“At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, "thus far and no further." If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, "If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour.”
Regretful feeling
Regretful Quotes — page 81 of 169
“England has never enjoyed a genuine social revolution. Maybe that's what's wrong with that dear, tepid, vapid, insipid, stuffy, little country.”
“The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient.”
“I've wrecked and ravaged half my life in the pursuit of women, and I suffer the pangs of about seventeen regrets -- the seventeen who got away.”
“A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.”
“Who's 'they'? Why don't you all get together and be 'they' yourselves?”
“He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.”
“I never quite toed the line.”
“England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter.”
“When I left school I went on trip around the world - I only got as far as Australia, but like a bloody fool I cut it short because of a girl. It's probably one of my big regrets in life.”
“More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce.”
“Notwithstanding my experiments with electricity the thunderbolt continues to fall under our noses and beards; and as for the tyrant, there are a million of us still engaged at snatching away his sceptre.”
“. . . it is yours women's to be silent and stay within doors.”
“It's a man's jobno place for women's plans here!what lies outside. Stay home and cause no trouble.”
“The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples. . . We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is MORE than a state, government and sovereignty----this is national consolidation in a free homeland.”
“We do not seek an agreement with the [Palestinian] Arabs in order to secure the peace. Of course we regard peace as an essential thing. It is impossible to build up the country in a state of permanent warfare. But peace for us is a mean, and not an end. The end is the fulfillment of Zionism in its maximum scope. Only for this reason do we need peace, and do we need an agreement.”
“No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land Of Israel. [A] Jewishstate in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning ..... Our possessionis important not only for itself ... through this we increase our power,and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in itsentirety. Establishing a [small] state .... will serve as a very potent lever inour historical effort to redeem the whole country.”
“This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.”
“In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government.”
“I think gay couples should be allowed to marry. They should suffer just like us heterosexuals.”