Officials Quotes - Page 7

• I like BuzzFeed, and I understand the pressure that online reporters are under. But I think everyone agrees that, despite all the awesome kitten gifs, they're still obligated to be skeptical of government officials and ask the right questions.

  Michael Moore

  Thinking, Government, Pressure

  "My Final Word on BuzzFeed and Emad Burnat’s Detention at LAX" by Michael Moore, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 27, 2013.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Desire, Liberty, Citizens

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1970). “Toward a national urban policy”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• In my office in Jerusalem, there's an ancient seal. It's a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next to the Western Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now, there's a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu.

  Benjamin Netanyahu

  Kings, Wall, Years

  Benjamin Netanyahu's Remarks to the U.N. General Assembly, www.mfa.gov.il. September 23, 2011.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Officials at the White House are saying that President Bush hasn't changed his schedule much since the war started. The main difference, they say, is that he's started watching the news and taping Sponge Bob.

  Conan O'Brien

  War, White, Differences

  16 Copy quote

• A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between two countries, so that the official can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly.

  Daniel Handler

  Country, Travel, Government

  7 Copy quote

• Most contemporary novels are not really "written." They obtain what reality they have largely from an accurate rendering of the noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication; and what part of a novel is not composed of these noises consists of a prose which is no more alive than that of a competent newspaper writer or government official. A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel-reader is not prepared to give.

  T. S. Eliot

  Communication, Simple, Reality

  12 Copy quote

• It is quite common to hear high officials in Washington and elsewhere speak of changing the map of the Middle East, as if ancient societies and myriad peoples can be shaken up like so many peanuts in a jar.

  Edward Said

  Middle East, Maps, Jars

  Edward W. Said (2014). “Orientalism”, p.18, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A few weeks later, I’m in a fluorescent-lit classroom in Chelsea awaiting the start of the official Mensa test. I’m sitting next to a guy who’s doing a series of elaborate neck stretches, like we’re about to engage in a vigorous rugby match. He’s neatly laid out four types of gum on his Formica desk: Juicy Fruit, Wrigley Spearmint, Big Red, and Eclipse. I hate this guy. I hope to God he’s not a genius.

  A. J. Jacobs

  Hate, Guy, Genius

  A. J. Jacobs (2004). “The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If each side had been frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and each side is fighting the other side’s battle, all the bitterness which really flows from thwarted self-righteousness and obstinacy and from the accumulated grudges of the last ten years is concealed from them by the nominal or official "Unselfishness" of what they are doing or, at least, held to be excused by it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Fighting, Self

  C. S. LEWIS (1961). “The Screwtape Letters & Screwtape Proposes a Toast”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Part of the puzzle, surely, lies in the disconnect between official rhetoric and lived realities. Americans are constantly extolling “traditions”; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician’s discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as “identities” that fit in the larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.

  Susan Sontag

  Lying, Reality, America

  Susan Sontag, Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (2003). “Susan Sontag: Ansprachen aus Anlass der Verleihung”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.

  Bertrand Russell

  Attitude, Divorce, Catholic

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.34, Routledge

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the rock-hard self-satisfied strength of belief even for that.

  Neil Gaiman

  Atheist, Rocks, Self

  4 Copy quote

• Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Country, Truth, Mean

  Theodore Roosevelt (2015). “Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century”, p.42, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  388 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with each other, except at official functions, when we all wear ties and drink heavily and whoop it up like the natural, good-humored wild boys that we know in our hearts that we are..These occasions are rare, but they happen - despite the forked tongue of fate that has put us forever on different paths.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Heart, Fate, Boys

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the F”, p.289, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Official morality has always been oppressive and negative: it has said "thou shalt not," and has not troubled to investigate the effect of activities not forbidden by the code.

  Bertrand Russell

  Negative, Morality, Said

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.99, Psychology Press

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• On Wednesday, July 19, the Council, having gleaned and discerned, released its official verdict: the fall of the tile bearing the letter "Z" constitutes the terrestrial manifestation of an empyrean Nollopian desire, that desire most surely being that the letter "Z" should be utterly excised--fully extirpated--absolutively heave-ho'ed from our communal vocabulary!

  Mark Dunn

  Fall, Vocabulary, July

  4 Copy quote

• Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan.

  Ray Bradbury

  Friday, Monday, Ashes

  Ray Bradbury (2012). “Fahrenheit 451: A Novel”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The truth was stranger than the official fiction.

  Dean Koontz

  Fiction, Stranger

  Dean Koontz (2009). “Frankenstein: Dead and Alive: A Novel”, p.74, Bantam

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is my belief...that the talents every child has, regardless of his official 'I.Q,' could stay with him through life, to enrich him and everybody else, if these talents were not regarded as commodities with a value in the success-stakes.

  Doris Lessing

  Children, Belief, Talent

  6 Copy quote

• According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.

  Ashleigh Brilliant

  Statistics, Figures, Worthless

  7 Copy quote

• He's wearing his official university sweatshirt again, which puzzles me a little. I mean I'd sort of understand it more if it said Yale or Harvard or something, because then it would be a fashion choice. But why advertise the fact that you're at a university to all the other people who are at the university with you?

  David Nicholls

  Fashion, Mean, Yale

  David Nicholls (2008). “Starter for Ten: A Novel”, p.69, Villard

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When people discuss his plays, he says that he feels like he's standing at customs watching an official ransack his luggage. He cheerfully declares responsibility for a play about two people, and suddenly the officer is finding all manner of exotic contraband like the nature of God and identity, and while he can't deny that they're there, he can't for the life of him remember putting them there. In the end, a play is not the product of an idea; an idea is the product of a play.

  Tom Stoppard

  Responsibility, Play, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• For official record, announce instructor, the state requires no epic hero. No strive achieve personal celebrity of spotlight and applause. Lectures instructor, the state desires best ideal perform as mediocre. No gain attention showboat. No buffoon. Best effort so occur average. Suppress climbing ego. Become ordinary. Invisible.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Hero, Epic, Climbing

  4 Copy quote

• Rachel delivered it like an official pronouncement. Like she was one of the fairies gifting Sleeping Beauty's christening: Beauty. Intelligence. Heterosexual.

  Josh Lanyon

  Sleep, Fairy, Gifting

  7 Copy quote

• If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Believe, People, Vampire

  "The Social Contract". Book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source