Jane Routley > Jane's Quotes

“You can't base your life on other people's expectations.”
― Stevie Wonder

“What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.”
― Chris Abani

“Saving nature' then, might not just mean a last-fence stand to preserve shrinking islands of Wilderness by keeping people out of them. Through restoration, we might escape from our locked dichotomy between the twin roles of destroyers and preservers and find a more rewarding middle way as facilitators of - and participants in - natural processes.”
― Paddy Woodworth page 2.

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
― Margaret Atwood

“The government is like a horse - the only reason a horse doesn't kill you is because it doesn't want to - it could kill you without any trouble.”
― First Dog on the Moon

“Auden Letter to Lord Byron
Banker or Landlord, booking clerk or pope,
Whenever he’s lost faith in choice and port,
Whenever man sees the future without hope
Whenever he endorses Hobbes report,
The life of man is nasty, brutish, short,
The Dragon rises from his garden border,
And promises to set up Law and Order.”
― W.H. Auden

“The difference between genius and stupidity is: genius has its limits.”
― Alexandre Dumas-fils

“...the small ecstasies of good prose”
― Geordie Williamson in the Australian

“The trouble with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

“Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.”
― Mary Anne Radmacher

“What would a war give you? ........ but if indeed war should break out, then it would not be in our power to stop it, for such is the logic of war. I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction.

Reply to JFK October 26 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis”
― Nikita Kruscev

“...the small ecstasies of good prose”
― Geordie Willimson , The Australian

“Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in western popular culture, but in reality, our cynicism advances the desires of the powerful: cynicism is obedience.”
― Alex Steffen, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century

“He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”
― Groucho Marx

“If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong.”
― Groucho Marx

“If a black cat crosses your path, it signifies that the animal is going somewhere.”
― Groucho marx

“Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh... now you tell me what you know.”
― Groucho Marx

“I wish I'd been a Hell-raiser when I was 30 years old. I tried when I was 50 but I always got sleepy.”
― Groucho Marx, The Groucho Letters