Amanda > Amanda's Quotes

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
― Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds

“Stories aren't fiction. Stories are fabric. They're the white sheets we drape over our ghosts so we can see them.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Other Birds

“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays

“When Joy looked at humans, she saw animals so detached from the food chain that their own boredom was eating them alive. None of their instincts made sense to them; they were primates adorning themselves with skins and shiny things, all swagger and posturing with no idea what it's for. They were grotesque and ridiculous, and she loved them so, so much. They were all doing their best, and their best was just an appalling disaster. That was why she loved the nursing home; the residents were humans stripped of all their pumped-up self-regard, scared and forced to put their whole trust in someone else for the first time since childhood. How could you hate humanity after seeing them in that state, helpless and afraid, watching their strength trickle away? Even the worst of them, when reduced to that, become something that just needs to be fed and bathed and comforted. They begin that way, and they end that way, and you can't really get too mad about the stuff they do in the middle.”
― Jason Pargin, If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe

“Does your need seem big to you? Then make sure God knows how big it looks to your eyes, and He will treat it as such. He will never belittle it, however trivial. He will not laugh at it, or at us. He never forgets how large our problems look to us.”
― Corrie ten Boom, Don't Wrestle, Just Nestle

“If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we are up for grabs for the next charlatan—political or religious—who comes ambling along.” —Carl Sagan”
― Brian Grazer, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life