Arthur Hailey > Quotes

“Winners will be losers if they don't support the losers.”
― Hailey

“Americans see democracy as a remedy for all ills-to be taken three times daily like prescription medicine. It works for them. Ergo - it should work for the world. What America naïvely forgets is that for democracy to function, most of a populace must have something personally that is worth preserving.”
― Arthur Hailey

“...a private hell was something you lived with alone, even when someone else's casual questions nudged old, raw wounds within yourself.”
― Arthur Hailey, Hotel

“Don't put down too many roots in terms of a domicile. I have lived in four countries and I think my life as a writer and our family's life have been enriched by this. I think a writer has to experience new environments. There is that adage: No man can really succeed if he doesn't move away from where he was born. I believe it is particularly true for the writer.”
― Arthur Hailey

“There was no surer way to lose the confidence of an audience, or a jury, than by letting them think faster than yourself, so that they became aware of what you were going to say before you said it.”
― Arthur Hailey, Airport

“It was simply because, as a doctor, I don’t believe a drug should be taken for anything that is just uncomfortable or self-limiting.”
― Arthur Hailey, Strong Medicine

“I learned a long time ago, though—you can’t live other people’s lives. We have to make our own decisions even if we’re wrong.”
― Arthur Hailey

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
― Arthur Hailey, Detective

“... there is nothing so tedious like the self-righteousness of a young man.”
― Arthur Hailey, In High Places

“So let me tell you, Nicky, there’s nothing wrong with being scared to death. It can happen to the best. What counts is hanging on, somehow staying in control and doing what you know you should.”
― Arthur Hailey, The Evening News

“A dog likes people who pat him on the head. That's because his thinking isn't complicated by knowledge and education”
― Arthur Hailey, Hotel

“The trouble in our society is that everyone wants drugs that are free from risk and, as you and I both know, they don’t exist and never will.”
― Arthur Hailey, Strong Medicine

“Sentimentality, he reflected, was an aid and comfort to the opponents of progress.”
― Arthur Hailey, The Final Diagnosis

“Familiar things, their touch and sight and sound, had become an ache of heart—all encompassing—which filled the waking day and penetrated sleep. Strangely—and in a way it shamed her at the time—there were never nightmares; only the steady procession of events as they had been that memorable day at Madison airport. She had been there to see her family leave for Europe: her mother, gay and excited, wearing the bon voyage orchid which a friend had telegraphed; her father, relaxed and amiably complacent that for a month the real and imagined ailments of his patients would be someone else’s concern. He had been puffing a pipe which he knocked out on his shoe when the flight was called. Babs, her elder sister, had embraced Christine; and even Tony, two years younger and hating public affection, consented to be kissed. “So long, Ham!” Babs and Tony had called back, and Christine smiled at the use of the silly, affectionate name they gave her because she was the middle of their trio sandwich. And they had all promised to write, even though she would join them in Paris two weeks later when term ended. At the last her mother had held Chris tightly, and told her to take care. And a few minutes later the big prop-jet had taxied out and taken off with a roar, majestically, though it barely cleared the runway before it fell back, one wing low, becoming a whirling, somersaulting Catherine wheel, and for a moment a dust cloud, and then a torch, and finally a silent pile of fragments—machinery and what was left of human flesh. It was five years ago. A few weeks after, she left Wisconsin and had never returned.”
― Arthur Hailey, Hotel

“But then I get to thinking of our mortality and human weakness, remembering there has never been power with purity—anywhere. If you want to be pure, you must stand alone. If you seek to do positive things, achieve something, leave the world a mite better than you found it, then you must choose power and throw some of your purity away. There’s no other choice.”
― Arthur Hailey, In High Places

“shrugging”
― Arthur Hailey, The Final Diagnosis

“I don't think I really invented anybody. I have drawn on real life.”
― Arthur Hailey

“A surgeon gets $500 for taking out a tumor. A pathologist gets five dollars for examining it, making a diagnosis, recommending further treatment, and predicting the patient’s future.”
― Arthur Hailey

“In 1633,” Ainslie explained, “Galileo was condemned for heresy and held under house arrest for the last eight years of his life—all because he showed that the earth revolves around the sun. That, of course, was contrary to Catholic doctrine, which said that the earth was the center of the universe and didn’t move. Only in 1992, after what the Vatican called ‘thirteen years of study,’ did Pope John Paul II admit the Church was wrong—something science had confirmed centuries before.”
― Arthur Hailey, Detective

“chimeric”
― Arthur Hailey, Hotel

“nastiness. Next day, fat and monstrous, it rumbled up the Mississippi Valley. Finally, over Illinois the storm unloaded, almost paralyzing the state with blizzard winds, freezing”
― Arthur Hailey, Airport

“pockmarked”
― Arthur Hailey, The Moneychangers

“sepulchers”
― Arthur Hailey, The Moneychangers

“- ...день и без того короток, так зачем же его ещё укорачивать.
(Бен, слуга Прейскоттов, передаёт слова отца Марши Прейскотт Питеру Макдермотту. "Отель")”
― Arthur Hailey, Отель. Аэропорт

“The same rumour continued: Patroni made love the same way he did everything else – with a long, thin cigar stuck jauntily in the side of his mouth. This was untrue, at least nowadays. Marie, having coped with several pillow fires during their early years in marriage- drawing on her training as a TWA air hostess to extinguish them – had emphatically forbidden any more cigars in bed.”
― Arthur Hailey, Airport

“perfidy”
― Arthur Hailey, Hotel

“Generally, pharmacists know a lot more about drugs than doctors do.”
― Arthur Hailey, Strong Medicine

“boyish”
― Arthur Hailey, The Evening News

“- Бывает в жизни и так, что приходится делать выбор между тем, чего хочется, и тем, во что ты веришь.
(Доктор Ингрэм - Питеру Макдермотту. "Отель")”
― Arthur Hailey

“Во-первых, раз у женщины есть квартира, значит, она независима, а, во-вторых, если она потеряла ключи, значит, она всё-таки женщина.”
― Arthur Hailey, Отель. Аэропорт