Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Since the purpose of reading, of education, is to become good, our most important task is to choose the right books. Our personal set of stories, our canon, shapes our lives. I believe it is a law of the universe that we will not rise above our canon. Our canon is part of us, deeply, subconsciously. And the characters and teachings in our canon shape our characters--good, evil, mediocre, or great.
I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or who you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try.
I personally have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live. I believe that that death penalty should be used only very rarely, but I believe that no-one should go out certain that no matter how cruel, how vicious, how hideous their murder, they themselves will not suffer the death penalty.
Lovely girls are terribly insecure. They are convinced that their legs are too thick, and their bottoms are too big, and their bosoms are too small. They are conviced that their nose is the wrong shape, that their ears stick out, and that their eyes are too close together. They need a man who will tell them they are exactly right as they are. They do not believe him, but they need to hear it said.
This government does not believe that public safety is enhanced by carrying weapons. In fact, it has been a long-standing Canadian government practice to discourage the use of personal defence weapons. Once public possession of one type of weapon is condoned for personal defence, the situation of weapon possession for protection starts to spiral upwards towards more powerful and dangerous weapons.
I try not to think of myself as a woman filmmaker. I don't look for women influences. I have noticed in the past few years that there is a certain ceiling that a woman filmmaker can reach. I don't believe that it's sexism per se, but there are certain expectations in the industry about what films should be, how they should be made, what stories they should tell, and it's a habit, it's a tradition.
I think we can't be naive in dealing with the Russians or dealing with the Syrians. But at the same time, I think we could try to encourage - and I think this is what diplomacy should do - encourage the self-interests of all parties to believe that it is in their best interest to get evil actors or rogue actors such as Syria or Iran, if you try to have less belligerent and less bellicose behavior.
Three quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this and that - it's astonishing. These numbers aren't duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You'd have to maybe go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population.
You are beautiful and brilliant and bold and so very passionate about life and love and those things that you believe in. And you taught me that everything I believed, everything I thought I wanted, everything I had spent my life espousing--all of it...it is wrong. I want your version of life...vivid and emotional and messy and wonderful and filled with happiness. But I cannot have it without you.
We've got people in the Republican Party that just believe that if you just cut taxes for corporations, and that you have more trade, and we just bring in more people from abroad, that this is going to help the average guy. Well, it's not. I mean, this is an honest dispute. We're going to have a dispute about it. The American people agree with [Donald] Trump and I agree with Trump on those things.
I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life. I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race - the natural élite of mankind - to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'.
I heard there are no male sidhe-seers." Where did you hear that?" Around." And which one of those are you in doubt about Ms. Lane?" Which one of what?" Whether I see the Fae, or whether I'm a man. I believe I've laid your mind to rest on the former; shall I relieve it on the latter?" He reached for his belt. Oh, please." I rolled my eyes. "You're a leftie, Barrons." Touche, Ms. Lane," he murmered.
If you were good enough, there would be no need of confessing Christ at all. It is just because you are not good enough, that Christ says to you, "Follow me." He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. It is not the perfect people whom He wants in His church, but those who have a deep sense of their own imperfection, and who believe that His strength is made perfect in weakness.
These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking.... Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.
It's a democracy, and the reason why the conservative movement loses is because it believes that it is elite, that the smartest in its midst who have gone to the right schools and who have worked at the right think tanks and have the right opinions and the right friends can run it for the rest of America. That's why I'm a Tea Party adherent over a Republican or conservative establishment adherent.
When you develop an infatuation for someone you always find a reason to believe that this is exactly the person for you. It doesn’t need to be a good reason. Taking photographs of the night sky, for example. Now, in the long run, that’s just the kind of dumb, irritating habit that would cause you to split up. But in the haze of infatuation, it’s just what you’ve been searching for all these years.
I'm particularly keen on promoting this [Nikolai] Medtner piece, Night Wind, because I feel it is a fantastic work that hasn't been given its due yet. Admittedly, it's difficult for both the performer and the listener. The work is quite dense, comparatively long, as these things go, and demands rather active listening. But it's gripping, and I believe it should be heard much more than it has been.
Then I will tell you something. I do not believe in it. Forty years among men has consistently taught me that they are not amenable to commonsense. Show them the red tail of a comet, fill them with black terror, and they will all come running out of their houses and break their legs. But tell them one sensible proposition, and support it with seven reasons, and they will simply laugh in your face.
I believe that online paid content hasn't worked for general circulation newspapers because consumers weren't ready for it, because the implementation did not deliver enough value, because content was typically the same as in the print version, and because much of the material was being syndicted by the papers to other publishers or was not protected with DRM technologies to exclude use by others.
I believe the earth gets warmer, and I also believe the earth gets cooler, and I think history points out that it does that and that the idea that man through the production of CO2 which is a trace gas in the atmosphere and the manmade part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all of the other factors.
It seems to me that literature is giving way a little bit to the immediacy of other diversions, other forms of entertainment. What will it be in fifty years? I don't know. Will there be printed books? Probably, but I'm not sure. There's always going to be literature, though. I believe that. I think literature has a way of getting deep into people and being essential. Literature has its own powers.
In a different moment, in the 60s and 70s, I did believe we were going to succeed - that we were going to create a revolution, that America was going to be a completely transformed nation state and that there would be an amazingly different set of beliefs; that this country would reflect. And I thought that that was the fulfillment of the American democratic dream and I believed in it passionately.
Eating and sleeping are not like loving and breathing. Washing is not like eating and sleeping. Believing is like breathing and loving. Religion can be believing, it can be like breathing, it can be like loving, it can be like eating or sleeping, it can be like washing, it can be something to fill up a place when someone has lost out of them a piece that it was not natural for them to have in them.
There would be no one there to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistance with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
My life is one long daily, hourly record of answered prayer. For physical health, for mental overstrain, for guidance given marvelously, for errors and dangers averted, for enmity to the Gospel subdued, for food provided at the exact hour needed, for everything that goes to make up life and my poor service. I can testify, with a full and often wonder-stricken awe, that I believe God answers prayer.
I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure --will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets, to the stars, and beyond, carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage --and his noble essential decency. This I believe with all my heart.
I esteem his understanding and subtlety highly, but I consider that they have been put to ill use in the greater part of his work, where the author studies things of little use or when he builds on the improbable principle of attraction. Writing about Newton's Principia. Huygens had some time earlier indicated he did not believe the theory of universal gravitation, saying it 'appears to me absurd.'
I don't believe in having to show anybody anything. I just do my work. You know, making a living as an actor is such a rarity on earth. It's like making a living as a painter. So I look at different opportunities in the same way as Jack Nicholson, who said once, "Keep popping up in different holes. That's what you want to do: Just keep popping up in different holes." That made a lot of sense to me.
Modern education is competitive, nationalistic and separative. It has trained the child to regard material values as of major importance, to believe that his nation is also of major importance and superior to other nations and peoples. The general level of world information is high but usually biased, influenced by national prejudices, serving to make us citizens of our nation but not of the world.
Most people believe that great leaders are distinguished by their ability to give compelling answers. This profound book shatters that assumption, showing that the more vital skill is asking the right questions…. Berger poses many fascinating questions, including this one: What if companies had mission questions rather than mission statements? This is a book everyone ought to read—without question.
Well I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And, you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman.
I take facts about reasons to be fundamental in two ways. First, I believe that facts about reasons are not reducible to or analyzable in terms of facts of other kind, such as facts about the natural world. Second, I believe that reasons are the fundamental elements of the normative domain, and other normative notions, such as goodness and moral right and wrong can be explained in terms of reasons.
The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy - a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting "Sieg Health" and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind.
What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophesy or as poesy...should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open up new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth.
I need to know you believe me when I say I love you. That is all." "I believe everything you say," Tessa said with a smile, her hands creeping doen from his waist to his weapons belt. Her fingers closed on the hilt of the dagger, and she yanked it from the belt, smiling as he looked down at her in surprise. "After all," she said, "you weren't lying about the tattoo of the dragon of Wales, were you?
Can I get a lock for my tent? Bears can't unzip tents, Lana. Well, chainsaw psychos who wander the woods looking for young girls all alone to chop up into pieces can. There are no chainsaw psychos! I can't believe you've never been camping. It's safe, Lana. I promise. Easy for you to say. You'll be snuggled up safely in the arms of Beau Vincent. I'm more than positive he could take on a black bear.
In the mirrors of the many judgments, my hands are the color of blood. I sometimes fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils; and on that great Day of which the prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on the day the world is utterly cleansed of evil, then I too will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Until then, I will not wash my hands nor let them hang useless.
When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are. When I have a thought about you, that’s something I’ve created. I’ve turned you into an idea. In a certain sense, if I have an idea about you that I believe, I’ve degraded you. I’ve made you into something very small. This is the way of human beings, this is what we do to each other.
We think the problem is out there, when the problem is really in here - who we are and how we experience the world around us. The acoustic ecologist listens, as the primary sense, to the world around us, and I believe that they have a significant contribution to make to all environmental groups who think that they're solving environmental problems, when we're actually all on a spiritual pilgrimage.
In two weeks, despite these notes, I shall no longer believe in what I am experiencing now. One must leave behind a trace of this journey which memory forgets. One must, when this is impossible, write or draw without responding to the romantic solicitations of pain, without enjoying suffering like music, tieing a pen to one's foot if need be, helping the doctors who can learn nothing from laziness.
Twenty-six years ago the highest court in this land did an incredible thing. They issued a Supreme Court decision that really boils down to one simple and profoundly evil idea: They said that our unborn children have no rights that the rest of us are bound to respect. And when they made that decision they unleashed on America an unbelievable event that has undermined who we are and what we believe.
Just because they broke the law doesn't mean they're condemned forever to a twilight status. So, I think that most Americans, if these people who have come illegally, as long as they pay back taxes, pay a fine, learn English and get behind everybody else, that's a key element of it. And most Americans now realize we can't have 11 million people sit in the twilight - the shadows of America, forever.
Religious faith is the only area of discourse where immunity through conversation is considered noble . It's the only area of our lives where someone can win points for saying, "There's nothing that you can do to change my mind and I'm taking no state of the world ultimately into account in believing what I believe. There's nothing to change about the world that would cause me to revise my beliefs.
The Holy Spirit is the immediate source of all holiness. He is entirely sincere, and perfect in love. He is generous. He is pure in heart, free from selfishness, and never swerves from the path of duty. He is deep like a fountain. He sends forth his virtues in due season. He speaks, and men believe him; he acts, and men are gladdened by him. He possesses all heavenly virtues. He is one with Heaven.
Berta Caceres was a Lenca Indian activist well-known in her country, shot in her home. She was not only known in Honduras, she was one of the world's best-known environmentalists and had recently opposed plans for a dam on a river considered sacred by the Lenca. Honduran police have said they are investigating the murder as a botched robbery, but many of her colleagues believe Caceres was targeted.
Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove. And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion.
I believe that we have free will. I believe we get the chance to make choices in our lives. Not everything is set in stone from the moment we're born. We choose our destiny, our ultimate fate. But I also think that we don't realize the choices we've made until after we make them. We're racing down a freeway, only to realize we've missed all the exits, and the only direction we can go is dead ahead.
Who cares what the color means? How do you know what he meant to say? I mean, did he leave another book called "Symbolism in My Books?" If he didn't, then you could just be making all of this up. Does anyone really think this guy sat down and stuck all kinds of hidden meanings into his story? It's just a story.... But I think you are making all of this symbolism stuff up. I don't believe any of it.
There are moments in our lives when we summon the courage to make choices that go against reason, against common sense and the wise counsel of people we trust. But we lean forward nonetheless because, despite all risks and rational argument, we believe that the path we are choosing is right and best thing to do. We refuse to be bystanders, even if we do not know exactly where our actions will lead.
When an almond tree became covered with blossoms in the heart of winter, all the trees around it began to jeer. 'What vanity,' they screamed, 'what insolence! Just think, it believes it can bring spring in this way!' The flowers of the almond tree blushed for shame. 'Forgive me, my sisters,' said the tree. 'I swear I did not want to blossom, but suddenly I felt a warm springtime breeze in my heart.