Quotes on Has Beens

No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.

I think most of my approach to life has been like that, to find order in chaos, to be in the middle of a bunch of things happening at the same time, but find focus. I strive to be like the sun sitting in the middle of the solar system with all the planets spinning around it - millions of things going on. It's just sitting there being the sun, but exerting gravitational effect on everything. I think man should look at himself that way.

Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear.

We cannot step aside and say that we have achieved our goal by inventing a new drug or a new way by which to treat presently incurable diseases, a new way to help those who suffer from malnutrition, or the creation of ideal balanced diets on a worldwide scale. We cannot rest till the way has been found, with our help, to bring our finest achievement to everyone.

Second place is meaningless. You can't always be first, but you have to believe that you should have been - that you were never beaten - that time just ran out on you.

I wish you could see the two cats drowsing side by side in a Victorian nursing chair, their paws, their ears, their tails complementarily adjusted, their blue eyes blinking open on a single thought of when I shall remember it's their supper time. They might have been composed by Bach for two flutes.

Paul Ryan's love for Rage Against The Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades

All my adult life people have been helping me.

The possible has been tried and failed. Now it's time to try the impossible.

The economic expansion that began in 2001, while it has been great for corporate profits, has yet to produce any significant gains for ordinary working Americans. And now it looks as if it never will.

My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

I'm not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live. My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I'm the son of my history. There have been years when I would have been happy just to have a mattress.

Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?Making life means making trouble. There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things.

Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?

The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security.

We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.

Once humankind has been some place and found it_x000D_ entrancing, they always go back, I think in the history of the_x000D_ human race, the moon has been the first place we've gone to and said,_x000D_ 'OK, we don't need to go back there again.

It is a curious property of research activity that after the problem has been solved the solution seems obvious. This is true not only for those who have not previously been acquainted with the problem, but also for those who have worked over it for years.

Chess has given me a lot more than I could ask for. I have been able to feel special, travel the world and do what I truly enjoy. Moreover, chess players love being their own boss and hate having to wake up early!

I have had friends who have acted kindly towards me, and it has been my good fortune to have it in my power to give them substantial proofs of my gratitude.

People like us are afraid to leave ball. What else is there to do? When baseball has been your whole life, you can't think about a future without it, so you hang on as long as you can.