Heather's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 100)

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
— Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems)

tags: poetry
244 people liked it

"You only live twice:
Once when you're born
And once when you look death in the face."
— Ian Fleming (You Only Live Twice)

tags: bond, death, james, philosophy, poetry
197 people liked it

"Poetry = Anger x Imagination"
— Sherman Alexie

tags: anger, imagination, poetry
40 people liked it

"For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity."
— Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth)

6 people liked it

"And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization a simply a question of relative strength."
— Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth)

4 people liked it

"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are
presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new
evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is
extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it
is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize,
ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief."
— Frantz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks)

tags: liberation, politics, psychology, revolution
2 people liked it

"Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well."
— Frantz Fanon

2 people liked it

"There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: poetry, wit
33 people liked it

"Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it."
— Mark Twain

tags: politics
994 people liked it

"In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
— Mark Twain

tags: politics
85 people liked it

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. "
— Pericles

tags: politics
52 people liked it

"Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top."
— Edward Abbey

tags: politics
70 people liked it

"The world hasn't changed that much; men still rule."
— Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl)

tags: politics
7 people liked it

"7 DEADLY SINS

Wealth without work

Pleasure without conscience

Science without humanity

Knowledge without character

Politics without principle

Commerce without morality

Worship without sacrifice."
— Mahatma Gandhi

tags: character, commerce, conscience, happiness, humanity, knowledge, money, morality, pleasure, politics, principle, sacrifice, science, sin, sins, wealth, work, worship
881 people liked it

"The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened."
— John F. Kennedy

tags: inspirational, politics
127 people liked it

"Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists."
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

tags: america, history, immigration, politics, revolution, united-states, usa
48 people liked it

"There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it."
— Bertrand Russell

tags: books, humor
842 people liked it

"You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena."
— Jon Stewart

tags: democracy, government, humor, politics
136 people liked it

"The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man."
— Huey P. Newton

tags: anarchy, fate, politics, revolution, revolutionaries, war
13 people liked it

"Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!"
— Allen Ginsberg (Howl and Other Poems)

22 people liked it

"Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does."
— Allen Ginsberg

19 people liked it

"He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration."
— Michael Pollan

tags: americans, chocolate, food, french, politics
44 people liked it

"What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender."
— Terry Jones

tags: bush, bushism, grammar, politics, terrorism
20 people liked it

"The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too."
— Malcolm X

tags: communism, democracy, freedom, history, hope, individualism, philosophy, politics, revolution, socialism
21 people liked it

"the difference between a rebel and a patriot depends upon who is in power at the moment."
— Sidney Sheldon (The Sands of Time)

tags: politics
14 people liked it

"The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation."
— Pierre Elliott Trudeau

tags: politics
4 people liked it

"I honestly see the battle between Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative as the exact same dynamic--there's a group of people in this world that don't like conflict and care about what other people are going through, and then there's this other group of people in the world who hate that. 'Suck it up, man, we're not coddling you, take care of yourself, what's your problem?' It's jocks versus geeks, and I've always referred to life as perpetual high school because it never stops."
— Paul Feig

tags: nerd, politics
2 people liked it

"
"The media's the most powerful entity on earth.
They have the power to make the innocent guilty
and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power.
Because they control the minds of the masses.""
— Malcolm X

26 people liked it

"I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream--I see an American nightmare."
— Malcolm X

22 people liked it

"Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight."
— Malcolm X

15 people liked it

"To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace"
— Malcolm X

tags: crime
15 people liked it

"The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first."
— Jim Morrison

tags: freedom, individuality, inspirational, mask, personality, revolution, truth
220 people liked it

"A poet's work . . . to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep."
— Salman Rushdie

tags: poetry, poets
62 people liked it

"When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger, the other opportunity."
— John F. Kennedy

tags: chinese, crisis, danger, inspirational, opportunity
472 people liked it

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: human, humor, nature, politics
66 people liked it

"...freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that "Oh, I don't get involved in politics", as if that makes you somehow cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable."
— Bill Maher

tags: freedom, government, politics
31 people liked it

"RORSCHACH:

Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.
Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there.
The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later.
Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion.
There is nothing else."
— Alan Moore (Absolute Watchmen)

tags: writing
34 people liked it

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: history, humor, writing
639 people liked it

"Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read."
— Frank Zappa (The Real Frank Zappa Book)

tags: humor, music, writing
118 people liked it

"For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver."
— Virginia Woolf (Orlando)

tags: writing
84 people liked it

"In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: writing
64 people liked it

"I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon."
— Philip Pullman

tags: sarcasm, writing
51 people liked it

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: intelligence, self-deprecation
7,909 people liked it

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: books, morality, reading
999 people liked it

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: belief, death, ideals, martyr, truth
795 people liked it

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: truth
498 people liked it

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

tags: college, semicolons, writing
354 people liked it

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."
— Thomas Jefferson

tags: writing
163 people liked it

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."
— Stephen King

tags: writing
120 people liked it

"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."
— Robert A. Heinlein

tags: writing
57 people liked it

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