Quotes by Journalists - Page 64

Thomas slammed his fist on the table, sending eating utensils flying. “Shameful! It is downright shameful that so-called men of God would use religion to manipulate people.”--from Prairie Grace when Thomas learns how the Indian agents and others are stealing from Native Americans
Marilyn Bay Wentz
You might think that, by now, people would have become accustomed to the idea of natural catastrophes. We live on a planet that is still cooling and which has fissures and faults in its crust; this much is accepted even by those who think that the globe is only six thousand years old, as well as by those who believe that the earth was "designed" to be this way. Even in such a case, it is to be expected that earthquakes will occur and that, if they occur under the seabed, tidal waves will occur also. Yet two sorts of error are still absolutely commonplace. The first of these is the idiotic belief that seismic events are somehow "timed" to express the will of God. Thus, reasoning back from the effect, people will seriously attempt to guess what sin or which profanity led to the verdict of the tectonic plates. The second error, common even among humanists, is to borrow the same fallacy for satirical purposes and to employ it to disprove a benign deity.
Christopher Hitchens
Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning.
Mitch Albom
The passion for defiling things was inborn in her. It was not enough for her to destroy them, she had to soil them too.
Émile Zola
Who cares what a writer looks like as long as their words are beautiful?
Holly Bourne
Shinji slowly fell forward onto his face. Debris bounced up on impact. It took less than thirty seconds for the rest of his body to die. The memento of his beloved uncle--the earring worn by the woman he loved--was now stained with the blood running down Shinji's left ear, reflecting the glow from the red flames of the farm building.And so the boy known as the Third Man, Shinji Mimura, was dead.
Koushun Takami
It is a great comfort to a rambling people to know that somewhere there is a permanent home--perhaps it is the most final of the comforts they ever really know.
Ben Robertson
Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.
Mitch Albom
If you ever want something badly, let it go. If it comes back to you, then its yours forever. If it doesnt, then it was never yours to begin with.
Jack Engelhard
I just know that I don't want cheating. I refuse. I deepened myself but I don't believe in myself because my thought is invented.
Clarice Lispector
By portraying war as an opportunity for virtuous acts, the politicians romanticize evil.
Sheldon Richman
I think that my first impulse arises from a hypersensitivity or allergy. It seems to me that language is always used in a random, approximate, careless manner, and this distresses me unbearably. Please don't think that my reaction is the result of intolerance towards my neighbor: the worst discomfort of all comes from hearing myself speak. That's why I try to talk as little as possible. If I prefer writing, it is because I can revise each sentence until I reach the point where - if not exactly satisfied with my words - I am able at least to eliminate those reasons for dissatisfaction that I can put a finger on. Literature - and I mean the literature that matches up to those requirements - is the promised land in which language becomes what it really ought to be.
Italo Calvino
Nobody ever feels they’re doing well with teenagers,” he said. “I think that’s kind of the point of them.
Jojo Moyes
History shows: Whenever people try to pull you down, you will reach peaks of success. You just need the ability to ignore.
Debalina Haldar
The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. One the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.
Albert Camus
The scientific world of the time was in the midst of a terrible ferment, with discoveries and realizations coming at an unseemly rate. To many in the ranks of the conservative and the devout, the new theories of geology and biology were delivering a series of hammer blows to mankind's self-regard. Geologists in particular seemed to have gone berserk, to have thrown off all sense of proper obeisance to their Maker... Mankind, it seemed, was now suddenly rather – dare one say it? – insignificant. He may not have been, as he had eternally supposed, specially created.
Simon Winchester
The schedules are crammed with shows urging us to travel further, drive faster, build bigger, buy more, yet none of them are deemed to offend the rules, which really means that they don't offend the interests of business or the pampered sensibilities of the Aga class. The media, driven by fear and advertising, are hopelessly biased towards the consumer economy and against the biosphere.
George Monbiot
Faith was the most powerful force in the universe.
Robert Ferrigno
Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.
Jim Bishop
Life's too short to care about what other people think. Besides, they should accept us for who we are
Jeannette Walls
You are rotting away, you are falling to pieces. What are you? A bag of filth. Now turn around and look into that mirror again. Do you see that thing facing you? That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity. Now put your clothes on again.
George Orwell
[The ideology of beauty] has grown strong to take over the work of social coercion that myths about motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and passivity, no longer can manage. It is seeking right now to undo psychologically and covertly all the good things that feminism did for women materially and overtly.
Naomi Wolf
...I'm the last person to ask about unrequited love - I've run away to the Moon and fled to its valleys...
John Geddes
...I learn about the sacred in the everyday - I look in your face...
John Geddes
If we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love, and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of ‘I could have, I should have’. We can sleep in a storm. And when its time, our goodbyes will be complete.
Mitch Albom
If you realise and accept your mistakes, faults and wrong doings, it is the exact way to recognising, getting and finding yourself, when it happens, you are a genius
Ehsan Sehgal
Fun is not the same thing as fulfillment.
Tom Bissell
Indeed, very few people are aware that in each of our fingers, located somewhere between the first phalange, the mesophalange, and the metaphalange, there is a tiny brain. The fact is that the other organ which we call the brain, the one with which we came into the world, the one which we transport around in our head and which transports us so that we can transport it, has only ever had very general, vague, diffuse and, above all, unimaginative ideas about what the hands and fingers should do. For example, if the brain-in-our-head suddenly gets an idea for a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music or literature, or a clay figurine, it simply sends a signal to that effect and then waits to see what will happen
José Saramago
Grant Allen once said that an Englishman's idea of God was another Englishman twelve feet high, and I suppose that is more or less everybody's idea of God- with the necessary geographical adjustment. Zenith Brown has an idea about God that pleases me. 'God,' says Mrs. Brown, 'is obviously a friendly enough Old Gentleman most of the time, Who wishes us well and tries to see to it that we are reasonably happy. It is equally obvious the He has an idiot brother who takes over the reins whenever God Himself goes fishing. It is when the idiot brother is in charge of things that the world goes wrong and we have wars, famines, and pestilences on earth.
Vincent Starrett
Never mistake motion for action.
Ernest Hemingway
There's almost always a church youth group at the soup kitchen. I have yet to see an atheists' youth group. Yeah, I know, religious people don't have a monopoly on doing good. I'm sure that there are many agnostics and atheists out there slinging mashed potatoes at other soup kitchens. I know the world is full of selfless secular gropus like Doctors without Borders. But I've got to say: It's a lot easier to do good if you put your faith in a book that requires you to do good.
A.J. Jacobs
The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.
Esther Dyson
Most important thing in life is learning how to fall.
Jeannette Walls
One of the reasons for the failure of feminism to dislodge deeply held perceptions of male and female behavior was its insistence that women were victims, and men powerful patriarchs, which made a travesty of ordinary people's experience of the mutual interdependence of men and women.
Rosalind Coward
To show others, the quotes and sayings of the visionary figures, as a mirror instead of reform own conduct and character, indicates one's worst egoism unless that reflects and demonstrates not their golden words.
Ehsan Sehgal
We don’t go in for that psychodynamic stuff around here. Those guys will talk you to death, clean out your bank account while they are doing it, and then invite you to come back and express your innermost feelings about being broke.
Forrest Carr
She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after everyone else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.
Ernest Hemingway
You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.
Charles Kuralt
MEDITATION ON THE BUS. Rainy and cold. Thinking gloomily of the sins and shortcomings of others, it suddenly came to me to remember my own offenses, just as heinous as those of others. If I concern myself with my own sins and lament them, if I remember my own failures and lapses, I will not be resentful of others. This was most cheering and lifted the load of gloom from my mind. It makes one unhappy to judge people and happy to love them.
Dorothy Day
The dream begins, most of the time,with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you on to the next plateau sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth
Dan Rather
Never, never underestimate the power of desire. If you want to live badly enough, you can live. The great question, at least for me, was: How do I decide I want to live?
Marya Hornbacher
ALS is like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and leaves your body a pile of wax.. you cannot support yourself standing.. you cannot sit up straight. By the end, if you are still alive.. your soul, perfectly awake, is imprisoned inside a limp husk.. like something from a science fiction movie, the man frozen inside his own flesh.
Mitch Albom
Trying hard and working hard is its own reward. It feeds the soul. It affirms your will and your power. And it radiates from you, lighting the way for all those who see you.
Charles M. Blow
a simple question to identify your true home: where do you want to die?
Eric Weiner
The true test of life isn't how you cope when everything is going in your favour; it's how you deal with things that could destroy you, if you let them.
Holly Bourne
Perhaps the breaking of the human spirit into submissive, thoughtless robots is the most terrible feature of Stalin’s Russia. Humanity is bowed down. Every one cringes before his superiors, and those who abase themselves seek outlets in bullying and terrifying the unfortunates beneath them. Integrity, courage and charity disappear in the stifling atmosphere of cant, falsehood and terror.
Freda Utley
We’ve had bad luck with our kids – they’ve all grown up.
Christopher Morley
What do you most value in your friends?Their continued existence.
Christopher Hitchens
When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel.
Gloria Steinem
Marriage is the gold standard of all relationships. It's the currency by which everything is valued.
Frank Delaney
Capitalists' wet dreams is to be involved in charity.
Stieg Larsson
I want to kiss the bottom of the ocean before I burst through its surface into the sunlight. Otherwise I'll always be wondering about what was left unseen at the bottom.
Carol Lee
The young doctor was disappointed: he had never had th eopportunity to study the effects of gold cyanide on a cadaver. Dr. Juvenal Urbino had been surprised that he had not seen him at the Medical School, but he understood in an instant from the young man's blush and Andean accent that he was probably a recent arrival to the city. He said: "There is bound to be someone driven mad by love who will give you the chance one of these days." And only after he said it did he realize that among the countless suicides he could remeber, this was the first with cyanide that had not been caused by the sufferings of love. Then something changed in the tone of his voice. "And when you do find one, observe with care," he said to the intern: "they almost always have crystals in their heart.
Gabriel García Márquez
There might not be a measure of happiness left in a life, but there could be beauty and grace and endless love.
Peter Heller
The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.
Mitch Albom
In my quest to find Green Cottenham, I also discovered an unsettling truth that when white Americans frankly peel back the layers of our commingled pasts, we are all marked by it. Whether a company or an individual, we are marred either by our connections to the specific crimes and injuries of our fathers and their fathers. Or we are tainted by the failures of our fathers to fulfill our national credos when their courage was most needed. We are formed in molds twisted by the gifts we received at the expense of others. It is not our "fault". But it is undeniably our inheritance.
Douglas A. Blackmon
All this, sadly enough, is truer of the more educated, higher-income, professional families. It is here that the competition is the greatest, the expectations most elevated. If the boy would be happier as a telephone linesman or a forest ranger, he is in a hopeless bind. His goals have been set for him by his milieu, and he cannot be his own man; so he simply refuses to play the game. He "does not try.
Sydney J. Harris
With a more expansive stretch, there’s a better chance that I’ll be around at the precise, random moment when one of my nephews drops his guard and solicits my advice about something private. Or when one of my nieces will need someone other than her parents to tell her that she’s smart and beautiful.
Frank Bruni
It is one thing to rouse the passion of a people, and quite another to lead them.
Ron Suskind
Canada's national bird is the grouse.
Stuart Keate