In this post, you will find great Were Quotes from famous people, such as Winston Churchill, James Baldwin, Dave Mustaine, Timothy Leary, Patrick Henry. You can learn and implement many lessons from these quotes.
In the information age, you don’t teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he’d have a talk show.
If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms never never never!
I started ‘Outer Banks,’ because there’s so much hype around it. I saw one episode and I didn’t really continue, but I got to keep going at it. Two of the actors on there were also in ‘Stranger Things,’ and all my friends always ask, ‘Oh my God, you know Madelyn Cline. She was in ‘Stranger Things’ too.’
My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.
There would be no need for love if perfection were possible. Love arises from our imperfection, from our being different and always in need of the forgiveness, encouragement and that missing half of ourselves that we are searching for, as the Greek myth tells us, in order to complete ourselves.
Explorations into chemistry were done in our basement, sometimes with friends, and my parents must have had quite a bit of confidence in my abilities when they allowed me to experiment with explosive mixtures.
We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
I was surrounded by strong women so it had never even occurred to me that women were anything other than equal to men.
History and social sciences were my interests. I was always interested in knowing how societies get organized, why there is rich and poor divide, why there are classes. I was never apolitical. I think we are all political in a way. Politics decides our day-to-day life.
I am a Shawnee. My forefathers were warriors. Their son is a warrior. From them, I take my only existence.
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in. It was we who gave the perfect conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive.
Growing up in America, I experienced two puberties. The first opened me up to the possibilities of adulthood. The second reinforced that for someone like me – an immigrant, a minority, an Asian-American – there were limits.
Marriage is an attempt to solve problems together which you didn’t even have when you were on your own.
I perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our own model.
If all difficulties were known at the outset of a long journey, most of us would never start out at all.
Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.
The Roaring Twenties were the period of that Great American Prosperity which was built on shaky foundations.
When I came to Johannesburg from the countryside, I knew nobody, but many strangers were very kind to me. I then was dragged into politics, and then, subsequently, I became a lawyer.
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.
Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.
My father being a soldier, every time I saw soldiers marching – ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘my father’s that,’ and these soldiers were always looking magnificent. And I thought they were powerful; they were all-powerful. I knew that they were an elite in India.
I learned conservatism through my grandfather; I didn’t know that was the name. I didn’t know these were conservative principles. Starting his life on a sharecropping farm. Working tremendously hard. Five years old, picking cotton and laying tobacco out to dry on a farm, and today he now owns that farm.
Life is a terminal condition. Were all going to die. Cancer patients just have more information, but we all, in some ways, wait for permission to live.
Our teachers made such a difference – all my teachers and professors were very supportive and nurturing.
Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
For those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, we are grateful that such men and women were among us. For those who continue to serve, we honor their commitment. For those who return to civilian life, we honor their service.
My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn’t lived long enough to experience. That’s why I also believe in reincarnation, that we were put here with ideas to pass around.
All men were made by the Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers.
Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a person as if he were where he could be and should be, and he will become what he could be and should be.
Everyone has a dream deep in their heart, which is a center of what they want to do. If they had all the money, and they had the time and they were guaranteed that they’d be successful, that dream is what they would love to do.
There is no refutation of Darwinian evolution in existence. If a refutation ever were to come about, it would come from a scientist, and not an idiot.
My grandfather was a wealthy and respected merchant in Montclair, New Jersey, where I was born. But his estate was wiped out in the Great Depression, and as a result, I had what I consider the ideal upbringing: We were a proud family, good citizens, and we didn’t have a sou.
You’ve got to know your limitations. I don’t know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.
The world is wide. No two days are alike, nor even two hours, neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of all the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from each other.
I think that the United States and the Philippines have always had a good relationship with each other. We were colonized by the Americans and we have their culture and our traditions even up to this day and I think that we’re very welcoming with the Americans. And I don’t see any problem with that at all.
I think it’s difficult to say what exactly made me become a successful DJ. It depends on so many different things. If I were given an award, I would thank my family, friends, Tiesto and the great team behind me for all their support and hard work. Without them, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.
Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
My heroes were always soccer players.
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn’t able to succeed at those institutions.
Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector.
If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army.
The fact that I fell in love with Meghan so incredibly quickly was sort of confirmation to me that all the stars were aligned; everything was just perfect. It was this beautiful woman just sort of literally tripped and fell into my life; I fell into her life.
I opened Leith’s in Notting Hill in 1969 and it eventually worked its way into being awarded a Michelin star. At the time, there were a few women running small bistros – but I was the first woman to have a ‘serious,’ expensive restaurant.
Personally, I would not care for immortality in the least. There is nothing better than oblivion, since in oblivion there is no wish unfulfilled. We had it before we were born yet did not complain. Shall we whine because we know it will return? It is Elysium enough for me, at any rate.
I started collecting aerial photographs of Native American and South Pacific architecture; only the African ones were fractal. And if you think about it, all these different societies have different geometric design themes that they use. So Native Americans use a combination of circular symmetry and fourfold symmetry.
Asian parents, or a lot of parents in general, they have no idea what goes on in this industry. Mine were born in the Philippines, where it’s different, because it is about who you know, and who knows what you have to do to get to the top? So they had a lot of that skepticism.
Were I not a king, I would be a university man.
If it weren’t for Miyamoto-san, I wouldn’t be where I am.
When I was an orphan, I was the richest kid at the orphanage because everyone else was complaining about not having anything. But when I discovered that you could get two cents for a Coca-Cola bottle, I would follow people around who were drinking it and ask them if they were almost through with it.
The Raiders of old were vicious and crazy and cruel. Hanging around their locker room was like hanging around the weight room at Folsom Prison.
I cannot even imagine where I would be today were it not for that handful of friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let’s face it, friends make life a lot more fun.
Life is about the gray areas. Things are seldom black and white, even when we wish they were and think they should be, and I like exploring this nuanced terrain.
Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.
I was born in very sorry circumstances. Both of my parents were very sorry.
If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren’t really there.
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.
If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.
If it weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we’d still be eating frozen radio dinners.
I’m sorry, if you were right, I’d agree with you.
I believe in rules. Sure I do. If there weren’t any rules, how could you break them?
Bragging about yourself violates norms of modesty and politeness – and if you were really competent, your work would speak for itself.
I just wondered how things were put together.
I take after my mother more than my father in terms of personality. My mother’s a worrier, and I’m a worrier. Both were very good with numbers and mathematics, so I kind of got that from both of them.
My belief is that we were put into this world of wonders and beauty with a special ability to appreciate them, in some cases to have the fun of taking a hand in developing them, and also in being able to help other people instead of overreaching them and, through it all, to enjoy life – that is, to be happy.
Along the way, let’s never forget that once we were children and that we were all playing together without distinction of skin color, society level, or where people come from. Adults need to remember to play and to be more childlike in our behavior. We’ve forgotten what that childlike experience was like.
Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.
Did you ever feel as if the whole world was a tuxedo, and you were a pair of brown shoes?
Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.
We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.
O! Desolated Scotland, too credulous of fair speeches, and not aware of the calamities which are coming upon you! If you were to judge as I do, you would not easily put your neck under a foreign yoke.
There’s nothing more superficial to do than to paint a beautiful woman. The most beautiful portraits in art were of ugly women. If you paint Brigitte Bardot, it’s a disaster. Sunsets, you have to stay away from sunsets. You paint a sunset, you are in great danger.
Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.
If it were a fact, it wouldn’t be called intelligence.
The great thing about Watergate is, is that the system worked. The American system worked. The press did its job. We did what we were supposed to do.
In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, six million Jews and seven million others unable to defend themselves were exterminated.
We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in reality occurs. We have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present – deja vu.
The most valuable investment we can make is in our children’s education. When we make education a priority, we give our children opportunity. Opportunity to learn at higher levels than their parents were able to learn; to earn at higher levels than we were able to earn.
I constructed a laboratory in the neighborhood of Pike’s Peak. The conditions in the pure air of the Colorado Mountains proved extremely favorable for my experiments, and the results were most gratifying to me.
I always wish the hotels were like they are in movies and TV shows, where if you’re in Paris, right outside your window is the Eiffel Tower. In Egypt, the pyramids are right there. In the movies, every hotel has a monument right outside your window. My hotel rooms overlook the garbage dumpster in the back alley.
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That’s a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.
Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.
Now, as a nation, we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.
People change with time. There are things that happened to a person in his childhood and years later they seem to him alien and strange. I am trying to decipher that child. Sometimes he is a stranger to me. When you think about when you were 14, don’t you feel a certain alienation?
Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.
‘The Beatles‘ did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.
My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.
Among the difficulties I encountered, economic problems were the worst. I found that financial hardships could limit one’s ability to realize one’s dream, no matter how desperate and earnest you are.
If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.
Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson‘s administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s brilliant ‘whiz kids’ tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.
We had been told many times that astronauts would not make any mistakes. They were trained to be perfect.
Would you believe in what you believe in if you were the only one who believed it?
Anyone is free to judge me, but they weren’t there in my tough times.
If we’d know we were going to be the Beatles, we’d have tried harder.
I grew up in a time when women didn’t really do comedy. You had to be homely, overweight, an old maid, all that. You had to play a stereotype, because very attractive women were not supposed to be funny – because it’s powerful; it’s a threat.
On the one hand, the guns were there to help capture the imagination of the people. But more important, since we knew that you couldn’t observe the police without guns, we took our guns with us to let the police know that we have an equalizer.
I was a product of Andy Warhol‘s Factory. All I did was sit there and observe these incredibly talented and creative people who were continually making art, and it was impossible not to be affected by that.
In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated.
Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property… Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.
As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.
I grew up conservative because my mum was a conservative, and when I finally realized what conservatives were, I changed my mind immediately. As children, we tend to copy our parents.
Let’s teach kids, at the kindergarten level, what the contributions of people of color were to building the United States of America.
The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.
I’m really living my dream so if I were to change anything up, I probably wouldn’t be where I am.
If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.
If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.
Mom and Dad were the best. I never clashed with them.
Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.
Most people are dead. Did you know that? It’s true, out of all the people that ever were, almost all of them are dead.
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
Once there were two brothers: one ran away to sea, the other was elected Vice-President-and nothing was ever heard from either of them again.
My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious – like, I don’t remember them ever being together.
Serenity is the balance between good and bad, life and death, horrors and pleasures. Life is, as it were, defined by death. If there wasn’t death of things, then there wouldn’t be any life to celebrate.
You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense.
As the years went by, working on Broadway, I started seeing that I had a fan base and that they were mostly young girls. They are looking for someone that they can look up to, that they see as a role model. And I don’t take that lightly; it’s a big responsibility.
One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts… to my surprise… almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.
I remember arguing with kids on the street who were talking about Santa Claus. I said don’t be so daft – Santa Claus doesn’t come down our chimney. He’s an economic Santa Claus; he goes down chimneys where they’ve got money.
When you are laboring for others let it be with the same zeal as if it were for yourself.
I think the greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
Exercise to stimulate, not to annihilate. The world wasn’t formed in a day, and neither were we. Set small goals and build upon them.
My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
If I couldn’t laugh I just would go insane, If we couldn’t laugh we just would go insane, If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane.
Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.
There’s an examination for young people to go to university. I failed it three times. I failed a lot. So I applied to 30 different jobs and got rejected. I went for a job with the police; they said, ‘You’re no good.’ I even went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four people went for the job. Twenty-three were accepted.
I don’t feel like millions of people are wrong because they love who they love or they were born how they were born.
Photography was a way for me to freeze time and to capture the moments that were happy and healthy. I saw a photo as a way to go back to a memory if I ever needed to.
It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.
The great thing about getting older is that you become more mellow. Things aren’t as black and white, and you become much more tolerant. You can see the good in things much more easily rather than getting enraged as you used to do when you were young.
My mother and father didn’t love each other, so they were always fighting.
When I was playing in the Ajax youth teams – when I was, say, 14, 15 – you started to get all those international youth tournaments. All those English teams came. Well, the English were much further than we were.
I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.
We needed to be assertive as women in those days – assertive and aggressive – and the degree to which we had to be that way depended on where you were. I had to be.
The whole point of being alive is to evolve into the complete person you were intended to be.
In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them.
People of African descent, most of us grew up accepting and loving Spider-Man. I still love Spider-Man. I still love the Incredible Hulk. I still have those characters that were white role models, superheroes, heroes – whatever you want to call it. You basically had no choice but to accept those.
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.
Coy Wire played in the NFL for 9 years and is now a motivational speaker and has a book out called ‘Change Your Mind.’ He is an amazing person with such positive energy! When Kroy and I first met and started dating, there weren’t a whole lot of people that supported us, but Coy always did.
I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.
What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.
All of nature begins to whisper its secrets to us through its sounds. Sounds that were previously incomprehensible to our soul now become the meaningful language of nature.
When you’re safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
I acted all the way up until Princeton. It was just one of my favorite extracurricular activities. Then I got to Princeton and had a really conservative vibe. All my friends were planning on law school, med school, or Wall Street, and suddenly acting seem like a really risky proposition.
There were many people who tried to insult me and never appreciated me in the beginning. The biggest platform for me I would say more than South Industry, I will say was ‘Bigg Boss’. They made me realise who I am and what all I can do in my life.
Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.
For each of us, life is a journey. Heavenly Father designed it for us out of love. Each of us has unique experiences and characteristics, but our journey began in the same place before we were born into this world.
The Brexit thing to me just looks like a difference of opinion. I know things were lied about, but that should be a wake-up call to get all the information before you vote about something. Educate yourself.
When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.
You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’
History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.
My heroes are and were my parents. I can’t see having anyone else as my heroes.
We’ve definitely had our share of ups and downs as a group, and there were times we’ve faced some pretty big challenges, but we were able to get through these times, which allowed our bond to grow stronger.
Mentors of mine were under a big pressure to minimize their femininity to make it. I’m not going to do that. That takes away my power. I’m not going to compromise who I am.
If I were to say, ‘God, why me?’ about the bad things, then I should have said, ‘God, why me?’ about the good things that happened in my life.
Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
The most terrifying moment in my life was October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I did not know all the facts – we have learned only recently how close we were to war – but I knew enough to make me tremble.
If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be present.
I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.
It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.
I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms.
Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.
I invented ‘It’s a good thing’ before you were even born.
I believe that every single one of us, celebrity or not, has a responsibility to get involved in trying to make a difference in the world. Our generation faces many challenges, some of which were passed on to us by the past generations, but it’s up to us to find solutions today so that we don’t keep passing our problems on.
Oprah‘s got good politics, she’s got a good heart, and she’ll have us all up Jazzercising at six in the morning. This cannot be a bad thing, and reading a book while we’re Jazzercising. So America would be better off if Oprah were president.
If you think back to the first sporting event you went to, you don’t remember the score, you don’t remember a home run, you don’t remember a dunk. You remember who you were with. Were you with your mom, your dad, your brother, on a date?
It doesn’t matter what the colour of your skin is, your sexual preference, the region where you were born, your gender. We’re all equal… We can’t take certain minorities and think they have super powers and are different from the others.
The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor.
I’ll never forget Hurricane Katrina – the mix of a natural and a man-made catastrophe that resulted in the death of over 1,500 of our neighbors. Millions of folks were marked by the tragedy.
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.
If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.
The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
One of the positives of getting older is that you forget your age. Then you find out that you’re younger than you thought you were.
We may not know what each day has in store for us. We could be gone tomorrow. Any minute could truly be our goodbye. But we do have this moment. This time. Today. Right now. It takes way more effort to shell out hate then it does to allow love to flow freely in our lives. After all, it’s what we were born to do.
My teenage years were exactly what they were supposed to be. Everybody has their own path. It’s laid out for you. It’s just up to you to walk it.
I looked up to my parents because they were very successful in what they wanted to do. I was lucky; I didn’t have to look far for role models.
I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.
I’ve realized through the years that I just find happiness in other things, whether it’s my dogs or my friends or, like, looking at the sunset. So if I were to wish for something else, it would just to be happy all the time, to have a superpower of not letting things affect me, and to be true to who I am, always.
A friend is, as it were, a second self.
The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed, young Japanese-Americans, like all young Americans, rushed to their draft board to volunteer to fight for our country. That act of patriotism was answered with a slap in the face. We were denied service and categorized as enemy non-alien.
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
If we weren’t all crazy, we’d just go insane.
The idea of a spiritual heart transplant is a vivid image to me; once you have the heart of somebody else inside you, then that heart is there. Jesus’ heart is inside me, and my heart is gone. So if God were to place a stethoscope against my chest, he would hear the heart of Jesus Christ beating.
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
I think, under President Obama, who was a really bright guy – I didn’t agree with a lot of his politics – but we got to the point internationally where our friends didn’t trust us. They were confused. And our enemies didn’t quite respect us.
Only very intelligent people don’t wish they were in politics, and I’m dumb enough to want to be in there.
My mom and dad are from the streets. My mom’s from Chicago. My dad’s from Memphis. My dad got out of school and got with my mom. They were hustlers. They were from the streets. They were doing their thing. The streets ain’t got no love for the streets. You can light up the streets, or be a victim of the streets.
Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.
I’m humble ’cause I think many years ago people say, ‘Well, Alibaba’s terrible company‘. And I know we were not that terrible. We’re pretty good; we’re better than people thought. But today, when people have a high expectation on you, and I start to worry and nervous because we are not good yet.
My goal in the classroom was always to make sure they were having so much fun that they didn’t realize they were learning.
When you don’t manage your life well, you become angry and frustrated as things don’t go as intended, and our bad mood is a sign showing we were not able to resolve the conflict.
Sometimes, I feel I am really blessed to be blind because I probably would not last a minute if I were able to see things.
If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be.
In my career, there have been three things that were challenging: playing gay; playing a Jewish woman; and playing Chekhov. The scariest part was playing Chekhov!
There were times when close people… Some of my closest friends have left me. People hurt me, so everything fell apart. I didn’t feel like I had anyone on my side or anyone who could understand me. So that’s why I completely fell apart.
As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldn’t necessarily be good.
I worked at a movie theater in Tempe, Arizona, when I went to community college there. And I got fired because a sorority had rented out a theater to watch ‘Titanic,’ and they were being really rude to me while they were waiting for the movie. So as I tore their tickets, I told them the end of the movie.
The concept of The ‘Most Beautiful Moment in Life’, that was chapter one for us; it feels like that because we were starting from the bottom, but on this concept, ‘Love Yourself‘, we started to talk about some brighter things, like the real things in life.
If your dad died before you were born, yeah, it hurts – but it’s not like you had a connection with something that was real. Not to say it’s any better – but to have that connection and then have it ripped away was, like, the worst. My dad was such a good dad that when he left, he left a huge scar. He was my superhero.
My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of the misery I’ve endured over the past twenty-five years.
When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.
Life is so fast. And I still remember when I came up to the big leagues and played as if it were yesterday. Time flies.
I was very sorry when I found out that your intentions were good and not what I supposed they were.
You can’t tell young people what to do. You can’t tell ’em because they’ll look at you and say, ‘Well, how can you tell me not to do that when you were there doing it yourself?’ Or supposedly were doing it yourself. I think you must let everyone live their life the way they have to.
I’m the first to admit that we were totally dependent on a particular place and time… for us, seeing Minor Threat at the CBGB hardcore matinee was just as necessary a force in our lives as the Treacherous Three at Club Negril or the Funky Four + One More at the Rock Lounge.
And I figured out that the reason I couldn’t get through the day as well as I can now is because I had too many things on my mind, on my plate, you know, for one person to have. So I started to eliminate some of the things that were too heavy to carry and unnecessary.
If… many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made.
There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.
I tell students that the opportunities I had were a result of having a good educational background. Education is what allows you to stand out.
Maori get pigeonholed into the idea they’re spiritual and telling stories like ‘Whale Rider‘ and ‘Once Were Warriors,’ quite serious stuff, but we’re pretty funny people, and we never really have had an opportunity to show that side of ourselves, the clumsy, nerdy side of ourselves, which is something I am.
Nobody, absolutely nobody, straps a bomb on their body because they were recruited from the Internet. It takes an enormous amount of personal face-to-face contact and time in order to recruit a young person into the cause of jihad.
Everybody said you’re never going to win this whole Classic. You’re not strong enough. You’re big, you’re athletic, you’re fast – but you will never win this Arnold Classic. Those were the people who didn’t believe in me… I put in the work every single day – and here I am, three times champ!
Vulnerability is the strongest state to be in. How boring would it be if we were constantly dominant or constantly submissive?
I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans – the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today.
If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation and to raise the dead with tears, then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping.
I believe that people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.
I used to think that anyone doing anything weird was weird. I suddenly realized that anyone doing anything weird wasn’t weird at all and it was the people saying they were weird that were weird.
To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.
Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God’s Paradise.
A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?
‘Boyz-n-the-Hood’ was actually supposed to be written for Eazy’s group. He had a group out in New York called Home Boys Only, called HBO. One of them looked like LL Cool J. Eazy wanted to write a song for them, a street song, like what we were doing on the mix tapes. So when I wrote it, it was too West Coast for them.
If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle.
Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.
I always thought records were there to be broken.
I liked St. Louis, when they were in the American League, because that was going home. I had all my family and friends there.
The more important a call to action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel about answering it. But to yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
I’m an actor who they said was wrinkled and balding and everything else when I was in my early 30’s. Most of the people who wrote that who thought they were younger than me are now bald and wrinkled.
I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of the legacy that I’ve gotten from so many of the adult elders.
Challenge yourself, grow, blossom, and become who you were meant to be. Don’t ever stay at a job solely out of convenience or comfort. Aim higher, even if that means pursuing another job that’s just one step closer to your ultimate goal.
Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.
Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‘Boy, those were great old days.’ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.
You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.
I thought the attractions of being an astronaut were actually, not so much the Moon, but flying in a completely new medium.
For a really long time, I thought being different was a negative thing. But as I grew older, I started to realize we were all born to stand out; nobody is born to blend in.
The human longings that are deep inside of us never go away. They exist across cultures; they exist throughout life. When people were first made, our deepest longing was to know and be known. And after the Fall, when we all got weird, it’s still our deepest longing – but it’s now also our deepest fear.
If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.
The hardest times for me were not when people challenged what I said, but when I felt my voice was not heard.
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
In every age ‘the good old days’ were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.
Ah, if I were not king, I should lose my temper.
Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.
Sometimes, when I see my granddaughters make small discoveries of their own, I wish I were a child.
If there were only one truth, you couldn’t paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.
I am not like a pebble on the beach – a grain of sand on the seashore or just one of millions of human beings past, present and future. No, I am a unique human being loved by God as if I were an only child – the only fruit of his creative powers.
If you think about stuff that happened when you were young, it stays with you forever.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
I had a weird accent. Dutch people speak American English, and my parents were Jamaican, with their own broken English.
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.
If the choice were made, one for us to lose our sovereignty and become a member of the Commonwealth or remain with our sovereignty and lose the membership of the Commonwealth, I would say let the Commonwealth go.
It’s just so cool when you meet people who are different than you are. That can give you a different perspective, a viewpoint on life, or inspire you. I mean, what would the world be like if we were all the same? I think it would be very boring.
It’s worth pointing out that conflicts between racially oppressed people often result from the fact that colonialism worked on divide and rule. Certain ethnic, religious, racial or indigenous groups were deliberately privileged over others in order to create a sense of investment in upholding the power structure.
Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.
God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.
If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.
My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren’t my children.
Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.
People ask ‘do you make a conscious effort not to swear?’ – if you’re doing silly stuff you’re not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.
You can’t build a revolution with no education. Jomo Kenyatta did this in Africa, and because the people were not educated, he became as much an oppressor as the people he overthrew.
I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child.
The good ole days weren’t always good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
I’ve made peace with the fact that the things that I thought were weaknesses or flaws were just me. I like them.
Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.
It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.
If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?
In the late ’60s, there were the the three B’s: The Beatles, Batman, and Bond.
There were no strategic mistakes that could affect Russia’s history and it further development. No, there were no such mistakes. Tactical errors were made in some less significant options, problems and so on. But, on the whole, Russia embarked on a correct path and it changed.
I chose as my target the University of Mississippi, which in 1960 was the holiest temple of white supremacy in America, next to the U.S. Capitol and the White House, both of which were under the control of segregationists and their collaborators.
See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
How can I be in two places at once, unless I were a bird?
People always ask me, ‘Were you funny as a child?’ Well, no, I was an accountant.
Dreams are where we visit the many lands and landscapes of human possibility and discover the one where we feel at home. The great religious leaders were all dreamers.
Growing up, I knew I was different. But I didn’t know what it meant to be Aboriginal. I just knew that I had a really big, extended family. I was taught nothing about who we were or where we came from.
Believe with all your heart that you will do what you were made to do. Never for an instant harbor a doubt of it.
In my case, I can sincerely say that nothing is impossible… When I was saying I want to be No. 1 of the world, and I was seven or eight years old, most of the people were laughing at me because it seems like I have one percent of chances to do that, and I’ve done it.
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
I lived next to Russian soldiers. We had Russian army guys in our house when I grew up. We made lemonade for them; they were everywhere. I had a Russian school. I grew up with Russian traditions, I know Russian songs… it infiltrates me a lot. I even speak a little Russian.
When President Obama entered the White House, the economy was in a free-fall. The auto industry: on its back. The banks: frozen up. More than three million Americans had already lost their jobs. And America’s bravest, our men and women in uniform, were fighting what would soon be the longest wars in our history.
It seems that I have always been ahead of my time. I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara was harnessed by my system, fifteen years before the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally.
The old days were the old days. And they were great days. But now is now.
Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.
There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.
In the 1950s and ’60s, America’s natural resources were in bad shape. Communities were so polluted that clouds of smog lingered over cities like Los Angeles. Rivers and lakes were filled with chemicals. In my hometown of Boston, the harbor was among the nation’s most polluted waterways.
Loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation.
My dad wanted me to play football so bad, he took me to Washington High School on the west side of Atlanta because they were number one. They never lost.
Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.
When Alexander of Macedon was 33, he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer. Eric Bristow is only 27.
There are many talented people who haven‘t fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith.
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
I am sorry that Mr. Cheney, and every other supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques, has to defend the practices as if they were torture. They are not.
Acquire the habit of speaking to God as if you were alone with Him, familiarly and with confidence and love, as to the dearest and most loving of friends.
If poverty were a man, I would have slain him.
The signing of the Sex Pistols was a turning point for Virgin. It put the company on the map and, over the years, attracted bands such as Genesis, the Rolling Stones, Lenny Kravitz, and Janet Jackson. It also attracted Culture Club, who were ground-breaking.
I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.
My parents divorced. There was the usual awkward business of going between them, but I was mostly with my mother. She remarried to a Greek painter Nico Ghika, so we were always around artists and intellectuals.
I wish there were 48 hours in a day and 14 days in a week.
A lot of people change for good. Some people just fall off. Just trying to progress in anything, no matter what you’re doing, I feel like any progression you make… some people aren’t gonna be around you that were around you.
I grew up in the ghetto, and the thing is when there were problems, I knew when to get away.
After Hiroshima was bombed, I saw a photograph of the side of a house with the shadows of the people who had lived there burned into the wall from the intensity of the bomb. The people were gone, but their shadows remained.
You weren’t born just to live a life and to die; you were born to accomplish something specifically. Matter of fact, success is making it to the end of your purpose; that is success… Success is not just existing. Success is making it to the end of why you were born.
You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.
Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.
The winners in life treat their body as if it were a magnificent spacecraft that gives them the finest transportation and endurance for their lives.
There is no one on earth who knew you from the day you were born; who knew why you cried, or when you’d had enough food; who knew exactly what to say when you were hurting; and who encouraged you to grow a good heart. When that layer goes, whatever is left of your childhood goes with her.
I was an only child and I had a mother and father who were just – there wasn’t a straight man in the house, and I mean that in a very nice way. They were fun, and we would laugh a lot.
What you don’t want is for violence and gore to become more important than character and structure. A lot of slasher movies from the eighties were only focused on violence and gore, which robs the human beings in the story of any empathetic reaction from the audience, and instead makes them cheer for the gore.
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure about you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
Leaders in China and India realize that science and technology lead to success and wealth. But many countries in the West graduate students into the unemployment line by teaching skills that were necessary to live in 1950.
Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.
After 9/11, the amount of applicants the FBI received increased exponentially. Whereas you used to require a college degree, and it was a small group of people who were just out of college, after 9/11, it changed.
I noticed that there are no B batteries. I think that’s to avoid confusion, cause if there were you wouldn’t know if someone was stuttering. ‘Yes, hello I’d like some b-batteries.’ ‘What kind?’ ‘B-batteries.’ ‘What kind?’ ‘B-batteries!’ and D-batteries that’s hard for foreigners. ‘Yes, I would like de batteries.’
If I weren’t doing what I’m doing today… I’d be traveling around the world on the back of a motorcycle.
If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.
A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.
When I was young we weren’t even allowed to speak our own languages in school. They called it ‘vernacular,’ as if only English was the real tongue.
They call it golf because all the other four letter words were taken.
There were moments when I really just thought, I don’t need anything and I don’t need anyone. I just want to go away and disappear.
I cut off my dreadlocks, but I couldn’t face throwing them away. They were so hard to grow, man. There’s a lot of work goes into those things. Some people keep a diary or a photo album to remind them of their past lives – well, I’ve got hair. Who knows? One day, maybe my grandchildren might want to see it.
If I were a Roman Catholic, I should turn a heretic, in sheer desperation, because I would rather go to heaven than go to purgatory.
Having been let out of the barn once, I know I wouldn’t be happy if I were home all the time.
I was not popular in school, and I was definitely not a ladies’ man. And I had a very painful adolescence, because it was all very strange to me. It wasn’t like I got beat up, but the humiliation and isolation, and the existential ‘God, I exist, and nobody cares‘ of being a teenager were extremely pronounced for me.
No one likes the Electoral College, expect perhaps those who were elected because of it. No one likes gerrymandering, except those doing the gerrymandering. No one likes the filibuster, except those doing the filibustering.
My teacher told me I’d never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.
‘Presence of God’ is really that understanding that sometimes when you step out of your own shoes and just open your ears and listen to what’s going on around you, you get answers to the questions you were asking.
It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
I’m really thankful for every experience I’ve had, even the ones that were puzzling or disorienting, because they taught me so much.
I was born in Orange County – in Santa Ana. My dad is from California. I was raised on the East Coast. My first two years were in California, but I claim East Coast. I’m sorry, I don’t rep California.
If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were.
A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.
