All Quotes

"This campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd. The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling’s case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn’t square with her actual views."

"[N]othing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic. She is not disputing the existence of gender dysphoria. She has never voiced opposition to allowing people to transition under evidence-based therapeutic and medical care. She is not denying transgender people equal pay or housing. There is no evidence that she is putting trans people "in danger," as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist."

"When Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling published the piece "TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) Wars" on her blog in the summer of 2020, she specifically mentioned her fear that many transgender men are actually Autistic girls who weren't conventionally feminine, and have been influenced by transactivists on the internet into identifying out of womanhood. In presenting herself as defending disabled "girls," she argued for restricting young trans Autistic people's ability to self-identify, and access necessary services and health care. Rowling's perspective (which she shares with many gender critical folks) is deeply dehumanizing to both the trans and Autistic communities. We're fully fledged, complex people, who are entitled to the same body autonomy and self-determination as anyone else."

"In practical talk, a man's common sense means his good judgement, his freedom from eccentricity, his gumption."

"We know that the probability of well-established induction is great, but, when we are asked to name its degree we cannot. Common sense tells us that some inductive arguments are stronger than others, and that some are very strong. But how much stronger or how strong we cannot express."

"A small overweight of knowledge is often a sore impediment to the movements of common sense."

"I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic."

"I am one of those philosophers who have held that that "the Common Sense view of the world" is in certain fundamental features, wholly true."

"Common sense is not wrong in the view that is meaningful, appropriate and necessary to talk about the large objects of our daily experience…Common sense is wrong only if it insists that what is familiar must reappear in what is unfamiliar."

"Since the world is what it is, it is clear that valid reasoning from sound principles cannot lead to error; but a principle may be so nearly true as to deserve theoretical respect, and yet may lead to practical consequences which we feel to be absurd. There is therefore a justification for common sense in philosophy, but only as showing that our theoretical principles cannot be quite correct so long as their consequences are condemned by an appeal to common sense which we feel to be irresistible."

"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense."

"Common sense is the very antipodes of science."

"There is absolutely no common sense; it is common nonsense."

"Whatever the common-sense of earlier generations may have held in this respect, modern common-sense holds that the scientist's answer is the only ultimately true one. In the last resort enlightened common-sense sticks by the opaque truth and refuses to go behind the returns given by the triangle of facts."

"On dit quelquefois: "Le sens commun est fort rare.""

"To act with common sense according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know; and the best philosophy, to do one’s duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot, bless the Goodness that has given so much happiness with it, whatever it is, and despise affectation."

"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."

"Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done."

"There is nothing more uncommon than common sense."

"The eleventh day of the eleventh month has always seemed to me to be special. Even if the reason for it fell apart as the years went on, it was a symbol of something close to the high part of the heart. Perhaps a life that stretches through two or three wars takes its first war rather seriously, but I still think we should have kept the name "Armistice Day." Its implications were a little more profound, a little more hopeful."

"Not all segregationists are lunatics, or even dishonest men."

"Suspicion is the mother of invention And a fishin' expedition Needs no repetition For the end is never new: you need a friend and you."

"God is not dead — He is merely unemployed..."

"As we thrash on to a finish through the current thicket of flags and banners, we realize it is no finish at all, but a new inning. Secure in the rules, we know that, given three strikes, the truth will out."

"Looking back on things, the view always improves."

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

"Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent."

"Eventually every man gotta face the problem of tryin' to figger if it’s worthwhile to prove that he is himself."

"The best break anybody ever gets is in bein' alive in the first place. An' you don't unnerstan' what a perfect deal it is until you realizes that you ain't gone be stuck with it forever, either."

"I been readin' 'bout how maybe they is planets peopled by folks with ad-vanced brains. On the other hand, maybe we got the most brains...maybe our intellects is the universe's most ad-vanced. Either way, it's a mighty soberin' thought."

"[After Pogo says, Eventual Porky, I figger ev'ry critter's heart's in the right place., Porky responds:] If you gotta be wrong 'bout somthin', that's 'bout the best thing they is to be wrong 'bout."

"Is we runnin' TO it or FROM it?"

"Ever since I heard you is got a million dollars I notice you is fraught with perspicacity."

"Foo, a beautiful gal wastes her time gracin' up this swamp."

"I'll tell you, son, the minority got us out-numbered!"

"So we got fifty percent. Babe Ruth didn't do no better. — Did you mean hittin' it... or throwin' it?"

"Some is more equal than others, as is well known. It ain't that your majority is outnumbered, you're just out-surrounded."

"The natural born reason we didn't git no yew-ranium when we crosses the li'l yew tree and the gee-ranium is on account of cause we didn't have no geiger counter."

"Halp! My powerful brain is blowed itself up!"

"Y'see, when you start to lick a national problem you have to go after the fundamentables. You want to cut down air pollution? Cut down the original source... Breathin!"

"Deck us all with Boston Charlie Walla Walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo! Nora's freezin' on the trolley, Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo! Don't we know archaic barrel, Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou. Trolley Molly don't love Harold, Boola Boola Pensacoola Hullabaloo! Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Polly wolly cracker n' too-da-loo! Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon, Willy, folly go through! Donkey Bonny brays a carol, Antelope Cantaloup, 'lope with you! Chollie's collie barks at Barrow, Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo Duck us all in bowls of barley, Hinky dinky dink an' Polly Voo! Chilly Filly's name is Chollie, Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo! Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, Woof, Woof! Tizzy seas on melon collie! Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, Goof, Goof!"

"Whether you’re a vegan or not, there are endless reasons why we should all be delighted that the movement has grown so fast in the last few years. … Through adapting their diets to make sure they get all the vitamins they need, to pressuring big corporations and governments for more ethical products, vegans are giving food the focus it deserves. They are also doing their bit to reduce food miles and emissions … They’re teaching us a thing or two as well. My vegan and vegetarian friends have cooked me some fantastic meals, many of which I now make regularly. It’s saving me money, encouraging me to eat more vegetables, and reducing my meat intake. While I have no plans to give up meat, I recognise that it shouldn’t be the focus of my diet. I am now vegetarian every other day – not consciously, but because lots of my favourite meals are meat-free. I have also learnt lots of new techniques as I work around the limits of reducing dairy and meat products. I make cakes without eggs, burgers without beef, and pastry without butter. I … refuse to buy any animal product that doesn’t have a guarantee of quality such as Freedom Food, free range or organic status."

"When God is Socialism, God is love. [...] Socialism means that all the means of production that man has [...] are owned by the same people, the family of man, the family of God. There is only one source of ownership—love. No one can privately own the land. No one can privately own the air. It must be held in common. So then, that is love, that is God, Socialism"

"I have seen by divine revelation the total annihilation of this country and many other parts of the world. San Francisco will be flattened. The only survivors will be those people who are hidden in the cave that I have been shown in a vision. Those who go into this cave with me will be saved from the poisonous radioactive fallout that will follow the nuclear bomb attack. [...] It will be up to our group to begin life anew on this continent. Then we will begin a truly ideal society just as you see it here in this room today. People will care about one another. Elderly people will be made to feel needed and will be allowed to be productive. People's needs will be met because they are loved, and not because they have money.This church family is an example of what society will eventually be like all over the world. There will at last be peace on earth. I have seen this all by divine revelation."

"Our government does not love its people."

"You've seen three people drop dead and you saw them resurrected. Their attitudes were prejudiced and they would drop dead, but I resurrected them. And I've done it sixty-three times in eleven months this year in a public meeting."

"For twenty-four times this year people up to ninety-six years of age have fell down, and they've gived up the ghost, and no God came out of the sky. Old nigger Jones just walked down, and said, "Arise! Arise! Take up your bed! Arise!""

"My whole life I have suffered from poverty and have faced many disappointments and pain, like a man is used to. That is why I want to make other people happy and want them to feel at home."

"The young preacher once threw his Bible to the floor and yelled at his associates, "Too many people are looking at this instead of looking at me!""

"If you're born in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you're born in sin. But if you're born in socialism, you're not born in sin."