Quotes on Ifs

If you're going into a very dark place, then you should take a bright light, and shine it on everything. If you don't want to see, why in God's name would you dare the dark at all?

And so gentlemen, I learned. Oh, if you have to learn, you learn; if you’re desperate for a way out, you learn; you learn pitilessly. You stand over yourself with a whip in your hand; if there’s the least resistance, you lash yourself.

I was given away. If your mother gives you away, you think everybody who comes into your life is going to give you away.

No foreign policy - no matter how ingenious - has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If I were dammed of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, mother o' mine o mother o' mine.

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you. The world will be yours and everything in it, what's more, you'll be a man, my son.

We have used the Bible as if it was a mere special constable's handbook — an opium-dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded — a mere book to keep the poor in order.

There's no use doing a kindness if you do it a day too late.

I'm not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul.

The main thing is to care. Care very hard, even if it is only a game you are playing.

Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect

I wondered if I would appear on a temple wall painting someday. A blonde Egyptian girl with purple highlights running sideways through the palm trees, screaming "Yikes!" in hieroglyphics as Neith chased after me. The thought of some poor archaeologist trying to figure that out almost lifted my spirits.

I'd swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet.

I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.

If you love deeply, you're going to get hurt badly. But it's still worth it.

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.

Look to her, Moor, if thou has eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee.