Cleveland Quotes (3 quotes)
[Reporting after the now infamous 22 Jun 1969 burning of the Cuyahoga River:] Some River! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows. “Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown,” Cleveland’s citizens joke grimly. “He decays” … The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration dryly notes: “The lower Cuyahoga has no visible signs of life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes.” It is also—literally—a fire hazard.
— Magazine
As reported in Time magazine (1 Aug 1969).
As for the skies, I quit using the flying machines in 1929 after the pilot of one of them, blinded by snow, handed the chart to me and asked me to find the Cleveland airport.
Remarks (in absentia) on receiving the National Medal for Literature (2 Dec 1971). In 'The Egg Is All', New York Times (7 Dec 1971).
Cleveland, even now I can remember
Cause the Cuyahoga River
Goes smokin’ through my dreams
Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on
Now the Lord can make you tumble
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can’t make you burn.
Cause the Cuyahoga River
Goes smokin’ through my dreams
Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on
Now the Lord can make you tumble
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can’t make you burn.
From lyrics of 'Burn On', released on LP album Sail Away (May 1972), track 8. The song 'Burn On' was used as the opening song in Major League (7 Apr 1989).
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
