Here we have the best Were Quotes from famous authors such as Barack Obama, RM, Robin Cook, Erykah Badu, Rudyard Kipling. Find the perfect quotation from our collection.
Now, as a nation, we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.
There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in. It was we who gave the perfect conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive.
Growing up in America, I experienced two puberties. The first opened me up to the possibilities of adulthood. The second reinforced that for someone like me – an immigrant, a minority, an Asian-American – there were limits.
I don’t feel like millions of people are wrong because they love who they love or they were born how they were born.
There were some great clinicians in the 20th century – great men. Freud was a genius; Jung was a genius, Carl Rogers was a genius – there’s a half-dozen psychologists of the 1950s and humanists of the 1960s.
In the 1950s and ’60s, America’s natural resources were in bad shape. Communities were so polluted that clouds of smog lingered over cities like Los Angeles. Rivers and lakes were filled with chemicals. In my hometown of Boston, the harbor was among the nation’s most polluted waterways.
Y’know, you can’t please all the people all the time… and last night, all those people were at my show.
It’s worth pointing out that conflicts between racially oppressed people often result from the fact that colonialism worked on divide and rule. Certain ethnic, religious, racial or indigenous groups were deliberately privileged over others in order to create a sense of investment in upholding the power structure.
As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.
Both my mom and dad were models.
If a projectile were deprived of the force of gravity, it would not be deflected toward the earth but would go off in a straight line into the heavens and do so with uniform motion, provided that the resistance of the air were removed.
If I weren’t doing what I’m doing today… I’d be traveling around the world on the back of a motorcycle.
The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.
I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn’t lived long enough to experience. That’s why I also believe in reincarnation, that we were put here with ideas to pass around.
I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.
We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in reality occurs. We have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present – deja vu.
We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.
The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.
If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.
The most terrifying moment in my life was October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I did not know all the facts – we have learned only recently how close we were to war – but I knew enough to make me tremble.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
I learned conservatism through my grandfather; I didn’t know that was the name. I didn’t know these were conservative principles. Starting his life on a sharecropping farm. Working tremendously hard. Five years old, picking cotton and laying tobacco out to dry on a farm, and today he now owns that farm.
I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn’t able to succeed at those institutions.
I knew at an early age I wanted to act. Acting was always easy for me. I don’t believe in predestination, but I do believe that once you get where ever it is you are going, that is where you were going to be.
He was a very strict father, which in a way has helped me to become who I am today. He never pampered me, as he wanted me to live a normal life. No film magazines were allowed at home, and we weren’t allowed to watch any movies.
Faith is an act of rational choice, which determines us to act as if certain things were true, and in the confident expectation that they will prove to be true.
Everything always looked better in black and white. Everything always looked as if it were the first time; there’s always more people in a black and white photograph. It just makes it seem that there were more people at a gig, more people at a football match, than with colour photography. Everything looks more exciting.
If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.
For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.
Before the palefaces came among us, we enjoyed the happiness of unbounded freedom and were acquainted with neither riches, wants, nor oppression.
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
There were many people who tried to insult me and never appreciated me in the beginning. The biggest platform for me I would say more than South Industry, I will say was ‘Bigg Boss’. They made me realise who I am and what all I can do in my life.
Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.
When you are laboring for others let it be with the same zeal as if it were for yourself.
In every age ‘the good old days‘ were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
Personally, I would not care for immortality in the least. There is nothing better than oblivion, since in oblivion there is no wish unfulfilled. We had it before we were born yet did not complain. Shall we whine because we know it will return? It is Elysium enough for me, at any rate.
Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.
Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.
See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.
Hot Lips changed a lot in eleven years. Initially, Margaret Houlihan behaved as though a man were the only thing that could complete her life, and she didn’t see what richness her life contained. She gained a lot of self-esteem through the years, and she came to realize that what she did, what she offered, was valuable.
Most patients enter a doctor‘s office or hospital as if it were a Mayan temple, representing an ancient and mysterious culture with no language in common with the visitor.
The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.
If I were in a room full of people, I’d rather be the person who is more interesting than the one who is wallpaper.
If you do what you were born to do, I think you will never grow old.
I’ve realized through the years that I just find happiness in other things, whether it’s my dogs or my friends or, like, looking at the sunset. So if I were to wish for something else, it would just to be happy all the time, to have a superpower of not letting things affect me, and to be true to who I am, always.
My dad’s cooking was magic in the kitchen. But eventually over the years, his personality changed and his ability to remember recipes failed. He became paranoid and thought people were stealing from him, when often he was just misplacing things.
The original ‘Hobbit‘ was never intended to have a sequel – Bilbo ‘remained very happy to the end of his days and those were extraordinarily long’: a sentence I find an almost insuperable obstacle to a satisfactory link.
Once there were two brothers: one ran away to sea, the other was elected Vice-President-and nothing was ever heard from either of them again.
I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.
Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.
My heroes are and were my parents. I can’t see having anyone else as my heroes.
A friend is, as it were, a second self.
My teenage years were exactly what they were supposed to be. Everybody has their own path. It’s laid out for you. It’s just up to you to walk it.
The people who have impacted the world didn’t live long. Martin Luther King. John F. Kennedy. These people who impact the world were not old people, but they lived so effectively that we cannot erase them from history.
During most of my life, my contact with Jews and Judaism was slight. I gave little thought to their problems, save in asking myself, from time to time, whether we were showing by our lives due appreciation of the opportunities which this hospitable country affords. My approach to Zionism was through Americanism.
My mom and dad are from the streets. My mom’s from Chicago. My dad’s from Memphis. My dad got out of school and got with my mom. They were hustlers. They were from the streets. They were doing their thing. The streets ain’t got no love for the streets. You can light up the streets, or be a victim of the streets.
If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.
All of my favorite people – people I really trust – none of them were cool in their younger years.
If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren’t really there.
The Native American cultures on this continent, most of them, were matrilineal, and some women were the chiefs. Societies were about balance.
Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them.
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn’t hear the barbarians coming.
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.
When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.
The signing of the Sex Pistols was a turning point for Virgin. It put the company on the map and, over the years, attracted bands such as Genesis, the Rolling Stones, Lenny Kravitz, and Janet Jackson. It also attracted Culture Club, who were ground-breaking.
Stop this attitude that older people ain’t any good anymore! We’re as good as we ever were – if we ever were any good.
Marriage is an attempt to solve problems together which you didn’t even have when you were on your own.
Today’s younger generation is no worse than my own. We were just as ignorant and repulsive as they are, but nobody listened to us.
I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms.
I’ll never forget Hurricane Katrina – the mix of a natural and a man-made catastrophe that resulted in the death of over 1,500 of our neighbors. Millions of folks were marked by the tragedy.
I’m an extremist so I’m either hated or loved. I think it’s down to when I first got to Formula One not always knowing what I was saying, saying things that mean one thing but people were taking the other way and then people don’t forget.
My belief is that we were put into this world of wonders and beauty with a special ability to appreciate them, in some cases to have the fun of taking a hand in developing them, and also in being able to help other people instead of overreaching them and, through it all, to enjoy life – that is, to be happy.
Coy Wire played in the NFL for 9 years and is now a motivational speaker and has a book out called ‘Change Your Mind.’ He is an amazing person with such positive energy! When Kroy and I first met and started dating, there weren’t a whole lot of people that supported us, but Coy always did.
My brother and I were brought up outdoors. We appreciate the countryside; we appreciate nature and everything about it.
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.
Our hearts were drunk with a beauty Our eyes could never see.
There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature.
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
I grew up in a family with three siblings. My parents were always very supportive and encouraging. It was important for them that we have meaningful and satisfying professions, but they didn’t care as much about success and achievement.
When I was about 8 or 9, I lived in New Jersey with my mother and we were seven deep in one bedroom and sometimes we didn’t have electricity.
After 50 years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes, my father died, too young, of a massive heart attack. He was 69. It’s almost certain that all those years of nicotine inhalation were a major contributor to his clogged arteries.
When President Obama entered the White House, the economy was in a free-fall. The auto industry: on its back. The banks: frozen up. More than three million Americans had already lost their jobs. And America’s bravest, our men and women in uniform, were fighting what would soon be the longest wars in our history.
‘Boyz-n-the-Hood’ was actually supposed to be written for Eazy’s group. He had a group out in New York called Home Boys Only, called HBO. One of them looked like LL Cool J. Eazy wanted to write a song for them, a street song, like what we were doing on the mix tapes. So when I wrote it, it was too West Coast for them.
Shaquille and I kind of joke we were the Christopher Columbus of social media. We’re kind of out on a boat by ourselves going through these uncharted waters. But it’s become more understood, embraced and accepted, and now it’s pretty much expected by fans for athletes, leagues and teams to be there.
During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were not unlike those experienced by the most disadvantaged groups in society. The Great Depression had a leveling effect, and all groups really experienced hard times: poor whites, poor blacks.
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
In the earliest years of the AIDS crisis, there were many gay men who were unable to come out about the fact that their lovers were ill, A, and then dead, B. They were unable to get access to the hospital to see their lover, unable to call their parents and say, ‘I have just lost the love of my life.’
I was an only child and I had a mother and father who were just – there wasn’t a straight man in the house, and I mean that in a very nice way. They were fun, and we would laugh a lot.
When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense.
I take after my mother more than my father in terms of personality. My mother’s a worrier, and I’m a worrier. Both were very good with numbers and mathematics, so I kind of got that from both of them.
I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.
Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
The Myth of Male Power dealt much more with the political issues, the legal issues, sexual harassment, date rape, women who kill, and those issues were very much more interfaced with the agendas of feminism.
If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be.
Fortunately, problems are an everyday part of our life. Consider this: If there were no problems, most of us would be unemployed.
Vulnerability is the strongest state to be in. How boring would it be if we were constantly dominant or constantly submissive?
If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.
I grew up with an incredibly loving and supportive family that gave me the impression there were a lot of options for me out there.
We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
The word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.
There are many talented people who haven‘t fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith.
Challenge yourself, grow, blossom, and become who you were meant to be. Don’t ever stay at a job solely out of convenience or comfort. Aim higher, even if that means pursuing another job that’s just one step closer to your ultimate goal.
The failure of Lehman Brothers demonstrated that liquidity provision by the Federal Reserve would not be sufficient to stop the crisis; substantial fiscal resources were necessary.
I think it’s difficult to say what exactly made me become a successful DJ. It depends on so many different things. If I were given an award, I would thank my family, friends, Tiesto and the great team behind me for all their support and hard work. Without them, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
I’ve come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.
In my case, I can sincerely say that nothing is impossible… When I was saying I want to be No. 1 of the world, and I was seven or eight years old, most of the people were laughing at me because it seems like I have one percent of chances to do that, and I’ve done it.
My husband. He keeps me grounded. If I were in the world on my own, it would all be much more seductive. But I’m in a relationship that has nothing to do with the film world.
At first, laws evolved out of religious doctrines. It followed that they were recognized only when advantageous to those who practiced the same religion and who appeared equals under the protection of the same gods. For the members of all other cults, there was neither law nor mercy.
If the choice were made, one for us to lose our sovereignty and become a member of the Commonwealth or remain with our sovereignty and lose the membership of the Commonwealth, I would say let the Commonwealth go.
I liked St. Louis, when they were in the American League, because that was going home. I had all my family and friends there.
‘The Beatles’ did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.
It doesn’t matter what the colour of your skin is, your sexual preference, the region where you were born, your gender. We’re all equal… We can’t take certain minorities and think they have super powers and are different from the others.
The Raiders of old were vicious and crazy and cruel. Hanging around their locker room was like hanging around the weight room at Folsom Prison.
Do every act of your life as if it were your last.
I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
My activism did not spring from my being gay, or, for that matter, from my being black. Rather, it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker upbringing and the values that were instilled in me by my grandparents who reared me.
I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans – the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today.
If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose love would follow me still Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
If your dad died before you were born, yeah, it hurts – but it’s not like you had a connection with something that was real. Not to say it’s any better – but to have that connection and then have it ripped away was, like, the worst. My dad was such a good dad that when he left, he left a huge scar. He was my superhero.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
Among the difficulties I encountered, economic problems were the worst. I found that financial hardships could limit one’s ability to realize one’s dream, no matter how desperate and earnest you are.
We danced on the lip of the volcano, so to speak. We were young, too. And New York was still a big, open city where anything could happen and anyone could be star. Rents were cheap, creativity was encouraged, and bottle service was still 20 years away. That was the era the Club Kids came into.
I used to choose friends based on similarity in age and life stage, but I’ve learned that those were the wrong criteria. Trying to live life exclusively alongside others our own age is like attempting to climb Mt. Everest without a Sherpa. It’s a little dangerous.
I am a Shawnee. My forefathers were warriors. Their son is a warrior. From them, I take my only existence.
‘Presence of God’ is really that understanding that sometimes when you step out of your own shoes and just open your ears and listen to what’s going on around you, you get answers to the questions you were asking.
I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of the legacy that I’ve gotten from so many of the adult elders.
All men were made by the Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers.
Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
Believe with all your heart that you will do what you were made to do. Never for an instant harbor a doubt of it.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
The groves were God’s first temples.
If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
Nobody, absolutely nobody, straps a bomb on their body because they were recruited from the Internet. It takes an enormous amount of personal face-to-face contact and time in order to recruit a young person into the cause of jihad.
You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’
When I was growing up, my parents were almost involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.
The meals were served in a large hall, in which Moctezuma was accustomed to eat, and the dishes quite filled the room, which was covered with mats and kept very clean.
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
I remember at one time there were 44 mining MPs.
You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.
What you don’t want is for violence and gore to become more important than character and structure. A lot of slasher movies from the eighties were only focused on violence and gore, which robs the human beings in the story of any empathetic reaction from the audience, and instead makes them cheer for the gore.
Most people are dead. Did you know that? It’s true, out of all the people that ever were, almost all of them are dead.
Religion is the organization of spirituality into something that became the hand maiden of conquerors. Nearly all religions were brought to people and imposed on people by conquerors, and used as the framework to control their minds.
There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.
In my career, there have been three things that were challenging: playing gay; playing a Jewish woman; and playing Chekhov. The scariest part was playing Chekhov!
When you’re a little kid, you don’t see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.
Loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation.
Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.
My teacher told me I’d never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.
I’m the first to admit that we were totally dependent on a particular place and time… for us, seeing Minor Threat at the CBGB hardcore matinee was just as necessary a force in our lives as the Treacherous Three at Club Negril or the Funky Four + One More at the Rock Lounge.
I hated baseball. I really didn’t like baseball at all until someone decided they were going to pay me… Every year I played in the big leagues, the day the season ended, I called my buddies in West Virginia and said, ‘I’ll be home tomorrow.’
A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.
Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow.
The good ole days weren’t always good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.
I was a product of Andy Warhol‘s Factory. All I did was sit there and observe these incredibly talented and creative people who were continually making art, and it was impossible not to be affected by that.
It’s no secret that we were sticking just about every nickel we had on the chance that people would really be interested in something totally new and unique in the field of entertainment.
My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious – like, I don’t remember them ever being together.
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.
The Brexit thing to me just looks like a difference of opinion. I know things were lied about, but that should be a wake-up call to get all the information before you vote about something. Educate yourself.
Serenity is the balance between good and bad, life and death, horrors and pleasures. Life is, as it were, defined by death. If there wasn’t death of things, then there wouldn’t be any life to celebrate.
I have no regrets. I wouldn’t have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.
If it weren’t for Miyamoto-san, I wouldn’t be where I am.
I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which I have now been dedicated with such solemnity.
I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.
There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way.
Even when we talked about child labor, we were frowned upon. But then you know that you have to speak the truth irrespective of the repercussions.
If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.
The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be present.
My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of the misery I’ve endured over the past twenty-five years.
No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.
Future generations are not going to ask us what political party were you in. They are going to ask what did you do about it, when you knew the glaciers were melting.
When terrorists attacked the symbols of our national unity and strength, they failed to realize that they were just symbols of our strength. The real strength of our nation comes from our people – not our buildings.
Dreams are where we visit the many lands and landscapes of human possibility and discover the one where we feel at home. The great religious leaders were all dreamers.
If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?
The forest has always been a place, in fairy tales and in Shakespeare, where you go and discover who you are. You get stripped of everything you thought you were, some type of ordeal takes place, and you come out stronger.
Photography was a way for me to freeze time and to capture the moments that were happy and healthy. I saw a photo as a way to go back to a memory if I ever needed to.
I grew up in the ghetto, and the thing is when there were problems, I knew when to get away.
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
I tell students that the opportunities I had were a result of having a good educational background. Education is what allows you to stand out.
If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms never never never!
If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were.
There would be no need for love if perfection were possible. Love arises from our imperfection, from our being different and always in need of the forgiveness, encouragement and that missing half of ourselves that we are searching for, as the Greek myth tells us, in order to complete ourselves.
Charity bestowed upon those who are worthy of it is like good seed sown on a good soil that yields an abundance of fruits. But alms given to those who are yet under the tyrannical yoke of the passions are like seed deposited in a bad soil. The passions of the receiver of the alms choke, as it were, the growth of merits.
If it weren’t for electricity, we’d all be watching television by candlelight.
I was born in Orange County – in Santa Ana. My dad is from California. I was raised on the East Coast. My first two years were in California, but I claim East Coast. I’m sorry, I don’t rep California.
I acted all the way up until Princeton. It was just one of my favorite extracurricular activities. Then I got to Princeton and had a really conservative vibe. All my friends were planning on law school, med school, or Wall Street, and suddenly acting seem like a really risky proposition.
Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.
Money is often a matter of chance or good fortune and is not the mark of a successful life. It is not the thing that brings a throb of pleasure or a thrill into my life. And I would not pose as a successful man if that were to be the measure.
I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.
The idea of a spiritual heart transplant is a vivid image to me; once you have the heart of somebody else inside you, then that heart is there. Jesus‘ heart is inside me, and my heart is gone. So if God were to place a stethoscope against my chest, he would hear the heart of Jesus Christ beating.
Millions of Americans were duped by the federal government and the Federal Reserve into buying homes they could not afford and failed to count the cost. When the financial crisis of 2008 hit, they could not keep up the monthly mortgage payments and defaulted.
It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.
I perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our own model.
The Cold War had become a battlefield marked by doublespeak. Disguise, distortion, and deception were accepted as reality. Truth was promised in a serum.
Maori get pigeonholed into the idea they’re spiritual and telling stories like ‘Whale Rider‘ and ‘Once Were Warriors,’ quite serious stuff, but we’re pretty funny people, and we never really have had an opportunity to show that side of ourselves, the clumsy, nerdy side of ourselves, which is something I am.
If two people were exactly alike, one of them would be unnecessary.
Our teachers made such a difference – all my teachers and professors were very supportive and nurturing.
I’ll say initially acting was my first love, and that’s what I pursued. But then, so far as even my first day on a film set, and just watching how things were set up, I just said, ‘I think I want to be in charge.’ I am very much type-A. I am a bit of a control freak.
We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.
Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.
It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.
The streets were dark with something more than night.
If I were president of the United States, I’d build a great wall along the Mexican border and not let anybody in.
I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.
Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That’s a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.
I feel like I’ve lived quite a sheltered life, like my mom and dad were quite protective of me.
One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts… to my surprise… almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.
Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.
God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.
I worked at a movie theater in Tempe, Arizona, when I went to community college there. And I got fired because a sorority had rented out a theater to watch ‘Titanic,’ and they were being really rude to me while they were waiting for the movie. So as I tore their tickets, I told them the end of the movie.
The golden age was when people were starting to understand what hip-hop was and how to use it. I was lucky to come up then. Everybody wanted to be original and have substance; it was somewhat conscious… There was an integrity that people respected.
Oprah‘s got good politics, she’s got a good heart, and she’ll have us all up Jazzercising at six in the morning. This cannot be a bad thing, and reading a book while we’re Jazzercising. So America would be better off if Oprah were president.
We had been told many times that astronauts would not make any mistakes. They were trained to be perfect.
I come from a long line of strong and confident women out of New Orleans. My grandmother and great-grandmother were women who ran their homes and were leaders in their communities. I was never taught that there was anything that I couldn’t do, and I believed that.
What attracted me to Jimmy Bulger were the various facets of his personality and his humanity because I felt that the only way I could approach playing a character like him was to find his human side first and then map that out to see where it took the turn. He was a very complicated man.
When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.
The winners in life treat their body as if it were a magnificent spacecraft that gives them the finest transportation and endurance for their lives.
It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.
O! Desolated Scotland, too credulous of fair speeches, and not aware of the calamities which are coming upon you! If you were to judge as I do, you would not easily put your neck under a foreign yoke.
I invented ‘It’s a good thing’ before you were even born.
I had a weird accent. Dutch people speak American English, and my parents were Jamaican, with their own broken English.
Before 1915, space and time were thought of as a fixed arena in which events took place, but which was not affected by what happened in it. Space and time are now dynamic quantities… space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe.
I chose as my target the University of Mississippi, which in 1960 was the holiest temple of white supremacy in America, next to the U.S. Capitol and the White House, both of which were under the control of segregationists and their collaborators.
When I was young we weren’t even allowed to speak our own languages in school. They called it ‘vernacular,’ as if only English was the real tongue.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous.
The world is not black and white; there are lots of shades of grey. There are good things and bad things in every era, and I think it’s kind of very blindfolded to say one era was wonderful, as it was wonderful, but there were a lot of bad things as well.
Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property… Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
If I couldn’t laugh I just would go insane, If we couldn’t laugh we just would go insane, If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane.
When I was playing in the Ajax youth teams – when I was, say, 14, 15 – you started to get all those international youth tournaments. All those English teams came. Well, the English were much further than we were.
We have magnificent brains, but we use a great deal of our brilliance to keep ourselves stuck and ignorant, to keep ourselves from not shining. We are so afraid of our beauty and radiance and brilliance because it scared the adults around us when we were children.
We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn’t speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.
I lived next to Russian soldiers. We had Russian army guys in our house when I grew up. We made lemonade for them; they were everywhere. I had a Russian school. I grew up with Russian traditions, I know Russian songs… it infiltrates me a lot. I even speak a little Russian.
You don’t have to have anything in common with people you’ve known since you were five. With old friends, you’ve got your whole life in common.
When I look back at my past mistakes, I realise that there were times when I wasn’t myself, and that’s why certain styles did not work well for me.
In Egypt, the living were subordinate to the dead.
Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.
People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.
There is no one on earth who knew you from the day you were born; who knew why you cried, or when you’d had enough food; who knew exactly what to say when you were hurting; and who encouraged you to grow a good heart. When that layer goes, whatever is left of your childhood goes with her.
Growing up, I knew I was different. But I didn’t know what it meant to be Aboriginal. I just knew that I had a really big, extended family. I was taught nothing about who we were or where we came from.
If it weren’t for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song.
For a long time, men weren’t respecting women. They weren’t understanding Mother Earth, Mother Nature, the Motherland, all the motherly stuff. And now we are.
Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.
It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.
Most of us weren’t born with a silver spoon in our mouth, but if life dealt you all the wrong cards, you still have to play.
It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
You always do what you want to do. This is true with every act. You may say that you had to do something, or that you were forced to, but actually, whatever you do, you do by choice. Only you have the power to choose for yourself.
Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
My father was a general manager with Hyatt, so we lived in the hotel so he would be close by if there were any problems. My mum was always adamant about us not abusing it. So I still had to clean my room. Housekeeping would never come and do it.
You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.
I grew up in a time when women didn’t really do comedy. You had to be homely, overweight, an old maid, all that. You had to play a stereotype, because very attractive women were not supposed to be funny – because it’s powerful; it’s a threat.
I am sorry that Mr. Cheney, and every other supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques, has to defend the practices as if they were torture. They are not.
If I were to give advice, I would say to parents that they ought to be very careful whom they allow to mix with their children when young; for much mischief thence ensues, and our natural inclinations are unto evil rather than unto good.
Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.
We were all born with a certain degree of power. The key to success is discovering this innate power and using it daily to deal with whatever challenges come our way.
Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.
Life is a terminal condition. Were all going to die. Cancer patients just have more information, but we all, in some ways, wait for permission to live.
If Copenhagen were a person, that person would be generous, beautiful, elderly, but with a flair. A human being that has certain propensities for quarrelling, filled with imagination and with appetite for the new and with respect for the old – somebody who takes good care of things and of people.
I was born in very sorry circumstances. Both of my parents were very sorry.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed, young Japanese-Americans, like all young Americans, rushed to their draft board to volunteer to fight for our country. That act of patriotism was answered with a slap in the face. We were denied service and categorized as enemy non-alien.
My parents divorced. There was the usual awkward business of going between them, but I was mostly with my mother. She remarried to a Greek painter Nico Ghika, so we were always around artists and intellectuals.
What is sad for women of my generation is that they weren’t supposed to work if they had families. What were they going to do when the children are grown – watch the raindrops coming down the window pane?
My earliest memories of rap music was mixed with my earliest memories of reggae music. They were big sounds around the way, heavy bass lines, strong messages, definitely.
One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.
The problem with EMMA is that it is cost prohibitive for the small investors who were supposed to benefit from the new transparency.
I cut off my dreadlocks, but I couldn’t face throwing them away. They were so hard to grow, man. There’s a lot of work goes into those things. Some people keep a diary or a photo album to remind them of their past lives – well, I’ve got hair. Who knows? One day, maybe my grandchildren might want to see it.
The great thing about Watergate is, is that the system worked. The American system worked. The press did its job. We did what we were supposed to do.
My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.
Everybody said you’re never going to win this whole Classic. You’re not strong enough. You’re big, you’re athletic, you’re fast – but you will never win this Arnold Classic. Those were the people who didn’t believe in me… I put in the work every single day – and here I am, three times champ!
My mother and dad were big animal lovers, too. I just don’t know how I would have lived without animals around me. I’m fascinated by them – both domestic pets and the wild community. They just are the most interesting things in the world to me, and it’s made such a difference in my lifetime.
I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child.
The moment in between what you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place.
I believe that every single one of us, celebrity or not, has a responsibility to get involved in trying to make a difference in the world. Our generation faces many challenges, some of which were passed on to us by the past generations, but it’s up to us to find solutions today so that we don’t keep passing our problems on.
To me, the Seventies were very inspirational and very influential… With my whole persona as Snoop Dogg, as a person, as a rapper. I just love the Seventies style, the way all the players dressed nice, you know, kept their hair looking good, drove sharp cars and they talked real slick.
If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
My second divorce was the worst kind of divorce. There were two children; one had just been born. My husband was in love with someone else.
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
I was in New Zealand and met this girl. Her sister dared me to bungee jump, so I did! It was a spur-of-the-moment decision – I wanted to impress the girl, and it worked! We were in a relationship after that.
DJ Envy‘s definitely talk about me, but I’m one of many. I was under the assumption that he had kids but wasn’t actually married. I found out around the time that I started filming ‘Love & Hip Hop.’ After I found out, I was still in shock because we were together for so long.
I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.
In the information age, you don’t teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he’d have a talk show.
If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.
The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet.
My yachts were, I suppose, outstanding status symbols.
You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.
Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson‘s administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s brilliant ‘whiz kids’ tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.
Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.
I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead – and that one was myself.
Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.
We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.
One of the positives of getting older is that you forget your age. Then you find out that you’re younger than you thought you were.
The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.
In a Balenciaga you were the only woman in the room – no other woman existed.
There’s nothing more superficial to do than to paint a beautiful woman. The most beautiful portraits in art were of ugly women. If you paint Brigitte Bardot, it’s a disaster. Sunsets, you have to stay away from sunsets. You paint a sunset, you are in great danger.
There were times when close people… Some of my closest friends have left me. People hurt me, so everything fell apart. I didn’t feel like I had anyone on my side or anyone who could understand me. So that’s why I completely fell apart.
If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.
You have spent many lives and much treasure to bring freedom to many lands that were reluctant to receive it. And here you have a people who won it by themselves and need only the help to preserve it.
Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born.
Along the way, let’s never forget that once we were children and that we were all playing together without distinction of skin color, society level, or where people come from. Adults need to remember to play and to be more childlike in our behavior. We’ve forgotten what that childlike experience was like.
My mother and father didn’t love each other, so they were always fighting.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
I think I’m just always myself, and I think that’s what’s most important to me. Just be genuine. Be authentic. Be who you are and who you were meant to be. And celebrate that. Celebrate all of that.
That’s what liberalism is all about, is promoting incompetence on the basis it’s fair, because people would be the best if they weren’t discriminated against.
When you don’t manage your life well, you become angry and frustrated as things don’t go as intended, and our bad mood is a sign showing we were not able to resolve the conflict.
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
If poverty were a man, I would have slain him.
My first big mission for UNICEF in Ethiopia was just to attract attention, before it was too late, to conditions which threatened the whole country. My role was to inform the world, to make sure that the people of Ethiopia were not forgotten.
Let’s teach kids, at the kindergarten level, what the contributions of people of color were to building the United States of America.
I’m sorry, if you were right, I’d agree with you.
When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me.
School shootings were invented by blacks… and stolen by the white man.
Your grandparents came of age in the Great Depression, when everyday life was about deprivation and sacrifice, when the economic conditions of the time were so grave and so unrelenting it would have been easy enough for the American dream to fade away.
