"Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society."
~~ Michel Foucault [1926-84]
"Cinema deals more fatuously with religion than with any other human enterprise."
~~ critic Anthony Lane
"It's noble to be good. It's nobler to teach others to be good, and less trouble."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
"Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression."
~~ James A. Michener [1907-97]
"Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?"
~~ Martin Heidegger [1889-1976]
"The next time I want some dumb son of a bitch to do something, I'll do it myself."
~~ movie director Michael Curtiz [1886-1962]
"Even the best writer has to erase."
~~ Spanish proverb
"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
~~ J.D. Salinger [1919-2010]
"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."
~~ Joseph Conrad [1857-1924]
"More than Any other time, when I hold a beloved book in my hand, my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]
"In American writing, there are three perfect books, which seem to speak to every reader and condition: "Huckleberry Finn", "The Great Gatsby", and "The Catcher In The Rye".
~~ Adam Gopnik, in "The New Yorker", February 2010
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
"The best life is one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possesive impulses the smallest."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
"In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]
"I would agree with Luis Buñuel that sex without sin is like an egg without salt."
~~ Carlos Fuentes
"Common sense is genius with its work clothes on."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders' money for such purposes; and, more-over, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effec-tive method of stopping the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts."
~~ Republican President Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919], in 1905
"The future is a race, a race between education and catastrophe"
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]
"Like gravity, [the petroleum industry] influences everything that we do."
~~ Peter Maass, author of "Crude World"
"Life becomes harder and harder as it approaches the heights – the coldness increases, the responsibility increases."
~~ Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"It's a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead, and find no one there."
~~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]
"Cable 'news' [is] largely preoccupied with the trivial, the tactical, and the tawdry."
~~ Richard Norton Smith
"The only thing that reliably grows in our economy is public debt."
~~ Jeffrey D. Sachs
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
