Bernie Goderich > Bernie's Quotes

“It strikes me that the power or capability of a man in getting rich is in inverse proportion to his reflective powers and in direct proportion to his impudence.”
― Paul Sochaczewski, An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles: Campfire Conversations with Alfred Russell Wallace

“To rule all mankind requires not just power, but men called to do the bidding of that power. Until the rise of the Dewars, no one man could raise the resources necessary. Today, the Dewar can call on human forces that no one else can gather. With the power of othium, the Dewar and Oien will create again the horrors of the Second Age.”
― Robert Reid, White Light Red Fire

“We lack spiritual-warfare tactics and spiritual-warfare training, and we also lack understanding of the arsenals of heaven because we do not have the faith to confront the devil.”
― John Ramirez, Conquer Your Deliverance: How to Live a Life of Total Freedom

“Are you ready for nuclear Armageddon?”
― Michael Parker, The Devil's Trinity

“Her whole face lights up when she smiles, Vaselik thought. She’s almost beautiful. When Leah entered the office and saw Vaselik standing there, her heart sklipped a beat like any foolish adolescent girl. Still he was her enemy...”
― Beverly Magid, Sown in Tears: A Historical Novel of Love and Struggle

“To leave the marriage behind is to step out of the spotlight. It means fading into normalcy, returning to ordinary life, perhaps an impossible admission for women who have built their egos on being one member of a powerful team. To divorce might be to admit defeat for women who have come to see themselves as extraordinary and who circulate with other famous and history-making figures.”
― Anne Michaud, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Eight Political Wives

“True,' I said, amazed. Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or devine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then a place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“மாற்றத்தை நாம் எதிர்பார்க்காமல் இருந்தாலோ, அல்லது அதைத் தேடாமல் இருந்தாலோ மட்டுமே அந்த மாற்றம் நமக்கு ஆச்சரியமளிக்கும்.”
― Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese? (Tamil)

“In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It's just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It's like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that's now been taken away and hidden. The graphite's not important. It's just the means of revealing the indentations. So you see, astrology's nothing to do with astronomy. It's just to do with people thinking about people.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Mr. Roosevelt liked to be liked. He courted and wooed people. He had good taste, an affable disposition, and profound delight in people and human relationships. This was probably the single most revealing of all his characteristics; it was both a strength and a weakness, and is a clue to much. To want to be liked by everybody does not merely mean amiability; it connotes will to power, for the obvious reason that if the process is carried on long enough and enough people like the person, his power eventually becomes infinite and universal. Conversely, any man with great will to power and sense of historical mission, like Roosevelt, not only likes to be liked; he has to be liked, in order to feed his ego. But FDR went beyond this; he wanted to be liked not only by contemporaries on as broad a scale as possible, but by posterity. This, among others, is one reason for his collector's instinct. He collected himself—for history. He wanted to be spoken of well by succeeding generations, which means that he had the typical great man's wish for immortality, and hence—as we shall see in a subsequent chapter—he preserved everything about himself that might be of the slightest interest to historians. His passion for collecting and cataloguing is also a suggestive indication of his optimism. He was quite content to put absolutely everything on the record, without fear of what the world verdict of history would be.”
― John Gunther, Roosevelt In Retrospect: A Profile in History

“Power, in Case's world, meant corporate power. The zaibatsus, the multinationals that shaped the course of human history, had transcended old barriers. Viewed as organisms, they had attained a kind of immortality. You couldn't kill a zaibatsu by assassinating a dozen key executives; there were others waiting to step up the ladder, assume the vacated position, access the vast banks of corporate memory...”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“Lord James did not know whether to feel proud of his daughter or
throttle her. He had managed to collar her quietly among the guests at the
Shinar manor, and they were alone together in the Lord Steward’s library.
He ordered her to a sofa in front of a ceiling-high bookcase.
Helen heard the same hard quality in his voice that she had perceived the first time they spoke together. She swallowed hard. He was not in a mood to be trifled with or flouted.
“You dress and behave modestly enough, Lieutenant,” he said. “But
your language earlier today was utterly appalling. You sounded like
a Lesser Shore whore, not a proper young woman, or a professional
healer. I simply won’t have it.”
“Two out of three is a start, Lord —”
He brought the back of his hand down across her face. She leapt
to her feet, not wounded so much as angry. “Is force your answer for
everything, Lord Protector?”
“Are sarcasm and insubordination yours, Lieutenant?”
― Candace L. Talmadge, Stoneslayer: Book One Scandal

“I have decided it's my mind that's woman. It's my narrator. It's my relationship to myself, and oddly, nothing at all to do with my body.”
― Sara Pascoe

“I swallowed a sigh since, truthfully, I was glad she found the cabin.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“The guard looked down at the scarlet bloodstains blooming on his chest. He appeared to think of something that he needed to say, but as his lips began to form the words, his knees gave up the strain of supporting his ruined bulk. He collapsed to the floor, his throat issuing a final sound like a bubbling casserole.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“She gasped. In his eyes, in just a heartbeat or two, she saw herself for what she was: a creature of this broken world, herself bearing the burden of the breaking.”
― Jack Borden, The Lost City: An Epic YA Fantasy Novel

“How power is used in organizations determines whether it unites us with trust or divides us with fear”
― Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention & Satisfaction

“Grief is not an excuse for depravity.”
― Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead

“I wanted to say, Who am I to do this, a woman? But that voice was not mine. It was Father's voice. It was Thomas'. It belonged to Israel, to Catherine, and to Mother. It belonged to the church in Charleston and the Quakers in Philadelphia. It would not, if I could help it, belong to me.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

“Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita. There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: "honey-colored skin," "thin arms," "brown bobbed hair," "long lashes," "big bright mouth"); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. when a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

“This was too much. “Yes,” she shouted, “but I’m eleven.” “Oh.” He looked somewhat taken aback, standing there with the Monopoly board in his hand. Harriet began to feel sorry for him. “Well,” she said, “shall we play one game?” He looked relieved. He set up the board carefully on the coffee table. Then he went to the desk drawer and got out a notebook and a pen. Then he sat down across from her. Harriet stared at the notebook. “What’s that?” “A notebook.” “I KNOW that,” she shouted. “I just take a few notes now and then. You don’t mind, do you?” “Depends on what they are.” “What do you mean?” “Are they mean, nasty notes, or just ordinary notes?” “Why?” “Well, I just thought I’d warn you. Nasty ones are pretty hard to get by with these days.” “Oh, I see what you mean. Thank you for the advice. No, they’re quite ordinary notes.” “Nobody ever takes it away from you, I bet, do they?” “What do you mean?”
― Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

“Hug me till you drug me, honey;
Kiss me till I'm in a coma.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited