Nancy > Nancy's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”
― Garrison Keillor

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...”
― C.S. Lewis

“Above all else, guard your heart for it affects everything else you do.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: New International Version

“Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“For you, a thousand times over”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”
― Jim Henson, It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”
― Toni Morrison

“The function of freedom is to free someone else.”
― Toni Morrison

“He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.”
― C.S. Lewis

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. ”
― James Baldwin

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
― James Baldwin

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ”
― James Baldwin

“His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily: "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”
― Alice Walker

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
― Toni Morrison