Famous Quotes & Sayings

David Bowie

There have been times when I've written something and it goes out and it comes back in a letter from some kid as to what they think about it and I've taken their analysis to heart so much that I have taken up his thing. Writing what my audience is telling me to write.

Andy Roddick

I cook a little - I've never taken classes or anything - but enough to get by.

Margaret Mead

If I were to be taken hostage, I would not plead for release nor would I want my government to be blackmailed. I think certain government officials, industrialists and celebrated persons should make it clear they are prepared to be sacrificed if taken hostage. If that were done, what gain would there be for terrorists in taking hostages?

The unions need to be taken on. British Airways is massively over-staffed and has got to get its costs down. . . . The problem for [chief executive] Willie Walsh is that the board of BA has no spine, no balls and no vision.

Christina Perri

I took time off from school and traveled to Italy when I was 19, living with my extended family members. I must have slept in 30 different houses those months, taken in by people who'd never even met me.

Chris Noth

People are so phobic and crazed about this word 'commitment.' It's weird. Everyone has taken this word to a new height of morality.

Jeremy Davies

All the filmmakers I've worked with have taken my desire to educate myself very seriously.

Jeff Garcia

I think I'm very conscientious of how precious life is and how quickly life can be taken away from you, especially at times when it can be least expected.

Halle Berry

I used to have to downplay my sexuality because I wanted to be taken so seriously as a thespian and as an artist and as an actor, so I'd play crack heads and down trotting women and disguise myself, and I think as I've gotten older, I become more comfortable with who I really am and all parts of me knowing that my physical self doesn't diminish me in any way or my talent.

Greil Marcus

I never find myself even catching lyrics until something in the sound has taken me captive. Thinking about anything else is just the pleasurable byproduct of wow.

Gregory David Roberts

Cowardece is often just another name for being taken by surprise.

Hooman Majd

He had undoubtedly not availed himself of the ministry archives, archives that might have revealed to him that Iranian diplomats in Paris, from this, his own Foreign Ministry, had taken it upon themselves to issue Iranian passports to Jews escaping the very Holocaust they were aware of, but that he now denied.

Horace Bushnell

Morality, taken as apart from religion, is but another name for decency in sin. It is just that negative species of virtue which consists in not doing what is scandalously depraved and wicked. But there is no heart of holy principle in it, any more than there is in the grosser sin.

Horace Bushnell

Morality, taken as apart from religion, is but another name for decency of sin.

Ian Mckellen

Quite low down in the list is "How much am I going to be paid?"... my main feeling about money is that I don`t want to feel as though I`m being taken advantage of... The other actors they asked to play Gandalf wouldn`t go to New Zealand on that money for that length of time. I thought it would be a bit of an adventure... I`m an eccentric actor, and there`s a lot of us around.

Ian Mckellen

I've had enough of being a gay icon! I've had enough of all this hard work, because, since I came out, I keep getting all these parts, and my career's taken off. I want a quiet life. I'm going back into the closet. But I can't get back into the closet, because it's absolutely jam-packed full of other actors.

Ian Anderson

There seems to be an inclination among rock musicians to be very carefree with money, but I negotiate the best flight and hotel deals on our tours to maximise the band's income - I don't want too see too much taken off the top line.

Iain Banks

You're a wicked man." "Thank you. It's taken years of diligent practice.

Hugo Black

What finally emerges from the 'clear and present danger' cases is a working principle that the substantive evil must be extremely serious and the degree of imminence extremely high before utterances can be punished...It must be taken as a command of the broadest scope that explicit language, read in the context of a liberty-loving society, will allow.

Hugh Prather

One element of maturity is the realization that we don't get away with anything. Any advantage gained or convenience taken, any private procrastination or insincerity, no matter how subtle or quick in passing, is paid for.

Hugo Chavez

The descendants of those who crucified Christ... have taken ownership of the riches of the world, a minority has taken ownership of the gold of the world, the silver, the minerals, water, the good lands, petrol, well, the riches, and they have concentrated the riches in a small number of hands.

Huey Newton

Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.

Howard Barker

I’ve often taken important classical, biblical or literary stories and interrogated them. I have tried to reinvigorate Lot by interpreting it differently.

Guy de Maupassant

I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing

Gottfried Leibniz

I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant.

Gottfried Leibniz

All the different classes of beings which taken together make up the universe are, in the ideas of God who knows distinctly their essential gradations, only so many ordinates of a single curve so closely united that it would be impossible to place others between any two of them, since that would imply disorder and imperfection. Thus men are linked with the animals, these with the plants and these with the fossils which in turn merge with those bodies which our senses and our imagination represent to us as absolutely inanimate.

Gore Vidal

History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

Gina Gershon

I've seen it too many times in Hollywood. Talking about a relationship in public can jinx it. And if you have your picture taken together, you might as well start packing your bags.

James Bryant Conant

Therefore, a grotesque account of a period some thousands of years ago is taken seriously though it be built by piling special assumptions on special assumptions, ad hoc hypothesis [invented for a purpose] on ad hoc hypothesis, and tearing apart the fabric of science whenever it appears convenient. The result is a fantasia which is neither history nor science.

James Blunt

Being sent away to boarding school at seven is as great an inspiration as any songwriter could have - to be taken away from one's family and locked away for 10 years. It does create an incredible intensity of emotion.

James Bovard

Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote. Those rights are spelled out in the Bill of Rights and in our California Constitution. Voters and politicians alike would do well to take a look at the rights we each hold, which must never be chipped away by the whim of the majority.

Jamaica Kincaid

Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.

Jaime Lerner

The lack of resources is no longer an excuse not to act. The idea that action should only be taken after all the answers and the resources have been found is a sure recipe for paralysis. The planning of a city is a process that allows for corrections; it is supremely arrogant to believe that planning can be done only after every possible variable has been controlled.