JW > JW's Quotes

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“The Russian contribution to peace in Ukraine is not sufficient. [German Chancellor commenting on 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea]”
― Angela Merkel

“Most people do not have a problem with you thinking for yourself, as long as your conclusions are the same as or at least compatible with their beliefs.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Expensive clothing is a poor man’s attempt to appear prosperous.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“In fiction: we find the predictable boring. In real life: we find the unpredictable terrifying.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Facebook gives people an illusory sense of being LIKED.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Beliefs are conclusions reached by men who are lazy to think for themselves.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I'm an American, our names don't mean shit.”
― Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction: A Quentin Tarantino Screenplay

“Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action'.”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

“It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

“Unfortunately most ways of making big money take a long time. By the time one has made the money one is too old to enjoy it.”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

“Prohibition is the trigger of crime.”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

“Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality.' As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits--barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them.”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

“clean-shaven and dressed in the conventional disguise with which Brooks Brothers cover the shame of American millionaires.”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

“Bond broke into his warehouse one night and left a thermite bomb. He then went and sat in a café a mile away and watched the flames leap above the horizon of roof-tops and listened to the silver cascade of the fire-brigade bells.”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
― Confucious

“There are very few jobs that actually require a penis or vagina. All other jobs should be open to everybody.”
― Florynce Kennedy

“Are you - are you sad?"
- No.
"But your - your songs are sad."
- My songs are of time and distance. The sadness is in you. Watch my arms. There is only the dance. These things you treasure are shells.”
― William Gibson, Count Zero

“The child saw things that were too evident, too obvious for the trained eye.”
― William Gibson, Count Zero

“Because he had a good agent, he had a good contract. Because he had a good contract, he was in Singapore an hour after the explosion. Most of him, anyway.”
― William Gibson, Count Zero

“In Heathrow a vast chunk of memory detached itself from a blank bowl of airport sky and fell on him. He vomited into a blue plastic canister without breaking stride.”
― William Gibson, Count Zero

“thin and elegant as a mantis”
― William Gibson, Count Zero

“The machine, the structure, was there, was real. Virek’s money was a sort of universal solvent, dissolving barriers to his will . . .”
― William Gibson, Count Zero

“If you believe the journalists, he’s the single wealthiest individual, period. As rich as some zaibatsu. But there’s the catch, really: is he an individual? In the sense that you are, or I am? No.”
― William Gibson, Count Zero