Quotes to inspire and reflect

I’m OK—You’re OK.

 

A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone.

 

Outside the Kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than another. God and history will remember your judgment!

 

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned: . . . until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; . . . until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; . . . until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; . . . until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.

 

Soldiers! When it is announced that a respected and beloved leader has died for our freedom in the course of a battle, do not grieve, do not lose hope! Observe that anyone who dies for his country is a fortunate man, but death takes what it wants, indiscriminately, in peacetime as well as in war. It is better to die with freedom than without it.

 

De toutes les aberrations sexuelles, la plus singulière est peut-être la chasteté .

 

Preach the gospel all the time—if necessary, use words.

 

The so-called white races are really pinko-gray.

 

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.

 

Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the gray, sober against the fire.

 

I am known in parts of the world by people who have never heard of Jesus Christ.

 

I do not know, but I feel it happen and am in agony.

 

Per caputque pedesque .

 

Odi et amo: quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior .

 

No justice, no peace.

 

[ Advice to writers :] First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. . . . Habit is persistence in practice.

 

We’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!

 

I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

 

[ Maintaining that he was not involved in discussions of trading arms for hostages in 1985 :] We were not in the loop.

 

[ Of Ronald Reagan :] For seven and a half years I have worked alongside him and I am proud to be his partner. We have had triumphs, we have made mistakes, we have had sex.

 

[ Remark after vice-presidential debate with Geraldine Ferraro :] We tried to kick a little ass last night.

 

[ On turning his attention to long-term objectives :] Oh, the vision thing.

 

The big mo [momentum].

 

The biggest thing that has happened in the world in my life, in our lives, is this: By the grace of God, America won the Cold War.

 

The liberation of Kuwait has begun. In conjunction with the forces of our coalition partners, the United States has moved under the code name Operation Desert Storm to enforce the mandates of the United Nations Security Council.

 

What is at stake is more than one small country; it is a big idea: a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind—peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.

 

We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order—a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.

 

[ Referring to United States actions against Iraq :] A line has been drawn in the sand.

 

[ Of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait :] This will not stand.

 

Time and again in this century, the political map of the world was transformed. And in each instance, a new world order came about through the advent of a new tyrant, or the outbreak of a bloody global war, or its end. Now the world has undergone another upheaval, but this time, there’s no war.

 

I want a kinder, gentler nation.

 

America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral purpose. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.

 

We are a nation of communities, of tens and tens of thousands of ethnic, religious, social, business, labor union, neighborhood, regional, and other organizations, all of them varied, voluntary, and unique . . . a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.

 

[ On the Iran-Contra scandal :] Clearly, mistakes were made.

 

[ Of Ronald Reagan’s proposals to increase government revenues by reducing taxes :] Voodoo economics.

 

A paranoid is someone who has all the facts.

 

Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.

 

Just look there (another Heavy Metal Boy sank through the earth’s crust and we got some good pictures . . . ).

 

Manuscripts don’t burn.

 

The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch—a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.

 

The Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children.

 

And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always— take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!

 

He’s [Heathcliff’s] more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

 

Nelly, I am Heathcliff.

 

I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.

 

Proud and insolent youth, prepare to meet thy doom.

 

She [Tinker Bell] says she thinks she could get well again if children believed in fairies!

 

[ Explaining how to fly :] You just think lovely wonderful thoughts and they lift you up in the air.