Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

       By Leo Tolstoy    [fullquote]

Opportunities to rise are not a substitute for a large measure of practical equality of income and social condition. The existence of such opportunities…depends not only upon an open road but upon an equal start.

       By RH Tawney    [fullquote]

I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.

       By Che Guevara    [fullquote]

Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.

       By Pierre-Simon Laplace    [fullquote]

Before I traveled my road I was my road.

       By Antonio Porchia    [fullquote]

Before the law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. "It is possible," says the doorkeeper, "but not at the moment." Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: "If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him." These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet. The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: "I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted any- thing." During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly, later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his years long contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper's mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low towards him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage. "What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper; "you are insatiable." "Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?" The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.

       By Franz Kafka    [fullquote]

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

       By Albert Einstein    [fullquote]

A book should serve as the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

       By Franz Kafka    [fullquote]

216 Quotations

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The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.

       By D.H. Lawrence    [fullquote]

The first sign of a thoroughly ill-adjusted or bankrupt form of society is that the ruling classes cannot agree how to save the situation.

       By C.L.R. James    [fullquote]

The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure - in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past six months, a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation.

       By Desmond Mpilo Tutu    [fullquote]

In politics all abstract terms conceal treachery.

       By C.L.R. James    [fullquote]

Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.

       By Matthew    [fullquote]

The most lamentable thing is that in their determination to dominate the world...,(the Americans) are setting it alight.

       By Hugo Chavez    [fullquote]

Kilroy Was Here.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

Hoorah for those who never invented anything/ for those who never explored anything/ for those who never mastered anything // but who, possessed, give themselves up to the essence of each thing...

       By Aime Cesaire    [fullquote]

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

       By Irina Dunn    [fullquote]

Men make their own history, and the black Jacobins of San Domingo were to make history which would alter the fate of millions of men and shift the economic currents of three continents. But if they could seize opportunity they could not create it.

       By C.L.R. James    [fullquote]

God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from taking over the world.

       By Ed McMahon    [fullquote]

Success has many fathers, failure none.

       By Proverb    [fullquote]

When everything is done, mornings are sad.

       By Antonio Porchia    [fullquote]

The dogs bark but the caravan rolls on.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

You can't teach stupid, but you can vote him out of office.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

...the UN's International Criminal Court is not impartial, nor independent; it is directed by the Security Council, which decides what proceedings to initiate and when they will end.

       By Nicolas Fernandez    [fullquote]

Fear of separation is all that unites.

       By Antonio Porchia    [fullquote]

Email Footnote: No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

       By Source Unknown    [fullquote]

Only a few arrive at nothing, because the road is long.

       By Antonio Porchia    [fullquote]

God is Communication, or something like that.

       By Lloyd Rowsey    [fullquote]

Never squat while wearing your spurs.

       By Will Rogers    [fullquote]

How do I define history? It's just on f*ck*ng thing after another.

       By A Character Named Rudge    [fullquote]

As scientists are thrust forward into positions of power and influence in natural resource management, it is well that they be humble. For of all people, scientists should be acutely aware that we know so little and that there is no final truth. Scientists are not accustomed to power and are likely to use power poorly. If we are not careful, we may be like the Wizard of Oz that Dorothy discovered behind the curtain manipulating an impressive show of smoke, mirrors, and images.

       By Jack Ward Thomas    [fullquote]

I wish I could say I'd hit upon the answers to the great mysteries of life. But it doesn't make any more sense to me than it did on day one.

       By Herbert Hunke    [fullquote]

No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity/ But I know none, and therefore am no beast./

       By William Shakespeare    [fullquote]

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved ["] burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everyone goes, "Awww!

       By Jack Kerouac    [fullquote]

Drink a bottle of wine together/ And rarely look at each other./ Into each other's eyes, I mean.

       By Omar Khayyam    [fullquote]

It would be MUCH harder to make a sow's ear out of a silk purse.

       By Lloyd Rowsey    [fullquote]

We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.

       By Louis D. Brandeis    [fullquote]

The Government of the United States is secular. It derives its power from the consent of man. It is a Government with which God has nothing whatever to do.

       By Robert Ingersoll    [fullquote]

Knowledge makes us accountable.

       By Che Guevara    [fullquote]

The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves. They do not pretend that fraud is moral or that corporate greed is good. They do not claim that the demands of the marketplace can morally justify the hunger of children or denial of medical care to the sick. They do not throw 6 million families from their homes as the cost of doing business. Thought is a dialogue with one's inner self. Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness.

       By Chris Hedges    [fullquote]

Nuclear plants are incredibly complex technological devices for locating earthquake faults.

       By David Brower    [fullquote]

Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism.

       By Noam Chomsky    [fullquote]

When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

       By Victor Hugo    [fullquote]

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

       By John Steinbeck    [fullquote]

It is more insulting to be feared than hated.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

Knowledge makes us accountable.

       By Che Guevara    [fullquote]

Genealogy is tracing one's ancestors to ancestors who did not care to trace their own.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

And in the end, we shall arrive at the place where we started, and know it truly for the first time.

       By T. S. Eliot    [fullquote]

The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.

       By Chris Hedges    [fullquote]

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

       By Fyodor Dostoevski    [fullquote]

Who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?

       By Virginia Woolf    [fullquote]

Death is sweet; it delivers us from the fear of death.

       By Jules Renard    [fullquote]

Humiliations, spankings and beatings, slaps in the face, betrayal, sexual exploitation, derision, neglect, etc. are all forms of mistreatment, because they injure the integrity and dignity of a child, even if their consequences are not visible right away. However, as adults, most abused children will suffer, and let others suffer, from these injuries. This dynamic of violence can deform some victims into hangmen who take revenge even on whole nations and become willing executors to dictators as unutterably appalling as Hitler and other cruel leaders. Beaten children very early on assimilate the violence they endured, which they may glorify and apply later as parents, in believing that they deserved the punishment and were beaten out of love. They don't know that the only reason for the punishments they have (or in retrospect, had) to endure is the fact that their parents themselves endured and learned violence without being able to question it. Later, the adults, once abused children, beat their own children and often feel grateful to their parents who mistreated them when they were small and defenseless. This is why society's ignorance remains so immovable and parents continue to produce severe pain and destructiveness - in all "good will", in every generation. Most people tolerate this blindly because the origins of human violence in childhood have been and are still being ignored worldwide. Almost all small children are smacked during the first three years of life when they begin to walk and to touch objects which may not be touched. This happens at exactly the time when the human brain builds up its structure and should thus learn kindness, truthfulness, and love but never, never cruelty and lies. Fortunately, there are many mistreated children who find "helping witnesses" and can feel loved by them.

       By Arthur Silber    [fullquote]

Fools' names and fools' faces are often seen in public places.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

In a democracy you cannot expect the people, whose sons are being killed and who will be killed, to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them.

       By Frank Church    [fullquote]

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

       By Oscar Wilde    [fullquote]

It is necessary to work if not from inclination, at least from despair. All things considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

       By Charles Baudelaire    [fullquote]

The Opinion "And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God*" has been stomped on, tasered, riddled with bullets, blown up by a drone aircraft, disappeared, tortured, maimed, squashed, violated, raped, sh*t upon, pummeled, decapitated, buggered, imprisoned, murdered, squashed, assassinated, disemboweled, poisoned, asphyxiated, lynched, pulverized, deleted, flayed, cremated, thrashed, throttled, torn apart, bombed and bitten to death. The richest bastards in the game have paid off the Lord, and the glittering palaces and majestic boulevards of the Heavenly Kingdom reflect the new owners' aesthetics: the Gates of Heaven have been reinforced with fools' gold, forged in the fiery battlements of Hell. The Opinion was bought out during a hostile takeover, and heaven has never looked more malevolent, removed, cold and cruel. Yahweh/God has accepted his golden parachute and exited the building, to pursue adventures in lands not yet created, to work on projects that remain a mystery to us all.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

I will help you approach if you approach, and to keep away if you keep away.

       By Antonio Porchia    [fullquote]

Man talks about everything; and he talks about everything as though the understanding of everything were all inside of him.

       By Antonio Porchia    [fullquote]

Better to sit quietly and be thought a fool than open your mouth and be proved one.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

Radical" simply means "grasping things at the root.

       By Angela Davis    [fullquote]

Where are our great movie directors now that the religious right is trampling over our human rights? Are they scared or are they on the wrong side of the debate?

       By Eric Stone    [fullquote]

Be the change you want to see in the world.

       By Mahatma Gandhi    [fullquote]

The super-rich are different from you and I. They don't think about us.

       By Lloyd Rowsey    [fullquote]

I hurled the flaming darts of truth.

       By Cardinal Bellarmino    [fullquote]

Frisbeetarianism: The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

       By The Washington Post    [fullquote]

Did you hear the one about the Buddhist ordering the hamburger, and he said I'll take it with everything.

       By Warren Beatty    [fullquote]

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

       By Sinclair Lewis    [fullquote]

If you know hat you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

       By Derek Walcott    [fullquote]

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing the ground....Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.

       By Frederick Douglass    [fullquote]

Some things take so long But how do I explain When not too many people Can see we're all the same And because of all their tears Their eyes can't hope to see The beauty that surrounds them Isn't it a pity....

       By George Harrison    [fullquote]

Nobody reads poetry, we are told at every inopportune moment. I read poetry. I am somebody. I am the people, too [...] If I wanted to understand a culture, my own for instance, and if I thought such an understanding were the basis for a lifelong inquiry, I would turn to poetry first. For it is my confirmed bias that the poets remain the most 'stunned by existence,' the most determined to redeem the world in words.

       By Carolyn D. Wright    [fullquote]

A little whimsy goes a long way.

       By Lloyd Rowsey    [fullquote]

If you don't write the book you have to write, everything breaks.

       By A.M. Homes    [fullquote]

Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.

       By Angela Davis    [fullquote]

A Marine returned home from the Korean War with a crippling leg injury and was asked by a reporter how he got the wound. The Marine explained that his squad and a Chinese squad were exchanging fire across a road, when one of the Chinese soldiers shouted, "Harry Truman is a son of a bitch!" So, the injured Marine said he shouted back, "Chairman Mao is a son of a bitch!" And the Marine continued, "We were standing in the middle of the road shaking hands on it, when a truck hit us.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

Nobody puts one over on Fred C. Dobbs.

       By Humphrey Bogart    [fullquote]

Pharoah, you better let them chillun go, honey.

       By Curt Flood    [fullquote]

Absinthe makes the heart grow fodder.

       By Lloyd Rowsey    [fullquote]

The significance of RANKIN was in its mere existence, for it reflected a political sophistication no less intense than that of the English, and it indicated the political importance that the Americans attached to the possession of German soil rather than the Balkans. If the United States refused to go along with the British plans for a Balkan strategy after OVERLORD it was not because it was unconcerned about the alleged danger of Bolshevism, but only because it differed about how and where to meet it. By the end of 1944, and certainly by the early part of 1945, to the United States and Britain, every Soviet military advance took on, to varying degrees, the aspect of a political threat. RANKIN was only one index of that political sensitivity, and the final battles of the war and the movement of troops were ultimately to become another.

       By Gabriel Kolko    [fullquote]

Back in the 80's, the Army sent me to an advanced journalism course at the University of South Carolina. Day after day, the pompous little professor went on and on about how wonderful; how honest and brave the media was. Finally, I raised my hand and asked, "but who keeps US honest, to whom do we answer?" He stood there, mouth agape for a long moment, then hissed, "We police ourselves! We don't need anybody telling us what to do...

       By Sheila Samples    [fullquote]

So far as I know, the only eminent writer in English history who was also a 100% Englishman, absolutely beyond suspicion, was Samuel Johnson. The Ku Klux (Klan) of his day gave him a clean bill of health; he was the Roosevelt of the 18th century. But was Johnson actually an artist? If he was, then the cornet player is a musician. He employed the materials of one of the arts, to wit, words, but his use of them was hortatory, not artistic, Johnson was the first Rotarian; living today he would be a United States Senator, or a university president. He left such wounds upon English prose that it was a century recovering from them.

       By H.L. Mencken    [fullquote]

Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.

       By Porfirio Diaz    [fullquote]

Freud...explained that the aim of psycho-analysis was to transform 'hysterical misery into common unhappiness'.

       By Jenny Diski    [fullquote]

Despair is not a useful emotion.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

If you save one person's life, you save all mankind.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

How odd of God to choose the Jews.

       By Ogden Nash    [fullquote]

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges...

       By Anatole France    [fullquote]

Mister, you've got a lot of hard bark on you

       By Elmore Leonard    [fullquote]

Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.

       By Niels Bohr    [fullquote]

Do stuff, be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention, attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It make you cagier. Stay Cagier.

       By Susan Sontag    [fullquote]

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

       By Leo Tolstoy    [fullquote]

Think globally, act locally.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

The Definition of Research: Plagiarism on a grand scale.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

Big issues rattle from his brain and out his inert, somewhat glassy-eyed face as if dispensed by a gum-ball machine.

       By Robert Draper    [fullquote]

Nothing Succeeds Like Success.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

History will absolve me.

       By Fidel Castro    [fullquote]

The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten-thousand truths.

       By Alexander Pushkin    [fullquote]

Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.

       By Niels Bohr    [fullquote]

Give away your happiness, but keep your money.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

...we would know far more about life's complexities if we applied ourselves to the close study of its contradictions instead of wasting so much time on similarities and connections, which should, anyway, be self-explanatory.

       By Jose Saramago    [fullquote]

What a strange scene you describe and what strange prisoners. They are just like us.

       By Plato    [fullquote]

I made one great mistake in my life, when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made, but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them.

       By Albert Einstein    [fullquote]

If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

Just Connect.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

Nothing is given to Man.

       By Unknown    [fullquote]

Let me warn you, if you start chasing after views, you'll be left without bread and without views.

       By Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol    [fullquote]

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