Famous Quotes & Sayings

Carlos Castaneda

When a man has fulfilled all four of these requisites-to be wide awake, to have fear, respect, and absolute assurance-there are no mistakes for which he will have to account; under such conditions his actions lose the blundering quality of the acts of a fool. If such a man fails, or suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that.

Carlos Castaneda

If his spirit is distorted he should simply fix it-purge it, make it perfect-because there is no other task in our entire lives which is more worthwhile...To seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task worthy of our temporariness, our manhood.

Carlos Castaneda

To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.

Carlos Castaneda

Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does. On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts. And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations.

Carlos Castaneda

There are lots of things a warrior can do at a certain time which he couldn't do years before. Those things themselves did not change; what changed was his idea of himself.

Carlos Castaneda

A rule of thumb for a warrior is that he makes his decisions so carefully that nothing that may happen as a result of them can surprise him, much less drain his power.

Carlos Castaneda

The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

Stacy Schiff

When finally I mustered the courage to tell a novelist friend that I was talking to editors about a biography, her reply was, 'Oh, that's okay. That's not a real book.'

Charlie Chaplin

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

Carol Moseley Braun

Defining myself, as opposed to being defined by others, is one of the most difficult challenges I face.

Carlos Castaneda

The third point of reference is freedom of perception; it is intent; it is spirit; the somersault of thought into the miraculous; the act of reaching beyond our boundaries and touching the inconceivable.

Thomas Paine

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Alan K. Simpson

There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.

Alan Kay

The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.

Charlotte Bronte

I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.

Charles Sumner

Without security, civilization is cramped and dwarfed. Without security, there can be no freedom. Nor shall I say too much, when I declare that security, guarded of course by its offspring, freedom, is the true end and aim of government.

Charles de Gaulle

History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.

Charles de Gaulle

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.

Carol Leifer

There are so many opportunities that I could've gotten before if I had just took a little more of a risk.

Carlos Fuentes

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

Duncan Fletcher

We want to rest Freddie whenever we can. We saw this as an opportunity the other day.

Fran Dunphy

When your opportunity comes, it's not what you do right as much as it's what you don't do wrong.

Abba Eban

Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Aasif Mandvi

When my family decided to leave England I could not have been happier. I was sort of like - America seemed like the land of opportunity and, you know, it was Hollywood to me.

Alan Stern

Naming celestial objects is usually done by astronomers and professionals. Other people who are interested in space never get the opportunity to do that kind of thing.

Alan Rusbridger

There is this ferocious digital revolution coming along and we're in the teeth of that at the time of maximum economic disruption. There are huge opportunities there. I made the point in my supplementary statement that the Guardian is now a very considerable global player, but there are huge challenges in terms of making, of finding, the convincing business model, so I want to see Guardian journalism continue and thrive, although whether and to what extent that is in print or in digital is a sort of second order matter.

Alan Shepard

So everything turned out fine, and we were given the opportunity to go to Washington and be briefed on the project of man in space, and given the opportunity to choose whether we wanted to get involved or not.