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Quotes by British Authors
"Decisions! And a general, a commander in chief who has not got the quality of decision, then he is no good."
"The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics."
"History is littered with wars which everybody knew would never happen."
"Political conflicts distort and disturb a people's sense of distinction between matters of importance and matters of urgency. What is vital is disguised by what is merely a matter of well being."
"You know, we're really destroying ourselves because we're really making the motivating force of anything we do selfish."
"When mental energy is allowed to follow the line of least resistance and to fall into easy channels, it is called weakness."
"I don't think there is really a favorite, I'm very fond of film making as a whole and as a medium and of course, there are some that I've enjoyed making more than others but I've enjoyed making all of them."
"The cultivation of sensibility on purely personal lines may, in fact, be the very worst training for a world where only the corporate and the cooperative will matter."
"Almost the moment he died, they put him in Playboy as one of the greatest drummers, which he was - there's no doubt about it. There's never been anybody since. He's one of the greatest drummers that ever lived."
"My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive."
"I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves."
"In fact I am quite snappy and irritable, and I don't know if I'd like to make myself worse in that respect."
"I remember in the early days when we played six nights a week for a month and I was doing my long drum solo every night. My hands were covered in blisters."
"I don't think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing."
"An involuntary return to the point of departure is, without doubt, the most disturbing of all journeys."
"A mistress never is nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers; and when it is over, anything but friends."
"There's one thing better than having a great actor, and that's having a great actor who's never done this kind of role before and is hungry to do it. They're testing themselves every day. They want to get out of their trailer and get to work."
"What we call "morals" is simply blind obedience to words of command."
"I am only 8 years old, I told myself. No little boy of 8 has ever murdered anyone. It's not possible."
"People like Beck and Shawn Colvin are some of the people I listen to lately."
"They're not bombarding me with offers, although the ones that have come along have been too preposterous to contemplate, so it's not as if I spend every day resisting $20 million pay cheques."
"Satnav will get us quickly and all-too-predictably from A to B, but the path of life is more interesting when we're allowed to explore the side streets."
"You might think the Bangkok Hilton (the nickname of a fictional prison in Bangkok) was tough, well that was paradise compared to this place!"
"There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience."
"I've been a photographer all these years... I haven't been in my own darkroom for 10 years."
"In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing."
"Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does."
"If you look at Newcastle or Gateshead, even over twenty years, even with the previous administration, it has moved quite remarkably in transforming itself."
"What happens to you here is forever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves."
"And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it."
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