The Drifters Quotes

“The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“I can no longer take war or promotion or big income or a large house seriously. I reject empire and Vietnam and placing a man on the moon. I deny time payments and looking like the girl next door and church weddings and a great deal more. If you want to blame such rejection on grass, you can do so. I charge it to awakening.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“Don't put off what you can do today because if you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“They’ll hear about your husband’s fortune. The suitors will begin to gather, and I want you to promise me this. Whenever one of them proposes, as they will, Doris must say rapturously, ‘Oh, David! All my life I’ve wanted to live in Israel.’ When he hears that she intends to live there instead of bringing him to the United States, you’ll see his interest evaporate. I said evaporate. It vanishes.” He waved his hands violently back and forth across his face to indicate total abolishment.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“But the neat trick in life is not to negotiate the years from seventeen to twenty-five. Anyone can do that, and apparently it’s a lot easier than I once thought. The problem is to build something that will sustain you from thirty-five to sixty.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“For three centuries the United States profited from the political exiles who fled to our protection. It took the politicians of this generation to launch a reverse flow.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“No matter what’s happening in the world, even the moon walk, which was something, believe me, the ads come on and show illiterate men and stupid women all excited about the most trivial aspects of living, and you honestly begin to wonder if that isn’t the real America.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“there are only three to consider” and he laid them out: Matthew Arnold’s “The Scholar-Gypsy,” Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village” and Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“pettifogging”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“club, where everyone looked to be over sixty, even those in their thirties, and he showed Bruce how to order dishes that were the mainstay of the menu: beef with Yorkshire pudding and trifle.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“In China they used thousands of workmen where ten would suffice, because they got them cheap, and the results suffered. I concluded that the most expensive product in the world is cheap labor, because it lures you away from rational operations. You pay a man a high wage, you demand a high return, and from high returns you pick up a good profit. So ever since, I’ve believed in paying a man high wages, then taxing him like hell for the welfare of the state. The thing that”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“Qarash.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“obstreperous.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“Scheherazade,”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“Tanks are nothing unless they’re kept moving. Because if you leave them static, a determined team can destroy them every time.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“A sensible man never brags about two things. How lovable his first wife was and how good his last school was.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“The Arabs can lose every war, if only they win the last one. The Jews have gained nothing if they win all the wars but lose the last one.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“The Arabs can lose every war, if only they win the last one.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“In this country we get stuck with taxes, but in the old country we used to get stuck with bayonets.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“It's the good minds that find difficulty in committing themselves”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“She was always pleased when a young man said “I can’t” rather than “I won’t,” because the former indicated a moral conviction that could not be set aside, whereas the latter implied mere personal preference without a solid footing.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters

“Negroes were drafted, white men weren’t; the poor were hauled off to war, the rich weren’t; the stupid were shot at, the bright boys weren’t.”
― James A. Michener, The Drifters