Famous Quotes & Sayings

Leo Tolstoy

They say: sufferings are misfortunes," said Pierre. 'But if at once this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and erat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us.

Leo Tolstoy

Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at all.

Lawrence Lessig

Creativity builds upon the public domain. The battle that we're fighting now is about whether the public domain will continue to be fed by creative works after their copyright expires. That has been our tradition but that tradition has been perverted in the last generation. We're trying to use the Constitution to reestablish what has always been taken for granted--that the public domain would grow each year with new creative work.

Lawrence Lessig

The more important point, however, is not about what the money does. It's about what has to be done to get the money. The effect of the money might be (democratically) benign. But what is done to secure that money is not necessarily benign. To miss this point is to betray the Robin Hood fallacy: the fact that the loot was distributed justly doesn't excuse the means taken to secure it.

Lawrence Lessig

A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense.

Larry Kramer

Writers who are activists are very rarely taken seriously as artists.

Joseph Heller

You're an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I'm an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I'm in an ideal position to appreciate it.

Joseph Campbell

The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It's usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.

Karl Popper

[The aim of science is] to explain what so far has taken to be an explicans, such as a law of nature. The task of empirical science constantly renews itself. We may go on forever, proceeding to explanations of a higher and higher universality...

Karl Popper

A system is empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation... It must be possible for an empirical or scientific system to be refuted by experience.

Monica Denise Brown

I am a firm believer that God has already ordered the things that have taken place in my life...and I'm just learning to follow the path he's laid before me.

Mike Jackson

Well, the U.N. Security Council resolution 1973 is very clear. It says all necessary measures to be taken to protect civilians and civilian areas. I mean, that to me is very clear.

Mike Johanns

There is a tremendous amount of support for the approach we have taken, which again is to base our decisions on risk analysis and thoughtful scientific process.

Peter Ueberroth

Authority is 20% given and 80% taken...so take it!

Peter Straub

Instead, I was interested in what I guess I could call narrative indeterminacy, in questioning the apparent, taken-for-granted authority of any particular representation of the events in question.

Peter F. Hamilton

You've no idea how wonderful toilet paper is until it's taken away from you by an unfeeling universe. I think it's the defining characteristic of human civilization, the ability to manufacture something decent to wipe your ass on.

Peter Berg

I think musicians oftentimes have the right skill set to be good actors. And with Rihanna, I noticed her and knew of her obviously, and was very taken with her charisma and her confidence.

Peter S. Beagle

It’s a rare man who is taken for what he truly is.

Peter Jackson

Two of the actors, Sean Bean and Orlando Bloom, have been caught between two landslides and are now trapped in a tiny town in the middle of the South Island. They have been taken in by a kindly woman who has offered them food and a bed. They were last reported to be cooking spaghetti and cracking into a bottle of red wine.

Peter Capaldi

Chris Addison is a stand-up comic, but his ability to act is extraordinary, to be so natural, I've taken 25 years just getting to that level.

Peter Capaldi

Every viewer who ever turned on Doctor Who has taken him into his heart. He belongs to all of us.

Pete Fountain

If I had grown up in any place but New Orleans, I don't think my career would have taken off. I wouldn't have heard the music that was around this town. There was so much going on when I was a kid.

Pete Sampras

For so long people have just taken what I do for granted. It is not easy to do year-in, year-out, to win Grand Slams and be No. 1.

Pearl White

Why should I have my picture taken when I can get paid for it?

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Individual human beings are so subtly developed through the centuries that it is strictly impermissible to compare any two men who are not contemporaries-that is to say are taken from two quite different times.

Rachel Cusk

I was aware, in those early days of motherhood, that my behaviour was strange to the people who knew me well. It was as though I had been brainwashed, taken over by a cult religion. And yet this cult, motherhood, was not a place where I could actually live. Like any cult, it demanded a complete surrender of identity to belong to it.

Rabindranath Tagore

When you have once taken up a responsibility, you must see it through.

Julian Barnes

You put together two people who have not been put together before. Sometimes it is like that first attempt to harness a hydrogen balloon to a fire balloon: do you prefer crash and burn, or burn and crash? But sometimes it works, and something new is made, and the world is changed. Then, at some point, sooner or later, for this reason or that, one of them is taken away. and what is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. this may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.

Maggie Stiefvater

It was as if I had thought all along I was a complete picture and he had revealed I was a puzzle and had taken me apart and put me back together again.

Maggie Stiefvater

Where are Sam and Grace?" "Ringo left in his car a few hours ago. He must've taken Grace with him. I don't know where they went." "You didn't ask?" "We're not married" Cole said, and added, in a more humble tone, "yet".

Haruki Murakami

I bet the reason people are afraid of going bald is because it makes them think of the end of life. I mean, when your hair starts to thin, it must feel as if your life is being worn away ... as if you've taken a giant step in the direction of death, the last Big Consumption.

Each of us is a being in himself and a being in society, each of us needs to understand himself and understand others, take care of others and be taken care of himself.

Gustav Stresemann

Nothing is more misleading to the youth of a nation than to state the outcome immediately after the beginning as if nothing could have taken place in between.