Famous Quotes & Sayings

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Not enough books focus on how a culture responds to radically new ideas or discovery. Especially in the biography genre, they tend to focus on all the sordid details in the life of the person who made the discovery. I find this path to be voyeuristic but not enlightening.

Noel Riley Fitch

Whether in print or other media, a good biography is more than a court record or a stringing together of already familiar sources. It breathes life into the subject.

Joseph Campbell

Whenever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or place. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd.

Will Rogers

There ain't nothing that breaks up homes, country, and nations like somebody publishing their memoirs.

A. S. Byatt

Reading a newspaper is like reading someone's letters, as opposed to a biography or a history. The writer really does not know what will happen. A novelist needs to feel what that is like.

Denis O'Hare

I went on a Buddha jag. I read 'Confession of a Buddhist Atheist' by Stephen Batchelor and Karen Armstrong's biography of Buddha, which is a great book.

David A. Adler

My first biography was 'Our Golda: The Life of Golda Meir.' To research that book, I bought a 1905 set of encyclopedias. Those books told me what each of the places Golda Meir lived in were like when she lived there.

Dan Wakefield

I wrote a great deal about the Civil Rights Movement when I was writing for 'The Nation' in the '60s, and also for Esquire magazine. Reading the biography of Coffin, it just reminded me that in those days, when you saw the term 'Christian,' it usually meant people for civil rights and for justice.

Brad Grey

Mental illnesses involve biological brain disorders, no matter what Tom Cruise says,

Charles Caleb Colton

A semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest.

Alan Bennett

I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?

Aiden Wilson Tozer

Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. It wears us out by multiplying distractions and beats us down by destroying our solitude, where otherwise we might drink and renew our strength before going out to face the world again.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

I have no doubt that historians will conclude that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

John Wilson

We want to send a very strong message ... this is not what we expect out of civilized society, ... We're going to make an example of somebody.

David Mitchell

Freedom!- is the fatuous jingle of our civilization, but only those deprived of it have the barest inkling re: what the stuff actually is.

David Graeber

It's a difficult business, creating a new, alternative civilization.

David Suzuki

More than any other time in history, the 1990s will be a turning point for human civilization.

Cesare Pavese

Generations do not age. Every youth of any period, any civilization, has the same possibilities as always.

Robert Randall

We want the pedophiles to give it a thought, that they might be dealing with the police, ... And if we can stop them ... then we are serving our purpose.

Dave Minshall

We want them to get an offer to the table that they can live with. We want a deal that is more than just a nickel and a dime an hour. We want a deal that recognizes that they went without a wage increase for three years.

Jim Smith

We want them to be ready for whatever they might have to deal with on that first flight; to understand what to do if some of the systems don't do what they're supposed to.

Michael Defensor

We want to set this up properly because we are dealing with a military hierarchy and I might set it up wrongly.

Gene Smith

The positives are closure. We're going into the Big Ten tournament and we want our student-athletes to have the opportunity to participate in this tournament understanding there won't be any sanctions they have to deal with. ... They can play without that stress.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The pleasures of the palate deal with us like the Egyptian thieves, who strangle those whom they embrace.

Steve Perkins

We are proud to earn this award. It represents a great deal of hard work for us, for our suppliers and for their suppliers. We salute our team of exemplary employees and suppliers, and share this honor with them.

Rolly Woolsey

We started the deal and here they are 30-years later in the Super Bowl.

Craig Brown

There are some deals to be made right now. Some people don't want to rebuild. And they don't want the headaches. But it's not as valuable as it will be in the future.

Don Novello

I wrote that letter, and the one to Nixon. And I wrote more letters, and I thought it might be a magazine article. At that time I sent it to Esquire and Playboy, but anyway, I kept writing, and all of sudden I had enough and thought, well maybe it is a book.

Charles Caleb Colton

Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.

Charles Caleb Colton

Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. If it follow them it is well, but they will not deviate to follow it.

Charles Caleb Colton

In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.

Charles Caleb Colton

Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him.

Charles Dickens

The secret was such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not tear it away.

Charles Dickens

So new to him," she muttered, "so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us!...

Charles Dickens

But, in this separation I associate you only with the good and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you have done far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may.

Charles Dickens

Let me feel now what sharp distress I may.

Charles Simmons

True greatness consists in being great in little things.

Maajid Nawaz

Satire is, by definition, offensive. It is meant to make us feel uncomfortable. It is meant to make us scratch our heads, think, do a double-take, and then think again.

Martin Jacques

We all know what is meant by the term 'international community,' don't we? It's the West, of course, nothing more, nothing less. Using the term 'international community' is a way of dignifying the West, of globalising it, of making it sound more respectable, more neutral and high-faluting.

Jude Law

What's it all about, Alfie? /Is it just for the moment we live? /What's it all about when you sort it out, Alfie? /Are we meant to take more than we give or are we meant to be kind?

Dee Romine

She has meant so much to our program. She is the ultimate team player and didn't shy away from taking the big shots.

Pat Summitt

She reached out at a time that meant a lot to me.

Jennifer Rizzotti

She willed us not just to win, but to play like this. Erika has meant everything to this team all weekend and all season long.

David Selby

And I haven't met too many actors along the way that haven't told me how much the show has meant to them. It's one of the reasons they say they are doing what they're doing, today.

Nicole Scherzinger

I'm a strong believer in 'everything is meant to be for a reason.'

Liam Neeson

I had done some flimflam movies, but I didn't understand what being an actor meant anymore.

C. L. R. James

I had a national and international reputation. I had written the history and articles. So I brought to the Trotskyist movement some international reputation.

Bryan Clay

I'm excited to be a part of the Olympic movement again.

Frank Newport

There are debates, there are ads, and all that stuff so you're going to have movements up and down.

Cecily Brown

I love the trick of painting. You can have the movement within the still thing, but it is completely fixed. And that illusion is constantly exciting.

David Walker

We have to get some movement on it shortly,

Bob Harper

CrossFit is all about constantly-varied, high-intensity movements. And to do these movements, you have to have a certified coach to take you through this - or any type of physical activity.

Harry Shum, Jr.

When it comes to acting, you really have to create movement which in some ways is dancing. And dancing, I feel is very important to act as well. I wouldn't put one over the other.

Arundhati Roy

I am a Maoist sympathiser. I'm not a Maoist ideologue, because the communist movements in history have been just as destructive as capitalism.

Irfan Pathan

The pitch had a lot of moisture on it. There was a lot of movement off the wicket, more than there was in the air.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.

Charles Dickens

A multitude of people and yet solitude.

Charles Dickens

My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the people governed is, on the whole, illimitable.

Charles Dickens

Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness.

Charles Dickens

Mrs. Boffin and me, ma'am, are plain people, and we don't want to pretend to anything, nor yet to go round and round at anything because there's always a straight way to everything.

Charles Dickens

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

Charles Dickens

I have heard it said that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of dead people, who are not easy in their graves, keep the day they died upon.

Charles Dickens

Some people are nobody's enemies but their own

Charles Soule

Superman/Wonder Woman, people expected, I guess, a lot of romance, or maybe something that wasnt emotionally deep. Who knows?

Charles Dickens

Mr. Pickwick took a seat and the paper, but instead of reading the latter, peeped over the top of it, and took a survey of the man of business, who was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable-diet sort of man, in a black coat, dark mixture trousers, and small black gaiters; a kind of being who seemed to be an essential part of the desk at which he was writing, and to have as much thought or sentiment.

Charles Dickens

I have nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess that no one can ever believe this narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing.

Charles Stross

Speech recognition is utterly crap for writing fiction. If you try reading a novel aloud you'll soon figure out why - written prose style is utterly unlike the spoken word.

Charles Stanley

I hear people all the time say, well I read through the Bible last year. Well, so what? I'm all for reading through the Bible. But how much of that got on the inside, or did they just cover three more chapters today? I would never discredit reading the Scriptures, but it is important to meditate on it.

Charles Spurgeon

It is a reading age, a preaching age, a working age, but it is not a praying age.

Charles Spurgeon

To believe a thing is to see the cool crystal water sparkling in the cup. But to meditate on it is to drink of it. Reading gathers the clusters; contemplation squeezes forth their generous juice.

Charles Spurgeon

Give yourself to reading.’... You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible.

Alan Bennett

...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.

Alan Bennett

The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

Larry Ellison

Maui reminded me of San Diego: beautiful, but crowded.

Scott Weiss

I don't like sweating the details, and I'm pretty disorganized. To be a better leader, I need to stay on top of these shortcomings, and being reminded really helps.

CeeLo Green

My first rap name was Ralo. Because my first name is Carlos. I likened myself to what Busta Rhymes was doing when he first came out. And what Onyx did when they first came out - they reminded me of me.

Rabih Alameddine

No one needs to be reminded of racism in soccer: the xenophobia, the nativism and, yes, nationalism.

Rich Galen

What it reminded me of the other day is 'Baghdad Bob' saying there are no Americans at the airport.

Roy Moore

They don't want to be reminded that there is an authority higher than the authority of the state.

Rhys Ifans

The older I get, I'm really reminded how important the arts are to our wellbeing as a society.

Greg Walker

It wasn't so much what we told him. We just reminded him of some things that he had done in the past.

Mike Hargrove

It reminded me of the first two weeks of Spring Training. But they'll be better.

Charles Dickens

I'm awful dull, but I hope I've beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!

David Shapiro

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to assume that their president, hostile to the principles that formed the nation and determined to act with malice toward its inhabitants by suppressing their rights and enabling its enemies to prosper in their attempts to destroy it, must be confronted, a rational response for the nation is to encumber itself no more with such a president and reject his authority and the acolytes who carry out his wishes.

David McCullough

You have to have wisdom and knowledge as well as virtue to preserve your rights and liberties.

David Korten

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

Catherine Ashton

In the EU you have half a billion people who share a common belief in democracy, in rights, in the kind of economic life we want.

Madeleine Albright

Our strategic dialogue with China can both protect American interests and uphold our principles, provided we are honest about our differences on human rights and other issues and provided we use a mix of targeted incentives and sanctions to narrow these differences.

Ai Weiwei

For all the tough talk about China during the presidential debates, Romney and Obama evaded any mention of China's suspect human rights record, corruption, and rule of law. By not tackling these controversial topics, the candidates are protecting a strategic partnership with China at the expense of essential human values and beliefs.

Ai Weiwei

Liberty is about our rights to question everything.

Bob Menendez

We should seek international support for our mutual objectives abroad, in promoting freedom, democracy, respect for human rights, and also the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.

David Sedaris

If you stepped out of the shower and saw a leprechaun standing at the base of your toilet, would you scream, or would you innately understand that he meant you no harm?

Roman Gutierrez

We still saw some of our inexperience today. That will be the case, but there were still some steps of improvement.

Bo Burnham

I saw a giraffe with a short neck That was sad Or a deer

Audrey Meadows

Fans always ask, What did the bedroom look like? All they ever saw was Alice or Ralph going in and out.

Arnold Bennett

Saw Washington Monument. Phallic. Appalling. A national catastrophe.

Deborah Harkness

You do angry. I just saw it. And you left at least one hole in my carpet to prove it.

Dennis Hopper

I wanted to be an actor. I decided when I was very young, when I first saw movies, that I wanted to be an actor.

Bill Murray

If you walk up to some random person on the street, grab them by the shoulder, and say 'Did you just see what I saw?!', you'll find that no-one wants to talk to you.

Carol Leifer

There were very few women comics when I started out doing stand-up. But I always saw that as a great advantage.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

I have always been very fortunate in my working life in terms of the, I say that like I've not been fortunate at all in my private life.

David Lange

Death is very, very terminal.

Steve Squyres

We're not going to take any risks. It's a big crater in terms of diameter, but really shallow. It's nothing like Endurance.

Benjamin Netanyahu

We wanted peace and we wanted to come to terms with the Israelis.

Edgar Bronfman, Sr.

In terms of defending Jews, I'm a Jew.

Cheryl Strayed

You get to define the terms of your life.

Willis Reed

We would still have been here if we could have come to terms with the union.

Robert Kazinsky

There are always things you wish you could've done better, and there are always things that you wish would've turned out a different way in terms of storyline, which you're not in charge of.

Kent Haruf

I write in a journal first, briefly. Then read something I've read many times before, for about half an hour, then rework what I wrote the day before.

Kent Haruf

Writing is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote for 20 years and published nothing before my first book.

Alice Walker

My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig.

William Gibson

In 1981, I was a futurist - or at least I was a guy who put on a futurist hat occasionally - and I wrote about the 21st century.

Natalie Babbitt

My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.

Gail Carson Levine

I wrote as a kid, but I never wanted to be a writer, particularly. I had been drawing and painting for years and loved that.

Kathryn Harrison

I wrote 'The Kiss' 12 hours a day for six months.

Jennifer McMahon

I wrote my first short story in third grade.

Randy Alcorn

I wrote my first novel, 'Deadline,' in 1994 as an experiment.