All Quotes

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: For when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of Kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of Paradise: For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistably obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property, to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do, by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the whole design and end of government, it unanswerably follows, that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expence and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others."

"How came the King by a power which the People are afraid to trust, and always obliged to check? Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people, neither can any power which needs checking be from God: Yet the provision which the constitution makes, supposes such a power to exist. But the provision is unequal to the task; the means either cannot or will not accomplish the end, and the whole affair is a felo de se: For as the greater weight will always carry up the less, and as all the wheels of a machine are put in motion by one, it only remains to know which power in the constitution has the most weight, for that will govern: And though the others, or a part of them, may clog, or, as the phrase is, check the rapidity of its motion, yet so long as they cannot stop it, their endeavours will be ineffectual: The first moving power will at last have its way, and what it wants in speed is supplied by time."

"Government by Kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry."

"For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever; and though himself might deserve some decent degree of honors of his cotemporaries, yet his descendents might be far too unworthy to inherit them."

"Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent—selected from the rest of mankind, their minds are easily poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed in the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions."

"Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned Ruffians that ever lived."

"The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. It is not the affair of a City, a County, a Province, or a Kingdom; but of a Continent—of at least one eighth part of the habitable Globe. It is not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time by the proceedings now. Now is the seed-time of Continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters."

"It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount the force of local prejudice, as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world."

"Every thing that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ."

"Every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual. Our prayers have been rejected with disdain; and hath tended to convince us, that nothing flatters vanity or confirms obstinacy in Kings more than repeated petitioning—and nothing hath contributed more, than that very measure, to make the Kings of Europe absolute. Witness Denmark and Sweden. Wherefore, since nothing but blows will do, for God's sake let us come to a final separation, and not leave the next generation to be cutting throats, under the violated, unmeaning names of parent and child."

"Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for government to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a Continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America with respect to each other reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems. England to Europe: America to itself."

"But where, say some, is the King of America? I'll tell you, friend, he reigns above; and doth not make havoc of mankind, like the Royal Brute of Great-Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the Charter; let it be brought forth placed on the Divine Law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the World may know, that so far as we approve of Monarchy, that in America . For as in absolute governments the King is Law, so in free countries the Law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people, whose right it is."

"I have never met with a man, either in England or America, who hath not confessed his opinion, that a separation between the countries would take place one time or other: And there is no instance in which we have shewn less judgment, than in endeavoring to describe what we call the ripeness or fitness of the Continent for independence.—As all men allow the measure, and vary only in their opinion of the time, let us, in order to remove mistakes, take a general survey of things, and endeavor if possible, to find out the very time. But I need not go far, the enquiry ceases at once, for the time hath found us. The general concurrence, the glorious union of all things, prove the fact.—It is not in numbers but in unity that our great strength lies: Yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world."

"O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny, but the Tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is over-run with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her.—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind."

"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember, that virtue is not hereditary."

"Before we wrote the screenplay, we tried to get the studios interested in the story. It was turned down everywhere. But again, after the screenplay was done, there was quite a bit of studio interest. We finally went with 20th Century Fox. Then they started having trouble finding a director. Either the ones they wanted weren't available, or wanted to go in such a different direction with the story that they were unacceptable. Finally, Richard Loncrane was hired. The first draft of my screenplay took ten months, which is a very long time. When I started working with Richard, I would fly to London or he would fly here. He had a wonderful, very exciting vision of the film, but at the same time, it might have exceeded what was possible. What you see on the screen today is maybe 75 script pages. The script Loncrane and I started shooting with in Iceland was 140 pages long."

"It's funny, but I'd never actually seen a Drac. I knew they were completely inhuman. Not even male or female, but both, bundled together in a scaly, reptilian body."

"Any chance is better than no chance."

"What I'd been hearing at night was the scavenger ship. The scavengers were human all right. Barely human. They were outlaw miners who raped whole planets for precious ores. They hunted Dracs for slave labour, so we tolerated them."

"Maybe we should open up a little place here. I could ruin the food. You could frighten the customers."

"God, Jerry,... what am I supposed to do now, huh? You taught me all about the Talman and the line of Jeriba. But you didn't say nothin' about taking care of baby Dracs!"

"I guess he was an ugly little cuss,... but no uglier than the pictures of those other kids that were shown around the mess hall."

"And so Davidge brought Zammis and the Dracs home. He fulfilled his vow and recited the line of Zammis' forfathers before the Holy Council on Dracon. And when, in the fullness of time, Zammis brought its own child before the Holy Council, the name of Willis Davidge was added to the line of Jeriba."

"After we'd been shooting for about a month, the studio wasn't happy with what they were seeing, so they hired Wolfgang Petersen as the new director. ... We reset and resculpted with a new design concept, although it wasn't all that different from Drac's original look, which I always thought was cool. He looked more like an iguana, and dark grey, peppered with small, iridescent patches."

"The space burial sequence now two-thirds of the way into the film was actually menat to be the first scene of the movie. Davidge is found after three years on Fyrine IV, but doesn't initially answer what he did there or how he survived. The story is initially told through flashback because I wanted to set up suspense by slowly uncovering what had happened to him. After the first public testing, Wolfgang decided that it wasn't right. I can see some of it, but I still think that's the best structure for the story. Plus I think they cut more out of the film than they should have. There's some stuff showing his relationship with his three friends aboard the battle station that I wish they would have kept in. I think it created a feeling in the first of the film that carried over to the ending. But I do think that the film has an epic grandeur and enormous emotional intensity to the two characters. That's what I wanted to do most and I think that got to the screen."

"... this is the first science fiction film I know of that's based on character rather than hardware. I read the story on a plane from New York to LA and, at a critical point, I had to throw the script down. I was in tears... it touched me that much. It's such a wonderful story. Here's two guys who are enemies. One happens to be an alien. They could easily be an American and a Russian."

"The way I look at it, I am the alien! I'm the one devoid of human values. Drac has them. Not me. Not Davidge, the spaceman. For me, the film is the discovering of the human side of myself. You know – How to be human!"

"It's the biggest, most satisfying role I've ever had. Davidge is a human being who gets to know a lot of sides to himself. Wolfgang thought he was a bit too Han Solo, at first. Now, Davidge really evolves through everything in the story: humour, anguish, tears, hate, pride, love, pain, action. There's no end to the action! I'm trying to do most of it, myself. So, it's also, physically, a very gruelling experience."

"Louis Gossett Jr. - Jeriba Shigan"

"Brion James - Stubbs"

"Richard Marcus - Arnold"

"Carolyn McCormick - Morse"

"Bumper Robinson - Zammis"

"Jim Mapp - Old Drac Slave"

"Lance Kerwin - Joey Wooster"

"Scott Kraft - Jonathan"

"Lou Michaels - Wilson"

"Andy Geer - Bates"

"Henry Stolow - Cates"

"Herb Andress - Hopper"

"Girls are often left in the care of garden boys, as parents go to work, these gardeners tend to fill in blank spaces, abusing the girls, knowing fully well that they are unable to communicate the horrors they face. At EGJLS, we will protect the vulnerable girl child"

"I’ll refer to the Memory issue and I think something could have been done by Memory’s mother or relatives to say no even if we believe in this church can’t we at least seek justice and say this is wrong there’s no way a 14-year-old can give birth at a shrine and make it"

"Be as nice as possible and as nasty as necessary."

"Life is a game and a gamble."

"Ideas are harder to promote than products or personalities."

"We in the media could help [the insurance situation] if we put in proper perspective long range hurricane forecasts that often are exaggerated and play into insurers’ hands."

"By the mid-seventeenth century, depictions of s, animals, and plants had officially been declassed to the status of inferior art genres, deemed decorative, even frivolous—lacking the conceptual depth, moral integrity, and ethical elevation of art portraying grandiose human narratives. ... Or at least that was the case until aspiring female artists like , , , , , , , , Frances Elizabeth Tripp, , and , among others, turned to painting plants and flowers, spearheading an unparalleled botanical revolution in Western art. Initiating an unwavering, albeit gradual, ascent in the arts and in society, these women artists made the most of what was available to them to showcase their aptitudes, talent, and conceptual acumen."

"The work of women artists, which often transgresses the racial, ethnic, and gender dictates of society, asks us to consider the ambiguous boundary between self and other not with horror and fear—a convention of exclusion on which much of society is founded—but as offering an opening onto a new form of ."

"These issues are taken to pastors. I don’t understand what sort of counselling is given to a rapist and telling him never to do it again. And yet he’s coming from a family where he is capable of doing it to his children"

"We know little of the practice of the arts by women in ancient times. The degraded condition of the sex in Eastern countries rendered woman the mere slave and toy of her master; but this very circumstance gave her artistic ideas capable of development into independent action. These first showed themselves in the love of dress and the selection of ornaments. From the early ages of the world, too, and were feminine employments, in which undying germs of art were hidden; for it belongs to human nature never to be satisfied with what merely minsters to necessity."