal House with this spirit of guerilla filmmaking. John Landis came from that world too, and all the National Lampoon writers were from that world. It was just chaos on film. Controlled chaos, though. We stayed very close to the script. It was a very formal kind of movie, if you look at it. Formally photographed and structured, with certain elements of improv.

Lampoon ran out of steam in the early '80s, and wasn't able to reinvent itself because it ran out of talent. People who wanted to do this kind of stuff could suddenly make $100,000 in Hollywood right out of college.

You can be guaranteed a story on the presidential campaign is gonna lampoon the Republican candidate in every one of those news agencies.

National education to be truly national must reflect the national condition for the time being.

Before I went to a meeting at the 'Harvard Lampoon,' I had no idea that there was even a comedy magazine at Harvard, let alone that you could write comedy potentially for a living.

I was never in the office [of Rolling Stone]. It was very different from Lampoon, where we spent a lot of time together socially, which is to say "drunk."

My proposal is one of national reconciliation, of national pacification. I've already said this many times, but what I propose is a government that could act as a national salvation.

The best thing about writing speculative fiction is the opportunity to satirize the whole wide world. The America in 'A Better World' isn't ours, but it's pretty close, so I could lampoon everything from partisan politics to the cult of celebrity to our general disaffection. To me, all that is the point.

Whether Canada ends up as o­ne national government or two national governments or several national governments, or some other kind of arrangement is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion...

We seek the right to play our part in advancing the cause of national defense and national unity. But certainly, there can be no true national unity where one-tenth of the population is denied their basic rights as American citizens.

It had never been a decision to choose between the French national team or the Senegalese national team because I was growing up in France and playing in the French youth national team, so it was something really normal.

Baseball is not a conventional industry. It belongs neither to the players nor management, but to all of us. It is our national pastime, our national symbol, and our national treasure.

What we've seen over the last decade is we've seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They've become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they've lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society.

The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.

Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does this not involve the principle of a national establishment ... ?

National Lampoon lost its audience when it went from monthly magazine to bimonthly to quarterly to annual to just making movies.

I was managing editor for a while [in National Lampoon ], and it does cause business problems when your circulation goes up.

The Lampoon was definitely quite formative. You know there's a crazy like kind of network of comedy writers from The Lampoon that are, that kind of you know like Seinfeld and The Simpsons and a lot of shows kind of had a lot of kind of Lampoon writers and so that was very formative. I mean, to me I got interested in comedy writing at an early like reading like Dave Barry.

If this [national Democratic Party] is a national party, sushi is our national dish. Today, our national Democratic leaders look south and say, "I see one-third of a nation and it can go to hell."

The National Security Act of 1947 - which established the National Security Council - laid the foundation for a deliberate, multitiered process, managed by the national security adviser, to bring government agencies together to debate and decide policy.

Now, I'm not onboard with the argument that jokes are destructive to humanity. There are bigger issues, and I do not necessarily subscribe to the belief that jokes perpetuate violence and racism. They lampoon those things most of the time. But I could be wrong about that. I'm not a sociologist or an expert.

You start out with Mad magazine, and you go right through the sort of black humor of Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Mort Sahl, Paul Krassner... If you put Lenny together with Mad magazine and run it through the brain of a college student, you get National Lampoon.

Legalized abortion is a national holocaust; an affront to our national character; a contradiction of established principles subscribed to from the beginning of Western Civilization; an insult to the principles of our Declaration of Independence; a bane of our national spirit; and a stench in the nostrils of Almighty God.

The 'Scowcroft Model' recognizes - and embraces - the unique but necessarily modest place the National Security Council and the national security adviser occupy in the American national security architecture.

In the wake of Animal House, all of us at the Lampoon had a lot of Hollywood opportunities. We could definitely get people to return phone calls.

Lampoon was exactly the opposite. The work was a lot of fun, but the office environment was hell. You cannot put 20 humorists together.

Spelling bees? Spelling bees do not scare me. I competed in the National Spelling Bee twice, thank you very much. My dad competed in the National Spelling Bee. My aunt competed in the National Spelling Bee. My uncle WON the National Spelling Bee. If I can't spell it, I know someone who can. So just bring it on.

I'm doing comedy development at National Lampoon.

I went to Second City, where you learned to make the other actor look good so you looked good and National Lampoon, where you had to create everything out of nothing, and SNL, where you couldn't make any mistakes, and you learned what collaboration was.

Having spent a substantial part of my career parodying religious figures from my own Christian background, I am aghast at the notion that it could, in effect, be made illegal to imply ridicule of a religion or to lampoon religious figures.

Humor is a powerful tool, and some of these politicians are so far out and easy to lampoon. They just provide such delicious opportunity.

The Lampoon started in 1970, and I began writing freelance for them around the end of 1971, and then all through '72. They hired me in '73, and I left early in '81. I did everything from low puns to being editor-in-chief.