Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Were Quotes from famous persons: Cuba Gooding, Jr., George Gobel, Eric Burdon, Ronnie James Dio, John F. Kerry. The wide variety of quotes available makes it possible to find a quote to suit your needs. You’ve likely heard some of the Were Quotes before, but that’s because they truly are great.
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You can’t tell young people what to do. You can’t tell ’em because they’ll look at you and say, ‘Well, how can you tell me not to do that when you were there doing it yourself?’ Or supposedly were doing it yourself. I think you must let everyone live their life the way they have to.
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In the 1950s and ’60s, America’s natural resources were in bad shape. Communities were so polluted that clouds of smog lingered over cities like Los Angeles. Rivers and lakes were filled with chemicals. In my hometown of Boston, the harbor was among the nation’s most polluted waterways.
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Were I not a king, I would be a university man.
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If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.
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There’s an examination for young people to go to university. I failed it three times. I failed a lot. So I applied to 30 different jobs and got rejected. I went for a job with the police; they said, ‘You’re no good.’ I even went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four people went for the job. Twenty-three were accepted.
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I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn’t able to succeed at those institutions.
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It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
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Now, as a nation, we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.
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It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.
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A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?
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One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts… to my surprise… almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.
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Everyone has a dream deep in their heart, which is a center of what they want to do. If they had all the money, and they had the time and they were guaranteed that they’d be successful, that dream is what they would love to do.
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Positive energy knows no boundaries. If everyone were to spread positive energy on the Internet, the world would be a much better place.
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All of nature begins to whisper its secrets to us through its sounds. Sounds that were previously incomprehensible to our soul now become the meaningful language of nature.
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What you don’t want is for violence and gore to become more important than character and structure. A lot of slasher movies from the eighties were only focused on violence and gore, which robs the human beings in the story of any empathetic reaction from the audience, and instead makes them cheer for the gore.
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The most terrifying moment in my life was October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I did not know all the facts – we have learned only recently how close we were to war – but I knew enough to make me tremble.
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If the choice were made, one for us to lose our sovereignty and become a member of the Commonwealth or remain with our sovereignty and lose the membership of the Commonwealth, I would say let the Commonwealth go.
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A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.
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It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.
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The signing of the Sex Pistols was a turning point for Virgin. It put the company on the map and, over the years, attracted bands such as Genesis, the Rolling Stones, Lenny Kravitz, and Janet Jackson. It also attracted Culture Club, who were ground-breaking.
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If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be present.
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If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.
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There are many talented people who haven‘t fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith.
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My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
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Only very intelligent people don’t wish they were in politics, and I’m dumb enough to want to be in there.
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I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which I have now been dedicated with such solemnity.
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Most of us weren’t born with a silver spoon in our mouth, but if life dealt you all the wrong cards, you still have to play.
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I was sort of born into a Subud cult that has ties to Islam and Indonesia and Middle Eastern spiritualism. My parents were kind of trial-and-error when it came to religion.
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When I was growing up, my parents were almost involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.
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I’ve never met a funny person who wasn’t smart. I’ve met a lot of dramatic people who were stupid. But I’ve never met a funny person who wasn’t smart.
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Ah, if I were not king, I should lose my temper.
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In a Balenciaga you were the only woman in the room – no other woman existed.
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The Raiders of old were vicious and crazy and cruel. Hanging around their locker room was like hanging around the weight room at Folsom Prison.
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The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.
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Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous.
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My mom and dad are from the streets. My mom’s from Chicago. My dad’s from Memphis. My dad got out of school and got with my mom. They were hustlers. They were from the streets. They were doing their thing. The streets ain’t got no love for the streets. You can light up the streets, or be a victim of the streets.
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If it weren’t for Miyamoto-san, I wouldn’t be where I am.
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We just were saying no more police brutality. And we had enough of police harassment in the Village and other places.
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To be honest, ‘Ready Steady Cook’ was a great opportunity, but I did compromise myself. I was stood there quizzing chefs on what they were doing when I knew exactly what they were doing and why.
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Maori get pigeonholed into the idea they’re spiritual and telling stories like ‘Whale Rider‘ and ‘Once Were Warriors,’ quite serious stuff, but we’re pretty funny people, and we never really have had an opportunity to show that side of ourselves, the clumsy, nerdy side of ourselves, which is something I am.
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If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
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If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation and to raise the dead with tears, then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping.
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I perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our own model.
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I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.
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If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?
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If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
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The old days were the old days. And they were great days. But now is now.
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Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
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For those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, we are grateful that such men and women were among us. For those who continue to serve, we honor their commitment. For those who return to civilian life, we honor their service.
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Vulnerability is the strongest state to be in. How boring would it be if we were constantly dominant or constantly submissive?
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I can mention many moments that were unforgettable and revelatory. But the most single revelatory three minutes was the first time I put on scuba gear and dived on a coral reef. It’s just the unbelievable fact that you can move in three dimensions.
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If poverty were a man, I would have slain him.
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The most valuable investment we can make is in our children’s education. When we make education a priority, we give our children opportunity. Opportunity to learn at higher levels than their parents were able to learn; to earn at higher levels than we were able to earn.
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It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.
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If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it.
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You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense.
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Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt ‘safe’ there.
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I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.
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When President Obama entered the White House, the economy was in a free-fall. The auto industry: on its back. The banks: frozen up. More than three million Americans had already lost their jobs. And America’s bravest, our men and women in uniform, were fighting what would soon be the longest wars in our history.
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At first, laws evolved out of religious doctrines. It followed that they were recognized only when advantageous to those who practiced the same religion and who appeared equals under the protection of the same gods. For the members of all other cults, there was neither law nor mercy.
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I am sorry that Mr. Cheney, and every other supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques, has to defend the practices as if they were torture. They are not.
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Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That’s just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin.
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My first big mission for UNICEF in Ethiopia was just to attract attention, before it was too late, to conditions which threatened the whole country. My role was to inform the world, to make sure that the people of Ethiopia were not forgotten.
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Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.
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If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.
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Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.
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We danced on the lip of the volcano, so to speak. We were young, too. And New York was still a big, open city where anything could happen and anyone could be star. Rents were cheap, creativity was encouraged, and bottle service was still 20 years away. That was the era the Club Kids came into.
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Geddy Lee and I went to the same grade school. He moved away when we were still young, but I remember him like I do all my friends from back then. Then in 1982, Dave Thomas and I were approached to do a record as the McKenzie Brothers on Anthem Records, the same label that Rush was on.
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I grew up in a family with three siblings. My parents were always very supportive and encouraging. It was important for them that we have meaningful and satisfying professions, but they didn’t care as much about success and achievement.
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My teenage years were exactly what they were supposed to be. Everybody has their own path. It’s laid out for you. It’s just up to you to walk it.
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Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.
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I liked St. Louis, when they were in the American League, because that was going home. I had all my family and friends there.
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For each of us, life is a journey. Heavenly Father designed it for us out of love. Each of us has unique experiences and characteristics, but our journey began in the same place before we were born into this world.
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We may not know what each day has in store for us. We could be gone tomorrow. Any minute could truly be our goodbye. But we do have this moment. This time. Today. Right now. It takes way more effort to shell out hate then it does to allow love to flow freely in our lives. After all, it’s what we were born to do.
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There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
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We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
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Sun-bleached bones were most wonderful against the blue – that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished.
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Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.
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Jim Carrey and my dad were best friends. He would always be in my house and stuff like that.
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My mom was born in Korea – Seoul, Korea, during the ’50s, ’51. She was abandoned; her and my uncle were abandoned. My grandfather was a Seabee and adopted my mom and my uncle, and brought them to Compton in the ’50s. That’s where she was raised.
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We’ve definitely had our share of ups and downs as a group, and there were times we’ve faced some pretty big challenges, but we were able to get through these times, which allowed our bond to grow stronger.
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If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms never never never!
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Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.
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The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.
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When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.
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Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
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I certainly know that I would not be able to survive if it were not for the fact that I am being upheld by the prayers of so many people.
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I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.
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May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.
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Anyone is free to judge me, but they weren’t there in my tough times.
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When I was young we weren’t even allowed to speak our own languages in school. They called it ‘vernacular,’ as if only English was the real tongue.
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I am not like a pebble on the beach – a grain of sand on the seashore or just one of millions of human beings past, present and future. No, I am a unique human being loved by God as if I were an only child – the only fruit of his creative powers.
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My belief is that we were put into this world of wonders and beauty with a special ability to appreciate them, in some cases to have the fun of taking a hand in developing them, and also in being able to help other people instead of overreaching them and, through it all, to enjoy life – that is, to be happy.
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I’ve realized through the years that I just find happiness in other things, whether it’s my dogs or my friends or, like, looking at the sunset. So if I were to wish for something else, it would just to be happy all the time, to have a superpower of not letting things affect me, and to be true to who I am, always.
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Men weren’t really the enemy – they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.
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I believe that every single one of us, celebrity or not, has a responsibility to get involved in trying to make a difference in the world. Our generation faces many challenges, some of which were passed on to us by the past generations, but it’s up to us to find solutions today so that we don’t keep passing our problems on.
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Y’know, you can’t please all the people all the time… and last night, all those people were at my show.
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I was surrounded by strong women so it had never even occurred to me that women were anything other than equal to men.
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Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.
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You can’t control where you were born, the family you were born into, what you look like; you can’t control any of those circumstances. The only thing you can control is how you react.
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I’m humble ’cause I think many years ago people say, ‘Well, Alibaba’s terrible company’. And I know we were not that terrible. We’re pretty good; we’re better than people thought. But today, when people have a high expectation on you, and I start to worry and nervous because we are not good yet.
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The people who have impacted the world didn’t live long. Martin Luther King. John F. Kennedy. These people who impact the world were not old people, but they lived so effectively that we cannot erase them from history.
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Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.
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Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
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Entertainment came out of this thing called a television, and it was gray. Most of the films that we saw at the cinema were black and white. It was a gray world. And music somehow was in color.
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My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.
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Fortunately, problems are an everyday part of our life. Consider this: If there were no problems, most of us would be unemployed.
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I grew up in a time when women didn’t really do comedy. You had to be homely, overweight, an old maid, all that. You had to play a stereotype, because very attractive women were not supposed to be funny – because it’s powerful; it’s a threat.
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All men were made by the Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers.
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The golden age was when people were starting to understand what hip-hop was and how to use it. I was lucky to come up then. Everybody wanted to be original and have substance; it was somewhat conscious… There was an integrity that people respected.
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I have five children. There were four boys. The fifth, I got weak, and a girl came.
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And I figured out that the reason I couldn’t get through the day as well as I can now is because I had too many things on my mind, on my plate, you know, for one person to have. So I started to eliminate some of the things that were too heavy to carry and unnecessary.
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I guess if there weren’t luck involved, I’d win ’em all.
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A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.
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Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.
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I was shaped by a pit environment and the Second World War. My playground was on the pit tip at Clay Cross and I grew up with that mining background. My father was a miner and my granddad was a miner, and I would say three out of ten on the street where I was born were working in the pits.
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I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans – the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today.
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If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
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Before the palefaces came among us, we enjoyed the happiness of unbounded freedom and were acquainted with neither riches, wants, nor oppression.
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Shaquille and I kind of joke we were the Christopher Columbus of social media. We’re kind of out on a boat by ourselves going through these uncharted waters. But it’s become more understood, embraced and accepted, and now it’s pretty much expected by fans for athletes, leagues and teams to be there.
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In my case, I can sincerely say that nothing is impossible… When I was saying I want to be No. 1 of the world, and I was seven or eight years old, most of the people were laughing at me because it seems like I have one percent of chances to do that, and I’ve done it.
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The original ‘Hobbit‘ was never intended to have a sequel – Bilbo ‘remained very happy to the end of his days and those were extraordinarily long’: a sentence I find an almost insuperable obstacle to a satisfactory link.
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Most patients enter a doctor‘s office or hospital as if it were a Mayan temple, representing an ancient and mysterious culture with no language in common with the visitor.
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Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.
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A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.
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My heroes are and were my parents. I can’t see having anyone else as my heroes.
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I am not someone who is ashamed of my past. I’m actually really proud. I know I made a lot of mistakes, but they, in turn, were my life lessons.
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It is not that the child lives in a world of imagination, but that the child within us survives and starts into life only at rare moments of recollection, which makes us believe, and it is not true, that, as children, we were imaginative?
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You can’t build a revolution with no education. Jomo Kenyatta did this in Africa, and because the people were not educated, he became as much an oppressor as the people he overthrew.
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Believe with all your heart that you will do what you were made to do. Never for an instant harbor a doubt of it.
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I come from a long line of strong and confident women out of New Orleans. My grandmother and great-grandmother were women who ran their homes and were leaders in their communities. I was never taught that there was anything that I couldn’t do, and I believed that.
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Among the difficulties I encountered, economic problems were the worst. I found that financial hardships could limit one’s ability to realize one’s dream, no matter how desperate and earnest you are.
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The problem with EMMA is that it is cost prohibitive for the small investors who were supposed to benefit from the new transparency.
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I’m really living my dream so if I were to change anything up, I probably wouldn’t be where I am.
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My dad wanted me to play football so bad, he took me to Washington High School on the west side of Atlanta because they were number one. They never lost.
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I opened Leith’s in Notting Hill in 1969 and it eventually worked its way into being awarded a Michelin star. At the time, there were a few women running small bistros – but I was the first woman to have a ‘serious,’ expensive restaurant.
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Exercise to stimulate, not to annihilate. The world wasn’t formed in a day, and neither were we. Set small goals and build upon them.
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The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
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I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.
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People change with time. There are things that happened to a person in his childhood and years later they seem to him alien and strange. I am trying to decipher that child. Sometimes he is a stranger to me. When you think about when you were 14, don’t you feel a certain alienation?
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Before agriculture was invented, land was not a resource. Before oil drilling and nuclear fission were invented, petroleum and uranium were not resources.
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Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.
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Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.
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Without my services, Pakistan would never have been the first Muslim nuclear nation. We were able to achieve the capability under very tough circumstances, but we did it.
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In the household in which I was raised, the themes were pretty simple. ‘Work hard. Don’t quit. Be appreciative, be thankful, be grateful, be respectful. Also, never whine, never complain. And always, for crying out loud, keep a sense of humor.’
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I wrote ‘Oath’ for Cher Lloyd because there were really no best-friend anthems out there. Not only did she love it, she wanted me to rap on it, too!
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The Cold War had become a battlefield marked by doublespeak. Disguise, distortion, and deception were accepted as reality. Truth was promised in a serum.
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Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‘Boy, those were great old days.’ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.
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Women are the real reason we get up every day. I’m talking about real men. If there were no women, I would not even have to bathe, because why would I care? These are guys I’m hanging with. I wake up for a woman every day of my life to make it happen for her.
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Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.
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People ask ‘do you make a conscious effort not to swear?’ – if you’re doing silly stuff you’re not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.
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Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them.
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Everyone who achieves success in a great venture, solves each problem as they came to it. They helped themselves. And they were helped through powers known and unknown to them at the time they set out on their voyage. They keep going regardless of the obstacles they met.
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Dreams are where we visit the many lands and landscapes of human possibility and discover the one where we feel at home. The great religious leaders were all dreamers.
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If your dad died before you were born, yeah, it hurts – but it’s not like you had a connection with something that was real. Not to say it’s any better – but to have that connection and then have it ripped away was, like, the worst. My dad was such a good dad that when he left, he left a huge scar. He was my superhero.
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If I were a black liberal, I would be hailed, I guess. But I’m not. I mean, I think for myself. I want to make my own decisions.
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The fact that I fell in love with Meghan so incredibly quickly was sort of confirmation to me that all the stars were aligned; everything was just perfect. It was this beautiful woman just sort of literally tripped and fell into my life; I fell into her life.
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There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.
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I had to fight all my life to survive. They were all against me… but I beat the bastards and left them in the ditch.
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As the years went by, working on Broadway, I started seeing that I had a fan base and that they were mostly young girls. They are looking for someone that they can look up to, that they see as a role model. And I don’t take that lightly; it’s a big responsibility.
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Explorations into chemistry were done in our basement, sometimes with friends, and my parents must have had quite a bit of confidence in my abilities when they allowed me to experiment with explosive mixtures.
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If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
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I lived next to Russian soldiers. We had Russian army guys in our house when I grew up. We made lemonade for them; they were everywhere. I had a Russian school. I grew up with Russian traditions, I know Russian songs… it infiltrates me a lot. I even speak a little Russian.
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One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.
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When you’re a little kid, you don’t see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.
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In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, six million Jews and seven million others unable to defend themselves were exterminated.
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As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.
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If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be.
320
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I’ll say initially acting was my first love, and that’s what I pursued. But then, so far as even my first day on a film set, and just watching how things were set up, I just said, ‘I think I want to be in charge.’ I am very much type-A. I am a bit of a control freak.
322
323
The Roaring Twenties were the period of that Great American Prosperity which was built on shaky foundations.
324
When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.
325
For a really long time, I thought being different was a negative thing. But as I grew older, I started to realize we were all born to stand out; nobody is born to blend in.
326
If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.
327
It’s just so cool when you meet people who are different than you are. That can give you a different perspective, a viewpoint on life, or inspire you. I mean, what would the world be like if we were all the same? I think it would be very boring.
328
People always ask me, ‘Were you funny as a child?’ Well, no, I was an accountant.
329
A country that cannot feed itself cannot have self-pride, and in the mid-’60s 20 percent of all the wheat produced in America came into India. We were agriculturally a basket case. And 15 years later, 20 years later, we have become an agricultural power. This is the famous Green Revolution.
330
331
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.
332
If I couldn’t laugh I just would go insane, If we couldn’t laugh we just would go insane, If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane.
333
The Father willed that his blessed and glorious Son, whom he gave to us and who was born for us, should through his own blood offer himself as a sacrificial victim on the altar of the cross. This was to be done not for himself through whom all things were made, but for our sins.
334
In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
335
336
There is no one on earth who knew you from the day you were born; who knew why you cried, or when you’d had enough food; who knew exactly what to say when you were hurting; and who encouraged you to grow a good heart. When that layer goes, whatever is left of your childhood goes with her.
337
338
I’m an extremist so I’m either hated or loved. I think it’s down to when I first got to Formula One not always knowing what I was saying, saying things that mean one thing but people were taking the other way and then people don’t forget.
339
If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.
340
The Club Kids were about fun. Wild, messy fun – the more debauched, the better.
341
In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated.
342
343
344
345
There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way.
346
347
Most people are dead. Did you know that? It’s true, out of all the people that ever were, almost all of them are dead.
348
My heroes were always soccer players.
349
Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.
350
351
352
353
I’m an actor who they said was wrinkled and balding and everything else when I was in my early 30’s. Most of the people who wrote that who thought they were younger than me are now bald and wrinkled.
354
355
356
Krishna children were taught that in the spiritual world there were no parents, only souls and hence this justified their being kept out of view from others, cloistered in separate buildings and sheltered from the evil material world.
357
I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.
358
359
360
361
If I were to say, ‘God, why me?’ about the bad things, then I should have said, ‘God, why me?’ about the good things that happened in my life.
362
363
Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.
364
Men would live exceedingly quiet if these two words, mine and thine, were taken away.
365
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
366
Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson‘s administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s brilliant ‘whiz kids’ tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.
367
368
369
370
‘The Beatles’ did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.
371
There were many people who tried to insult me and never appreciated me in the beginning. The biggest platform for me I would say more than South Industry, I will say was ‘Bigg Boss’. They made me realise who I am and what all I can do in my life.
372
373
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.
374
Fidelity and allegiance sworn to the King is only such a fidelity and obedience as is due to him by the law of the land; for were that faith and allegiance more than what the law requires, we would swear ourselves slaves and the King absolute; whereas, by the law, we are free men, notwithstanding those oaths.
375
376
377
I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old.
378
379
The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor.
380
You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.
381
Challenge yourself, grow, blossom, and become who you were meant to be. Don’t ever stay at a job solely out of convenience or comfort. Aim higher, even if that means pursuing another job that’s just one step closer to your ultimate goal.
382
383
384
385
My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren’t my children.
386
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
387
Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.
388
389
If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.
390
The idea of a spiritual heart transplant is a vivid image to me; once you have the heart of somebody else inside you, then that heart is there. Jesus’ heart is inside me, and my heart is gone. So if God were to place a stethoscope against my chest, he would hear the heart of Jesus Christ beating.
391
Mom and Dad were the best. I never clashed with them.
392
He was a very strict father, which in a way has helped me to become who I am today. He never pampered me, as he wanted me to live a normal life. No film magazines were allowed at home, and we weren’t allowed to watch any movies.
393
Growing up, my parents were Roman Catholic – strict Catholics – from New Orleans. I understood the idea in the principle of spirituality. I noticed it in the stories that I read. The Trinity was something that was brought up consistently: the power of three. Things happened in threes, and I thought that was brilliant.
394
395
396
In every age ‘the good old days’ were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
397
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
398
I acted all the way up until Princeton. It was just one of my favorite extracurricular activities. Then I got to Princeton and had a really conservative vibe. All my friends were planning on law school, med school, or Wall Street, and suddenly acting seem like a really risky proposition.
399
Our hearts were drunk with a beauty Our eyes could never see.
400
401
402
403
What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.
404
Athletics are not my wheelhouse because sports were mean to this uncoordinated kid growing up, a 6-foot-2 14-year-old who never could do a layup.
405
Today’s younger generation is no worse than my own. We were just as ignorant and repulsive as they are, but nobody listened to us.
406
Loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation.
407
408
409
I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.
410
I was very sorry when I found out that your intentions were good and not what I supposed they were.
411
412
Marriage is an attempt to solve problems together which you didn’t even have when you were on your own.
413
If I weren’t doing what I’m doing today… I’d be traveling around the world on the back of a motorcycle.
414
415
416
A friend is, as it were, a second self.
417
A lot of people change for good. Some people just fall off. Just trying to progress in anything, no matter what you’re doing, I feel like any progression you make… some people aren’t gonna be around you that were around you.
418
Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
419
420
421
You don’t have to have anything in common with people you’ve known since you were five. With old friends, you’ve got your whole life in common.
422
It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
423
I invented ‘It’s a good thing’ before you were even born.
424
425
When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.
426
427
If I were a Roman Catholic, I should turn a heretic, in sheer desperation, because I would rather go to heaven than go to purgatory.
428
I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn’t lived long enough to experience. That’s why I also believe in reincarnation, that we were put here with ideas to pass around.
429
430
The great thing about Watergate is, is that the system worked. The American system worked. The press did its job. We did what we were supposed to do.
431
All the men in my family were bearded, and most of the women.
432
433
434
435
436
‘Boyz-n-the-Hood’ was actually supposed to be written for Eazy’s group. He had a group out in New York called Home Boys Only, called HBO. One of them looked like LL Cool J. Eazy wanted to write a song for them, a street song, like what we were doing on the mix tapes. So when I wrote it, it was too West Coast for them.
437
When I came to Johannesburg from the countryside, I knew nobody, but many strangers were very kind to me. I then was dragged into politics, and then, subsequently, I became a lawyer.
438
439
Never be discouraged. If I were sunk in the lowest pits of Nova Scotia, with the Rocky Mountains piled on me, I would hang on, exercise faith, and keep up good courage, and I would come out on top.
440
441
The ocean is the lifeblood of our world. If we were to lose our fish that we appreciate so much by overfishing; or if we were to lose some of our favorite beaches to overbuilding and pollution, then how would we feel? It’s become a case of not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone.
442
Instead of kids just hearing about beads and baskets and fringe, and about what ‘was’ and ‘were,’ we present Native American culture as a living contemporary culture.
443
No one likes the Electoral College, expect perhaps those who were elected because of it. No one likes gerrymandering, except those doing the gerrymandering. No one likes the filibuster, except those doing the filibustering.
444
It’s no secret that we were sticking just about every nickel we had on the chance that people would really be interested in something totally new and unique in the field of entertainment.
445
446
447
448
449
What attracted me to Jimmy Bulger were the various facets of his personality and his humanity because I felt that the only way I could approach playing a character like him was to find his human side first and then map that out to see where it took the turn. He was a very complicated man.
450
451
452
453
I believe in rules. Sure I do. If there weren’t any rules, how could you break them?
454
455
I feel like I’ve lived quite a sheltered life, like my mom and dad were quite protective of me.
456
The groves were God’s first temples.
457
Dad used to reminisce about the good old days when Everton won the old first division championship and the FA Cup back in the 1970s and 80s but they weren’t quite so good when I started supporting them.
458
I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of the legacy that I’ve gotten from so many of the adult elders.
459
I started collecting aerial photographs of Native American and South Pacific architecture; only the African ones were fractal. And if you think about it, all these different societies have different geometric design themes that they use. So Native Americans use a combination of circular symmetry and fourfold symmetry.
460
Oprah‘s got good politics, she’s got a good heart, and she’ll have us all up Jazzercising at six in the morning. This cannot be a bad thing, and reading a book while we’re Jazzercising. So America would be better off if Oprah were president.
461
If I were an animal, I would be an eagle.
462
463
People of African descent, most of us grew up accepting and loving Spider-Man. I still love Spider-Man. I still love the Incredible Hulk. I still have those characters that were white role models, superheroes, heroes – whatever you want to call it. You basically had no choice but to accept those.
464
465
I grew up with plenty of smart people. They would beat me at chess; they could solve brain teasers before I could, but then they would struggle in algebra. These were incredibly smart people who simply did not have the foundation in math that I had.
466
When you are laboring for others let it be with the same zeal as if it were for yourself.
467
468
My father being a soldier, every time I saw soldiers marching – ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘my father’s that,’ and these soldiers were always looking magnificent. And I thought they were powerful; they were all-powerful. I knew that they were an elite in India.
469
Once there were two brothers: one ran away to sea, the other was elected Vice-President-and nothing was ever heard from either of them again.
470
471
472
473
My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious – like, I don’t remember them ever being together.
474
The concept of The ‘Most Beautiful Moment in Life’, that was chapter one for us; it feels like that because we were starting from the bottom, but on this concept, ‘Love Yourself‘, we started to talk about some brighter things, like the real things in life.
475
Let’s teach kids, at the kindergarten level, what the contributions of people of color were to building the United States of America.
476
There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature.
477
To guarantee success, act as if it were impossible to fail.
478
479
480
‘Presence of God’ is really that understanding that sometimes when you step out of your own shoes and just open your ears and listen to what’s going on around you, you get answers to the questions you were asking.
481
Your grandparents came of age in the Great Depression, when everyday life was about deprivation and sacrifice, when the economic conditions of the time were so grave and so unrelenting it would have been easy enough for the American dream to fade away.
482
You’ve got to know your limitations. I don’t know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.
483
Even when we talked about child labor, we were frowned upon. But then you know that you have to speak the truth irrespective of the repercussions.
484
My teacher told me I’d never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.
485
Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.
486
487
Personally, I would not care for immortality in the least. There is nothing better than oblivion, since in oblivion there is no wish unfulfilled. We had it before we were born yet did not complain. Shall we whine because we know it will return? It is Elysium enough for me, at any rate.
488
There would be no need for love if perfection were possible. Love arises from our imperfection, from our being different and always in need of the forgiveness, encouragement and that missing half of ourselves that we are searching for, as the Greek myth tells us, in order to complete ourselves.
489
We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in reality occurs. We have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present – deja vu.
490
When I was an orphan, I was the richest kid at the orphanage because everyone else was complaining about not having anything. But when I discovered that you could get two cents for a Coca-Cola bottle, I would follow people around who were drinking it and ask them if they were almost through with it.
491
492
If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.
493
Millions of Americans were duped by the federal government and the Federal Reserve into buying homes they could not afford and failed to count the cost. When the financial crisis of 2008 hit, they could not keep up the monthly mortgage payments and defaulted.
494
495
The James Webb Space Telescope was specifically designed to see the first stars and galaxies that were formed in the universe.
496
If Everton were playing down the bottom of my garden, I’d draw the curtains.
497
I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms.
498
499
500
You were made perfectly to be loved – and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.
501
502
503
What is sad for women of my generation is that they weren’t supposed to work if they had families. What were they going to do when the children are grown – watch the raindrops coming down the window pane?
504
No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That’s a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.
505
506
507
My grandfather was a wealthy and respected merchant in Montclair, New Jersey, where I was born. But his estate was wiped out in the Great Depression, and as a result, I had what I consider the ideal upbringing: We were a proud family, good citizens, and we didn’t have a sou.
508
509
510
511
For a long time, men weren’t respecting women. They weren’t understanding Mother Earth, Mother Nature, the Motherland, all the motherly stuff. And now we are.
512
There were no strategic mistakes that could affect Russia’s history and it further development. No, there were no such mistakes. Tactical errors were made in some less significant options, problems and so on. But, on the whole, Russia embarked on a correct path and it changed.
513
To me, the Seventies were very inspirational and very influential… With my whole persona as Snoop Dogg, as a person, as a rapper. I just love the Seventies style, the way all the players dressed nice, you know, kept their hair looking good, drove sharp cars and they talked real slick.
514
515
It’s worth pointing out that conflicts between racially oppressed people often result from the fact that colonialism worked on divide and rule. Certain ethnic, religious, racial or indigenous groups were deliberately privileged over others in order to create a sense of investment in upholding the power structure.
516
The human longings that are deep inside of us never go away. They exist across cultures; they exist throughout life. When people were first made, our deepest longing was to know and be known. And after the Fall, when we all got weird, it’s still our deepest longing – but it’s now also our deepest fear.
517
518
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
519
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
520
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.
521
Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.
522
I was an only child and I had a mother and father who were just – there wasn’t a straight man in the house, and I mean that in a very nice way. They were fun, and we would laugh a lot.
523
524
Charity bestowed upon those who are worthy of it is like good seed sown on a good soil that yields an abundance of fruits. But alms given to those who are yet under the tyrannical yoke of the passions are like seed deposited in a bad soil. The passions of the receiver of the alms choke, as it were, the growth of merits.
525
My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.
526
The streets were dark with something more than night.
527
528
There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.
529
530
531
Photography was a way for me to freeze time and to capture the moments that were happy and healthy. I saw a photo as a way to go back to a memory if I ever needed to.
532
Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.
533
We had been told many times that astronauts would not make any mistakes. They were trained to be perfect.
534
When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.
535
To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.
536
I learned conservatism through my grandfather; I didn’t know that was the name. I didn’t know these were conservative principles. Starting his life on a sharecropping farm. Working tremendously hard. Five years old, picking cotton and laying tobacco out to dry on a farm, and today he now owns that farm.
537
God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.
538
539
540
In the information age, you don’t teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he’d have a talk show.
541
My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met.
542
543
544
Along the way, let’s never forget that once we were children and that we were all playing together without distinction of skin color, society level, or where people come from. Adults need to remember to play and to be more childlike in our behavior. We’ve forgotten what that childlike experience was like.
545
546
547
Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.
548
While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.
549
It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.
550
No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.
551
Money was always on my mind when I was growing up. So I was always wondering how we were going to afford this and that. Acting seemed to be a shortcut out of the mess.
552
553
554
555
556
If you’re teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.
557
If two people were exactly alike, one of them would be unnecessary.
558
559
My brother, a businessman, is the main cook in his home and my sister teaches cookery. Good food and good music were the mainstays of my childhood.
560
561
I grew up conservative because my mum was a conservative, and when I finally realized what conservatives were, I changed my mind immediately. As children, we tend to copy our parents.
562
Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
563
564
When I was a kid, nobody in my family had a car. And I didn’t have many toys. The only toys I had were the ones I would steal.
565
566
Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.
567
In Egypt, the living were subordinate to the dead.
568
Money is often a matter of chance or good fortune and is not the mark of a successful life. It is not the thing that brings a throb of pleasure or a thrill into my life. And I would not pose as a successful man if that were to be the measure.
569
I used to think that anyone doing anything weird was weird. I suddenly realized that anyone doing anything weird wasn’t weird at all and it was the people saying they were weird that were weird.
570
Before 1915, space and time were thought of as a fixed arena in which events took place, but which was not affected by what happened in it. Space and time are now dynamic quantities… space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe.
571
I just wondered how things were put together.
572
573
The word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
574
There’s nothing more superficial to do than to paint a beautiful woman. The most beautiful portraits in art were of ugly women. If you paint Brigitte Bardot, it’s a disaster. Sunsets, you have to stay away from sunsets. You paint a sunset, you are in great danger.
575
If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers.
576
As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldn’t necessarily be good.
577
Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.
578
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
579
I propose to construct a new chart for navigating, on which I shall delineate all the sea and lands of the Ocean in their proper positions under their bearings; and further, I propose to prepare a book, and to put down all as it were in a picture, by latitude from the equator, and western longitude.
580
581
I got two older brothers and two younger sisters, and we grew up in the country, and we were a little feral. So as long as the car didn’t end up in the rhubarb and you didn’t get caught for doing whatever you were doing, you were fine.
582
583
Behind that picture of me, thousands and thousands of people, they suffered – more than me. They died. They lost parts of their bodies. Their whole lives were destroyed, and nobody took that picture.
584
585
After 9/11, the amount of applicants the FBI received increased exponentially. Whereas you used to require a college degree, and it was a small group of people who were just out of college, after 9/11, it changed.
