James > James's Quotes

“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“What we do now echoes in eternity.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

“I have looked last upon that which was fairest' He said to Legolas his companion. 'Henceforward I will call nothing fair, unless it be her gift.' He put his hand to his breast.
'Tell me, Legolas, why did I come on this quest? Little did I know where the chief peril lay! Truly Elrond spoke, saying that we could not forsee what we might meet upon our road. Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my worst wound in this parting, even if I were to go this night straight to the Dark Lord. Alas for Gimli son of Gloin!'
'Nay!' Said Legolas. 'Alas for us all! And for all that walk the world in these after-days. For such is the way of it: to find and to lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring