Quotes

I always like a man in uniform, and that one fits you grand. Say, why don’t you drop in and see me some time? Home every evening you know. . . . Why don’t you come up some time?

You know, I always liked a man in uniform. . . . That one fits you perfect. Say, why don’t you come up some time. I’m home every evening.

Slovenliness is no part of religion; that neither this, nor any text of Scripture, condemns neatness of apparel. Certainly this is a duty, not a sin. “Cleanliness is, indeed, next to godliness.”

The brain upon which my experiences havebeen written is not a particularly good one. If there were brain-shows, as there are cat anddog shows, I doubt if it would get even a third class prize.

The catastrophe of the atomic bombs whichshook men out of cities and businesses and economic relations, shook them also out of their old-established habits of thought, and out of the lightly held beliefs and prejudices that came down to them from the past.

The professional military mind is by necessityan inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling.

Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century thanthe rapidity with which war was becomingimpossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands.

Are we not Men?

Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?

[ Response when asked which film directors he mostadmired :] I like the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

[ Of a Hollywood movie studio :] This is the biggest electric train [set] any boy ever had!

I started at the top and worked my way down.

[ Punch line of joke about a scorpion stinging a frogthat is carrying him across a river despite the fact that this would result in both their deaths :] I can’t help it. It’s my nature.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a graveannouncement to make. Incredible as it mayseem, strange beings who landed in New Jersey tonight are the vanguard of an invading armyfrom Mars.

Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.

The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either toreasons of state, or to any consideration ofmoney, nationality, race, or color, or to themoral or other value attributed to the humanbeing in question, or to any considerationwhatsoever.

Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.

But keep the wolf far hence that’s foe to men,

You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernaturalaid I would hardly be a human being.

[ After Randolph Churchill’s lung was removedand found not to have malignancies :] A typicaltriumph of modern science to find the onlypart of Randolph that was not malignant andremove it.

In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of makingan after-dinner speech without the help ofpoetry. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.

Any one who has been to an English publicschool will always feel comparatively at home in prison.

Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.

I expect you’ll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That’s what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behavior.

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Ignorance is more costly to the State than education.

The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It isabout simple awareness—awareness of what isso real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.”

To those of my race who . . . underestimatethe importance of cultivating friendly relationswith the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say, “Cast down yourbucket where you are”—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of allraces by whom we are surrounded.

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect votingfor the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting : you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.

The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

Acceptance is mostly a matter of fatigue rather than anything else.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspokenbelief that way deep down they are differentfrom everyone else.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.”

“You can trust me,” R.V. said, watching herhand. “I’m a man of my

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden.

Resistance is the secret of joy!

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.

I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.

The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn’t want to give thewhite man nothing else. But the fact is, you gotto give ’em something. Either your money, your land, your woman, or your ass.

The good news may be that Nature is phasing out the white man, but the bad news is that’swho She thinks we all are.

We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. “My God, my God—” I said to myself, “it’s the Children’s Crusade.”

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

So it goes.