Gotta get the ruby off the fat guys head... gotta get the ruby off the — The Thief and the Cobbler

"Princess Yum-Yum: Who is this? Zigzag: O Greatest King of all the Earth, this low-born [uses cane to stop Tack from walking off] cobbler of no worth attacked me in the square today. Shall we take his head away? King Nod: [wakes up] What? No. Yes, Zigzag, if you really think so. Princess Yum-Yum: But what has he done? Zigzag: [takes a tack from Tacks mouth] Attacked me! Princess Yum-Yum: [skeptical] Really? Zigzag: [hisses] Yes!"

"Mighty One-Eye: [Zigzag presents himself before the One-Eye] Sorcerer? Zigzag: I conjure demons, and charm beasts! And birds of prey, too! Phido! Phido the Vulture: [makes Phido jump through hoops] AWWK! Zigzag: But as you see, thats not all I can do! Haha! Hee-hee! I have power over people, though they may appear complex. For me... they fall like playing cards... and I control the decks! [brandishes deck of cards, but they slip and fall] Zigzag: Ah! Eh-heh! Ho ho! Ah! Hee-hee! But all this is nothing, for now in my hand is the very key to the Golden Land! for no man can take it, no matter how great, unless he possesses these three balls... [presents balls] OF FATE! Mighty One-Eye: You say you can charm beasts? [laughs to himself, then Zigzag laughs to himself, too] THROW HIM TO THE ALLIGATORS! [The One-Eyes men take Zig-Zag to the alligator pit; Phido watches from afar snickering to himself]"

"-Princess Yum-Yums Nanny: Your baths ready! The waters getting cold! Princess, hes a Cobbler! Keep your eyes on your work, Cobbler! Tack the Cobbler: Y-yes, maam. [after Princess Yum-Yum and Princess Yum-Yums Nanny leaves] Nothing wrong with being a Cobbler. [sighs] Why cant I ever talk when it matters?"

"[the Thief is on hanging onto a pole, stealing the golden balls] Youre gonna buy me a castle by the sea. [as he takes the second ball] Hmm. And youre gonna buy me everything I need to turn a basement into a rec room. [as he takes the last ball] And with you...I tell you sweet heart, Im going to Disneyland."

"[a reference to the Night on Bald Mountain segment in Fantasia] Here goes nothin. [the Night on Bald Mountain plays in the background; the Thief is holding palm leaves as wings, and then jumps off the cliff and flaps his arms] Im flyin! Im flyin Im flyin! [falls into the bushes]"

"[first lines] It is written among the limitless constellations of the celestial heavens, and in the depths of the emerald seas, and upon every grain of sand in the vast deserts that the world which we see is an outward and visible dream of an inward and invisible reality. Once upon a time, there was a golden city. In the center of this golden city, atop the tallest minaret were three gold balls. The ancients had prophesied that if the three golden balls were ever taken away, harmony would yield to discord, and the city would fall to destruction... and death! But the mystics had also foretold that the city might be saved by the simplest soul with the smallest and simplest of things. In the city, there dwelt a lowly shoemaker who was known as Tack the cobbler. [Tack is shown asleep] Also in the city, existed a thief... who shall be nameless. [the Thief is shown sneaking about]"

"History is a strange experience. The world is quite small now; but history is large and deep. Sometimes you can go much farther by sitting in your own home and reading a book of history, than by getting onto a ship or an airplane and traveling a thousand miles. When you go to Mexico City through space, you find it a sort of cross between modern Madrid and modern Chicago, with additions of its own; but if you go to Mexico City through history, back only 500 years, you will find it as distant as though it were on another planet: inhabited by cultivated barbarians, sensitive and cruel, highly organized and still in the Copper Age, a collection of startling, of unbelievable contrasts."

"I cant read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up. I couldnt read the proletarian crap that came out in the 30s; again you had sentimentalism — the poor oppressed workers."

"Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing. But it is also more than that; it stands on firmer ground, being based on the reality of forms and the observation of social phenomena, whereas history is based on documents, and the reading of print and handwriting — on second-hand impression. Thus fiction is nearer truth. But let that pass. A historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience."

"(reading) Golden Mist Cologne. Mmm, my favorite."

"I learned about renormalization theory as a graduate student, mostly by reading Dyson’s papers. ... From the beginning it seemed to me to be a wonderful thing that very few quantum field theories are renormalizable. Limitations of this sort are, after all, what we most want, not mathematical methods which can make sense of an infinite variety of physically irrelevant theories, but methods which carry constraints, because these constraints may point the way toward the one true theory."

"In the development of intelligence nothing can be more "basic" than learning how to ask productive questions. Many years ago, in Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Charles Weingartner and I expressed our astonishment at the neglect shown in school toward this language art. ...The "back to the basics" philosophers rarely mention it, and practicing teachers usually do not find room for it in their curriculums. …all our knowledge results from questions, which is another way of saying that question-asking is our most important intellectual tool… There are at present no reading tests anywhere that measure the ability of students to address probing questions to the particular texts they are reading... What students need to know are the rules of discourse which comprise the subject, and among the most central of such rules are those which govern what is and what is not a legitimate question."