James > James's Quotes

“That's just the point, my dear fellow, that cases may arise when the Government does not fulfill the will of its citizens and then Society announces its own will.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilisation.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“What is grander than a country and more valuable than gold? Strength of heart.”
― Cornelius Elmore Addison, Tom Thorneval: Dream Merchant Extraordinaire

“You were given your gift for the joy you may give in return.”
― Cornelius Elmore Addison, Tom Thorneval: Dream Merchant Extraordinaire

“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“[T]he time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“He came to the conclusion that it was because there were some things you remembered with your head, like numbers, and other things you remembered with your heart, like shapes, colours, and shadows. He was a heart-memory type.”
― B. Glen Rotchin, Halbman Steals Home

“Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you don’t have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy.”
― Ayn Rand

“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“And also don’t forget, the reason opportunity is often missed is that it usually comes disguised as hard work.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“The surest way to keep a problem from being solved is to deny that problem exists. Telling people not to complain is a way of keeping social issues from being addressed. It trivializes the grievances of the vulnerable, making the burdened feel like burdens. Telling people not to complain is an act of power, a way of asserting that one's position is more important than another one's pain. People who say "stop complaining" always have the right to stop listening. But those who complain have often been denied the right to speak.”
― Sarah Kendzior, The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

“To permit ignorance is to empower it. To do nothing as our leaders proclaim absurdities is a crime of complacency. As is letting our schools and churches teach outright untruths to our children.”
― Dan Brown, Origin

“And history has proven repeatedly that lunatics will rise to power again and again on tidal waves of aggressive nationalism and intolerance, even in places where it seems utterly incomprehensible.”
― Dan Brown, Origin

“To permit ignorance is to empower it.”
― Dan Brown, Origin

“I am a good person because I am a good person! God has nothing to do with it!”
― Dan Brown, Origin

“Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently-run universe, this guy would've been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago. And by the way, I say "this guy", because I firmly believe, looking at these results, that if there is a God, it has to be a man.
No woman could or would ever fuck things up like this. So, if there is a God, I think most reasonable people might agree that he's at least incompetent, and maybe, just maybe, doesn't give a shit. Doesn't give a shit, which I admire in a person, and which would explain a lot of these bad results.”
― George Carlin

“...this museum must celebrate the OTHER lesson history has taught us - that tyranny and oppression are no match for compassion...that the fanatical shouts of the bullies of the world are invariably silenced by the unified voices of decency that rise up to meet them. It is THESE voices - these choirs of empathy, tolerance and compassion - that I pray one day will sing from this mountaintop.”
― Dan Brown, Origin

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“A trap is only a trap if you don't know about it. If you know about it, it's a challenge.”
― China Miéville, King Rat

“I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it's worth doing. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
― Gregg Hurwitz, Hellbent

“One of the hardest things about getting old is admitting mistakes that it's too late to put right.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway. All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“A simple truth, repeated as often as it is ignored, is that if you tell a child it can do absolutely anything, or that it can’t do anything at all, you will in all likelihood be proven right. *”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“There are people who say that children don't behave the way adults tell them to, but the way they see adults behave. Perhaps that's true. But children live the way adults tell them to a fair bit as well.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“She’s fifteen, above the age of consent, and he’s seventeen, but he’s still “the boy” in every conversation. She’s “the young woman”.

Words are not small things.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.”
― Sarah Kendzior

“Ability is discounted without credentials, but the ability to purchase credentials rests, more often than not, on family wealth.”
― Sarah Kendzior, The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior