Bryan L. > Bryan's Quotes

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,...Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Compromise is a stalling between two fools.”
― Stephen Fry

“I will never compromise Truth for the sake of getting along with people who can only get along when we agree.”
― D.R. Silva

“Compromise is a word found only in the vocabulary of those who have no will to fight.”
― St. Josemaria Escriva

“You cannot build a dream on a foundation of sand. To weather the test of storms, it must be cemented in the heart with uncompromising conviction.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“Nothing will bind the eyes of man quicker than the touch of compromise. A principle not compromised is a principle worth dying for. A dream not compromised is a dream worth living for.”
― Ogwo David Emenike

“Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.

Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.”
― George Packer

“It is hard to talk about a middle ground for something that is a fundamental right.”
― Teri Reynolds, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad

“When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.”
― John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace

“How many millions there are who don't want to go to Hell, but they don't want to get off the road to Hell.”
― Alan Cairns

“The West in general should stand up more for its own values. It is not always worthwhile to compromise.”
― imre kertesz

“They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

—written for the Pennsylvania Assembly in its Reply to the Governor, 11 November 1755”
― Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin Volume 2