John Kramer Quotes

John F Kennedy (President Elect) was at the White house in order to confer with his predecessor Dwight Eisenhower. He was told to wait while the President of the United States of America attended to some necessary items. After a time, John was escorted into the Oval Office, and he found himself directly in front of the out-going president. So it was that the conversation between two of the most powerful men on earth began.

To be free, you must think. There is no way to follow blindly and to be free.

The people’s silence is a tyrant’s greatest advocate. The less captives talked, the less they knew; the less they knew, the more they feared; and the more they feared, the more easily others could manipulate them to their own ends, the more easily the captives could be controlled.

If you're good at anticipating the human mind. it leaves nothing to chance. | أذا كنت جيداً في معرفة طريقة تفكير البشر. لن يبقي شئ للحظ

One of mankind’s greatest sins is inaction in the face of injustice.

Oh, yes, there will be blood

Every manmade disaster begins when one man thinks for another. However benevolent they begin, the ultimate outcome is tyranny.

Some people are anchored to this world by their feet, others by their fears.

Every decision is easy once you make it. The important thing is to think carefully, make your decision, and then work to make your choice the right one. That is the secret to a happy life. There are very few wrong decisions in life, but very few people who are willing to make the effort it takes to make their decisions the right ones.

Those who do not appreciate life do not deserve life | من هم لا يقدرون الحياة ... لا يستحقونها

All of my work has been leading to this

Public awareness is the equinox of tyranny’s rise; once one man learns of another’s captivity, he will act to free him. It is the best and most certain part of man’s nature.

You must meet death in order to be reborn.

Too much reason limits man to the physical world and blinds his imagination to the greater things that may be. But too much faith blinds him from curing the human suffering in this world. Men with too much faith accept suffering; they expect it and even seek it out.

I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold… These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier. Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do — and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are. The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there—all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed. That's how I want to be defined: as one of the men who fought the war.

The pursuit of goodness leads to greatness, but the pursuit of greatness, whether by a man or a nation, leads to ruin…. [G]ood men build; great men destroy. They destroy because they try to control something other than themselves and that always leads to destruction.

God gives you everything you need. You just have to look around for it, and it will be there.

We are all terminally mortal, but looking after each other will help us to become part of the immortal divine.

She who follows another’s course, finds a sure path to her own remorse.

Discontent comes from two sources alone: Not having dreams, or not pursuing the ones you have. No one has ever died sorry who tried to turn a wish into a memory.

When there is a crisis, let your heart pray, but let your hands work.

Humanity is not that difficult to understand; it is inhumanity that I cannot decipher.

Ignorance has one virtue: persistence. It will insist through dogged persistence on leading others to follow its vision no matter how misguided. Ignorance will drive the world to the brink of failure and catastrophe and beyond into the abyss with arrogance and anger because wisdom is often too polite to fight. Wisdom doesn’t like to impose its will, but that is all ignorance understands—force over free will and choice. Sooner or later the world comes to its senses, but oh the damage that has been done.

Religion is such an icky, sticky thing, full of tortuous—well, everything. Why is it so essential for man to be forced, for that is what religion relies on, force, to believe in anything but himself? And this is what John Winthrop should represent for us: the utter disdain he and Puritanism have for the self, for the human, for the human being.

Most people are so ungrateful to be alive | أكثر الناس غير ممتنين لكونهم أحياء

Gold is cold. The only warmth it has we give to it.

There is no shame in ignorance and failing; there is only shame in not being willing to learn and repeating the same errors over again.

Every war, every plague is God’s judgment. But every man who rises up to stop the wars and the plagues is God’s instrument. Human action is God’s will, not blind indifference in the face of suffering.

The surviving human beings there could do nothing but wait for the end to come. They chose different ways to live out their final days. That was the plot.** It was a dark movie offering no hope of salvation. (Though, watching it, Aomame reconfirmed her belief that everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.) ** On the Beach, the 1959 movie, director: Stanley Kramer, writer: John Paxton, starring: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire & Anthony Perkins. On the Beach, the 1957 novel, writer: Nevil Shute.

It was no accident that one of the first things God asked of Adam was for him to name the animals he saw around him. Why do you suppose God asked man to do that? Because once you have a name, you have the beginning of understanding, and once you have understanding, you lose fear. God didn’t want man to be fearful. He wanted man to be brave.

NED: I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E. M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, john Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjöld . . . These are not invisible men.

Catastrophe alone sparks man’s salvation. I don’t mean in the religious sense, although I guess it is appropriate there, too, because believers agree that salvation comes only after death. It is part of the human near-tragedy that we learn more from loss than from gain. Gain binds us until we stumble and fall into that black pit then we find the spirit of understanding and truth. And if we fall far enough and still persist, we find our salvation.

Korie: Jase lives right across the street from us, and he and his wife, Missy, have three kids: Reed, Cole, and Mia. Jase and Missy like to joke that our oldest son, John Luke, is like Kramer from Seinfeld. On nights when we’re not cooking at our house, John Luke busts through their front door as soon as he sees the dining room light go on to join them for dinner. He seems to know exactly when Missy pulls the rolls out of the oven. Our baby girl, Bella, and their daughter, Mia, are great friends. We say Mia is like the ghost of our house. She appears in our house at all times. You’ll turn around in your recliner, and she’ll be standing there. As soon as we pull in the driveway, she’s in our house, waiting to play with Bella. Our entire neighborhood is actually family. My parents are next door, along with four aunts and uncles and two grandparents. That’s the absolute best thing about where we live. It’s all about family.

Take liberties you shouldn’t and you’ll find your liberties are taken from you.

There is no success where there are no secrets.

As’ is the most difficult word in a Christian’s life. We have to forgive 'as' we want to be forgiven.

The smallest act of compassion can save a soul, perhaps your own.

A full heart has more room than an empty one.

This is what evil does; it makes choices for others in the name of religion, in the name of government, in the name of community, in the name of personal gain, that these individuals are best able to make for themselves.

Man must be free or he will not survive.

Not by prayers alone will a captive be freed, but by another man’s prayers matched by his deeds.

In politics and passion, perception is reality.

Someone can speak with all the sincerity in the world, but with no truth.