Customs Quotes - Page 29

• I remember when I posed as a customs officer so that I could meet Oscar Wilde. I said to him "Have you anything to declare?" He said "I have nothing to declare but my genius." I said "I'll put that down as nothing then shall I?" For I am the wittiest man on Earth.

  Simon Munnery

  Men, Genius, Earth

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• Keep to the ancient way and custom of the Church, established and confirmed by so many Saints under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And live a new life. Pray, and get others to pray, that God not abandon His Church, but reform it as He pleases, and as He sees best for us, and more to His honor and glory.

  Angela Merici

  Inspiration, Honor, Church

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• The heart is naturally hard, and grows harder by custom in sin, especially by long abuse of mercy, neglect of the means of grace, and resisteing the spirit of grace.

  Richard Baxter

  Religious, Heart, Mean

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• Language surely does affect our thoughts, rather than just labeling them for the sake of labeling them. Most obviously, language is the conduit through which people share their thoughts and intentions and thereby acquire the knowledge, customs, and values of those around them."

  Steven Pinker

  People, Doe, Sake

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.283, Penguin

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• A custom-tailored suit retains a certain dignity about it.

  Vincent Piazza

  Tailored Suits, Dignity, Certain

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• Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.

  George W. Bush

  Helping Others, Government, Law

  Second Presidential Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 2005

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• People will be surprised at the eagerness with which we went aboutpretending to rouse from its slumber a sexuality which every­thing-our discourses, our customs, our institutions, our regulations, our knowledges-was busy producing in the light of day and broadcasting to noisy accompaniment.

  Michel Foucault

  Light, People, Regulation

  Michel Foucault (2012). “The History of Sexuality: An Introduction”, p.158, Vintage

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• Trying every day to tell the truth is hard. There are harder things, of course - arguably, living with lies and meaninglessness, living in despair is harder, but it's hardship disguised as luxury and easier perhaps to grow accustomed to, since truth is usually the enemy of custom. There are harder things than writing, being President Obama, for instance, and having to deal with House Republicans, or trying to fix the leak at the Fukushima reactor, these are harder, but writing is hard.

  Tony Kushner

  Lying, Writing, Luxury

  "We Call That Failure Art" by Tony Kushner, www.newyorker.com. October 31, 2013.

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• Preventing people from illegally immigrating to the United States should be the primary purpose of Customs and Border Protection.

  Ted Cruz

  People, Borders, Purpose

  "TED CRUZ TO OBAMA: You Must Help Texas Solve The Border Crisis Now" by Brett LoGiurato, www.businessinsider.com. June 19, 2014.

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• History or custom or social utility or some compelling sense of justice or sometimes perhaps a semi-intuitive apprehension of the pervading spirit of our law must come to the rescue of the anxious judge and tell him where to go.

  Benjamin Cardozo

  Law, Justice, Judging

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• Yet, Puerto Ricos economic convergence and political integration with the rest of the nation is in a state of arrest - even though the island has been within the national borders, political system and customs territory of the U.S. for a century.

  Dick Thornburgh

  Islands, Political, Borders

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• The moral, then, is that familiar categories of behavior - marriage customs, food taboos, folk superstitions, and so on - certainly do vary across cultures and have to be learned, but the deeper mechanisms of mental computation that generate them may be universal and innate.

  Steven Pinker

  Culture, May, Superstitions

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.66, Penguin

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• It is ordinarily said that criminal law is designed to protect property and to protect persons, and if society's only interest in controlling sex behavior were to protect persons, then the criminal codes concerned with assault and battery should provide adequate protection. The fact that there is a body of sex laws which is apart from the laws protecting persons is evidence of their distinct function, namely that of protecting custom.

  Alfred Kinsey

  Sex, Law, Body

  Alfred C. Kinsey (1998). “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male”, p.4, Indiana University Press

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• I've begun to look at the world through apocalypse eyes. Our society, which seems so sturdily built out of concrete and custom, is just a temporary resting place, a hotel our civilization checked into a couple hundred years ago and must one day check out of.

  Neil Strauss

  Couple, Eye, Years

  Neil Strauss (2011). “Emergency: One man's story of a dangerous world, and how to stay alive in it”, p.7, Canongate Books

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• Rule by the statist elite is not benign or simply a matter of who happens to be in office: it is rule by a growing army of leeches and parasites battening off the income and wealth of hard-working Americans, destroying their property, corrupting their customs and institutions, sneering at their religion.

  Murray Rothbard

  Hard Work, Army, Office

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• The tone and tendency of liberalism...is to attack the institutions of the country under the name of reform and to make war on the manners and customs of the people under the pretext of progress.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Country, War, Names

  Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1886). “Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: Collected from His Writings and Speeches”

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• A convention is a social pattern we have chosen to prefer over whatever the raw world simply proffers. It is a sign of the operation of the mind, drawing the assent of a sufficient number of other minds so that the agreement will be widely operative. A convention is not a custom; a custom is a habit in which a sufficient number acquiesce. A custom can appear as a convention, but it is really a lesser act, the result of passive acceptance rather than of the imposition of design. It is the difference between learning to live by the annual flooding of the river or by a calendar.

  A. Bartlett Giamatti

  Acceptance, Agreement, Rivers

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• Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another agewhen so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Thoughtful, Thinking, Order

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• Living in England has no such excuse:
  These are my customs and establishments.

  Philip Larkin

  Home, England, Excuse

  Philip Larkin (2012). “The Whitsun Weddings”, p.32, Faber & Faber

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• The despotism of custom is on the wane. We are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.

  John Stuart Mill

  Despotism, Ought, Knows

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• I resolved to claim for my sex all that an impartial Creator had bestowed, which, by custom and a perverted application of the Scriptures, had been wrested from woman.

  Lucretia Mott

  Sex, Scripture, Claims

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• From early Colonial days, sex life in America had been based on the custom of men supporting women. That situation reached its heyday in the Twenties when it was easy for any dabbler in stocks to flaunt his manhood by lavishing an unearned income on girls. But with the stock-market crash, men were hard put even to keep their wives, let alone spend money on sex outside the home. The adjustment was much easier on women than on men, who jumped out of windows in droves, whereas I can't recall a single headline that read: KEPT GIRL LEAPS FROM LOVE NEST.

  Anita Loos

  Girl, Sex, Home

  Anita Loos (1974). “Kiss Hollywood good-by”, Viking Adult

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• It isn't pleasant to surrender to the hegemony of a nation which is still wild and primitive, and to concede the absolute superiority of its customs and institutions, science and technology, literature and art. Must one sacrifice so much in the name of the unity of mankind?

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Art, Sacrifice, Technology

  "The Captive Mind" by Czeslaw Milosz, as translated by Jane Zielonko, 1990.

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• We are ourselves the stumbling-blocks in the way of our happiness. Place a common individual - by common, I mean with the common share of stupidity, custom, and discontent - place him in the garden of Eden, and he would not find it out unless he were told, and when told, he would not believe it.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Block, Believe, Mean

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1831). “Romance and reality, by L.E.L.”, p.176

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• A strong person makes the law and custom null before his own will.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strength, Strong, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.468

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