Quotes by American Authors - Page 3314

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
George Washington
That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.
Tim O'Brien
Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.
George R.R. Martin
The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.
David Foster Wallace
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.
Ernest Hemingway
The only truth is music.
Jack Kerouac
Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.
Edward Abbey
Thinking something does not make it true. Wanting something does not make it real.
Michelle Hodkin
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.
Robert Orben
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
Ernest Hemingway
So you're always honest," I said."Aren't you?""No," I told him. "I'm not.""Well, that's good to know, I guess.""I'm not saying I'm a liar," I told him. He raised his eyebrows. "That's not how I meant it, anyways.""How'd you mean it, then?""I just...I don't always say what I feel.""Why not?""Because the truth sometimes hurts," I said."Yeah," he said. "So do lies, though.
Sarah Dessen
The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
Ernest Hemingway
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Henry David Thoreau
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
Flannery O'Connor
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
Mark Twain
Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.
William Faulkner
I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.
S.E. Hinton
Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.
George Carlin
I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.
Suzanne Collins
The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.
Joe Klaas
Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
Mark Twain
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Mark Twain
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
Mark Twain
There is more for us to gain through love than hate.
Suzy Kassem
YOU ARE JUSTYou are not just for the right or left,but for what is right over the wrong.You are not just rich or poor,but always wealthy in the mind and heart.You are not perfect, but flawed.You are flawed, but you are just.You may just be conscious human,but you are also a magnificentreflection of God.
Suzy Kassem
I was transformed the dayMy ego shattered,And all the superficial, materialThings that matteredTo me before,Suddenly ceasedTo matter.
Suzy Kassem
Without sound,There would be no music.And without music,There would be no life.And without a life force,There would be no matter.But it does not matter -Because what is matter,If there is no light?
Suzy Kassem
What I know definitively about life at this age … is absolutely nothing.
James Qualls
Hoarded things might easily become a menace; a mere fire-and-theft risk; a breeding-ground for destructive insects; a source of worry. Men would have plenty of anxieties, but there was no sense in accumulating worries over THINGS! That kind of worry destroyed your character. Even an unused coat, hanging in your closet—it wasn't merely a useless thing that did nobody any good; it was an active agent of destruction to your life. And your LIFE must be saved, at all costs. What would it advantage a man—Jesus had demanded—if he were to gain the whole world, and lose his own life?
Lloyd C. Douglas
Perhaps this general degradation was the result of too much crowding, too little privacy, too much noise. You couldn't be decent if you weren't intelligent; you couldn't be intelligent if you couldn't think—and who could think in all this racket? Add the stench to the confusion of cramped quarters, and who could be self-respecting?
Lloyd C. Douglas
I do not think it possible to convey the moral energy that went into this division between abstraction and realism, from both sides, in those years. It had an almost theological intensity, and in another stage of civilization there would certainly have been burnings at stake.
Arthur C. Danto
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.
G. Michael Hopf
A bird doesn't sing because it knows the song. It sings because it carries the melody in its heart. May you always dance to the rhythm of your heart.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
Why is female vulnerability still only acceptable when it's neuroticised and personal; when it feeds back on itself? Why do people still not get it when we handle vulnerability like philosophy, at some remove?
Chris Kraus
She may not be like everyone else, but neither am I.
Jessica Marie Baumgartner
We all have to share this world. The best way to do that is to be nice to each other.
Jessica Marie Baumgartner
What we do is what means the most.
Jessica Marie Baumgartner
The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.
John Green
Of course we dance with our demons. Our angels are far too shy.
Kayla Krantz
We all encounter things that may seem dim and puzzling at first, but when we actively explore them, we find bold, undauntable light igniting the way from the inside. From within.
Kayla Severson
No explanation is ever as good as not having one.
Marty Rubin
Honor,' he said firmly. 'I have great honor. So will you. But you will find that that is not the same as power.
Lois Lowry
In the story of the Ugly Duckling, when did the Ugly Duckling stop feeling Ugly? When he realized he was a Swan. Each of us has something Special, a Swan of some sort, hidden inside somewhere. But until we recognize that it's there, what can we do but splash around, treading water?
Benjamin Hoff
As I think therefore I amAm I more if I think more?
Richard L. Ratliff
(...) greed that preys on human misery (...)
Michael J. Sandel
Outrage is the special kind of anger you feel when you believe that people are getting things they don't deserve. Outrage of this kind is anger at injustice.
Michael J. Sandel
Most people are like sheep. Nice, harmless creatures who want nothing more than to be left alone so they can graze. But then of course there are wolves. Who want nothing more than to eat the sheep.But there’s a third kind of person. The sheepdog. Sheepdogs have fangs like wolves. But their instinct isn’t predation. It’s protection. All they want, what they live for, is to protect the flock.
Barry Eisler
Morality means choice. Choice means priorities. Priorities mean a hierarchy. A hierarchy means something at the top, a standard. That is the greatest good. If you have no greatest good, you have no hierarchy, you have no priorities. If you have no priorities, you cannot make intelligent choices. If you cannot make intelligent moral choices, you have no morality. You can still guide your life by your feelings or by social fashions, but that is not choice – not free, responsible, moral choice. Both feelings and fashions push you; you are passive. But moral choice is your own doing; you are active. You are responsible for your choices but not for your feelings or for your environment’s fashions.
Peter Kreeft
Honesty is a moral virtue, a matter of the will. Honesty means willing the truth with the whole of your heart. This demands sacrifice. We have little hope of attaining honesty unless we realize how demanding it is. It demands sacrifice of self-will, self-image, the desire to win, and the comfort of being right.The “honesty” often praised today is usually only emotional honesty with others, not intellectual honesty with one’s self; only “letting it all hang out,” not asking what is the real truth. Sometimes “honesty” is only a code word for shamelessness. Rarely does it mean the absolute, fanatical, selfless love of truth.
Peter Kreeft
I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened
Mark Twain
Spinoza formulated the profoundly important principle that *all determination is negation*. To determine a thing is to cut it off from some sphere of being and so to limit it. To define is to set boundaries. To say that a thing is green limits it by cutting it from the sphere of pink, blue, or other-coloured things. To say that it is good cuts it off from the sphere of evil. This limitation is the same as negation. To *affirm* that a thing is within certain limits is to *deny* that it is outside those limits. To say that it is green is to say that it is not pink. Affirmation involves negation. Whatever is said of a thing denies something else of it. All determination is negation.This principle is fundamental for Hegel also, but with him it takes rather the converse form that *all negation is determination*. Formal logicians will remind us that we cannot simply convert Spinoza's proposition. But it is sufficient to point out in reply that not only does affirmation involve negation; negation likewise involves affirmation. To say that a thing belongs to one class is to affirm that it belongs to some other class,—though we may not know what that class is. Positive and negative are correlatives which mutually involve each other. To posit is to negate: this is Spinoza's principle. To negate is to posit: this is Hegel's.When, therefore, we meet Hegel talking about "the portentous power of the negative," we have to consider that for him negation is the very process of creation. For the *positive* nature of an object consists in its determinations. The nature of a stone is to be white, heavy, hard, etc. And since all determinations are negations, it follows that the positive nature of a thing consists in its negations. Negation, therefore, is of the very essence of positive being. And for the world to come into being what is above all necessary is the force of negation, "the portentous power of the negative." The genus only becomes the species by means of the differentia, and the differentia is precisely that which carves out a particular class from the general class by excluding, i.e., negating, the other species. And the species again only becomes the individual in the same way, by negating other individuals. These thoughts are no causal reflections of Hegel. They underlie his entire system. We must get to understand that these three ideas, determination, limitation, and negation, all involve each other."—from_The Philosophy of Hegel_
W.T. Stace
Sound and light are two different things,But it's more than just that, isn't it?
Eniitan Akinola
As complicated as life is, Its also very simple,Once we can find a balance, the world becomes ours,Till then, the hard work is to make things that are sooo complicated look sooo simple
Eniitan Akinola
There is no such thing a boring content. In the hands of a great teacher...even if as teachers we doubt that we can make it so...this doubt puts us at risk of undercutting it: watering it down or apologizing for teaching it.
Doug Lemov
One of the problems with teaching is that there's a temptation to evaluate what we do in the classroom based on how clever it aligns with a larger philosophy , or even how gratifying it is to use not necessarily how effective it is...
Doug Lemov
We can believe things that are true, and we can believe things that are not true. Which is more important---what is true, or what we believe?
Elana Arnold
Nothing' isn't better or worse than anything. Nothing is just... nothing." Arya Stark
George R.R. Martin
The questions philosophers ask are not so much meaningless as irrelevant.
Marty Rubin
I sometimes think," said Jason, " that the soul may be a state of mind.
Clifford D. Simak
To most anarchists, the advocacy of freedom on Earth while bowing to a heavenly tyrant (no matter how imaginary) seems an insupportable contradiction.
Chaz Bufe