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Quotes by English Authors

"Even private persons in due season, with discretion and temper, may reprove others, whom they observe to commit sin, or follow bad courses, out of charitable design, and with hope to reclaim them."

"What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?"


"After Nashville sushi and a long debate on Bob Dylan, we went into Woodland Studios at 10 pm that night for a look around, and jammed for 5 hours solid."

"Mr. Darwin refers to the multitude of the individual of every species, which, from one cause or another, perish either before, or soon after attaining maturity."


"He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow-Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of India ink. In cleanest, severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes, whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the heavens and hells, and all the chances of human life."

"Harvard is first and foremost a university and not a consulting operation, and our job here is to teach and to research and to create knowledge on Asia in conjunction and in cooperation with scholars as well as with political, intellectual, and cultural leaders in Asia."

"In the democratic western countries so-called capitalism leads a saturnalia of "freedom," like a bastard brother of reform."

"What I love about the East End is that there's a great perseverance, determination and courage. What I dislike about it is that there is sometimes a celebration of ignorance."

"We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television."

"What you're doing is putting into professional play the way that you relate to other people, the way that you analyze and relate to a written text, the way that you would persuade anybody to do anything. It has to do with listening, with humility and a sense of yourself."

"His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over."

"At The Body Shop we had always been measured by how many jobs we had created, and I got a major award from the Queen on that."

"A [national] flag has no real significance for peaceful uses."

"The Beatles and The Stones were basically inspired by American Rhythm and Blues."


"I'm never any good in the morning. It is only after four in the afternoon that I get going."

"Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined."

"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were."

"Things alter for the worse spontaneously if they be not altered for the better designedly."

"Liberties aren't given, they are taken."

"Our object in these remarks has been not only to account for the slow progress which has as yet been made by Political Economy, and to suggest means by which its advancement may be accelerated, but also to warn the reader of the nature of the following Treatise."

"I got a couple on per album but my problem was that I wanted to sing the songs and not let Roger sing them."

"Luckily, in my case, I have managed, by writing, to do the one thing that I always wanted to do."

"The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly."

"All you now do is pursue your private objectives within society. Instead of us being a community, everybody is asked to seek their own personal ends. It's called competition. And competition is antagonism."

"The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks."


"Until we totally change the way we elect our leaders, until we remove private money from public campaigns, lying will be the de facto method of governance in this country."

"We read Greek and Norse mythology until it came out of our ears. And the Bible."

"It is what you do from now on that will either move our civilization forward a few tiny steps, or else... begin to march us steadily backward."


"A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier."
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