Kinky Friedman Quotes

Everything I listen to is influential in some way.

Now I put up something, and I have to think, 'Oh, there are millions of people watching, and some of them could be affected by the jokes I make.'

We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it's too late.

Nobody is listening to your telephone calls.

What is the point? We assume that every time we do anything we know what the consequences will be, i.e., more or less what we intend them to be. This is not only not always correct. It is wildly, crazily, stupidly, cross-eyed-blithering-insectly wrong!

Every great decision creates ripples. Like a huge boulder dropping in a lake. The ripples merge and rebound off the banks in unforseeable ways. The heavier the decision, the larger the waves, the more uncertain the consequences.

You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath.

Was it serious? I don't know. It certainly had serious consequences.

It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. It's never occurred to me before; I've never been able to see it. And it makes me feel, weirdly, like maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different.

By your hand, millions - billions - of lives will be altered, caught up in a chain of events begun by you this day.

I really know so little about recording, and I'm learning as I go.

There are drones flying over the air randomly that are recording everything that's happening on what we consider our private property. That type of technology has to stimulate us to think about what is it that we cherish in privacy, and how far we want to protect it and from whom.

We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.

Any attempt to shape the world and modify human personality in order to create a self-chosen pattern of life involves many unknown consequences. Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back. The multiplicity of determinants which affect biological systems limits the power of the experimental method to predict their trends and behavior.

Friend, when you speak this carefully I know it is because you don't know what to say.

You can change the world, but if no one's listening, it doesn't matter.

We have to be very careful, we have to be very vigilant but to think that Apple won't allow us to get into her cell phone - who do they think they are? Now we have to open it up.

The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.

We shall know what things are of overmastering importance when they have overmastered us.

You can have a good vibe and a good feeling about something, but you never really know how it's going to be received and how an audience is going to react to it.

The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.

You write a book and it's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. You don't know if it will ever reach any shores. And there, you see, sometimes it falls in the hands of the right person.

Traitors hoist by their own petard?--or victims of the gods?--we shall never know!

It's interesting playing something that the audience doesn't fully know.

The real world, whether we like it or not, is right here, right now. All of this, every day, is important. Everybody matters. Everything we do has an effect on other, directly or indirectly, whether we realize it or not.