William > William's Quotes

“Once the war was over, they reorganized the Democratic Party and announced in their 1865 platform, “We hold this to be a Government of white people, made and to be perpetuated for the exclusive benefit of the white race, and … that people of African descent cannot be considered as citizens of the United States, and that there can, in no event, nor under any circumstances, be any equality between white and other races.”
― Charles Lane, The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction

“For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

“To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;”
― James Madison, The United States Constitution

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“There are only two types of people who can be totally honest with each other, lovers and strangers. Everyone else is just negotiating.”
― James Grippando

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”
― Mel Brooks

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“I don’t go to church. Not anymore. I’m a lot of things, but a hypocrite really isn’t one of them. If you’re not going to play by the rules, you don’t show up for team meetings.”
― Emma Chase, Tangled

“The only control you have is the amount of work you put into something. Never lose because someone else worked harder than you.”
― Candy Atkins

“Even if all the experts agree, they may well be mistaken.”
― Bertrand Russell

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”
― William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

“...all members of Congress should be required wear NASCAR uniforms. You know, the kind with the patches? That way we'd know who is sponsoring each of them. I think he was kidding; they'd never be able to do it but it's a great idea and would wake people up in this country.”
― Brad Thor, Full Black

“Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”
― Stephen King

“Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.”
― Mark Twain

“If you go into darkness, the darkness goes into you.”
― Michael Connelly, The Late Show

“There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.”
― Hippocrates

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
― Michael Crichton

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“We all want more: more money, a bigger house, fancier clothes, faster cars—all the stuff the people on TV have and tell us we need to be happy. We keep moving forward in search of something, but that something already lives inside of us. And that something is, simply, gratitude. It’s stopping in the middle of the cacophony of more and saying, “What I have is enough; I am enough; I am grateful for all that is in this moment, all that is me: the chances I have been given, the things I have done, the good, the bad, and the embarrassing. I am grateful for them because they have brought me to this place. They have been my guides and my teachers.”
― Paul Williams, Gratitude and Trust: Six Affirmations That Will Change Your Life

“The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence."
"Science is simply common sense at its best - that is, rigidly accurate in observation,
and merciless to fallacy in logic.”
― Thomas Huxley - Evolution and Ethics

“Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes”
― Daniel Pennac

“You can gain experience, if you are careful to avoid empty redundancy. Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years experience in craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience–twenty times. And never resent the advantage of experience your elders have. Recall that they have paid for this experience in the coin of life, and have emptied a purse that cannot be refilled.”
― Trevanian, Shibumi

“I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“A feeling is not a fact.”
― Kenneth Oppel, The Nest

“Everything you see is in the process of making or unmaking or dying or living. Everything is in a state of change.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Girl Who Drank the Moon

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

“God bless the Reference Librarians”
― James Lee Burke