Brett Williams > Brett's Quotes

“I asked him, ‘If I had died when I fell from that tree, would I wake up in the Kingdom, freed, like they say?’ And do you know what he told me, Miss Pancake? He said, ‘The Kingdom of the Father is upon the land, and men do not see it.”
― Brett Williams, The Father

“If two pilgrims, which have wandered some few miles together, have a heart's grief when they are near to part, what must the sorrow be at the parting of two so loving friends and never-loathing lovers as the body and the soul?”
― William Drummond 1623

“Every once in awhile the human race pauses in the job of botching its affairs and redeems itself by a noble work of the intellect.”
― Murray Rothbard

“When an individual becomes over-involved in a topic of conversation, others are drawn from the talk to the talker. One man's eagerness is another man's alienation. Readiness to become over-involved is a form of tyranny practiced by children, prima donnas and lords, placing feelings above moral rules that should have made society safe for interaction.”
― Erving Goffman

“NUTS! (In response to demands to surrender Bastogne, Belgium during WWII.)”
― Anthony McAuliffe

“We are unsettled to the very roots of our being. There isn't a human relation, whether of parent and child, husband and wife, worker and employer, that doesn't move in a strange direction. We don't know how to behave when personal contact and eternal authority have disappeared. There are no precedents to guide us, no wisdom that wasn't made for a simpler age. We have changed our environment faster than we can change ourselves.”
― Walter Lippmann

“The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.”
― Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

“It’s more than money now, Candice. It’s a memory maker…Hold this penny tight, close your eyes, and no matter where you are or when, you’ll find yourself back here with me in this very spot.”
― Brett Williams, The Father

“Common culture is in disrepute because many believe our Western tradition has promoted uniquely oppressive and imperialistic attitudes and practices. But it remains the case that no community can exist unless the people in it share important aspects of their lives in common.”
― George W. Carey, Community and Tradition: Conservative Perspectives on the American Experience

“Toleration and freedom and fairness are values too, and they can hardly be defended by the claim that no values can be defended. So it is a mistake to affirm...that all values are merely subjective.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy

“The most striking fact about contemporary university students is that there is no longer any canon of books which forms their taste and imagination...This state of affairs itself reflects the deeper fact of the decay of the common understanding of - and agreement on - first principles that is characteristic of our times.”
― Allan Bloom, Shakespeare's Politics

“Joseph said, ‘Beware of luxury and too much comfort, John. Avoid crowds and their approval. These things corrupt character. Doing makes a man, not display.”
― Brett Williams, The Father

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”
― Aldous Huxley

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads--and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
― Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
― Albert Camus

“My daily practice is to wake and immediately bring my attention to this thought: “I am one day closer to my death. So how will I live this day? How will I greet those I meet? How will I bring soul to each moment? I do not want to waste this day.”
― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”
― H. G. Wells

“Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where they live.”
― Holmes Rolston III

“Kant's style is so heavy that after his pure reason, the reader longs for unreasonableness.”
― Alfred Nobel

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
― George Orwell, 1984