All Quotes

"Those among them that have not received our religion do not fright any from it, and use none ill that goes over to it, so that all the while I was there one man was only punished on this occasion. He being newly baptised did, notwithstanding all that we could say to the contrary, dispute publicly concerning the Christian religion, with more zeal than discretion, and with so much heat, that he not only preferred our worship to theirs, but condemned all their rites as profane, and cried out against all that adhered to them as impious and sacrilegious persons, that were to be damned to everlasting burnings. Upon his having frequently preached in this manner he was seized, and after trial he was condemned to banishment, not for having disparaged their religion, but for his inflaming the people to sedition; for this is one of their most ancient laws, that no man ought to be punished for his religion."

"Utopus having understood that before his coming among them the old inhabitants had been engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they were so divided among themselves, that he found it an easy thing to conquer them, since, instead of uniting their forces against him, every different party in religion fought by themselves. After he had subdued them he made a law that every man might be of what religion he pleased, and might endeavour to draw others to it by the force of argument and by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness against those of other opinions; but that he ought to use no other force but that of persuasion, and was neither to mix with it reproaches nor violence; and such as did otherwise were to be condemned to banishment or slavery. This law was made by Utopus, not only for preserving the public peace, which he saw suffered much by daily contentions and irreconcilable heats, but because he thought the interest of religion itself required it. He judged it not fit to determine anything rashly; and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire man in a different manner, and be pleased with this variety; he therefore thought it indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify another to make him believe what did not appear to him to be true. And supposing that only one religion was really true, and the rest false, he imagined that the native force of truth would at last break forth and shine bright, if supported only by the strength of argument, and attended to with a gentle and unprejudiced mind; while, on the other hand, if such debates were carried on with violence and tumults, as the most wicked are always the most obstinate, so the best and most holy religion might be choked with superstition, as corn is with briars and thorns; he therefore left men wholly to their liberty, that they might be free to believe as they should see cause."

"Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws"

"Haec non suis commodis prosperitatem, sed ex alienis metitur incommodis."

"Thomas More was educated at Oxford and the . He was a friend of Erasmus and was an outstanding representative of . He lectured on Augustine's City of God and, in 1516, published ', which was both a description of an ideal , and a satire upon the society of his day."

"On an altogether higher level, intellectually and in its humanity, was the work of Sir Thomas More. One of the most intriguing early portrayals of an imagined communist society is to be found in More’s Utopia, published in 1516. With this book, he gave a name to the entire genre of utopian fiction, of which several thousand examples saw the light of day over the next five hundred years. More himself eventually suffered the same fate as John Ball (and Müntzer) – he was executed, although, unlike Ball, not primarily for anything he wrote or said. In contrast also to Ball, he had risen high in English society, holding the important rank of lord chancellor. He was beheaded because he did not endorse Henry VIII’s decision to appoint himself the supreme head of the Church in England, thereby supplanting the pope. More did not openly oppose the king. He was put to death principally for opinions he did not make public, his very silence becoming a ‘political crime’. Yet More’s Utopia would, on the face of it, appear to be more subversive of the hierarchy largely taken for granted in medieval Europe than his silence over the king’s extension of his powers."

"There is something very slack about a future that will take a biting satire for a vapid dream."

"Christ’s message was spiritual in nature and omitted to indicate the institutional means to achieve its ultimate aim. Certain thinkers in later centuries suggested that state power could be used to bring about equal access to food, shelter and reward. Two influential works were Thomas More’s Utopia in 1516 and Tomaso Campanella’s City of the Sun in 1601. More could not imagine that the common man, still less the common woman, might independently attain the perfection of society without order from above."

"More and Campanella advocated through indoctrination of their people. This was reversion to the attitude of the Greek philosopher Plato who, in the fourth century BC, called for philosopher-kings to introduce a reign of universal virtue. Neither More nor Campanella prospered in temporal affairs. Having faithfully served his master Henry VIII, More refused to accept the termination of the Pope’s supremacy over the English Church. He died on the executioner’s block in 1535"

"Do not the work of God negligently and idly: let not thy heart be upon the world when thy hand is lift up in prayer; and be sure to prefer an action of religion, in its place and proper season, before all worldly pleasure, letting secular things, that may be dispensed with in themselves, in these circumstances wait upon the other; not like the patriarch, who ran from the altar in St. Sophia to his stable, in all his pontificals, and in the midst of his office, to see a colt newly fallen from his beloved and much-valued mare Phorbante. More prudent and severe was that of Sir Thomas More, who, being sent for by the king when he was at his prayers in public, returned answer, he would attend him when he had first performed his service to the King of kings."

"A man of an angel's wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons."

"As for rosemarie, I lett it run alle over my garden walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but because 'tis the herb sacred to remembrance and therefore to friendship, whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language that maketh ye chosen emblem at our funeral wakes and in our buriall grounds."

"When I appear in public, people expect me to neigh, grind my teeth, paw the ground, and swish my tail, none of which is easy !"

"Today, the Princess Royal has been canonized as a secular saint, for her truly admirable international work on behalf of the Save the Children Fund. Her dedication and concern are beyond doubt, but she didn't catch them like measles."

"Bernard Levin, "Uneasy Lies the Head", The Times (23 January 1989)."

"In every organization there is a considerable accumulation of dead wood in the executive level."

"Occupational incompetence is everywhere. Have you noticed it? Probably we all have noticed it."

"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

"In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties. Do not be fooled by apparent exceptions."

"Some Blockett-type employees actually believe that they have received a genuine promotion; others recognize the truth. But the main function of a pseudo-promotion is to deceive people outside the hierarchy. When this is achieved, the maneuver is counted a success."

"Never stand when you can sit; never walk when you can ride; never Push when you can Pull."

"Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence"

"The only valid rule about the proper length of a statement is that it achieve its purpose effectively."

"On second thought, maybe the atheist cannot find God, for the same reason a thief cannot find a policeman."

"Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status."

"If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else."

"The habitually punctual make all their mistakes right on time."

"Television has changed the American child from an irresistible force into an immovable object."

"If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?"

"Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it."

"When you see yourself quoted in print and you're sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation."

"Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them."

"Dr. Peter effectively destroys examples of seeming exceptions and is rather convincing that his principle is ubiquitous."

"Jane leaned back against the counter and stared at the ceiling. At the traditional location of God, no matter what the planet."

"If you're up against a smart opponent, make him think himself to death."

"Trade isn't about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them."

"Average people didn't analyze what they thought: they thought they thought, and half of it was gut reaction."

"Given ignorance in the mix, stupidity was at least as common in politics as astute maneuvering;"

"Inevitably the party trying to resolve a matter had to contend with the party most willing to exploit it."

"For me the purest and truest art in the world is science fiction."

"Poisoning rarely happens in a well-managed kitchen."

"What the probe had found was a star with reasonable possibilities for encouraging life; a belt of debris, including particles, planetoids, irregular chunks somewhat under planet size with interesting implications for systemic formation, and a planetary companion with its own system of debris and moons...A planet desolate, baked, forbidding. It was no Eden, no second Earth, no better than what existed in the sun’s own system, and it was a far journey to have gone to find that out. The press grappled with questions it could not easily grasp itself, sought after something to give the viewers, lost interest quickly. If anything, there were questions raised about cost, vague and desperate comparisons offered to Columbus, and the press hared off quickly onto a political crisis in the Mediterranean, much more comprehensible and far bloodier."

"“You’ve behaved very highhandedly, Captain Mallory. Is that the custom out here?” “The custom is, sir, that those who know a situation handle it and those who don’t watch and learn, or get out of the way.”"

"What happened this far remote would have little political impact on Earth. What the visual media could not carry into living rooms, the general public could not long remain exercised about. Statistically, a majority of the electorate could not or did not read complicated issues; no pictures, no news; no news, no event."

"“I frankly doubt that.” “Ah. That is your privilege. But doubt doesn’t alter fact, sir.”"

"She was a student of history, valued the lessons of it. The worst atrocities began with half-measures, with apologies, compromising with the wrong side, shrinking from what had to be done."

"At this point I ceased argument with Lt. Goforth and shot him in the belly."

"Things there are in the world which have never loved Men, which have been in the world far longer than humankind, so that once when Men were newer on the earth and the woods were greater, there had been places a Man might walk where he might feel the age of the world on his shoulders. Forests grew in which the stillness was so great he could hear stirrings of a life no part of his own. There were brooks from which the magic had not gone, mountains which sang with voices, and sometimes a wind touched the back of his neck and lifted the hairs with the shiver of a presence at which a Man must never turn and stare. But the noise of Men grew more and more insistent. Their trespasses became more bold. Death had come with them, and the knowledge of good and evil, and this was a power they had, both to be virtuous and to be blind."

"Men changed whatever they set hand to. They wrought their magic on beasts, to make them dull and patient. They brought fire and the reek of smoke to the dales. They brought lines and order to the curve of the hills. Most of all they brought the chill of iron, to sweep away the ancient shadows. But they took the brightness too. It was inevitable, because that brightness was measured against that dark. Men piled stone on stone and made warm homes, and tamed some humbler, quieter things, but the darkest burrowed deep and the brightest went away, heartbroken. Save one, whose patience or whose pride was more than all the rest. So one place, one untouched place in all the world remained, a rather smallish forest near the sea and near humankind, keeping a time different than elsewhere."

"Things whispered here, and the trees muttered with the wind and perhaps with other things. Men knew the place was old, old as the world, and they never made peace with it."