All Quotes

"Our most serious challenges to date have been external—the kind this strong and resourceful country could unite against. While serious external dangers remain, the graver threats today are internal: haphazard urbanization, racial discrimination, disfiguring of the environment, unprecedented interdependence, the dislocation of human identity and motivation created by an affluent society—all resulting in a rising tide of individual and group violence."

"The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution."

"Ah, music! A magic beyond all we do here!"

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that."

"After all, to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure."

"What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally the whole school knows."

"The Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all - the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them."

"Fear of a name increases fear of a thing itself."

"I believe your friends Misters Fred and George Weasley were responsible for trying to send you a toilet seat. No doubt they thought it would amuse you."

"I will only have truly left the school when none here are loyal to me."

"It is not our abilities that show who we truly are, it is our choices."

"You think the dead we love ever truly leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble."

"Fat lady, who did this to you?"

"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light."

"I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind.... At these times... I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure."

"If your determination to shut your eyes will carry you so far, Cornelius, then we have reached a parting of the ways. You must act as you see fit and I must act as I see fit."

"Curiosity is not a sin.... But we should exercise caution with our curiosity... yes, indeed."

"Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it."

"You place too much importance... on the so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!"

"Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery."

"No spell can reawaken the dead, Harry. I trust you know that."

"Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open."

"Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right, and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good and kind and brave because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort."

"Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young..."

"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries,... that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that resides there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."

""By all means continue destroying my possessions,"

"It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more."

"No, I was merely reading the Muggle magazines . . . I do love knitting patterns."

"I am not worried, Harry... I am with you."

"It's good that children's literature includes the reality of gay people, since we exist in every society. But many are disappointed that she did not make Dumbledore's sexuality explicit in the Harry Potter book. Many also agree that Making it obvious would have sent a much more powerful message of understanding and acceptance."

"[Richard] Harris's portrayal of Dumbledore showcased a gentle demeanour, complete with flowing locks of golden-white hair. However, when Gambon assumed the role, he brought his unique touch, donning distinct capes and infusing the character with an Irish flair, presenting Dumbledore as a figure of wisdom rather than just kindness."

"Criticism should be done by critics, and a critic should have some training and some love of the medium he is discussing. But these days, gossip-columnist training seems to be enough qualification. I suppose an ability to stand on your feet through interminable cocktail parties and swig interminable gins in between devouring masses of fried prawns may just possibly help you to understand and appreciate what a director is getting at, but for the life of me I can't see how."

"There is no me. I do not exist … There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed."

"If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am."

"People will swim through shit if you put a few bob in it."

"To see me as a person on screen would be one of the dullest experiences you could ever wish to experience."

"If I can't really find a way to live with myself, I can't expect anyone else to live with me."

"I'm a classic example of all humorists — only funny when I'm working."

"Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat."

"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!"

"I writhe when I see myself on the screen. I'm such a dreadfully clumsy hulking image. I say to myself, "Why doesn't he get off? Why doesn't he get off?" I mean, I look like such an idiot. Some fat awkward thing dredged up from some third-rate drama company. I must stop thinking about it, otherwise I shan't be able to go on working."

"[W]hile at first I felt like a new boy in his presence, I soon relaxed: he was so welcoming, cheery and easy to write with. And he was effortlessly, brilliantly funny all the [fucking] time. We’d be sitting there discussing some aspect of the plot and he’d slide into a five-minute monologue that he could easily have bestowed on a West End audience."

"He had a conspicuous individual talent, but it was interpretive, not directly creative. He could never have emulated Chaplin, Keaton or Jacques Tati and set up a whole project by himself, controlling its every detail even if the task took years. But there is no point carping. He had such a protean capacity that it would have been a miracle if he had been in full command of it."

"Peter was always a mixed-up guy, a childish fellow. But if you're fond of children, you're also fond of childish men. He was always very helpful to me. After he was famous, and when I was still in trouble with the US embassy, he wrote a letter in support of me which was magnificent. But it is true that he was very cruel to his children. He was so hurt by the way children treat you when you're their father. I have been hurt by my children. But he was not in possession of a proper brain when it came to these things."

"Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world."

"Peter Sellers, a showbiz baby, was carried onstage two weeks into his life by vaudevillian Dickie Henderson, who encouraged the audience to join him in singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." Little Peter instantly burst into tears and the audience erupted into laughter and applause. From Pete's perspective, this emotional scenario was played out more or less consistently until his death in 1980."

"This time there will be no failure, no loss of truth, no misunderstanding and no misrepresentation I will direct its growth as it reaches from the paper on which it was written into the hearts for which it was intended."

"This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary … you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way: Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not "harder" or "bigger" than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal."

"Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond evaluation."