All Quotes

"What Christianity in her antagonism with every form of unbelief most needs is holy living."

"Chinese-American political scientist Pei Minxin’s “The Broken China Dream: How Reform Revived Totalitarianism” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2026) is an autopsy report on a failing idea that few were willing to address: the belief that markets would weaken authoritarianism, that billionaires would push the Chinese Communist Party toward democracy, and that a rising middle class would seek elections rather than larger apartments. Pei dissects the myth with scholarly precision and the dry humor of someone who has watched Western policymakers cling to the same fantasies for 40 years."

"Nobody was up in arms when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began three years ago and [Russia] had to leave international competitions and could not take part, as we have just seen, in Eurovision. Therefore Israel shouldn't either, because what we cannot allow is double standards in culture."

"Protecting your country and your society is one thing, but bombing hospitals and killing innocent boys and girls with hunger is another thing entirely."

"Spain, as you know, doesn't have nuclear bombs, aircraft carriers, or large oil reserves. We alone can't stop the Israeli offensive. But that doesn't mean we will stop trying. Because there are causes worth fighting for, even if winning them is not solely in our hands."

"Spain never recognised the Maduro government because it broke the rules, because his election was illegitimate, and precisely for that reason it cannot recognise the legitimacy of a military action that is clearly illegal, that violates international law and whose sole objective seems to be none other than to change the government of another country to seize its natural resources."

"The question is not if we are on the side of the ayatollahs - nobody is. The question is whether we are in favour of peace and international legality."

"And it is absolutely unacceptable that those leaders who are incapable of fulfilling that objective should use the fog of war to hide their failure while lining the pockets of a few – the same ones as always."

"For the dear old Flag I die, Mother, dry your weeping eye; For the honor of our land And the dear old Flag I die."

"To do Thy holy will; To bear Thy cross; To trust Thy mercy still, In pain or loss; Poor gifts are these to bring, Dear Lord, to Thee, Who hast done everything For me!"

"After the shower, the tranquil sun; After the snow, the emerald leaves; Silver stars when the day is done; After the harvest, golden grain."

"Brave the storm with firm endevor, Let your vain repinings go! Hopeful hearts will find forever— Roses underneath the snow."

"Come, little leaves," said the wind one day,— "Come o'er the meadows with me, and play; Put on your dresses of red and gold: Summer is gone, and the days grow cold."

"October gave a party; The leaves by hundreds came— The Ashes, Oaks and Maples, And leaves of every name. The Sunshine spread a carpet, And everything was grand, Miss Weather led the dancing; Professor Wind, the band"

"O, Genevieve, sweet Genevieve, The days may bring me joy or woe, But still the hands of Memory weave The blissful dreams of long ago, Sweet Genevieve!"

"Ist der weibliche Schwachsinn nicht nur vorhanden, sondern auch nothwendig, er ist nicht nur ein physiologisches Factum, sondern auch ein physiologisches Postulat. Wollen wir ein Weib, das ganz seinen Mutterberuf erfüllt, so kann es nicht ein männliches Gehirn haben. ... Die modernen Närrinnen sind schlechte Gebärerinnen und schlechte Mütter. In dem Grade, in dem die „Civilisation“ wächst, sinkt die Fruchtbarkeit, je besser die Schulen werden, um so schlechter werden die Wochenbetten, um so geringer wird die Milchabsonderung, kurz, um so untauglicher werden die Weiber."

"Persons, who have a decided mathematical talent, constitute, as it were, a favored class. They bear the same relation to the rest of mankind that those who are academically trained bear to those who are not."

"It is with mathematics not otherwise than it is with music, painting or poetry. Anyone can become a lawyer, doctor or chemist, and as such may succeed well, provided he is clever and industrious, but not every one can become a painter, or a musician, or a mathematician: general cleverness and industry alone count here for nothing."

"Without a medical evaluation you cannot understand anybody. It is intolerable to see men and their actions judged by linguists and other armchair pundits. They have no inkling that more is needed here than moralizing and the average knowledge of people...we have to abandon the prevalent old division into healthy and sick minds. Everybody is pathological to a certain degree...the more so the more elevated his standing....Only myth and cliché have it that a person must be either sane or crazy."

"Mettius Curtius ab Sabinis princeps ab arce decucurrerat et effusos egerat Romanos toto quantum foro spatium est. Nec procul iam a porta Palati erat, clamitans: "Vicimus perfidos hospites, imbelles hostes; iam sciunt longe aliud esse virgines rapere, aliud pugnare cum viris." In eum haec gloriantem cum globo ferocissimorum iuvenum Romulus impetum facit. Ex equo tum forte Mettius pugnabat; eo pelli facilius fuit. Pulsum Romani persequuntur; et alia Romana acies, audacia regis accensa, fundit Sabinos. Mettius in paludem sese strepitu sequentium trepidante equo coniecit; averteratque ea res etiam Sabinos tanti periculo viri. Et ille quidem adnuentibus ac vocantibus suis favore multorum addito animo evadit: Romani Sabinique in media conualle duorum montium redintegrant proelium; sed res Romana erat superior."

"The climate is changing, but the question is, is it being caused by natural cycles over the span of the Earth’s history? Or is it changing because we drive SUVs? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver."

"Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone. Society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet."

"There is no right to abortion in the Constitution."

"Pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it—that is my world view."

"The only way that I would call it, it was a burden sometimes because there are times when I wanted to be there for my children more. I had a lot of work here in the Philippines and abroad. I had daily shows, soaps, movies, like all of that was happening at the same time," she recounted. "If anything it was just more time with my children. But most of the time I would bring them actually. To be honest I am so lucky that my job is something that I love to do. I love dancing, I love hosting. I love meeting new people."

"Minds which could soar to such metaphysical heights [of the Chuang Tzu] could not fail to be disillusioned by a refined but miniscule civilization constantly threatened with extinction by its own crass folly. Something had to take its place, and, just as today, either the jealous states would have to learn to live together or be crushed out of existence by an authoritarian power. It is not surprising, therefore, that a Chinese poet, faced with this problem, took refuge, as Rousseau did, in a revulsion from civilization itself."

"As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends. Liberty in the wild and freakish hands of fanatics has once more, as frequently in the past, proved the effective helpmate of autocracy and the twin-brother of tyranny."

"I must atone for my wealth. I will reward the country of my adoption for the great benefits I have gathered."

"Our forefathers were pioneers. So are we."

"And who is any of us, that without starvation he can go through the kingdoms of starvation?"

"Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time."

"Has a man any fault a woman cannot weave with and try to change into something better, if the god her man prays to is a mother holding a baby?"

"All poets and story-tellers alive today make a single brotherhood; they are engaged in a single work, picturing our human life. Whoever pictures life as he sees it, re-assembles in his own way the details of existence which affect him deeply, and so creates a spiritual world of his own."

"Certainly there are great men whose age circumscribes them so completely that we lose interest."

"When I meet a new person, I am on the lookout for signs of what he or she is loyal to. It is a preliminary clue to the sense of belonging, and hence of his or her humanity."

"I do not believe that we can stop perfecting new ways of dying until we have found new ways of living. Every new life-way ought to prevent a new death-way."

"So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty. All other pacts of love or fear derive from it and are modeled upon it."

"To strip a man of all loyalties but those to the state, makes him not only a worm but a monster, without a shred of humanity."

"Free people make the only milieu possible in society for the full gift of one's self to church, state, and family. Free people enjoy and sustain and feel with one another because they live for one another. The paths of life are intermingled lives."

"I am no theologian. I am a layman. I am among those who are preached to, and who listen. It is not for me to preach. I should not willingly forego being a listener, a man who reads the Gospels and then listens to what others say that our Lord meant. But sometimes a listener speaks out, and listens to his own voice."

"Each of us is a being in himself and a being in society, each of us needs to understand himself and understand others, take care of others and be taken care of himself."

"When people discuss religion, it is a pity that they often become excited and argue. We should merely listen, as one does on a dark night; we should merely gaze at the stars."

"The most frightening pages of history are those which reveal how easily conditions making a desert of the human spirit may come into existence, with the oozings away of incentive and kindliness in our natural social structure."

"A man's motive in the small actions of daily life, like resting a moment on his pitchfork in the sun and listening intently, may be the most important thing about that man."

"A gang is the same as a wolf pack; gang members do not use their energies in friendship with one another, for they do not know what friendship is. If they are united, it is by the common bond of a desire to attack their world."

"The song birds are the sweetest In Kentucky; The thoroughbreds are the fleetest In Kentucky; Mountains tower proudest, Thunder peals the loudest, The landscape is the grandest — And politics — the damnedest In Kentucky."

"We Southerners are, of course, a mythological people. Supposed to dwell in moonlight or incandescence, we are in part to blame for our own legendary character. Lost by choice in dreaming of high days gone and big house burned, now we cannot even wish to escape."

"There exists among us by ordinary — both North and South — a profound conviction that the South is another land, sharply differentiated from the rest of the American nation, and exhibiting within itself a remarkable homogeneity.... This is not to suggest that the land does not display an enormous diversity within its borders. Anyone may see that it does simply by riding along any of the great new motor roads which spread across it — through brisk towns with tall white buildings in Nebraska Gothic; through smart suburbs, with their faces newly washed; through industrial and Negro slums, medieval in dirt and squalor and wretchedness, in all but redeeming beauty; past sleepy old hamlets and wide fields and black men singing their sad songs in the cotton, past log cabin and high grave houses, past hill and swamp and plain.... Nevertheless, if it can be said there are many Souths, the fact remains that there is also one South. That is to say, it is easy to trace throughout the region... a fairly definite mental pattern, associated with a fairly definite social pattern — a complex of established relationships and habits of thought, sentiments, prejudices, standards and values, and associations of ideas, which, if it is not common strictly to every group of white people in the South, is still common in one appreciable measure or another, and m some part or another, to all but relatively negligible ones.It is no product of Cloud-Cuckoo-Town, of course, but proceeds from the common American heritage, and many of its elements are readily recognizable as being simply variations on the primary American theme. To imagine it existing outside this continent would be quite impossible. But for all that, the peculiar history of the South has so greatly modified it from the general American norm that, when viewed as a whole, it decisively justifies the notion that the country is — not quite a nation within a nation, but the next thing to it."

"Alabama is more than one of the States. It is another country. The Congo is not more different from Massachusetts or Kansas or California. Alabama is a land with a spell on it — not a good spell always. It is as often "conjured" as enchanted."

"In Neapolitan tradition, mandolins, guitars and accordions were part of everyday life, just like kitchen utensils."