All Quotes

"Saddam is a war criminal and there are no two people who can argue over this."

"I seek the spread of freedom and democracy in the way that satisfies God. [Americans] have planned and paved the ways for a long time, but it is God who is the real planner -- and the proof of this is the fall of the American twin towers[...]a miracle from God."

"I renew my call for the occupier (the United States) to leave our land. The departure of the occupier will mean stability for Iraq, victory for Islam and peace and defeat for terrorism and infidels."

"He is somebody who has fought against the occupying forces," says Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, the leading Sunni clerical body. "All other Shi'ite leaders are seen [by Iraq's Sunnis] as collaborators because they cooperate with the Americans."

"Others contend that Sadr, working on a longer time scale than the Americans, is just lying low until the United States draws down its troops and declares its combat role concluded in Iraq. Then, this analysis continues, Sadr can launch the civil war he wants. "The reason I am distrustful of Sadr is that we know that in private conversations, he has said, 'There are two million who must die,'" said an Army officer who served in a key position in Iraq. This wasn't hearsay, he said, indicating that it came from an intercept of communications."

"What a curious picture it is to find man, homo sapiens, of divine origin, we are told, seriously considering going underground to escape the consequences of his own folly. With a little wisdom and foresight, surely it is not yet necessary to forsake life in the fresh air and in the warmth of the sunlight. What a paradox if our own cleverness in science should force us to live underground with the moles."

"The legislator is an indispensable guardian of our freedom. It is true that great executives have played a powerful role in the development of civilization, but such leaders appear sporadically, by chance. They do not always appear when they are most needed. The great executives have given inspiration and push to the advancement of human society, but it is the legislator who has given stability and continuity to that slow and painful progress."

"It is amazing how soon one becomes accustomed to the sound of one's voice, when forced to repeat a speech five or six times a day. As election day approaches, the size of the crowds grows; they are more responsive and more interested; and one derives a certain exhilaration from that which, only a few weeks before, was intensely painful. This is one possible explanation of unlimited debate in the Senate."

"When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled."

"Nature—pitiless in a pitiless universe—is certainly not concerned with the survival of Americans or, for that matter, of any of the two billion people now inhabiting this earth. Hence, our destiny, with the aid of God, remains in our own hands."

"The junior Senator from Wisconsin, by his reckless charges, has so preyed upon the fears and hatred of uninformed and credulous people that he has started a prairie fire, which neither he nor anyone else may be able to control."

"It is not our affluence, or our plumbing, or our clogged freeways that grip the imagination of others. Rather, it is the values upon which our system is built. These values imply our adherence not only to liberty and individual freedom, but also to international peace, law and order, and constructive social purpose. When we depart from these values, we do so at our peril."

"To me, the irony of this involvement with size, as I observed earlier, is the unwillingness or inability of so many Americans to identify themselves with something as vast as the United States. Bigger cars, bigger parking lots, bigger corporate structures, bigger farms, bigger drug stores, bigger supermarkets, bigger motion-picture screens. The tangible and the functional expand, while the intangible and the beautiful shrink. Left to wither is the national purpose, national educational needs, literature and theater, and our critical faculties. The national dialogue is gradually being lost in a froth of misleading self-congratulation and cliche. National needs and interests are slowly being submerged by the national preoccupation with the irrelevant."

"It seems to me that it is these extremists who are advocating a soft approach. Their oversimplifications and their baseless generalizations reflect the softness of those who cannot bear to face the burdens of a continuing struggle against a powerful and resourceful enemy. A truly tough approach, in my judgment, is one which accepts the challenge of communism with the courage and determination to meet it with every instrumentality of foreign policy—political and economic as well as military, and with the willingness to see the struggle through as far into the future as may be necessary. Those who seek to meet the challenge—or, in reality, to evade it—by bold adventures abroad and witch hunts at home are the real devotees of softness—the softness of seeking escape from painful realities by resort to illusory panaceas."

"The Soviet Union has indeed been our greatest menace — not so much because of what it has done, but because of the excuses it has provided us for our own failures."

"The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute."

"In these ways the war in Vietnam is poisoning and brutalizing our domestic life. Psychological incompatibility has proven to be more controlling than financial feasibility, and the Great Society has become a sick society."

"The price of empire is America's soul, and that price is too high."

"During a single week of July 1967, 164 Americans were killed and 2100 were wounded in city riots in the United States. We are truly fighting a two-front war and doing badly in both. Each war feeds on the other and, although the President assures us that we have the resources to win both wars, in fact we are not winning either."

"To give this activity even covert support is of a piece with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world-nor on our own consciences."

"We would be deliberately violating the fundamental obligations we assumed in the Act of Bogota establishing the Organization of American States."

"The operation was wildly out of proportion to the threat. It would compromise our moral position in the world and make it impossible for us to protest treaty violations by the Communists."

"Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations — to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence. Once imbued with the idea of a mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God's work."

"In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not its taste, but its effect, ..."

"A pre-emptive war in 'defense' of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because one simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend."

"There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power."

"When I first got there I spotted Senator Fulbright, and I said to somebody who was with me, "I don't know if he remembers me-we met once-and I ought to go over and say hello." But, at that point, Fulbright came over to me. "I wanted to say hello," he said. "There isn't a day I don't read about you in the papers. You're doing a great job." It was good to hear him say that. I've always admired him."

"The hardest theme in science fiction is that of the alien. The simplest solution of all is in fact quite profound—that the real difficulty lies not in understanding what is alien, but in understanding what is self. We are all aliens to each other, all different and divided. We are even aliens to ourselves at different stages of our lives. Do any of us remember precisely what it was like to be a baby?"

"We're not prophets. We're not here to inform the rich people of the world on how to make more money, or to inform governments on how to direct themselves. We are here to allow you to dream your dreams and make them happen, and have your nightmares a little in advance so you can prevent them from happening."

"You deserve whoever governs you … Everyone is responsible for the actions of their leaders."

"I explored new territory and described it. I did not create it. Don’t blame the conduit for the lightning."

"There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive—and getting away with it—is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun."

"“Being scared is nothing,” the old woman said. “Being bored, or ignorant—now that’s a crime.”"

"The battle was over. There were no victors."

"To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat."

"“We must know our enemy, at least a little.” “That’s dangerous,” Prufrax said, almost instinctively. “Yes, it is. What you know, you cannot hate.”"

"When evenly matched, you cannot win against your enemy unless you understand them. And if you truly understand, why are you fighting and not talking?"

"She saw that in all wars, the first stage was to dehumanize the enemy, reduce the enemy to a lower level so that he might be killed without compunction. When the enemy was not human to begin with, the task was easier."

"We’ve been fighting for so long, we’ve begun to lose ourselves. And it’s getting worse."

"There is no war so important that to win it, we must destroy our minds."

"“I’m going to take you out tonight,” he said. “Another Heisenberg dinner.” “What’s that?” “Uncertainty,” Edward said crisply. “We know where we are going, but not what we are going to eat. Or vice versa.” “Sounds wonderful. Which car?” “The Quantum, of course.” “Oh, Lord. We just had the speedometer fixed.” “And the steering went out?” “Shh! It’s still working. We’re cheating.”"

"Around her gulps of water, she repeated her prayer, until the monotony and futility silenced her."

"Can’t own a woman, Mike. Wonderful companions, can’t own them."

"“You’re a romantic, aren’t you?” she said. “I suppose I am.” “I am too. The silliest people in the world are romantics.”"

"He may not have had time, but even allowing him the time, Vergil simply did not think such things through. Brilliant in the creation, slovenly in the consideration of consequences. But wasn’t that true of every creator? Didn’t anyone who changed things ultimately lead some people—perhaps many people—to death, grief, torment?"

"Nothing will ever be the same again. Good! Wonderful! Wasn’t it all badly flawed anyway? No, perhaps not. Not until now."

"Information can be stored even more compactly than in molecular memory. It can be stored in the structure of space-time. What is matter, after all, but a standing-wave of information in the vacuum?"

"“Very evocative. He seems to be confirming what I said last year—that the universe really has no underpinnings, that when a good hypothesis comes along, one that explains the prior events, the underpinnings shape themselves to accommodate and a powerful theory is born.” “Then there is no ultimate reality?” “Apparently not. Bad hypotheses, those that don’t fit what happen on our level, are rejected by the universe. Good ones, powerful ones, are incorporated.”"

"Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten. It was in the blood, the flesh, And now it is forever."

"Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don’t understand everything."