“People who pray stand receptive before the world. They no longer grab but caress, they no longer bite but kiss, they no longer examine but admire.”
Quote collection
People Quotes — page 572 of 5018
“I always disagree, however, when people end up saying that we can only combat Communism, Fascism or what not if we develop an equal fanaticism. It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.”
“Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.”
“To talk, simply to talk! It sounds so little, and how much it is! When you have existed to the brink of middle age in bitter loneliness, among people to whom your true opinion on every subject on earth is blasphemy, the need to talk is the greatest of all needs.”
“There is a minority of gifted, willfuf people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class.”
“All people who have reached the point of becoming nations tend to despise foreigners, but there is not much doubt that the English-speaking races are the worst offenders. One can see this from the fact that as soon as they become fully aware of any foreign race they invent an insulting nickname for it.”
“In places this book is a little over-written, because Mr Blunden is no more able to resist a quotation than some people are to refuse a drink.”
“Tolerated people are never conciliated. They live on, but the aroma of their life is lost.”
“People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another.”
“Democratical States must always feel before they can see: it is this that makes their Governments slow, but the people will be right at last.”
“Though, when a people shall have become incapable of governing themselves and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes.”
“It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.”
“Fish have got to swim. Birds have got to fly, and Clintons have to run for office. It's what they do. It's a metabolic urge. That's all they've done their entire life is borrow money from rich people to seek public office.”
“Machiavelli, however, took his bearings from people as they are. He defined the political project as making the best of this flawed material. He knew (in words Kant would write almost three centuries later) that nothing straight would be made from the crooked timber of humanity.”
“What the federal government does basically is borrow money from people and mail it to people.”
“Americans, more than most people, believe that history is the result of individual decisions to implement conscious intentions. For Americans, more than most people, history has been that.... This sense of openness, of possibility and autonomy, has been a national asset as precious as the topsoil of the Middle West. But like topsoil, it is subject to erosion; it requires tending. And it is not bad for Americans to come to terms with the fact that for them too, history is a story of inertia and the unforeseen.”
“Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?”
“I was leaving the Belfast court, where I had been called to answer a very flimsy charge, later dismissed. You're relatively safe in such areas in the Irish community, but to go to downtown Belfast for me is dangerous. My appearance in court had been well advertised by the police. I think it was too much of a coincidence that the people who shot me were just passing by.”
“The hopeless grief of those poor colored people affected me more than almost anything else.”
“Psychoanalysis is a science conducted by lunatics for lunatics. They are generally concerned with proving that people are irresponsible; and they certainly succeed in proving that some people are”