If one thinks about racism by examining only one wire of the cage, or one form of disadvantage, it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped. Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way, and connected to one another, serve to enclose the bird and to ensure that it cannot escape.
A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fashions his goods or his dwelling. Nothing that he says, thinks or does is without consequences.
You don't want to go right, if everyone thinks you're going to go right. You go left, on purpose. Sometimes you can't explain why, and you can't explain what left looks like, but you just do it.
I'm not someone who thinks about the past. I'm so busy thinking about what I'm going to do today.
Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.
Almost everyone thinks they are a good person, but the question you should be asking is, am I good enough to go to Heaven? How would you know?
You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good.
If the show of any thing be good for any thing, I am sure sincerity is better; for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to?
When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself.
The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper
The difference between an amateur and a professional photographer is that the amateur thinks the camera does the work. And they treat the camera with a certain amount of reverence. It is all about the kind of lens you choose, the kind of film stock you use… exactly the sort of perfection of the camera. Whereas, the professional the real professional – treats the camera with unutterable disdain. They pick up the camera and sling it aside. Because they know it’s the eye and the brain that count, not the mechanism that gets between them and the subject that counts.
I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house, thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist.
Classic line from Bones (vampire) to human who thinks human kind is ready for the vamps and ghouls to come out of the closet "The day your kind stops killing each other over skin colour or which God someone prays to, I might believe that".
The fool thinks he has won a battle when he bullies with harsh speech, but knowing how to be forbearing alone makes one victorious.
If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion.
Musicians now find themselves in the unlikely position of being legitimate. At least the IRS thinks so.
Obviously, you take the risk to step over the line any time you do something where comedians interact with each other. Like a roast, somebody's always going to cross over the line. As far as the public goes, I like feedback, I like to hear laughter, and I like the occasional pointed heckle, but it's true: Everybody thinks that they need to express their opinion now. There's been this sea change where people are constantly writing to me directly about stuff, where in the past you'd never hear about it, because nobody would try to find you to make one of their stupid comments.
If everybody thinks you're out of your mind, you just might be onto something.
I think everyone thinks their family is insane, and every family is insane. There is no real normal.
The envious man thinks that if his neighbor breaks a leg, he will be able to walk better himself