Quotable Quotes

Quotable quotes are coins rubbed smooth by circulation.

Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

People who repeatedly attack your confidence and self-esteem are quite aware of your potential, even if you are not.

Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book.

In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who says there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University, page 214)

Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.

Sometimes people with low self-esteem will try to punish you for caring about them.

I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me.

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture. --The Fruit Hunters

Never delay kissing a pretty girl or opening a bottle of whiskey.

Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens.

Always make your future bigger than your past.

Pleasure is an attitude, not a person or place.   —Diary 6, pg. 52

Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for.

Person 1: "Stay back....I have a demon inside of me." Person 2: "Let me get closer...I have a hell inside me where your demons can live." (from Dark Winter, #2 - out Halloween 2014)

To paraphrase the very quotable Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, in the future there will be two types of jobs: people who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do. Wall

A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.

It is better to be quotable than to be honest.

Burying your head in the sand does not make you invisible it only leads to suffocation.

Politics is for the moment and equation is for eternity.

The problem with open-mindedness is that it can become empty-mindedness

Some people are born with a fire inside them. The will to succeed. It isn’t a learned behavior. It’s just some unknown biological factor that makes them try harder.

quote Quotable Quote “Mimpi-mimpi kamu, cita-cita kamu, keyakinan kamu, apa yang kamu mau kejar, biarkan ia menggantung, mengambang 5 centimeter di depan kening kamu. Jadi dia nggak akan pernah lepas dari mata kamu. Dan kamu bawa mimpi dan keyakinan kamu itu setiap hari, kamu lihat setiap hari, dan percaya bahwa kamu bisa. Apa pun hambatannya, bilang sama diri kamu sendiri, kalo kamu percaya sama keinginan itu dan kamu nggak bisa menyerah. Bahwa kamu akan berdiri lagi setiap kamu jatuh, bahwa kamu akan mengejarnya sampai dapat, apapun itu, segala keinginan, mimpi, cita-cita, keyakinan diri.. Biarkan keyakinan kamu, 5 centimeter mengambang di depan kening kamu. Dan… sehabis itu yang kamu perlu cuma kaki yang akan berjalan lebih jauh dari biasanya, tangan yang akan berbuat lebih banyak dari biasanya, mata yang akan menatap lebih lama dari biasanya, leher yang akan lebih sering melihat ke atas, lapisan tekad yang seribu kali lebih keras dari baja, dan hati yang akan bekerja lebih keras dari biasanya, serta mulut yang akan selalu berdoa.. Keep our dreams alive, and we will survive..

Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild.

I cannot live with someone who can't live without me.

I've never written a quote I feel would be suitable for my gravestone. Wouldn't it be ironic if it were this one? Oh, and could you pull a few weeds while you're here?

The future begins today.

I will love you until you run out of reasons to not love me, And then, I will love you a little more.

If only religion were an opiate. No known narcotic rots the brain so fast.

I don't cry. Unfortunately, I seem rather short of tears, so my sorrows have to stay inside me.

If it isn't urgent, worry about it later

Blurbs don’t work anymore!” was another. “You should make sure that the quotable lines of dialogue in your book never exceed a hundred and forty characters!” seemed at best debatable.

The whole point about corruption in politics is that it can't be done, or done properly, without a bipartisan consensus.

Of what value is your life, unless you are willing to sacrifice it for those you love?

Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.

A professional headshot in front of a bookshelf says you're an intellectual. A professional headshot peeking though a bookshelf says you're probably under a restraining order.

Aphrodite is about love and beauty. Being loving. Spreading beauty. Good friends. Good times. Good deeds.

Think of this as a short book composed entirely of what I hoped would be a long book's quotable passages.

my personal life philosophy is always to assume the worst, then you’re never disappointed. BAM! Highlight that previous sentence, baby! It’ll be one of many quotable life-nuggets you’ll be able to pull from this thing.

Out of the cradle onto the dry land here it is standing: atoms with consciousness; matter with curiosity. Stands at the sea wonders at wondering: I a universe of atoms an atom in the universe.

If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the "peace movement".

The more I get to know men, the more I love dogs.

Well, aren't you just saying it's better to be neurotic, sensitive, and miserable than unimaginative, adjusted and content? Is it really better?

A broken heart can be as lethal as a bullet to the brain.

Look lak we done run our conversation from grass roots tuh pine trees.

In the absence of a formally agreed, worldwide dictionary definition of 'Quotography' (in 2016), here are my two cents worth: 'Quotography is the art of pairing unique quotations with complementary images in order to express thought-provoking ideas, challenging concepts, profound sentiments'.

I am an African. I am white. I, in my humble way, and others in their much more brave way, have earned that right.

A steadfast heart does not stray from the path.

You want weapons? We’re in a library. Books! Best weapons in the world. This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have.’ THE DOCTOR, TOOTH AND CLAW

In books, that which is most generally interesting is what comes home to the most cherished private experience of the greatest number. It is not the book of him who has travelled the farthest over the surface of the globe, but of him who has lived the deepest and been the most at home.

Happiness is not to be found at the bottom of a bottle or from the tip of a needle; it is not to be found amidst a cloud of smoke or within a sugar-coated pill. If you look for it in these places, you will find naught but despair.

The only people truly bound by campaign promises are the voters who believe them.

I don't make jokes, I just watch the government and report the facts.

When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death—ourselves. —EDA LESHAN

Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.

The more you care, the more you fear.

There are those who will resent you for not being confined by their limitations.

The problem with communication…is the illusion that is has been accomplished.

Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen.

She'd make them wish they were never Alison DiLaurentis's friends in the first place. She didn't know how, and she didn't know when, but at least she had one person she could count on to help her carry it out. Together, they were going to make it happen. Even if it killed her.

You don't say 'they all do it' unless you know you've been doing it too.

A desert is a place without expectation.

If you ask, 'What happens when we die? Why do we die?' you are asking, 'Why do we live?

You can't change a regime on the basis of compassion. There's got to be something harder.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves." -Will Rogers

Life is difficult and those who make us laugh are angels.

As we live in an insane world major, maybe it's time we gave insane solutions a chance.

Sarcasm is a manifestation of anger, and anger can make you the puppet of your opponents.

Only by fully experiencing fear, can you ever hope to control it.

Generally it must be stated that realpolitik has been better at dividing than at ruling. Take it as a whole since Kissinger called on the Shah in 1972, and see what the harvest has been.

The books we read help to shape who we are. Reading offers us, as children, our first independence- allowing us to travel far beyond the confines of our immediate world. Books introduce us to great figures in history, narratives that stir our spirit, fictions that tug us out of ourselves and into the lives of a thousand others, and visions of every era through which human beings have lived. And in the process of stretching who we are, books also connect us to all others- of our own or previous times- who have read what we've read. In the community of readers, we instantly become linked to those who share our love for specific characters or passages. A well-composed book,' says Caroline Gordon, 'is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.

Do not dismiss the words of the old; they possess wisdom, which comes only with age, and often speak of things that the young are too immature to understand.

Control over the production and distribution of oil is the decisive factor in defining who rules whom in the Middle East.

I respect those who say that the United States should simply withdraw from the Middle East, but I don't respect them for anything but their honesty.

Death is really the mystery of life, isn't it?

It is a rule of life that we eventually become victims of the evil we do to others.

With what infinite & unwearied expectation and proclamations the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before.

Cries for justice are often the bitter laments of the vengeful.

[An example of misattribution:] If you don’t know the source of a quote, you can always make it sound better by attributing it to me. — Mark Twain

All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.” –

Normally, anything done in the name of 'the kids' strikes me as either slightly sentimental or faintly sinister—that redolence of moral blackmail that adheres to certain charitable appeals and certain kinds of politician. (Not for nothing is baby-kissing the synonym for public insincerity.)

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.   —D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study, pg. 20

As some heads cannot carry much wine, so it would seem that I cannot bear so much society as you can. I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don’t get enough of it this year I shall cry all the next.

The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.

Be yourself” is about the worst advice you can give some people. —THOMAS L. MASSON, AMERICAN AUTHOR

Any critique of realism must begin with a sober assessment of the horrors of peace.

Mightier than the sword, the pen may be; but the tongue is mightiest of all.

I feel the deepest, heartfelt pity for any adult who has never been in love.

What if, as an act of worship, creating something meant healing and restoration took place instead of pain and frustration?

The point of protesting about 'moral equivalence' is surely not to blur moral choices on ‘our side’. Is it?

The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head.

I would be guilty only if I were innocent of working to destroy racism in my country.

I'm an atheist. I wouldn't even call myself an agnostic. I am an atheist.

She spoke with all the authority vested in her by her flea-market prayer beads and her lotus-flower tramp stamp.

Liberty Valance is a cancer on this fair town. He's the cancer and I'm the, uh...what cures cancer?

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

You may find the worst enemy or best friend in yourself. —ENGLISH PROVERB

Those who do not care, escape the anguish of mourning but never know the delights of love. The meaning of life forever eludes them.

It's always good to be underestimated.

We Americans are not God’s covenant people. America has, in any event, no biblical guarantee of perpetuity.

It is a very remarkable and significant fact that though no man is quite well or healthy yet every one believes practically that health is the rule & disease the exception.

Communists are the last optimists.

Quotable quote

Nietzsche wrote, "One often contradicts an opinion when it is really only the tone in which it has been presented that is unsympathetic". Or, as The Dude put it: "You're not wrong, Walter - you're just an asshole". Less quotable, and often overlooked, is Walter's response: "Okay, then." The Walters of the world don't mid being assholes; what matters to them is being right.

Take this neat little equation here. It tells me all the ways an electron can make itself comfortable in or around an atom. That's the logic of it. The poetry of it is that the equation tells me how shiny gold is, how come rocks are hard, what makes grass green, and why you can't see the wind. And a million other things besides, about the way nature works.

Their findings about who these people are should sound familiar by now: "high tolerance for ambiguity"; "systems thinkers"; "additional technical knowledge from peripheral domains"; "repurposing what is already available"; "adept at using analogous domains for finding inputs to the invention process"; "ability to connect disparate pieces of information in new ways"; "synthesizing information from many different sources"; "they appear to flit among ideas"; "broad range of interests"; "they read more (and more broadly) than other technologists and have a wider range of outside interests"; "need to learn significantly across domains"; "Serial innovators also need to communicate with various individuals with technical expertise outside of their own domain.

Johnny Flora "The Spell of Zalanon" > quotable quote (edit) "Every page of a great novel should be crafted like a beautiful melody, to linger on long after the music stops playing." — Johnny Flora "The Spell of Zalanon

I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits.

The prejudiced are easily manipulated.

Thought is more dangerous than you think.

Rice is great when you’re hungry and you want two thousand of something.”     —Mitch Hedberg

The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life.

If everything isn't black and white I say why the hell not.

A trip to nostalgia now and then is good for the spirit, as long as you don’t set up housekeeping. —DAN BARTOLOVIC KPUG-KNWR, Bellingham, Wasington.

Nothing that would invent a mosquito is worthy of anything but hate.

doesn’t hurt to be optimistic. You can always cry later.

It is unfortunate that for some, kindness is an unwarranted expenditure, compassion an avoidable weakness, and love an unnecessary gamble.

I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last.

The silence rings—it is musical & thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible—I hear the unspeakable.

When you repay evil with evil, you become evil.

When people speak, listen carefully and pay particular attention to what they are not saying.

Where there is great love there is great harmony of thought.

After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well. Remark

Mirror, mirror on the wall," She caught Beu's gaze in the reflection. "Who's the handsomest man of all?

Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life." "If God doesn't like the way I live, let him tell me, not you." "Out of convicted rapists, 57 percent admitted to reading pornography; 95 percent admitted to reading the Bible.

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.”     —CARL SAGAN

. . . If you really care about a serious cause or a deep subject, you may have to be prepared to be boring about it.” [Letters to a Young Contrarian (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 122]

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

Every day one reads meretricious babble about 'globalization' and the abolition of frontiers, most of it amounting to little more than celebration of the worldwide availability of Wheel of Fortune.

The friends of Galtieri, Saddam Hussein, Mullah Omar and Milosevic make unconvincing defenders of humanitarian values, and it can be seen that their inept and sometimes inane arguments lack either the principles or the seriousness that are required in such debates.

Sensuality is beautiful, and dominance and submission in the right context is a passionate art. A muse which ignites the flame of femininity, which enraptures both partners in complete euphoria, magnifying both the masculine and the feminine in one tantalizing unit.

Those who worry about the treatment of animals are often accused of sentimentality or of putting the plight of beasts before the immense problems of humanity. But it is quite rare to find a humanitarian who is indifferent to animals and surprisingly common to find that those who belittle animal rights are the same ones who find the pain of humans easy to bear.

I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one? Cosmic

Hey, Captain Neckbeard! Less talky-talky, more worky-worky!” Wednesday shouted rudely down at the man who had been changing the tire. She wasn’t planning on taking shit from a tow truck driving hick today or any other day.

If one purges all subsequent additions from the original teachings of the Prophets and Christianity, especially those of the priests, one is left with a doctrine that is capable of curing all the social ills of humankind. Statement

The interview went well. I found him warm but not eager, friendly but slightly impersonal, and he answered all questions concerning music with an engaging straightforwardness. Nonmusical questions he either evaded with the skill of an expert, or ignored, apparently from lack of interest in the subjects broached. Already he had the gift of fielding impertinent questions by offering quotable evasions instead. For instance, I remember asking him if he was a religious person. He replied that he didn't want to talk about religion. "Why not?" I pursued. "Because my music is so very odd already that I see no reason to make myself sound any odder.

Jealousy Is An Emotion I’ve Never Felt.Envy Maybe.Like I’d Be Envious Of Say, Rihanna Who Is So Young, So Cool, She’s Done Amazing Work.But I’ve Never Felt The Need To Be Jealous.Maybe, Because I’ve Been Lucky Enough To Have Contentment In What I Do.

I believe with all my heart that standing up for America means standing up for the God who has so blessed our land. We need God’s help to guide our nation through stormy seas. But we can’t expect Him to protect America in a crisis if we just leave Him over on the shelf in our day-to-day living. Speech, New Orleans, November 16, 1982

My dad. I don’t really know where to begin other than to say he simply wasn’t a “dad.” He was this mythical creature. Part unicorn, part violent storm. And although he separated from my mom when she was pregnant, I somehow knew to forgive him. It’s as if I could grasp as a kid that this horse was so wild, he couldn’t be pinned down, and even if he could I am not sure you would want him around. This was the kind of man you saw in small doses. They were memorable. Sometimes dark, sometimes humorous, sometimes quotable.

There is no conceit equal to false modesty, and there is no politics like antipolitics, just as there is no worldliness compare with ostentatious antimaterialism.

Everyone has a right to be stupid. Some people abuse the privilege. —JOSEPH STALIN

It must be horny douchebag day,” she mumbled under her breath as she slid the bag’s strap up on her shoulder.

The creative act is not pure.

I opened the telegram and said, 'He's dead.

Quotes are echos of voices transporting wisdom, humor, and love. Returning again to the human condition, fleeting once more as a dove.

The best cure for a stick up your butt is a dog to play fetch with.

Laughter is much better than anger.

It is difficult to learn anything worthwhile if you only listen to those who share your views.

My name is John Wayne. When I was a kid I had ring worm. Hell, I was more worm than boy for a couple of years.

If you're with someone, but you're constantly worried about what they think of you, you're with the wrong person.

And so he plays his part; the sixth age shifts'... I usually have trouble with that phrase.

The contrarian dogma is simple and easy to understand: “Whatever is popular is wrong,” as Oscar Wilde proclaimed at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.

Every advance in human civilization, from the spread of science and literacy to the abolition of slavery, has had to meet the objection that it violated God-given laws.

What happens in you is more important than what happens to you.

Our brains are our command centers. Every thought and belief pattern we hold to be true within our core is accepted and implemented by our bodies.

those who call for ‘English Only’ believe themselves to be speaking English when they are mounting a mediocre patois,

To try is to accept the possibility of failure. Simply do.

The test of a well-conducted argument is not its ability to convert or to persuade. It lies in its capacity to refine or to redefine the positions of the other side.

One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends is that three out of four murders are committed by people who know the victim. —GEORGE CARLIN, AMERICAN COMEDIAN

Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.

The ‘environment’ is not the gift of entrepreneurs, risk takers, or investors. It is the common, inherited property of humanity.

No man can be called friendless when he has God and the companionship of good books.

Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself.

Love is a rare and precious thing. Squander it at your peril.

The selfish are seldom secure.

To dispense knowledge without moral guidance would be grossly irresponsible.

I am of the nature of Stone. It takes the summer’s sun to warm it.

Modesty isn’t always a virtue; it can be a hindrance; a careful measure of personal pride builds confidence and ensures success.

As long as the peace-makers are armed with assault rifles, it's highly unlikely we'll ever have peace.

The weak will try to convince you that weakness is strength.

I love listening to the sound of your heart beating, the comforting memory of a cuddling womb.

A little more compassion and a little less anger is what most of us need.

If we would aim at perfection in any thing, simplicity must not be overlooked.

Science is a long history of learning how not to fool ourselves.

The deficit, then, is not the difference between what America spends and what America earns; it is, to a striking extent, the difference between what the rich owe and what the rich pay.

Wow. This place looks classy. The smell of fertilizer and rot is really in this season. Remind me, what are we doing here?” she asked looking at him with a coy smile. “Did we come for bait?

There is, and there always has been, an unusually high and consistent correlation between the stupidity of a given person and that person’s propensity to be impressed by the measurement of I.Q.

Guns, double-crosses, hitmen… I can get used to a lot of things, but I’m never going to get used to sleeping where apocalypse bugs mate,” Wednesday said, walking into the room looking around. She dropped her Birkin on the floor and heard something scuttling behind the cheap plastic wood print veneer covered dresser. She turned to face Alvin, her head cocked to the side. “Seriously. I’m not saying five-star… I’m saying go on Expedia and find a place that actually has stars… any stars.

The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE, IN AEQUANIMITAS, 368.

No fairer destiny could be allotted to any physical theory than that it should of itself point out the way to the introduction of a more comprehensive theory, in which it lives on as a limiting case.

The measure of an education,” you write elsewhere, “is that you acquire some idea of the extent of your ignorance.” And that’s all that “agnosticism” really means: it is an acknowledgment of ignorance.

The Law of Man is inferior to the Law of God for the mere fact that man is held responsible if he were to unintentionally breach it even if he were not aware of the existence of such man-made statutes.

But you are involved in the world, and your actions have consequences for other people, and if you don't recognize that, then that's the supreme kind of cruelty. Everyone shares someone else's fate to some extent.

Some people say it’s a sign of intelligence to be able to keep two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time, and it can be a sign of intelligence. It can also be a sign of stupidity, or of unwillingness to make up the mind.

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.

Anonymous > Quotes > Quotable Quote “I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don’t know where it will take me, because I don’t know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I’m compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social centre, for it’s here that I meet others. But I’m neither impatient nor common. I leave who will to stay shut up in their rooms, sprawled out on beds where they sleeplessly wait, and I leave who will to chat in the parlours, from where their songs and voices conveniently drift out here to me. I’m sitting at the door, feasting my eyes and ears on the colours and sounds of the landscape, and I softly sing – for myself alone – wispy songs I compose while waiting.

The torpedo launch console has big square plastic buttons—Flood Tube, Open Shuttle, Ready to Fire—that flash red or green, like something Q would have built into James Bond’s Aston Martin. The missile compartment has similarly retro-looking panels of buttons. They provided the setup for one of the more quotable things Murray said to me—a line that, were fewer precautions in place, could have joined “Houston, we’ve had a problem” or “Watch this” in the pantheon of understated taglines for calamity: “I wouldn’t lean on that.

. One of the most idiotic jeers against animal lovers is the one about their preferring critters to people. As a matter of observation, it will be found that people who ‘care’—about rain forests or animals, miscarriages of justice or dictatorships— are, though frequently irritating, very often the same people. Whereas those who love hamburgers and riskless hunting and mink coats are not in the front ranks of Amnesty International.

Eden Ashe > Quotes > Quotable Quote(edit) “She shifted in his pocket, pressing her back against his chest. "It's iron." Instead of walking into the elevator, he glanced down at her. If he kept craning his neck this way, he was going to have a hell of a nasty headache by the time he made it home. Not to mention the looks he was getting from his taff for talking to himself, he was going to end up in a psych hold if this kept up....” "We're on the tenth floor. I'm not taking the damn stairs...." "...I'm not talking to myself. I have a fairy in my pocket who's afraid of elevators.

My heart is the expert, my head, the conspiracy theorist. Neither one is always right, but I know which one I’ll be listening to.

IRISH BLESSING   And may I conclude with a little Irish blessing – although, some suggest it’s a curse: May those who love us, love us. And those who don’t love us, may God turn their hearts. And if He doesn’t turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we’ll know them by their limping. Speech on Administrative Goals to Senior Presidential Appointees, September 8, 1987

If the president summons the other party to legislate laws to guarantee the best outcome of his executive mandates, then he has every right to do so and the other party must comply and do the tasks which were assigned to them. However, if they refuse to do so, then they are directly responsible for the loopholes (and their consequences) which are present in previous legislation.

A. I want my readers to remember a book of mine after they’ve turned the last page, partly so they will want to read more from me, but also because I want them to feel that reading it was well worth their time. I guess I want a book that I write to be more than entertainment that is enjoyable for the moment but forgettable as the months go by. I don’t make a conscious effort to craft quotable prose when I write, but I do endeavor to pose questions and suggest insights that speak across the pages into a reader’s life. For me, that translates into a good reason for having read the book. I always remember a book more fully and longer if I’ve been so emotionally tugged that I find myself highlighting phrases I don’t want to forget. And I usually can’t wait for that author’s next book! Khaled Hosseini’s books are always like that for me. Q.

I got some funny reactions, a lot of irate reactions, as if I were somehow taking people's fun away from them. I have nothing against sports. I like to watch a good basketball game and that sort of thing. On the other hand, we have to recognise that the mass hysteria about spectator sports plays a significant role. First of all, spectator sports make people more passive, because you're not doing them; you're watching somebody doing them. Secondly, they engender jingoist and chauvinist attitudes, sometimes to quite an extreme degree. I saw something in the newspapers just a day or two ago about how high-school teams are now so antagonistic and passionately committed to winning at all costs that they had to abandon the standard handshake before or after the game. These kids can't even do civil things like greeting one another because they're ready to kill one another. It's spectator sports that engender those attitudes, particularly when they're designed to organise a community to be hysterically committed to their gladiators. That's very dangerous, and it has lots of deleterious effects.

Trickle-down economics "So long as power remains privately concentrated, everybody, everybody, has to be committed to one overriding goal, and that's to make sure that the rich folk are happy—because, unless they are, nobody else is going to get anything. So, if you're a homeless person sleeping in the streets of Manhattan, let's say, your first concern must be that the guys in the mansions are happy—because, if they're happy, then they'll invest, and the economy will work, and things will function, and then maybe something will trickle down to you somewhere along the line. But if they're not happy, everything's going to grind to a halt, and you're not even going to get anything trickling down.

Will Smith > Quotes > Quotable Quote “The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I'm not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there's two things: You're getting off first, or I'm going to die. It's really that simple, right? You're not going to out-work me. It's such a simple, basic concept. The guy who is willing to hustle the most is going to be the guy that just gets that loose ball. The majority of people who aren't getting the places they want or aren't achieving the things that they want in this business is strictly based on hustle. It's strictly based on being out-worked; it's strictly based on missing crucial opportunities. I say all the time if you stay ready, you ain't gotta get ready.

The term '20/20 vision' implies good if not perfect sight. May the advent of 2020 - a new year, a new decade - see a lifting of the fog which has recently blurred the edges of what can be described as 'acceptable political discourse', and in the process refocus voter attention on the clear need to demand from elected representatives, a display of basic decency and decorum in public life - both of which have been seriously lacking in the behaviour of some high profile politicians on both sides of the pond, on an eye-watering number of occasions. That indeed would be a sight for sore eyes.

It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for it’s own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know). A great many people do now seem think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, your jokes, and the birds song and the frosty sunrise.

What the above examples reveal is not a man prone to the faux pas, but a gentleman—strictly defined, by Hitchens, as “someone who is never rude except on purpose.” A spectacular instance of his gentlemanliness occurred during an appearance on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Unlike most guests, Hitchens did not try to flatter or pacify the audience. Instead, after being booed and jeered for pointing out the horrors of a nuclear Iran, he raised his middle finger and pointed it at them, while intoning, “Fuck you! Fuck you!” What this little episode demonstrated was not only his indifference to crowd opinion—impressive in itself—but also his binary nature: He has a large mind and a big mouth—neither of which ever seems to be closed. Whereas

Your life is not an episode of Skins. Things will never look quite as good as they do in a faded, sun-drenched Polaroid; your days are not an editorial from Lula. Your life is not a Sofia Coppola movie, or a Chuck Palahniuk novel, or a Charles Bukowski poem. Grace Coddington isn’t your creative director. Bon Iver and Joy Division don’t play softly in the background at appropriate moments. Your hysterical teenage diary isn’t a work of art. Your room probably isn’t Selby material. Your life isn’t a Tumblr screencap. Every word that comes out of your mouth will not be beautiful and poignant, infinitely quotable. Your pain will not be pretty. Crying till you vomit is always shit. You cannot romanticize hurt. Or sadness. Or loneliness. You will have homework, and hangovers and bad hair days. The train being late won’t lead to any fateful encounters, it will make you late. Sometimes your work will suck. Sometimes you will suck. Far too often, everything will suck - and not in a Wes Anderson kind of way. And there is no divine consolation - only the knowledge that we will hopefully experience the full spectrum - and that sometimes, just sometimes, life will feel like a Coppola film.