Quotes

Reflection is only a partial understanding of truth if it does not translate itself in practice into commitments to the common good and justice. Truth is not mere abstraction but something to be done and is only apprehended when this is realized.

Consider in 1945, when the United Nations was first formed, there were something like fifty-one original member countries. Now the United Nations is made up of 193 nations, but it follows the same structure in which five nations control it. It's an anti-democratic structure.

The best power of all is to be free, but Obama is not a free person. He is a prisoner of a military system. He talked about closing Guantanamo and ending the war in Iraq. Now he's taken on another war. What's happening?

There is such thing as a 'smart bomb' - bombs are smart these days, you know.

I want to express the utmost intensity of the color, bring out the quality, make it expressive.

When I work, I'm thinking in terms of purely visual effects and relations, and any verbal equivalent is something that comes afterwards. But it's inconceivable to me that I could experience things and not have them enter into my painting.

I use color in terms of emotional quality, as a vehicle for feeling... feeling is everything I have experienced or thought.

I never use nature as a starting point. I never abstract from nature; I never consciously think of nature when I paint.

It never became an act in the sense of an act. It was always, no matter where we worked, little revues.

As a main ingredient to the show, it has to have truth, represent truth, or else it won't last.

I had met a young lady who wanted to be in the theater. It was Judy Holliday. She had somehow fallen down the steps of the Village Vanguard, which still exists today.

It's unfortunate we've never been just songwriters.

We had a certain kind of really big prestige among, I suppose not just intellectual folk, but a sort of nice middle class intelligent folk of a very urban nature.

We've managed to keep a spirit of fun, I guess, of urban satire and finding new and odd interesting angles to the ways of life to put on the stage.

You have to transmit to them what it's like being in the theater. And it has to come from somewhere inside you and not by being like what somebody did last year.

Rather than lose the public because television is here, wouldn't it be smart to adopt television as our instrument?

The public is never wrong.

I'm a Red-baiter; I'm a witch-hunter if the witches are Communists.

It was my mustache that landed jobs for me. In those silent-film days it was the mark of a villain. When I realized they had me pegged as a foreign nobleman type I began to live the part, too. I bought a pair of white spats, an ascot tie and a walking stick.

My success has been as full of luck as a crapshooter's dream.

God is to me the Great Unknown. I believe in Him, but I find Him not.

That mighty Being, who heaped up these craggy rocks, and reared these stupendous mountains, and poured out these streams in all directions, and scattered immortal beings throughout these deserts - He is present, by the influence of his Holy Spirit, and accompanies the sound of the gospel with converting, sanctifying power.

While therefore your tears flow, let a due proportion be tears of joy. Yet take the bitter cup with both hands and sit down to your repast. You will soon learn a secret: that there is sweetness at the bottom.

Perhaps the secret of living a holy life is to avoid every thing which will displease God and grieve the Spirit, and to be strictly attentive to the means of grace.

It is my growing conviction that the Baptist churches in America are behind the age in missionary spirit. They now and then make a spasmodic effort to throw off a nightmare debt of some years' accumulation, and then sink back into unconscious repose.