Decades Quotes - Page 17

• The only gift my dad ever bought me is still in my jewelry box. It died at 10 minutes to 11 decades ago, but the gold Caravelle watch keeps my dad alive. A watch isn't about keeping time. It's about stopping it.

  Regina Brett

  Dad, Gold, Watches

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• Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is pain. I don't want you to go through that. So what I'm trying to do is save you decades of time by bringing you the best.

  Tony Robbins

  Pain, Ignorance, Trying

  "Interview with Tony Robbins on His New Book, ‘Money: Master the Game’". Interview With Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 20, 2014.

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• As the decades go by, a painter's life becomes a life lived with oil paint, a story told in the thicknesses of oil. Any history of painting that does not take that obsession seriously is incomplete.

  James Elkins

  Oil, Doe, Stories

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.5, Routledge

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• In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.

  Amor Towles

  Decision, Vision, Twenties

  Amor Towles (2011). “Rules of Civility: A Novel”, p.323, Penguin

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• Galileo got it wrong. The earth does not revolve around the sun. It revolves around you and has been doing so for decades. At least, this is the model you are using.

  Srikumar Rao

  Doe, Earth, Sun

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• I discovered that I had, in the past two decades, written a far greater amount in the essay form than I remembered. Certainly I have written enough of it to demonstrate that I harbor no disdain for literary journalism or just plain journalism, under whose sponsorship I have been able to express much that has fascinated me, or alarmed me, or amused me, or otherwise engaged my attention when I was not writing a book.

  William Styron

  Book, Writing, Past

  William Styron (1993). “This Quiet Dust and Other Writings”, Vintage

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• Decades, if not centuries are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. In Britain, the road [to democratic government] took seven centuries to traverse.

  Jeane Kirkpatrick

  Government, Discipline, People

  "Jeane Kirkpatrick". www.economist.com. December 19, 2006.

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• What did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism.

  Martin Amis

  Teeth, Common, Poor

  Martin Amis (2010). “Experience”, p.116, Random House

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• Generations from now, when historians write about these times, they might note that, in the early decades of the twenty-first century, the United States succeeded in its great and historic mission--it globalized the world. But along the way, they might write, it forgot to globalize itself.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Writing, America, Twenties

  Fareed Zakaria (2009). “The Post-American World: And The Rise Of The Rest”, p.68, Penguin UK

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• Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Running, Ideas, Political

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• The world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades.

  Barack Obama

  Together, Climate, Fuel

  Awake! magazine, November 2011.

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• What is art is not likely to be decided for decades or longer after the work has been producedand then is often redecidedso we must not think badly if we regard literature as entertainment rather than as transcendent enlightenment.

  Richard Condon

  Art, Thinking, Enlightenment

  1976 Comment in D L Fitzpatrick (ed) Contemporary Novelists.

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• All the proliferating falsifications of what I and everyone I know experienced once in what it is now so convenient to call the "fifties" or "sixties," as if life was really measured or lived in arbitrary decades, when the history books are sold like comix.

  Lester Bangs

  Book, Arbitrary, Falsification

  Lester Bangs (2013). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll”, p.442, Anchor

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• The Sage of Toronto... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a "global village" instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle's present vulgarity.

  Guy Debord

  Gossip, Boredom, Sage

  "Comments on the Society of the Spectacle". Book by Guy Debord, 1988.

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• A high proportion of the population enjoys many of the 'luxuries' which until recently were considered the prerogative of the rich; and the ordinary worker lives at what even two decades ago would have been considered in Britain a middle-class standard of life.

  Anthony Crosland

  Class, Two, Luxury

  "The Future of Socialism". Book by Anthony Crosland, 1956.

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• The fears of recession in the aftermath of Black Monday have turned to fears of the economy racing ahead too fast, with inflation edging up and a substantial current account deficit... People understandably feel more confident about their future than they've done for decades, but as a result they have been borrowing more and saving less... Coming on top of a massive income investment boom, it's all been just a bit too much of a good thing.

  Nigel Lawson

  Monday, People, Black

  Speech to the Conservative Party Conference, October 13, 1988.

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• An adult has the opportunity to enjoy the wisdom gleaned from previous decades of living and experience.

  Henry Rollins

  Opportunity, Adults, Enjoy

  "Henry Rollins - Recountdown Tour 2008 Update". Live Q&A, www.washingtonpost.com. October 28, 2008.

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• The question of crime is one of concern to everybody. But the position is that the security forces in our country for the last four decades did not concentrate on suppressing crime. Their main objective was to suppress, to crush political activity. And in the process, crime grew to unacceptable proportions. And criminals were able to form powerful syndicates, and they virtually took over the control of the life of the community in certain areas.

  Nelson Mandela

  Crush, Country, Powerful

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• Many people ... prefer to describe themselves as progressives rather than liberals. To some extent that's a response to the decades-long propaganda campaign conducted by movement conservatives, which has been quite successful in making Americans disdain the word liberal but much less successful in reducing support for liberal policies.

  Paul Krugman

  Successful, Long, People

  Paul Krugman (2009). “The Conscience of a Liberal”, p.268, W. W. Norton & Company

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• For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy — a process that reached its epitome when George W. Bush won re-election by posing as America's defender against gay married terrorists, then announced that he had a mandate to privatize Social Security.

  Paul Krugman

  Cutting, Gay, America

  "Severe Conservative Syndrome". www.nytimes.com. February 12, 2012.

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• It was Rudolf Carnap's dream for the last three decades of his life to show that science proceeds by a formal syntactic method; today no one to my knowledge holds out any hope for that project.

  Hilary Putnam

  Dream, Today, Lasts

  "Hilary Putnam: Pragmatism and Realism". Book by James Conant and Urszula M. Zeglen, 2002.

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• By making college more affordable for all and more accessible for minority students, the first new higher education authorizing legislation in a decade will help strengthen our nation and America's middle class, and spur a new age of innovation and ingenuity in our country.

  Nancy Pelosi

  Country, College, Class

  "Pelosi: Higher Education Bill is Bipartisan Investment in College Affordability and in America's Middle Class". Press release, July 31, 2008.

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• Possibly worst of all, from the standpoint of the dedicated enemies of freedom, the Internet is a world that libertarians - having been marginalized for three decades by the establishment media - have made their own, almost without effort. It's an alternative reality (unlike 'meat-space' we live in) in which - exactly like intelligence, bravery, or virtue - the human capacity for violence is not additive, and in which it's impossible to initiate force against anybody.

  L. Neil Smith

  Reality, Media, Space

  "Keep Your Filthy Hands Off The Internet". The Libertarian Enterprise, www.ncc-1776.org. June 20, 2010.

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• I suppose every decade gets the music it deserves.

  Robert Charles Wilson

  Deserve

  Robert Charles Wilson (2014). “The Chronoliths”, p.175, Macmillan

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• The novice-friendly software is more like a misbehaving dog: it shits on the floor, it destroys things, and stinks - the novice-friendly software embodies the opposite of what computer people have dreamed of for decades: artificial stupidity. It's more human.

  Erik Naggum

  Dog, Opposites, People

  "Read the fine manual, please". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. November 14, 1997.

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