Quotes on Has Beens

Every person born into the world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique....If there had been someone like her in the world, there would have been no need for her to be born." --Martin Buber as quoted in Narrative Means for Sober Ends, by Jon Diamond, p.78

As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

I do not have a merchandise line. I don't sell knives or apparel. Though I have been approached to endorse various products from liquor to airlines to automobiles to pharmaceuticals dozens of times, I have managed to resist the temptation.

Life and death have been lacking in my life.

I didn't want to be selling insurance at 40, wondering what would it have been like to do stand-up.

I have been fortunate to have my game peak at the right times.

I like to spend time in the past, with the things that have been important to me.

It's fortunate that I am a writer, because that has helped me understand the properties of words. They are what have made life complex. In the battle for status in the animal kingdom, power and aggressiveness have been all-important. But among humans, once they acquired speech, all that changed.

God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism.

My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes.

No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them.

Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.

Whether at work, at home or in public, we have been trained to believe that who we are at the core of our being is often unacceptable. As a result, we work diligently to live up to - and sometimes down to - what others have made us out to be, whether or not it is an accurate reflection of who we are.

In my career, there have been roles I haven't taken because someone involved with the project gave me a bad vibe. I don't care how much money is on the table: No job is worth feeling uneasy every day.