Quotes by American Authors - Page 3298

We tend to be judged because of our actions.
Roxy Writer
These ideas can be made more concrete with a parable, which I borrow from John Fowles’s wonderful novel, The Magus.Conchis, the principle character in the novel, finds himself Mayor of his hometown in Greece when the Nazi occupation begins. One day, three Communistpartisans who recently killed some German soldiers are caught. The Nazi commandant gives Conchis, as Mayor, a choice — either Conchis will execute the three partisans himself to set an example of loyalty to the new regime, or the Nazis will execute every male in the town.Should Conchis act as a collaborator with the Nazis and take on himself thedirect guilt of killing three men? Or should he refuse and, by default, be responsible for the killing of over 300 men?I often use this moral riddle to determine the degree to which people are hypnotized by Ideology. The totally hypnotized, of course, have an answer at once; they know beyond doubt what is correct, because they have memorized the Rule Book. It doesn’t matter whose Rule Book they rely on — Ayn Rand’s or Joan Baez’s or the Pope’s or Lenin’s or Elephant Doody Comix — the hypnosis is indicated by lack of pause for thought, feeling and evaluation. The response is immediate because it is because mechanical. Those who are not totally hypnotized—those who have some awareness of concrete events of sensory space-time, outside their heads— find the problem terrible and terrifying and admit they don’t know any 'correct' answer.I don’t know the 'correct' answer either, and I doubt that there is one. Theuniverse may not contain 'right' and 'wrong' answers to everything just because Ideologists want to have 'right' and 'wrong' answers in all cases, anymore than it provides hot and cold running water before humans start tinkering with it. I feel sure that, for those awakened from hypnosis, every hour of every day presents choices that are just as puzzling (although fortunately not as monstrous) as this parable. That is why it appears a terrible burden to be aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on around you, and why most people would prefer to retreat into Ideology, abstraction, myth and self-hypnosis.To come out of our heads, then, also means to come to our senses, literally—to live with awareness of the bottle of beer on the table and the bleeding body in the street. Without polemic intent, I think this involves waking from hypnosis in a very literal sense. Only one individual can do it at a time, and nobody else can do it for you. You have to do it all alone.
Robert Anton Wilson
Rule number one: Why is it that the one time a cute guy talks to you, you have a friend who’s in crisis?
Candace Bushnell
This thing I am feeling, I’m almost certain, is the closest I’ll ever come to standing somewhere in between truth and reconciliation.
Raquel Cepeda
You can always tell the heart of man by what he do, and by what he don't do...
Steven J. Carroll
Perhaps conscience did not always produce cowards. Sometimes it made a man feel better about himself.
Robert Ludlum
If it's true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet.
Criss Jami
I need to be casual but not too casual. Dressy but not too dressy. I need him to think I just threw on the first thing I found and that I'm not taking this too seriously or overthinking it or even that I was thinking about it at all. Because I'm not. I'm totally not thinking about him, and I don't want him to think I was thinking about him, but I don't want him to think that I'm not thinking about him, because clearly he thought about me enough to ask me out and it would be mean not to be thinking about him at all, so I need just the right amount of thinking, and I'm not sure if that means boots and a skirt or skinny jeans and ballet flats. Help!
Gemma Halliday
Justice, love, truth, peace and harmony, a serene unity with science and the laws of the universe.
Luther Burbank
Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is truer.
Frederic Raphael
The truth had lacerated him to the bone, had punctured his heart, and had ripped through his soul. The truth had slain him and tended to his wounds. The truth had hated him and loved him. The truth had opened his eyes to his own faults.
Brenda Sutton Rose
Could mankind declare it was truly wise? Did man know everything on earth, or would he ever? Certainly not!
E.A. Bucchianeri
He gave himself to them completely, with no guilt, no shame, no reservation, and in that surrender he found a quiet, shining pearl he had never known existed - himself. He was Sam. He was Sunshine. He was Peaches.
Heidi Cullinan
When we begin to reflect Christ, the Bible, when more understood as being centered around Christ, seems to be potentially every man's biography regarding God's promised experiences and truth for him - his individual, unique path of humbling oneself before the Lord and then being exalted by the Lord back into his true and righteous personhood. Many followers may speak of it merely to try to change other people (before changing themselves), but the prophets speak of it as a living word which miraculously tells their very own experiences.
Criss Jami
All works of nonfiction, or memoir, have to first and foremost be art before they can be true. They have to be artful first before they can be truthful... If you emphasize the truth-telling at the expense of art, nobody is going to be interested in it. And if you sacrifice truth in the name of art, you risk triviality. There's a constant balance between those two.
Alan Shapiro
Poverty is not a disgrace, but it's terribly inconvenient
Milton Berle
It takes two of us to discover truth: one to utter it and one to understand it.
Kahlil Gibran
We’re fine.’ A few feet away, Aurum snarled quietly, which meant Nico was lying.
Rick Riordan
Don’t be afraid to stand tall in YOUR truth! Boldly and confidently face everything that has, and is, keeping you bound. Fight for your inner peace! Fight for your happiness! Fight for everything and everybody that’s important to you! You are NOT a victim! Don’t even play into that. You owe it to yourself to LIVE! Live your life without the regrets, without the resentments, without the unforgiveness, without the blame game, without the self-pity, without any and everything that keeps you from experiencing true joy within! You are too important to waste your life away! Learn to appreciate and value your life, but most importantly, learn to appreciate and value yourself! You count too, no matter what you’ve done!
Stephanie Lahart
Take lightly what you hear about individuals. We need not distort trust for our paltry little political agendas. We tend to trust soulless, carried information more than we trust soulful human beings; but really most people aren't so bad once you sit down and have an honest, one-on-one conversation with them, once, with an open heart, you listen to their explanations as to why they act the way they act, or say what they say, or do what they do.
Criss Jami
However unlikely it may seem, it is the truth and, therefore, one hundred percent likely.
Catherynne M. Valente
I believe that if there is a huge chunk of white/truth in you, you will be drawn mostly to truth. If there is a lot of black/ego in you, you will naturally migrate to darkness/ego. We can't change our natural compositions or our attraction to certain lighting, but we can slowly change our angle of perception. Anyone can work on balancing their inner lighting simply by adjusting their outer lenses. All you have to do is learn to use your heart before your mind to see things. There is no light greater than truth, and it shines at the heart of all creation. Be like a butterfly and celebrate it every day. It is inside you. Be aware of it so it can cultivate it to grow stronger and bigger.
Suzy Kassem
He who stands by his heart has God in him. Our conscience is what unites us with God.
Suzy Kassem
Stand up for what is just against the unjust.
Suzy Kassem
We were so little when you took away all our sins.
Maggie Stiefvater
TRUTHWhenever you stand up For your conscience, Be prepared to be hated By the wicked. But never, ever,Let that scare you;For whenever you Stand up for God, By him, You are loved.
Suzy Kassem
Just because they're a story doesn't mean they're not real.
Heather Bouwman
For there to be harmony and peace, everything must be balanced. And for there to be balance, there must be equality. And where there is equality, there will be justice. And where justice is honored and preserved, there will always be truth. Eliminate the concept of division by class, skills, race, income, and nationality. We are all equals with a common pulse to survive. Every human requires food and water. Every human has a dream and desire to be happy. Every human responds to love, suffering and pain. Every human bleeds the same color and occupies the same world. Let us recognize that we are all part of each other. We are all human. We are all one.
Suzy Kassem
A man says something. Sometimes it turns out to be the truth, but this has nothing to do with the man who says it.
Karen Joy Fowler
Not all deceptions are palatable. Untruths are too easy to come by, too quickly exploded, too cheap and ephemeral to give lasting comfort. Mundus vult decipi, but there is a hierarchy of deceptions.Near the bottom of the ladder is journalism: a steady stream of irresponsible distortions that most people find refreshing although on the morning after, or at least within a week, it will be stale and flat.On a higher level we find fictions that men eagerly believe, regardless of the evidence, because they gratify some wish.Near the top of the ladder we encounter curious mixtures of untruth and truth that exert a lasting fascination on the intellectual community.
Walter Kaufmann
Basically all the religions,sciences and powers of the world boil down to a simple truth. The Best Story Teller will win in the end!
Stanley Victor Paskavich
The most popular labor saving device is still money.
Phyllis George
It can be difficult to speak truth to power. Circumstances, however, have made doing so increasingly necessary.
Aberjhani
The worst part of being okay is that okay is far from happy.
Anna Todd
Stand up for what is right against the wrong.
Suzy Kassem
Sometimes, the things They say, the laws They make, the way the world spins doesn't make any sense at all...Which is exactly why you have to ask "Why?" and keep on asking until you get the TRUTH...
Joe Kelly
...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.
Brenda Ueland
I know certain truths about life.
Dana Reinhardt
The best fiction is true.
Kinky Friedman
The life of truth is cold.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Until modern times, we focused a great deal of the best of our thought upon rituals of return to the human condition. Seeking enlightenment or the Promised Land or the way home, a man would go or be forced to go into the wilderness, measure himself against the Creation, recognize finally his true place within it, and thus be saved both from pride and from despair. Seeing himself as a tiny member of a world he cannot comprehend or master or in any final sense possess, he cannot possibly think of himself as a god. And by the same token, since he shares in, depends upon, and is graced by all of which he is a part, neither can he become a fiend; he cannot descend into the final despair of destructiveness. Returning from the wilderness, he becomes a restorer of order, a preserver. He sees the truth, recognizes his true heir, honors his forebears and his heritage, and gives his blessing to his successors. He embodies the passing of human time, living and dying within the human limits of grief and joy.(pg.95, "The Body and the Earth")
Wendell Berry
When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.
Hannah Arendt
God is willing to walk the earth again incarnate in us.
Eugenia Price
If there is to be reconciliation, first there must be truth.
Timothy B. Tyson
I prefer the keen edge of truth to the dull comfort of lies.
Sondra Allan Carr
Sometimes when you get older—and I'm not talking about you, I'm talking generally, because everyone ages differently—things you think on and wish on start to seem real. And then you believe them, and before you know it they're a part of your history, and if someone challenges you on them and says they're not true—why, then you get offended.
Sara Gruen
... the mind was designed not to defend what we want, but to discover what is ultimately true, which should shape our wants and satisfy them more deeply with God. The purpose of the mind is not to rationalize subjective preferences, but to recognize objective reality and to help the heart revel in God.
John Piper
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is to be carried forward by truth, which at first offends, which wins its way by degrees, which the many hate and would rejoice to crush.
William Ellery Channing
When all of this music sounds like you know what you want to say, then it will have been of all worth, ever. You will be something complete unto yourself, present and unique.
Jeff Buckley
I tried to manipulate and control people and I harbored resentment. I wanted to be forgiven but I wouldn't forgive others.
Lauryn Hill
Science is only a Latin word for knowledge
Carl Sagan
Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true.
Jonah Lehrer
There is some relationship between the hunger for truth and the search for the right words. This struggle may be ultimately indefinable and even undecidable, but one damn well knows it when one sees it.
Christopher Hitchens
Life is difficult.
M. Scott Peck
I know you have it in you, Guy," Anne said suddenly at the end of a silence, "the capacity to be terribly happy.
Patricia Highsmith
What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Public truth telling is a form of recovery, especially when combined with social action. Sharing traumatic experiences with others enables victims to reconstruct repressed memory, mourn loss, and master helplessness, which is trauma's essential insult. And, by facilitating reconnection to ordinary life, the public testimony helps survivors restore basic trust in a just world and overcome feelings of isolation. But the talking cure is predicated on the existence of a community willing to bear witness. 'Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships,' write Judith Herman. 'It cannot occur in isolation.
Lawrence N. Powell
There is a law of the natural worlds (the spiritual and the physical) and this is something I have understood: that for every genuine existence, for every real manifestation and occurrence, there are are ten thousand falsities. Before you meet what or who is genuine, you will first have met, or known of, what is fake; and ten thousand times so! There is no need to feel disappointments, any number below ten thousand deceptions renders you a lucky person! And you ask why is there a need for this to happen? Well, if you have not known what is false first, there is no way to understand what then comes which is truth. What is lesser is so afraid of what is genuine, that it finds it necessary to imitate and duplicate that imitation ten thousand times over, for fear that you will finally meet what is real. The more important that one existence is, the more imitations there are in the world.
C. JoyBell C.
There is fact in every fiction and truth in every lie.
Krisi Keley