Quotes on Ifs

If any man claims the Negro should be content... let him say he would willingly change the color of his skin and go to live in the Negro section of a large city. Then and only then has he a right to such a claim.

What is sad for women of my generation is that they weren't supposed to work if they had families. What were they going to do when the children are grown - watch the raindrops coming down the window pane?

I think the best thing I can do is to be a distraction. A husband lives and breathes his work all day long. If he comes home to more table thumping, how can the poor man ever relax?

I feel like my grandparents and parents gave me a tremendous amount. And if I can pass some of that on, then I'll be very happy.

If you cannot mould yourself entirely as you would wish, how can you expect other people to be entirely to your liking?

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

I watched their reactions and emotions, especially to understand what was what I was doing wrong. But then I realized that if I could see these people and take note of everything I saw, I could write a good song.

A man does not need to be a wizard to know truth from falsehood, not if he has eyes. You need only learn to read a face. Look at the eyes. The mouth. The muscles here, at the corners of the jaw, and here, where the neck joins the shoulders.

My attitude has always been if you get better and you see success, that should motivate you to even work harder, so that's kinda how I approach everything.

This is a work of fiction. Still, given an infinite number of possible worlds, it must be true on one of them. And if a story set in an infinite number of possible worlds is true in one of them, then it must be true in all of them. So maybe, it's not as fictional as we think.

I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together.

When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws.

Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not if you put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don’t expect Carter or Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself.

Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness.

Deliver me from Swedish furniture. Deliver me from clever art. And the phone rang and Tyler answered. "If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't." May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete.

I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I've encountered some unnecessary resistance that's because most of the traffic is going the other way.

After all, if you make your enemy look like a fool, you lose the justification for engaging him.

If you don't live a life in service of a greater good, you've gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won't get either a life or a death that means anything.

If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease.

Si quelqu'un veut un mouton, c'est la preuve qu'il en existe un. (If somebody wants a sheep, that is a proof that one exists.)

If the infinite had not desired man to be wise, he would not have bestowed upon him the faculty of knowing.