When Yogi Berra Speaks, We All Listen

Yogisms always seem to catch a deeper meaning.

As Yogi Berra likes to remind us, he didn’t actually say everything he said.

Although not always grammatically correct, Yogi’s words usually capture the inner essence of a profound thought, a deeper meaning. Quite simply, Yogisms as we know and love them make a lot of sense when you think about them (although Yogi himself once said you can’t think and hit at the same time.)

Back in July of 1991, the New Yorker ran a list that drew parallels  between some of Yogi’s most fpopular sayings and those of other famous figures in history.

The article pointed out that hardly anyone could quarrel. that Winston Churchill has been replaced by Yogi Berra as the favorite source of quotations.

Here’s the top 10 from that list, with the Yogi quotes listed second.

“Never, never, never give up.”
– Winston Churchill

” It ain’t over till it’s over.”

“This is the best of all possible worlds.”
– Voltaire

“Even if the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.”

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –  I took the one less traveled by.”
– Robert Frost,  “The Road Not Taken”

“When you come to the fork in the road, take it.”

“Act the part and you will become the part.”
– William James

“He learned me all his experience.”

“The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
— Albert Einstein

“We may be lost but we’re making good time.”

“If none observe me, I have to observe myself all the closer.”
— Franz Kafka

“You can observe a lot just by watching.”

“In war, the moral is to the physical as three to one.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

“Half this game is 90 percent mental.”

“The time is now and now is the time.”
– Sikh Guru Yogi Bhajan

“You mean right now?”
– Yogi Berra, when asked what time it was

“Thinking should be done beforehand and afterwards, never while actually taking a photograph.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson

“You can’t think and hit at the same time.”

“The moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future, towards a future which has itself become the past, and draws us on in their train.”
– Marcel Proust

“It’s deja vu all over again.”