Might Quotes - Page 20

• Dangerous thing, a name. Someone might catch hold of you by it, mightn't they?

  Richard Adams

  Names, Dangerous, Dangerous Things

  Richard Adams (2015). “The Plague Dogs”, p.115, Oneworld Publications

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• For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns. His hearer's mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.

  Roger Bacon

  Men, Fire, Hands

  "Memorable Quotations: Philosophers of Western Civilization". Book by Carol A. Dingle, p. 21, 2000.

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• I think Freud is about contamination, but I think that is something he learned from Shakespeare, because Shakespeare is about nothing but contamination, you might say.

  Harold Bloom

  Thinking, Contamination

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• Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before. In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.

  George F. Kennan

  Military, War, Fighting

  "George Kennan Speaks Out About Iraq" by Albert Eisele, historynewsnetwork.org. August 08, 2005.

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• You could say I'd rewritten the same novel three times and I thought I had to move on. The success of the book, and then the movie, had by then also created a commercial expectation and I remember touring America and seeing people in the audiences who I thought might not want to read the books I wanted to write next. My constituency had become broader, but more mysterious to me.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Moving, Book, Writing

  "Living memories" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. February 18, 2005.

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• It is odd to watch with what feverish ardour Americans pursue prosperity, ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they might not have chosen the shortest route to get it. They cleave to the things of this world as if assured they will never die, and yet rush to snatch any that comes within their reach, as if they expected to stop living before relishing them. Death steps in, in the end, and stops them, before they have grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes them.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Tired, Watches, World

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• If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention where I had the honor to preside might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it.

  George Washington

  Religious, Rights, Honor

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1848). “pt. V. Speeches and messages to Congress, proclamations, and addresses”, p.155

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• I'll sing over some chords, searching, what does [the music] conjure up, where's the melody taking you? I deliberate over the lyrics, I really do. I'll come up with one line in a day, and then it might be a couple of days before I come up with the rhyming line. It's never been easy for me.

  Rod Stewart

  Couple, Doe, Lines

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• Don't let the bastards grind you down. I repeat this to myself but it conveys nothing. You might as well say, Don't let there be air; or Don't be. I suppose you could say that.

  Margaret Atwood

  Air, Grind, Handmaids Tale

  Margaret Atwood (2016). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.447, Random House

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• We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.

  Ray Bradbury

  Book, Years, Needs

  Ray Bradbury (2016). “Fahrenheit 451”, p.41, Hamilton Books

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• These are the influences that everybody has. Some individuals might stand out because of one thing or another, but whether one's perception as a child of what was important or not is accurate, I don't know.

  John Hume

  Children, Perception, Important

  "Ireland's Champion of Civil Rights". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 8, 2002.

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• Opportunities may come along for you to convert something -something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Lying, Writing

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• Why should the railroad employees be parceled out among a score of different organizations? They are all employed in the same service. Their interests are mutual. They ought to be able to act together as one. But they divide according to craft and calling, and if you were to propose today to unite them that they might actually do something to advance their collective and individual interests as workers, you would be opposed by every grand officer of these organizations.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Organization, Together, Different

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• By labor and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die.

  John Milton

  Life, Nature, Strong

  'The Reason of Church Government' (1642) bk. 2, introduction

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• There aint any news in being good. You might write the doings of all the convents of the world on the back of a postage stamp, and have room to spare.

  Finley Peter Dunne

  Writing, News, World

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• One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go.

  Sigmund Freud

  Horse, Powerful, Goal

  "New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Lecture 31 : The Anatomy of the Mental Personality". 1932.

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• Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Unhappy, Facts, Unhappiness

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.114, Beacon Press

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• The utilitarian behaves sensibly in all that is required for preservation but never takes account of the fact that he must die... His whole life is absorbed in avoiding death, which is inevitable, and therefore he might be thought to be the most irrational of men, if rationality has anything to do with understanding ends or comprehending the human situation as such.

  Allan Bloom

  Powerful, Passion, Men

  "The Closing of the American Mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students". Book by Allan Bloom, 1987.

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• Intimate or drastic elements in the work of others are untouchable and should not be commented upon even in their absence. Private conflicts, quarrels, sentiments, animosities are unavoidable in any human group. It is our duty towards creation to keep these in check in so far as they might deform and wreck the work process.

  Jerzy Grotowski

  War, Groups, Elements

  Jerzy Grotowski (2012). “Towards a Poor Theatre”, p.259, Routledge

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• For when we talk about the spreading power and influence of globalization, arent we really referring to the spreading economic and military might of the US?

  Fredric Jameson

  Military, Economic Globalization, Influence

  Fredric Jameson (2009). “Valences of the Dialectic”, Verso Books

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• The American Petroleum Institute filed suit against the EPA [and] charged that the agency was suppressing a scientific study for fear it might be misinterpreted... The suppressed study reveals that 80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees.

  Ronald Reagan

  Agency, Air, Tree

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• In our system, at about 11:30 on election night, they just push you off the edge of the cliff-and that's it. You might scream on the way down, but you're going to hit the bottom, and you're not going to be in elective office.

  Walter F. Mondale

  Night, Office, Political

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• Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.

  William Carlos Williams

  Philosophy, Writing, Men

  William Carlos Williams, John C. Thirlwall (1957). “The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams”, p.219, New Directions Publishing

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• It doesn't look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary dietary advice. And then we hear that she's out eating ribs at 1500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat ... No, I'm trying to say that our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date every six months or what have you.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Sports, Stupid, Issues

  "Does Rush Limbaugh's Criticism Of First Lady Cross The Line?". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. February 24, 2011.

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• I'm horrified of leprechauns. I'm horrified that I might be leprechauns.

  Thom Yorke

  Leprechaun

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