This is excerpted from an Internet Telecom Newsgroup

THANKS FOR ALL THE REPLIES I RECEIVED. A list follows.  First here are
some I found while rummaging through Dictionaries of Quotations in the
local library

They (wives) are people who think when the telephone bell rings,
it is against the law not to answer it"  --- Ring Lardner , 1923

"Well if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone"
--- James Thurber

"It (the telephone) will unmake our work. No greater instrument of 
counter revolution and conspiracy can be imagined" 
--- Josef Vissarvonovich Stalin

"Hello, Neil and Buzz. I'm talking to you by telephone from the 
Oval Room at the White House, and this certainly has to be the 
most historic telephone call ever made"
--- Richard Milhous Nixon ,20 July 1969, 
speaking to first men to land on the moon.

From: Rob Knauerhase <rob@zorro.cecer.army.mil>

Here are a few.  The attribution is all the source I have, but I assume they
are accurate.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a
 means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
    -- Western Union memo, 1877

"Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over
 wires.  Even if it were, it would be of no practical value."
    -- Boston Post 1865

From: tds@hoserve.att.com (Tony DeSimone)
Sender: Antonio_DeSimone@ATT.COM (Tony DeSimone)

"Communism must be like one big phone company."
                            Lenny Bruce
                            as quoted on "All Things Considered" 10/8/91

"The possibilities of a private home telephone system throughout the
country is out of the question.  Almost the entire working population
of the United States would be needed to switch cable."

        unidentified NY telphone financier, 1887

quoted in C. J. Cain in vol 35 of the Fiber Optic Reprint
Series, from Information Gatekeepers INC.

"Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over
wires.  Even if it were, it would be of no practical value."

                                               - Boston Post 1865

"According to Judge Greene, "Despite AT&T's argument that Bell Labs was
[a] leader in invention and innovation, and despite excellence and
`scientific genius' of the Labs, they have produced few products of
practical value."

"It is my heart-warm and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration
that all of us - the high, the low, the rich , the poor, the admired,
the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage - may 
eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and
peace and bliss -- except the inventor of the telephone."
        Mark Twain, 1890

%%
As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would
interfere with flight.  [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for
the Wright Brothers.  They were watching birds one day, trying to
figure out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it
dawned on Wilbur.  "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove
the sexual organs!"  You should have seen their original design.]  As
a result, birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually.  You
almost never see an aroused bird.  So when they want to reproduce,
birds fly up and stand on telephone lines, where they monitor
telephone conversations with their feet.  When they find a
conversation in which people are talking dirty, they grip the line
very tightly until they are both highly aroused, at which point the
female gets pregnant.
                        -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
                           Teen Should Know"
%%
For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but
phone calls taper off.
                                        -- Johnny Carson

Real Users know your home telephone number.

There were in this country two very large monopolies.  The larger of
the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-
digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the
8-cent postcard.  The second was responsible for such things as the
transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
satellite.  Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the
telephone business?
%%
To understand this important story, you have to understand how the
telephone company works.  Your telephone is connected to a local
computer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which is
in turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the
lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan.

Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in.  If it
suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the
computer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the
one above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe
break down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordid
incident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse,
an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapioca
pudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna's
loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listen
and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
                        -- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own
                           Phones?"

Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
President's and Kings to the scum of the earth...
                                        -- Lily Tomlin
I once met a lassie named Ruth
In a long distance telephone booth.
        Now I know the perfection
        Of an ideal connection
Even if somewhat uncouth.

Maybe Hamton's right. Maybe Buster is shy about inviting me to the
prom. Maybe he's waiting until the last minute to call me. Maybe I
should run home right now and sit by the phone like a drooling maniac
so I don't miss his call! No, I'm way too cool for that. BUT I CAN'T
TAKE THAT CHANCE!!!
                                        -- Babs Bunny
%%
        [ring ring] "Hello?"
        "Hello, Babs. This is the President of the United States."
        "Get off the line, Mac! I'm waiting for an important call!!!!"
                                        -- Babs & George Bush
%%

If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the
Constitution. (It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's
statecraft.) Instead, read selected portions of the Washington
telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with
titles beginning with the word "National."
                                        -- George Will
%%
In an attempt to kill a fly I drove into a telephone pole.
%%

Last Words of Advice: If you pay your taxes and don't get into debt
and go to bed early and never answer the telephone -- no harm can
befall you.
                                        -- Professor Charles P. Issawi
%%

Parkinson's Telephone Law: The effectiveness of a telephone
conversation is in inverse proportion to the time spent on it.

%%

The honeymoon is over when he phones that he'll be late for supper --
and she has already left a note that it's in the refrigerator.
                                        -- Bill Laurence
%%

The phone will not ring until you leave your desk and walk to the
other end of the building.
                                        -- Linda A. Lawyer
%%

The telephone pole was approaching fast, I was attempting to swerve
out of it's path when it struck my front end.