Dan Groat Quotes

It must be great to spend time in a spot and if you walk away, it’s so much better than before because of something you did.
Dan Groat
What kind of country has this become? Decent people can’t do anything without being watched.
Dan Groat
I wonder how long it takes for these people we elect to forget who they work for?
Dan Groat
There’s nothing wrong with fighting when you have no choice. As a matter of fact, it’s what you should do, but when you fight, fight to win.
Dan Groat
Despite his best efforts, maintaining dignity in a head attached to an unclean body wrapped in unclean garments was a battle that encouraged surrender.
Dan Groat
He knew most men only heard what they wanted to hear, and he had no desire to be like most men.
Dan Groat
The weak thrive on indulgence.
Dan Groat
We get so beat down by what we need, sometimes we forget how to want.
Dan Groat
Now, it’s time for me to lock up and go. Listen to me. Lock up an empty building that’s gonna be torn down. Makes no sense. Like an old man tellin’ a lie to his son from his death bed. What’s the point? Who besides yourself are you fooling?
Dan Groat
In this country our principles should not be silent.
Dan Groat
True genius is a complete stranger to most, a momentary acquaintance to others, a lasting friend to few.
Dan Groat
Fear was the hand of the devil holding a scalding hot branding iron and touching your brain and your stomach and yelling at you to run with leaden feet.
Dan Groat
Those who show no loyalty give up the right to expect any.
Dan Groat
Winning and losing was suddenly elevated to be about things that had no score and no teams and no uniforms; just one player at a time dealing with his life, his own struggle, his own triumph and torment.
Dan Groat
My name Quan. Quan Nguyen. This Kim-Ly, wife. We next door. Do nails. We with Mr. Blaylock. He fight, we fight. We come here from Viet Nam. This good country, but sometimes, good people in good country have to fight.
Dan Groat
As I have aged, I’ve been lucky never to reach old. Old is always at least five or ten years beyond my current calendar stage.
Dan Groat
A person gets built and stands for a few years and then nature’s demolition team comes in.
Dan Groat
Gifford Ulrich didn’t know the distance from despair to hope, but he knew hope didn’t sleep in alleys.
Dan Groat
They understood that brave men could be injured more by pity than by disease.
Dan Groat
If you decide to take somebody on, don’t look behind you, because there won’t be anybody there. You’ll be all alone.
Dan Groat
Surviving is about need. Living is about want.
Dan Groat
He had no ability to give up. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to quit, he couldn’t. It wasn’t in him. It never had been.
Dan Groat
My world was very limited in size and experience. Small things took on extra importance, at least to a child.
Dan Groat
It made him wonder if all things taken from their home too soon lost some of their bloom.
Dan Groat
I wish but to share your gifts as a young boy on his birthday would excitedly rip open his packages to the view of others.
Dan Groat
Back home. What wonderful words. What a wonderful place.
Dan Groat
Men who have been in war have a different attitude about being wronged.
Dan Groat
A hopeful journey is more important than the destination.
Dan Groat
Human thought and human caring go on in one brain and one heart at a time. Groups are necessary. Regulations are necessary. Government, I would hope limited government, is necessary. But it all starts with the individual. Everything that is accomplished starts with one person, even if the group steps in and helps; it’s still one brain and one heart at a time.
Dan Groat
People don’t die so the universe can gauge your reaction. They die because life is finite.
Dan Groat
I don’t know how a reporter would ever understand a politician. Your job is supposed to be about finding the truth and enlightening people. Right? A politician’s job is about hiding the truth and fooling people. Right? You want us to be better informed so we get smarter. They think we’re dumb and it’s to their advantage to keep us that way.
Dan Groat
How do we keep convincing young people to die in fights they didn’t start for reasons we’re too devious to tell the truth about? It’s way too easy for governments to spend other people’s blood. Maybe only the sons and daughters of those who declare the wars should be allowed to fight and die.
Dan Groat
I assumed that looking back reminded older guys of what they had shot at and missed, the what-ifs, the good memories, the bad, the people left behind, the people who moved on.
Dan Groat
There is no end to the hatred in men, but there is an end to the hatred in a man. If your hatred is just, and deeds will get you to the end of it, then go and do what must be done.
Dan Groat
We learn to love when we’re young. If we learn hating better, it has to go somewhere. We can hate ourselves or we can hate somebody else. Most people would rather hate somebody else.
Dan Groat
Evil won’t leave you alone until you take a stand or until you’re dead.
Dan Groat
Evil stinks and it doesn’t disappear just because you want it to. You can still smell it with your eyes closed.
Dan Groat
Doing without will wear on you until temptation is stronger than character, sometimes.
Dan Groat
Hope was always hard to find in the darkness.
Dan Groat
Time does not heal, but it can liberate. A race run well can never be lost.
Dan Groat
It’s as close to true freedom as I have come. Not freedom of, but freedom from; freedom from the debris of life that piles up and forces us to dig and dig for our original self, who we were once upon a time, innocent and wonderfully naïve, as authentically pure as a human can be.
Dan Groat
He knew that prejudice was a necessary part of the weak spirit of some men.
Dan Groat
Memories with laughter are the best ones to keep.
Dan Groat
What a wonderful sadness to miss the one you have loved forever, it seems, and know that she is waiting at home.
Dan Groat
I am not wise enough to know if there is ever purpose in tragedy, if there is ever virtue in resisting it. If it cannot be overcome, then grief has beaten you, and you are right to say so.
Dan Groat
We, the beggar class, have little to lose and our expectations are, at best, modest, and when we suffer, it seems we suffer to the depths, for there is nothing in our lives nor in our souls to buoy our hope. Nothing in the way of the blackness. It sinks to the bottom as the lead weight that is despair. We look forward such a short distance that our spirit is myopic, not to be corrected by any lens within our world.
Dan Groat
The bones of the oak tree that had stood by the spring branch during my youth were scattered about the ground, pieces of the skeleton of a majestic life that had passed while I was off growing up and old.
Dan Groat
I wonder if God hears prayers if the only time you make them is when you’re in trouble.
Dan Groat
Sometimes, you need to spit stuff out in words to get it better arranged in your head. I figure if you never talk about it, it just picks its own spot and lays there and festers.
Dan Groat
Being tough today might cause you to be weak in the future.
Dan Groat
It’s a funny thing, one day you’re living and the next day you’re not sometimes, whether you have plans or not. Wishes and wants get trumped by the reaper every time. I don’t even know if I would want a warning if it was my time. I think I’d rather be surprised.
Dan Groat
As an adult I had mastered the art of looking without seeing and listening without hearing and eating without tasting and maybe even existing without living.
Dan Groat
A government that thinks it can remedy personal failure is an intrusion in everybody’s life. No law is going to cure a human’s lack of physical or mental effectiveness. I’d rather see democracy promote strength than reward weakness.
Dan Groat
As you get older, you have to be willing and able to choose your own path for your life. And once you choose it, you walk it with strength. If you meet evil along the way, know that it is supposed to make you afraid, but it’s not supposed to stop you. You walk through the fear and you walk through the evil, and you don’t let either one become your master.
Dan Groat
Sometimes when the three of us were together on our own, we would have a good time. I was pretty young, but sometimes we would go off in the woods and build forts and fight Indians and I think things were about as close to fine as they ever got right then during those times. In the woods. No parents. No yelling.
Dan Groat
Our bird of hope was being denied the altitude it sought, just free enough to fly dangerously close to the reality of the treetops.
Dan Groat
Seek until there is no hope and then seek further. Seek without end. Trudge on without tiring and without fear and without disheartenment. Trudge on, for it is within you to fight any enemy. It is who you are. It is your past and your present and your future. You will not quit. You cannot quit. Your breath is your courage, and as you breathe, so must you hope or you are already dead.
Dan Groat
The world has a way of dragging down our mood.
Dan Groat
The power of our country relies on the character that comes out of each of our homes.
Dan Groat
Some people get what they want because they grab the power and swing it, and some people don’t.
Dan Groat