Quotes on Ifs

Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes.

The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.

Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world

If I'd known white people were going to buy my last album, I never would have recorded it.

If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.

If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy.

As for mother Eve - I wasn't there and can't deny the story, but I will say this. If she brought evil into the world, we men have had the lion's share of keeping it going ever since.

If you don't know history, it is as if you were born yesterday.

If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.

If your parent is deployed and you are that young, you spend the whole time wondering where they are and waiting for them to come home. As time passes and the absence is longer and longer, you become more and more concerned - but you don't really have the words to express your concern. There's only this continued absence.

If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected, and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.

If a statement is untrue, it is not the more respectable because it has been said in Latin.

If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.

With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.

This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself.

You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way.

Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential.

Who am I? If this once I were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amount to knowing whom I 'haunt.'

Give me a man who is man enough to give himself just to the woman who is worth him. If that woman were me,I would love him alone and forever

When Catherine told me about this (tragedy nearby), I could only say, shocked, "Dear God, that family needs grace." She replied firmly, "That family needs casseroles," and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this _is_ grace.