Quotes on Ifs

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

And if there was no Fall, what then of the need for Redemption? What god was offended and by whom? Some especially touchy cave bear whose skull had been improperly enshrined?

The object of defense is preservation; and since it is easier to hold ground than to take it, defense is easier than attack. But defense has a passive purpose: preservation; and attack a positive one: conquest.... If defense is the stronger form of war, yet has a negative object, it follows that it should be used only so long as weakness compels, and be abandoned as soon as we are strong enough to pursue a positive object.

Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control.

Sir, usually I do preach for souls, but my orphans cannot eat souls. And if they could, it would take four souls the size of yours to make a square meal for just one orphan!

This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.

We talk about predestination because the Bible talks about predestination. If we desire to build our theology on the Bible, we run head on into this concept. We soon discover that John Calvin did not invent it.

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be?

In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.

The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable: its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.

If you would keep your secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.

For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

The essence of peace is to merge two opposites. Therefore your notions should not scare you if you see another, who absolutely opposes you, and you presume that there is no chance for peace between you two. On the same token when you see two individuals who are exactly two opposites, never say it would be impossible for them to reconcile. On the contrary, and this is the perfection of peace to make it between two opposites.

Is the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we'd want to get involved.

If everyone is a changemaker, there's no way a problem can outrun a solution

Purists behave as if there was a vintage year when language achieved a measure of excellence which we should all strive to maintain. In fact, there was never such a year. The language of Chaucer's or Shakespeare's time was no better and no worse than that of our own - just different.

If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.

If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster - just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate.

If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, and make a change.

I know that it is a hopeless undertaking to debate about fundamental value judgements. For instance, if someone approves, as a goal, the extirpation of the human race from the earth, one cannot refute such a viewpoint on rational grounds. But if there is agreement on certain goals and values, one can argue rationally about the means by which these objectives may be obtained.

If I'm winning, I have to act like I'm not bored. If it's A tough match, I have to act like I'm having A good time. I'm a drama queen.