Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If someone says you are not capable or can't have something, keep pushing because you can. And it's not because you're special, but it's because everyone possesses the ability to be awesome. The reason people say, 'No, you can't,' 'God doesn't want you to,' or they make laws is because they know that you have that in you. And they are scared to lose their superior standing.
If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require.
The Danger of a Single Story”, which has resonated with me immensely every time I read it. “Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story, and to start with, “secondly.
The people of Ankh-Morpork had a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to entertainment, and while they were looking forward to seeing a dragon slain, they'd be happy to settle instead for seeing someone being baked alive in his own armour. You didn't get the chance every day to see someone baked alive in their own armour. It would be something for the children to remember.
I was with a real jerk after the first heartbreak, and once I did the prerequisite eating an entire cake and singing "All By Myself" in the shower, I realized that people treat you badly when you let them, and that I had to respect myself and not let anyone else treat me that way again. If someone really loves you, they are your biggest champion, not your biggest detractor.
We went to Comic-Con and there were people dressed up as the characters. There's a whole canon of Ninjago history that I didn't even know about until the process of making the movie had started. Especially at Comic-Con, I realized that people really, really care about this, and I hope they like it because it's meaningful to them. It did actually change my feelings about it.
There's an expression in life: "You can only make one first impression." And that first impression has to be spectacular. So, I wait, and let people see it when it's ready to go. It's not a set rule, but I think it's the better way of working. People will agree with you because of your track record, but you want people to like it because it's good, not because you found it.
If you cannot make moving pictures about yourself, your country and your culture, it's as if you do not exist anymore in this world of images we live in. Because now when we all switch on our smartphones or our iPads or our computers, it's all image and sound. All people and cultures must work to secure their place in the digital space. Cinema is also political in this way.
It's not what people do that scares me. It's what they hide. It's the secrets that keep us from bonding and create distrust. If we were more willing to accept each other's depravity we'd be more united, we'd be more honest. If you hide two things from me, I'll assume you're hiding a million. And I'll keep you at a distance. I'm not afraid of the evil in you. It's in me too.
In my opinion, mature political action is the type of action that that involves a program of re-education and information that will enable the black people in the black community to see the fruits that they should be receiving from the politicians who are over them and, thereby, they are then able to determine whether or not the politician is really fulfilling his function.
It is amazing how many of the horrors of the 20th century were a result of charismatic quacks misleading millions of people to their own doom. What is even more amazing is that, after a century that saw the likes of Hitler, Lenin and Mao, we still see no need to distrust charisma as a basis for choosing leaders, either in politics or in numerous organizations and movements.
Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group Groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together [is] surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.
The conversation should've been about middle class people. The conversation should've been about how to raise the minimum wage and strengthen Social Security. But then we started talking about this whole email stuff again. And now the outcome is that, you know, Donald Trump has somebody who he's looking at to put on his Cabinet who's a lobbyist to privatize Social Security.
I could've had moments when I could've said, "You know what? Let me make another film; this is taking a long time to get distributed." It can be difficult to stay passionate. You have to be that passionate and be prepared for it to get what it deserves. Make sure you have a really good team going in at the beginning and don't have people in your team that aren't there 100%.
Things like, people saying the new album would debut at number one on the Billboard Charts in the U.S. and I said, "No it's gonna be number Three." Because Number 3 is a very powerful number on the album. It's repeated quite often. Then it did chart an Number 3. Was it a coincidence you decide. If your in touch with your subconscious, you can really use it to your advantage
It's such a biblical posture in worship that speaks of reverence. If you look through the Bible, there's a whole host of people who faced up to the glory of God and found themselves facedown in worship. So the album weaves through a theme of reverence, wonder, and mystery in worship, things I feel we really need to grasp more of in our worship expressions. I know that I do!
Gossip is never fatal until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender makes a controversy. Gossip's a nasty thing, but it's sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhaps I should go wandering on lonely moors and barren shores. That is always a popular place for lunatics - in novels and plays at any rate. Perhaps wild England will make me mad.
We used to have adults who set standards, moral standards, cultural standards, legal standards. They were better than we were. They gave us something to aspire to. They were people that we described as having dignity and character. That's all gone now, particularly the upper levels of the Democrat Party. There isn't any of that kind of decency, dignity, character, morality.
I'd be very, very careful about falling prey to the things that liberals say about people, and that is rich people are automatically untrustworthy. They love to use class envy and they love to attack the whole notion of trickle-down economics by pointing out the rich are miserly and they don't share and they don't give and they don't... It's all a bunch of... It's not true.
I don't think about the audience, I don't think about what makes them happy, because there's no way for me to know. To try to think of what makes for entertainment is a very Japanese thing. The people who think like this are old-fashioned. They think of the audience as a mass, but in fact every person in the audience is different. So entertainment for everyone doesn't exist
There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase - the pursuit of happiness - is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.
When you look at the potential of such a zero-risk products as electronic cigarettes you need to understand what is the readiness of smokers to switch. That relates to public-health concerns, social pressure, concern for people around you and many other more subtle things. You cannot say that Indonesia is at the same level of readiness as the U.K, Western Europe or the U.S.
A while back there was this fad where a big star [would get] a producing credit and you'd ask around, and people were like, "No, they didn't produce, they just took the credit." I was flabbergasted. So when I started, people were weirded out by the fact that I was like, "How long is our prep? I'll come a week before that." They were like, "We're not shooting for six weeks."
My fans probably know what I had for breakfast that morning. And that's the cool part. And I respond to people, if they post on my blog, I'm like, "Oh, that's really cool you read that book, that fantasy series!" It's almost like they're my friends in a sense. There's less separation. They know me more as a human being with my flaws, versus some kind of actor on a pedestal.
I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence.
The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.
On the other side of the spectrum, you see someone like Donald Trump, who is using as the basis of his campaign political incorrectness. It's clearly intentional. He'd have to be a complete moron just to coincidentally insult Mexicans, and women, and disabled people, and Muslims. So clearly he's using it as a vote winner. But I think with comedians there's a responsibility.
Whoever sides with the revolutionary people is a revolutionary. Whoever sides with imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism is a counter-revolutionary. Whomever sides with the revolutionary people in words only but acts otherwise is a revolutionary in speech. Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense.
There is to me about this place a smell of rot, the smell of rot that ripe fruit makes. Nowhere, ever, have the hideous mechanics of birth and copulation and death -those monstrous upheavals of life that the Greeks call miasma, defilement- been so brutal or been painted up to look so pretty; have so many people put so much faith in lies and mutability and death death death.
We know that the African regimes, many African regimes have failed their people and many Africans want regime change, and there are a lot of African leaders who make promises but don't carry them out. I mean, the progress - I mean, it is noble for the rich countries to help Africa, but then the question is: What are African leaders themselves doing to help their own people?
Before the advent of Hitler or Stalin, who took their power from the German and the Russian people, measures were thrust upon the free legislatures of those countries to deprive the people of the possession and use of firearms, so that they could not resist the encroachments of such diabolical and vitriolic state police organizations as the Gestapo, the Ogpu, and the Cheka.
The solution to the nation's problems, depends on the true American achievers. It's people like you, playing by the rules and celebrating and continuing to remind people of the traditions and institutions that made this country great, who can re-create a society that is great once more. It's only by doing the right thing that this country is going to fix itself and survive.
In a way, the futile excuses many people use to cover their superstitions are demolished. They think it is enough to have some sort of religious fervor, however ridiculous, not realizing that true religion must be according to God's will as the perfect measure; that He can never deny Himself and is no mere spirit form to be changed around according to individual preference.
When you're looking for stories or movies usually the great stories are about people in their 30s or 40s because they've lived more life and they're usually accomplishing more incredible things. But when there's an interesting story about someone that's your age, you immediately - especially when you're younger - are like, "Wow that's crazy! There's not very many of these."
People are constantly trying to make an image for you. They`ll dress you up and tell you to pose a certain way and take all these pictures... they want a certain image, so they create that. And unless you`re spending a lot of time to create another image to counteract that image, theirs will win. So right now, I`m kind of dealing with a lot of false ideas of what I`m about.
Something I've learned over time, and trying to remind myself this week as I am back in New York and feeling pretty anxious, is that things always seem less dire when you're in the country than when you're outside. I don't exactly know why it is, except that people just have to get on with their life, so they do. And you don't have time to do anything other than keep going.
I think it is right for Canadians to be asked to show their faces when they're taking the oath. On revocation of citizenship, we do not let people who have criminal records, including convictions for terrorism, become either permanent residents or citizens. I think there is a limit beyond which someone has really cashed in their chips in terms of their allegiance to Canada.
The lobbying over China most favored nation trading status was disgusting. There's no way in hell that MFN would have passed in '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000 if all these companies hadn't come in flooding and making campaign contributions and ask for people's support. That drove the debate. Every year was the allure of corporate dollars flooding into members' bank accounts.
The digital world has allowed me a connection with my reader that I'd never had before. I didn't meet the people who read my material. The fan letters were mostly answered by professional people that'd done them for a living. And I didn't have any daily connection with their response to my work. I didn't have a relationship with my audience. And every artist should have it.
If I look at myself when I'm getting into the [God's] Word and just drinking Him [God] in, when I get to work, I'm looking for someone to love. I'm looking for people to encourage. I'm understanding that, hey, people are people. We're all wearing skin here. We all have our moments. I've already gotten what I need from Jesus and now I can just forgive and love and encourage.
Guns aren't just a tool of last resort. They're awesome. That's why people stroke them. And name them, and take pictures with them. You guys aren't just firearm enthusiasts — you're ammosexuals. And before you try and deny you have some sort of unnatural romantic relationship with your gun, consider this. You're taking it out to dinner! Because it completes you. Get a room.
What is the big deal about Eminem? Since when is offensive language a reason for being unpopular? I like the fact that Eminem is brash and angry and politically incorrect. At least he has an opinion. He's stirring things up. He's provoking a discussion. He's making people's blood boil. He's reflecting what's going on in society right now. That is what art is supposed to do.
That really sums up the strange bluntness that a really prime German interview can have. They're really interested in your cultural velocity in this way that I don't think people in the United States even necessarily think about alternative-rock bands. So it's not like we're against regular rock. We're not like a battling army shaking our weapons against The Rolling Stones.
Think bigger than society lets you think. And find mentors. My life is filled with people who knew me when I was 19 and had a horrible South African accent and bleach-blond hair and who believed in me in a way that was brutal. They were just unbelievable and consistent and smart. Find mentors who, every time you're with them, you're being schooled. Just absolutely schooled.
Andrew Creighton, who ran Europe for us and who now runs the company day-to-day, would always go to the people he would hire and say, "Look, I don't know what it is, but whatever this guy says comes true because he's got some sort of weird self-fulfilling-prophecy thing." And that's exactly right. The reason I was so bombastic or whatever was because you have to believe it.
I had found a new friend. The surprising thing is where I’d found him – not up a tree or sulking in the shade, or splashing around in one of the hill streams, but in a book. No one had told us kids to look there for a friend. Or that you could slip inside the skin of another. Or travel to another place with marshes, and where, to our ears, the bad people spoke like pirates.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay - that 'someone else' is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers' money.
We all need support and friendship, regardless of circumstances. But where do people turn when friends and family are simply no longer there, or can't help us through a difficult time, or need all our care and attention and can't give us any in return? Thank goodness for befriending projects, who help fill the empty spaces where care, support and a listening ear need to be.