Lisa > Lisa's Quotes

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
― Albert Einstein

“Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.”
― Rollo May, The Cry for Myth

“I long ago became convinced that the most reliable source for arcane and obscure and seemingly unobtainable information does not lie with the government or law enforcement agencies. Apparently neither the CIA nor the military intelligence apparatus inside the Pentagon had even a slight inkling of the Soviet Union's impending collapse, right up to the moment the Kremlin's leaders were trying to cut deals for their memoirs with New York publishers. Or, if a person really wishes a lesson in the subjective nature of official information, he can always call the IRS and ask for help with his tax forms, then call back a half hour later and ask the same questions to a different representative. So where do you go to find a researcher who is intelligent, imaginative, skilled in the use of computers, devoted to discovering the truth, and knowledgeable about science, technology, history, and literature, and who usually works for dirt and gets credit for nothing? After lunch I drove to the city library on Main and asked the reference librarian to find what she could on Junior Crudup.”
― James Lee Burke, Last Car to Elysian Fields

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.”
― Maya Angelou

“The Waverley sisters hadn't been close as children, but they were as thick as thieves now, the way adult siblings often are, the moment they realize that family is actually a choice.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Some of Bay's fondest memories were of lying under the apple tree in the summer while Claire gardened and the apple tree tossed apples at her like a dog trying to coax its owner into playing catch.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“I Have Not Yet Begun to Procrastinate" which was the quote on Bay's shirt from "First Frost”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“It had taken her a long time to realize that a prison sometimes isn't a prison at all. Sometimes, it's simply a door you assume is locked because you've never tried to open it.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Motherhood is hard enough without judgement from others who don't know the whole story.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Is anything illegal here?' Addison asked.
'Library late fines are stiff. Ten lashes a day, and that's just for paperbacks.
'There's a library?'
'Two. Though one won't lend because all the books are bound in human skin and quite valuable.”
― Ransom Riggs

“There was, in fact, a street sign to that effect—the first I’d seen in all of Devil’s Acre. Louche Lane, it read in fancy handwritten script. Piracy discouraged.
“Discouraged?” I said. “Then what’s murder? Frowned upon?”
“I believe murder is ‘tolerated with reservations.’ ”
“Is anything illegal here?” Addison asked.
“Library late fines are stiff. Ten lashes a day, and that’s just for paperbacks.”
“There’s a library?”
“Two. Though one won’t lend because all the books are bound in human skin and quite valuable.”
― Ransom Riggs, Library of Souls

“There are four things that lead to wisdom. You ready for them?'
She nodded, wondering when the police work would begin.
"They are four sentences we learn to say, and mean." Gamache held up his hand as a fist and raised a finger with each point. "I don't know. I need help. I'm sorry. I was wrong'.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“She quoted the Reverend James Forbes as saying, “Nobody gets into heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.”
― Anne Lamott, Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace

“Nobody gets into heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.”
― J. Forbes

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi

“You need your own strength in this life. Your own purpose. You can't simply live for others.”
― Mark Waid, Star Wars: Princess Leia

“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.
We are monkeys with money and guns.”
― Tom Waits

“The search for common ground starts with the search for higher ground, even with your opponents, especially with your opponents...You don't have to agree on everything if the one thing you do agree on is important enough.”
― Bono, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

“How do you ruin a people? Is it with fire? Is it with bullets? You can drag a man through the street tied to the back of a horse. You can incinerate a village. Can line families up in rows against a brick wall and fell them, one by one, like a forest. But all it takes is one survivor, and the story lives on. One survivor to carry the poems and the songs, the prayers, the sorrows. It isn’t just taking a life that destroys a people. It’s taking their history.”
― GennaRose Nethercott, Thistlefoot

“It is deeply troubling to make laws about what historical narratives are allowed to be told—it shows a rulership interested in propaganda, not truth.”
― Judy Batalion, The Light of Days

“The government want to criminalize all abortion and disallow in vitro fertilization because it produced wasted seed...My two companions were outraged at the misogyny, incensed by their government's unjust treatment of women. It sounds like the Poland I write about of the 1930s and 40s was more feminist than now. In some ways, it was.”
― Judy Batalion, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos

“On the other hand, the government had just passed a law making it illegal to blame Poland for any crimes committed in the Holocaust, and that doing so could result in incarceration. After decades of Soviet repression and Nazi conquest before that, the Poles were in a new nationalist phase. Their own victim status in WWII was important. The Polish underground was hugely popular; its anchor symbol graffitied across Warsaw buildings. People wore T-shirts with sleeve decorations that mimicked the Resistance armbands.”
― Judy Batalion, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos

“I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing.”
― Gregory Maguire, Out of Oz