David > David's Quotes

“In London the slaughter of the innocents goes on on a scale more stupendous than any before in the history of the world.  And equally stupendous is the callousness of the people who believe in Christ, acknowledge God, and go to church regularly on Sunday.  For the rest of the week they riot about on the rents and profits which come to them from the East End stained with the blood of the children.  Also, at times, so peculiarly are they made, they will take half a million of these rents and profits and send it away to educate the black boys of the Soudan.”
― Jack London, Complete Works of Jack London

“A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“Modern mass culture, aimed at the 'consumer', the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“Give me 26 lead soldiers and I will conquer the world.”
― Benjamin Franklin, Wit and Wisdom from Poor Richard's Almanack

“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your own clothes.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“What will our children be like ? A lot depends on us. But it's up to them as well. What must be alive in them is a striving for freedom. That depends on us. People who have been born into slavery find it hard to lose the habit.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Journal 1970-1986

“Being silent for a while is good. Words can’t really express a person’s emotions.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.”
― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

“For socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to Heaven from Earth but to set up Heaven on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“More and more I am convinced that the final solution of the political end of our race problem will be for each state that finds it necessary to change the law bearing upon the franchise to make the law apply with absolute honesty, and without opportunity for double dealing or evasion, to both races alike. Any other course my daily observation in the South convinces me, will be unjust to the Negro, unjust to the white man, and unfair to the rest of the states in the Union, and will be, like slavery, a sin that at some time we shall have to pay for.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

“For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“It has been said that no war has been fought without inflation. If we could ever devise a monetary system where inflation was absolutely prohibited, the chance of war breaking out would be greatly reduced. If we had to immediately pay for our foreign entanglements, people would not tolerate paying the bill with higher taxation. It's the meddling in the internal affairs of other nations that brings about the conditions that result in armed conflict. Not initially financing foreign intervention would make us much less likely to get involved in no-win, totally unnecessary wars.”
― Ron Paul, End the Fed

“I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien