Quotes to inspire and reflect

We enact many laws that manufacturecriminals, and then a few that punish them.

 

I am Goya

 

I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I likegardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humor (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.

 

I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men.

 

“The realm of Sauron is ended!” said Gandalf.

 

[ Sam Gamgee speaking :] “Well, I’m back,” he said.

 

“I will take the Ring,” he said, “though I do not know the way.”

 

The Road goes ever on and on

 

[ Gollum speaking of the Ring :] Where iss it? Where iss it? . . . Losst it is, my precious, lost, lost! Curse us and crush us, my precious is lost!

 

Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make abody of more or less connected legend, rangingfrom the large and cosmogonic, to the level ofromantic fairy-story—the larger founded onthe lesser in contact with the earth, the lesserdrawing splendor from the vast backcloths—which I could dedicate simply to: to England; tomy country.

 

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Nota nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down onor to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

 

I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish tohave them in the neighborhood, intrudinginto my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world thatcontained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.

 

Mastering the lawless science of our law,

 

For why is all around us here

 

Cannon to right of them,

 

Theirs not to make reply,

 

Wearing all that weight

 

Was there a man dismay’d?

 

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

 

In Memoriam.

 

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

 

For my purpose holds

 

The deep

 

He works his work, I mine.

 

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

 

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

 

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink

 

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

 

And the stately ships go on

 

[ Paying tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt after her death on 7 Nov. 1962 :] I have lost more than a belovedfriend. I have lost an inspiration. She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.

 

[The Republican Party] had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.

 

Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that theU.S.S.R. has placed and is placing medium-and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no? Don’t wait for the translation. . . . I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over, if that’s your decision. And I am also prepared to present the evidence in this room!

 

We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave—to the ancient enemies of man—half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.

 

[ Remark after he was defeated in the presidentialelection :] A funny thing happened to me on theway to the White House.

 

Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, theanonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab andanything to win. This is Nixonland. But I say toyou that it is not America.

 

A hungry man is not a free man.

 

The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end.

 

I yield to no man—if I may borrow thatmajestic parliamentary phrase—I yield to no man in my belief in the principle of free debate, inside or outside the halls of Congress. The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. But there is also, it seems to me, a moment at which democracy must prove its capacity to act. Every man has a right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with a single set of vocal cords.

 

Let’s talk sense to the American people. Let’stell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, likeresistance when you’re attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man—war, poverty, and tyranny—and the assaults uponhuman dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each.

 

A society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.

 

The problem of cat versus bird is as old as time. If we attempt to resolve it by legislation whoknows but what we may be called upon to takesides as well in the age old problems of dogversus cat, bird versus bird, or even bird versusworm. In my opinion, the State of Illinoisand its local governing bodies already haveenough to do without trying to control felinedelinquency.

 

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

 

The Gulag Archipelago had already begun its malignant life and would shortly metastasize throughout the whole body of the nation.

 

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

 

A great writer is, so to speak, a second government. That’s why no regime anywhere has ever loved its great writers, only its minor ones.

 

The separation between the two cultures has been getting deeper under our eyes; there is now precious little communication between them. . . . The traditional culture . . . is, of course, mainly literary . . . the scientific culture is expansive, not restrictive.

 

Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension—sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding.