Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If a man is a man and not a sheep in the flock, he has a survival instinct in him that leads him to fight even if he realizes he's fighting in vain, even if he knows he will lose.
I am one of the million or more male residents of the United Kingdom, who a year ago had no special yearning towards military life, but who joined the army after war was declared.
Accept the long night patiently, quietly, humbly, and resignedly as intended for your true good. It is not a punishment for sin committed but an instrument of annihilating egoism.
Appetite has really become an artificial and abnormal thing, having taken the place of true hunger, which alone is natural. The one is a sign of bondage but the other, of freedom.
In such a state, humility is the virtue of men, and their only defense; to walk humbly with God, never doubting, whatever befall, that His will is good, and that His law is right.
In a supposedly free and equal country, there is no excuse for our rulers having VIP treatment. On the contrary, there is every reason for them to get what we get, hot and strong.
In the polls, over 80% support the right to die and have done for the last 25 years. Even 80% of practising Catholics and Protestants support it, plus 76% of Church Times readers.
People change their opinion according to your position. And both politicians and bureaucrats begin to take you more seriously, as they suddenly feel you have become more important
There must be a technique for meeting pain. There must be a technique of endurance based on the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity, as Marcus Aurelius taught long ago.
If you're in part of rebel-controlled Syria, and suddenly your house blows up or a building next to you blows up, it would be convenient for rebels to say, 'It was the Americans.'
There are these boutique writers out there who think if they are not writing their novels sitting at a bistro with their laptops, then they're not real writers. That's ridiculous.
I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and then was applauded by editors for 'working magic.
I used to work very long hours. Then I started to realize that the stuff that I was writing in the late afternoons, I was generally throwing out. So I quit earlier than I used to.
Throw in neglect and politicization of the judicial system and you see the result: soaring rates of cocaine trafficking through Venezuela and worsening corruption of institutions.
Go your own way. Question everything. Accept nothing. Accept no dogma, no cant. There are too many people walking around thinking they're sacred cows, and they're only half right.
You don't have to stick with these recipes. They're guides. As I say, they're a way in. Have fun with them. It's an easier way to cook in a busy life, once you get the hang of it.
I feel like I partly came to writing through being in college during the start of the Iraq war, and knowing that those issues mattered lot to me, and wanting to go see for myself.
Most people don't realize that two-thirds of the federal budget is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Pentagon. The U.S. government is an insurance company with an Army.
When you find yourself on a pageant stage, there are a lot of unpredictable moments, and I think a lot of that translates to doing the live, breaking-news reporting that I do now.
A living countryside is not a luxury but a necessity for the human population; if you let conservation go hang until your pockets are jingling there will be a lot less to conserve
What has always puzzled me is the flexibility of God's word. For instance, Catholics can now eat meat on Fridays. And limbo has been abolished. How does this work? Who tells them?
I abhor crime novels in which the main character can behave however he or she pleases, or do things that normal people do not do, without those actions having social consequences.
It's amazing how unwilling most people are to admit they don't know the answer to a question or a problem and instead charge forward on a 'gut instinct' that turns out to be crap.
Our chips keep getting faster, and our data rates keep climbing, but at the end of the day - or worse, by mid-afternoon - those power meters on our screens inevitably turn to red.
Novelists who treat violence and cruelty as something to be exploited for their effect, or to enjoy the pleasure of an evacuation, are carriers of a singularly unpleasant disease.
Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvelous things - the natural world and the particular texture of small-town life, and the exhilarating experience of open space.
There are cultures that believe having your photograph taken steals your soul. I don't think there is a stolen soul in a picture, but still - why is it so hard to throw them away?
The women of Afghanistan, left behind as their men fought, did what the women of World War II did - used their wits and resourcefulness to preserve some semblance of civilization.
When he entered the Oval Office - by fate, not by design - Citizen Ford knew that he was not perfect, just as he knew he was not perfect when he left. But what president ever was?
Court proceedings, except for certain limited situations, are open to the public. This is for the protection of the accused, to be certain to ascertain that there is a fair trial.
Give news a little more time, and don't request that they also, in their news time, entertain. We're not entertainers. We're journalists. And we need more time to do our job well.
Government can have no more than two legitimate purposes - the suppression of injustice against individuals within the community, and the common defense against external invasion.
The soul of man is one of those subtle and evanescent substances that, as long as they remain still, the organ of sight does not remark; it must become agitated to become visible.
I’d recommend learning to accept rejection. Become friends with rejection. Be nice to rejection, because it’s a huge part of being a writer, no matter where you are in your career.
STORIES WE TELL is one of the boldest and most exciting films I’ve seen in the last six months, and the kind of experience that has the power to alter your perception of the world.
The number of the opposition has certainly increased [in Iran]. There is more disgruntlement, but because there is no media, the voice of this opposition is not heard outside Iran.
The solutions to the problems of the distraught lower strata of society are problems that can only be solved in the context of an overall political, cultural, economic development.
In fact, as far as one can tell, Obama seems to have killed more civilians during his first year than Bush did in his first year, and maybe even than Bush killed in his final year.
A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.
Funeral: a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.
POSITIVISM- A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.
How a mother comes to love her child, her caring at all for this thing that's made her heavy, lopsided and slow, this thing that made her wish she were dead ... that's the miracle.
Bitcoin, in the short or even long term, may turn out be a good investment in the same way that anything that is rare can be considered valuable. Like baseball cards. Or a Picasso.
In point of fact all Americans are automatically turned down by China these days because of the escalation of Johnson's war in Vietnam, which several times has intruded into China.
A People Magazine article in 1982 referred to him as the late Abe Vigoda. The very-much-alive Vigoda placed an ad in Variety with him in a coffin holding a copy of People Magazine.
politics ... is the hottest, most dangerous subject in the land. It's not only a conversation-wrecker, it's a friendship-wrecker, a family-wrecker, a job-wrecker, a future-wrecker.
The first and pivotal negotiations over global access to AIDS drugs began in Geneva in 1991. They lasted two years, but confidential minutes suggest they were doomed the first day.
Women only cut their hair in times of crisis... It's somethin' a woman always has the power to do, even when she loses control over everything else. Cuttin' hair is a cry for help.
We know Roger Ebert loved the 'Sun-Times' and his career as a newspaper columnist. But ironically, it was his illness and losing his voice that caused him to explore another venue.
Any time you get into a presidential campaign and the stakes are so high, all candidates - they want to be in complete control whenever they can. And you can't blame them for that.