Thinking Quotes - Page 482

Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.

I am so anxious for you not to abdicate and I think the fact that you do is going to put me in the wrong light to the entire world because they will say that I could have prevented it.

To think health when surrounded by the appearances of disease or to think riches when in the midst of the appearances of poverty requires power, but whoever acquires this power becomes a mastermind. That person can conquer fate and can have what he or she wants.

When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.

The most obvious risk was that the Russian speaking population was threatened and that the threats were absolutely specific and tangible. This is what made Crimean residents, the people who live there, think about their future and ask Russia for help. This is what guided our decision.

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.

Over the years, I've had about 80 stitches in my head and face from football incidents and bar incidents, so I have lots of scars. I don't think I look intimidating, but I'm sure other people have their opinions.

I think money helps us. It helps us. It's our - it's our exchange system. But it does not buy you happiness. It doesn't buy you health.

I think my acceleration is very good. That's the key for me.

I really want to try soccer after I retire because I've watched football over the years and I think I could be a good contender.

Perhaps we should all settle down and think about what's good in the world and what we want to do here. If we find this planet and its history and its story to be sacred, let's preserve and nourish it, and then we can go home at night and say whatever prayers we choose.

No one will ever know what 'In Cold Blood' took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me.

I've never gone for the smooth, suave Latin or French lover. That usually makes me think they're trying to pull one over on me.

Vegetarianism that is me. I don't eat meat. It's been over 10 years. Actually it's been 11 and a half years and I feel good and I feel like I look good and I have energy& and you have to look at what you're putting in your body. I eat vegetables and I eat grain and I take care of myself and I don't think I look that bad, do I?

I think all people's lives are controlled by their decisions. You look at people's lives - it's not their conditions, it's their decisions. So everybody has a choice and every moment in your life you're making decisions.

I think airports are places of huge human drama. The more I see of it, the more I am convinced that Heathrow is a secret city, with its own history, folklore and mythology. But what has surprised me is the love the people who work there feel for the place. Everyone seems to think they are plugged into something majestic.

Imagination can't create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions... So when we thing we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives, it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable.

What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.

I think that the Japanese culture is one of the very few cultures left that is its own entity. They're just so traditional and so specific in their ways. It's kind of untouched, it's not Americanized.

I think The Room is something magnetic, a certain magnetism in The Room that is related to human behavior, and that's why people relate to it.

When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.

I think that people feel they know what love means, it's probably one of the most used words in the world but has the most completely different definitions from one person to another.

There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it's why you want to become a writer — because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it.

[Childbirth] is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. It's like an 'Alien' movie. I started crying, it was so emotional ... I was there in the room but I wasn't planning on doing much. But then I see this blue pinhead come out and I think I said to the nurse, 'What the hell is that?' And then it turns into this round red thing in seconds. It's just shocking.