Î-Chhin > Î-Chhin 's Quotes

“When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory

“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.”
― Bertolt Brecht

“And do you know another thing, Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.”
― Sophocles

“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… Or so says the legend.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds

“A little Learning is a dangerous Thing.”
― Alexander Pope

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“The progress of human enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken.”
― Kenneth Burke

“With my book in one hand
And my drink in the other
What more could I want

But fame,
Better health,
And ten million dollars?”
― Kenneth Burke

“Men seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality.”
― Kenneth Burke

“She might or might not have "an imagination" (Arthur could not be sure of that), but she certainly had and extraordinary power of getting underneath people's skins. Without being conscious of it herself she was able to sum up a person or a situation in a few minutes, People's very bones were bare to her-and she had no idea of it.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle Married

“A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanshawe

“Victor: What does it feel like to be in love?

Creature: It feels like everything is boiling over and spilling out of me; it feels like my lungs are on fire, and my heart is a hammer, and I feel like I can do anything...I feel like I can do anything in the world...”
― Nick Dear, Frankenstein, Based on the Novel by Mary Shelley

“How does it feel? To be in love?' 'It feels like all the life is bubbling up in me and spilling from my mouth, it feels like my lungs are on fire and my heart is a hammer, it feels like I can do anything in the world!”
― Nick Dear, Frankenstein, Based on the Novel by Mary Shelley

“In a society in which equality is a fact, not merely a word, words of racial or sexual assault and humiliation will be nonsense syllables.”
― Catharine A. MacKinnon

“Because language and society are so closely linked, it is possible, in some cases, to encourage social change by directing attention towards linguistic reflections of aspects of society that one would like to see altered.”
― Peter Trudgill, Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society

“. . . irrational attitudes and discriminatory decisions, often made by governments or other official bodies acting out of ignorance or prejudice, have led to language policies which have had detrimental effects on children's education and even on societies as a whole.”
― Peter Trudgill, Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society

“only after we have understood what means he had of saying anything can we understand what he meant to say, what he succeeded in saying, what he was taken to have said, or what effects his utterance had in modifying or transforming the existing paradigm structures. Authors--individuals thinking and articulating--remain the actors in any story we may have to tell, but the units of the proceses we trace are the paradigms of political speech.”
― J.G.A. Pocock, Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History

“Speech in its essence is not neutral.”
― Kenneth Burke

“Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.'

"Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?"

"Sun readers don't care *who* runs the country - as long as she's got big tits.”
― Antony Jay, Yes Prime Minister: The Diaries of the Right Hon. James Hacker

“Clarification is not to clarify things. It is to put one’s self in the clear (Sir Humphrey Appleby)”
― Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay, The Complete Yes Minister

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.”
― Walter Scott, Marmion

“Paperwork is the religion of the Civil Service. I can just imagine Sir Humphrey Appleby on his deathbed, surround by wills and insurance claim forms, looking up and saying, 'I cannot go yet, God, I haven't done the paperwork.”
― Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay, The Complete Yes Minister

“Demons run when a good man goes to war
Night will fall and drown the sun
When a good man goes to war

Friendship dies and true love lies
Night will fall and the dark will rise
When a good man goes to war

Demons run, but count the cost
The battle's won, but the child is lost”
― Steven Moffat

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.”
― Steven Moffat

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.”
― A.A. Milne

“How many happy, satisfied people there are, after all, I said to myself. What an overwhelming force! Just consider this life--the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak, all around intolerable poverty, cramped dwellings, degeneracy, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lying...and yet peace and order apparently prevail in all those homes and in the streets. Of the fifty thousand inhabitants of a town, not one will be found to cry out, to proclaim his indignation aloud. We see those who go to the market to buy food, who eat in the daytime and sleep at night, who prattle away, marry, grow old, carry their dead to the cemeteries. But we neither hear nor see those who suffer, and the terrible things in life are played out behind the scenes. All is calm and quiet, and statistics, which are dumb, protest: so many have gone mad, so many barrels of drink have been consumed, so many children died of malnutrition...and apparently this is as it should be. Apparently those who are happy can only enjoy themselves because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and but for this silence happiness would be impossible. It is a kind of universal hypnosis. There ought to be a man with a hammer behind the door of every happy man, to remind him by his constant knocks that there are unhappy people, and that happy as he himself may be, life will sooner or later show him its claws, catastrophe will overtake him--sickness, poverty, loss--and nobody will see it, just as he now neither sees nor hears the misfortunes of others. But there is no man with a hammer, the happy man goes on living and the petty vicissitudes of life touch him lightly, like the wind in an aspen-tree, and all is well.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die.

True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.”
― Robin Hobb, The Mad Ship

“Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that. And no less.”
― Robin Hobb, The Mad Ship

“Innocent?” He was incensed at her suggestion he was somehow responsible for this mess. “I’ve done nothing wrong, I intend nothing wrong. I am innocent!”
“Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. It’s not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed.”
“Even when it’s stupid to try?” he asked with savage sarcasm.
“Especially then,” she replied sweetly. “That’s how it’s done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost. That’s how you do it.”
― Robin Hobb, The Mad Ship