Famous Quotes & Sayings

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.

Charles Dickens

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies.

Charles Caleb Colton

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.

Charles Spurgeon

His will cannot be neutral or 'free' to act contrary to his nature.

Alan Watts

As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.

Dell Leonard

We've won some big games at the line this year, and we've lost some at the line. We know how important free throws are.

Chogyam Trungpa

Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment.

Chogyam Trungpa

When you drop your unnecessary things, you finally can swoop and fly in vast space. It is so blue, so bright, and so nice, so airy and fresh. You can stretch your wings and breathe the air. You can do anything you want. You have experienced cheerfulness and joy, and finally the bliss of freedom occurs in you.

Dave Barry

Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you're told.

Byron Katie

There is no thought or situation that you can't put up against inquiry. Every thought, every person, every apparent problem is here for the sake of your freedom.

David McCullough

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

David McCullough

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.

C. Wright Mills

History is the shank of the social sciences.

Cesare Pavese

For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.

Cary Grant

Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.

E. Hicks

When you think about it, history is made to be broken. That's the way we look at it.

Kurt Vonnegut

History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.

Kurt Vonnegut

History! Read it and weep!

Edward Gibbon

But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.

Jerry Johnson

We are privately owned and we do not routinely give out information about our customers. I imagine if we do either, we sell (grain).

Christopher McQuarrie

When you've written a film and directed it and it comes out exactly as you imagined it, it's pretty boring.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

God sent you here to prepare for a future greater than anything can imagine.

Charlie Daniels

I just can't imagine not having something to do.

Matt Bitonti

We had 13,000 unique visitors here today on a Monday. Can you imagine if you had 13,000 people in a room, and you were talking to them? That's what you're doing. It's about reaching people, having a voice, having an opinion.

Arthur C. Clarke

When you finally understand the universe, it will not only be stranger than you imagine, it will be stranger than you can imagine.

bell hooks

What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.

Jason Calacanis

Imagine being 30 years old, thinking you were a media titan, and now you are labeled a 'scam artist.'

Keke Palmer

I'm a mash-up of everyone. My influences would be Michael Jackson, Brandy, Aaliyah - those types of people. So if you can imagine them - and with me taking them, and then putting my own twist and the influence on it - that's musically what I would sound like.

Madeleine Albright

I loved what I did. I could've been secretary of state for ever.

Madeleine Albright

I loved being Secretary of State, that's probably evident to everyone who watched me.

David Hume

...interest is the barometer of the state...

Eden Sher

I live in a constant state of hyperbole.

Carol Moseley Braun

I was very productive as a senator for my state.

Sammy Sosa

I have not broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic.

Susan B. Anthony

Better lose me than lose a state.

Elizabeth Bowen

writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility.

Barack Obama

Nobody wants to put the creditworthiness of the United States in jeopardy. Nobody wants to see the United States default. So we've got to seize this moment, and we have to seize it soon.

Chris Chocola

Madam Speaker, before being elected to Congress, I ran a manufacturing business that did a significant percentage of our sales outside the United States.

Denis McDonough

The bottom line is this. When it comes to preventing violent extremism and terrorism in the United States, Muslim Americans are not part of the problem, you're part of the solution.

Charlaine Harris

Episcopalians are pretty thin on the ground in the central United States.

Charles Rangel

The United States is historically a nation of immigrants.

Abraham Lincoln

I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is not the Constitution as I would like to have it, but as it is, that is to be defended. The Constitution will not be preserved & defended until it is enforced & obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be so respected, obeyed, enforced and defended, and let the grass grow where it may.

Bruce Springsteen

You can't have a United States if you are telling some folks that they can't get on the train. There is a cracking point where a society collapses.

Dominique de Villepin

I grew up in the United States.

Barack Obama

I'm the president of the United States. I'm not the emperor of the United States.

Judy Dickson

We (send) them all over the United States.

Charles Caleb Colton

For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence, and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandizement of the few.

Charles Caleb Colton

War is a game in which princes seldom win, the people never.

Charles Caleb Colton

Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun, the hand that warned Belshazzar derived its horrifying effect from the want of a body.

Charles Caleb Colton

Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.

Charles Caleb Colton

Wars are to the body politic, what drams are to the individual. There are times when they may prevent a sudden death, but if frequently resorted to, or long persisted in, they heighten the energies only to hasten the dissolution.

Charles Dickens

Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?

Charles Dickens

I believe that the heaviest blow ever dealt at liberty's head will be dealt by this nation in the ultimate failure of its example to the earth.

Charles Stross

There's a long-standing (50 year old) flame war within the field over whether it's "sci-fi" or "SF".SF has traditionally been looked down on by the literary establishment because, to be honest, much early SF was execrably badly written - but these days the significance of the pigeon hole is fading; we have serious mainstream authors writing stuff that is I-can't-believe-it's-not-SF, and SF authors breaking into the mainstream. If you view them as tags that point to shelves in bricks-and-mortar bookshops, how long are these genre categories going to survive in the age of the internet?

Charles Stross

I like lassic British spy thrillers. Seriously. If the cold war was still on, that's something I'd be writing.