James Rozoff Quotes & Sayings

Death is the night sky, the background against which the fleeting fireworks of life are displayed, an empty stage upon which the drama of life is played. — James Rozoff

The places of quiet are going away, the churches, the woods, the libraries. And it is only in silence we can hear the voice inside of us which gives us true peace. — James Rozoff

But failure and success are labels placed upon people's lives the way a child values winning a game whether or not they have to bend the rules in order to do it. But life is not a game and the rules cannot be bent without repercussions that prove damaging later on. We must play the game for all we are worth, and we must play it fairly. We play and lose and play again, over and over. We lose and we pick up and start again a little wiser. We learn the game a little better in the playing, learn lessons for the next game. And should we lose today it is only a step towards the winning of the larger game. We move our piece on the board one step at a time, but it is all part of some larger process. — James Rozoff

Sometimes you just have to hold on even when you don't believe in what you're holding on to anymore. Sometimes you have to hold on to empty and distant memories, even if it feels like there isn't any 'you' left. I think that's what faith is all about, doing what you need to do even when the feeling isn't there anymore. — James Rozoff

Such places exist among the endless abodes of every major city, places that seem to be sanctuaries from the present, immune to the hustle and bustle, the sound and fury that in the end change nothing. Like long unopened books sitting upon dusty shelves, there exist people filled with knowledge that has somehow been saved from extinction. But buried as they are by time, there abides in them yet a seed awaiting the proper condition for germination. There is some process that occurs in dormancy, some subtle shifting of the fabric of reality that science has yet to discover. From such forgotten places as these occasionally springs, in some unseen future, a gigantic oak whose day has come. — James Rozoff

Faith is jumping off a cliff, knowing you're going to have to fly. Once you're falling from a cliff, flapping your arms like a madman isn't really faith, I suppose, it's just the logical consequence of faith. It's where the devil waits to tempt us, it's the forty days and nights spent in the desert. It's that experience we all must have in our time on earth of what life would be without God. We all have to be tested. — James Rozoff

We look for things or people that are incorruptible. There is nothing incorruptible, merely uncorrupted. We neglect the role we play. We value innocence, but only the kind we cannot alter. We throw mud at purity and mock it for its stain. — James Rozoff

Intelligence resides between us as much as it resides in us. And it resides within the subconscious much more than it does the conscious. We're just conscious-biased: our conscious mind wants us to think it's the be all and end all. — James Rozoff

Never in mankind's history have we so fundamentally changed our means of existence with so little thought. — James Rozoff

We have to believe in free will, we have no other choice. — James Rozoff

Where once we aspired to be more like our heroes, today we try to make our heroes more like us. — James Rozoff

Simplistic ideas are the weapons with which the thoughtful are clubbed. — James Rozoff

If you want a language to survive, capture great thoughts within it. William Shakespeare has ensured Elizabethan English will never perish from this world. — James Rozoff

Safety and constancy were illusions granted only to those afraid enough not to peer beyond the walls. — James Rozoff

Feminism is not inherently bourgeois, but bourgeois feminism is the only one given voice in our society. That is why women's issues discuss glass ceilings rather than dirt floors. — James Rozoff

Perhaps the one unanswerable question in life is why so many of us choose to live in a fantasy world of our own creation that offers us nothing but pain. — James Rozoff

Perhaps humility is the greatest wisdom of all. — James Rozoff

TV pollutes our minds and dulls our senses. It is a babysitter that molests children. And yet those who are on the television scream "first amendment" and "freedom of speech". How is corporate control freedom of speech? And what rights did our forefathers grant corporations, anyway? — James Rozoff

Sooner or later you realize there are no answers, no answers except the ones you believe. Sooner or later faith is the only answer left. — James Rozoff

Perhaps the media may not always be telling what to think, but it is always telling you what to think about. — James Rozoff

Vulgarity is like a fine wine: it should only be uncorked on a special occasion, and then only shared with the right group of people. — James Rozoff

What is wisdom? It is the result of multiple paradigms brought to their intellectual furthest reaches and balanced and merged together. The fundamentalist, the person who only sees life through a single lens, can never hope for wisdom. — James Rozoff

Each man is an island unto himself. But though a sea of difference may divide us, an entire world of commonality lies beneath. — James Rozoff

Most animals sleep in a hole in the ground or hanging from a tree. Man alone has made for himself an elaborate resting place. And yet he is the only one to have developed the alarm clock to rouse himself from it, the only species to spend sixteen or more hours of each day away from it. — James Rozoff

The town they entered differed little from any other he had been in lately. The ubiquitous Perkins, Applebees, Buffalo Wild Wings, Qdoba, and Panda Express were situated around the central hub that was Walmart, like appendages of some spider or octopus. Like some metastasizing tumor that threatened to overwhelm the town. — James Rozoff

Sheep only need a single flock, but people need two: one to belong to and make them feel comfortable, and another to blame all of society's problems on. — James Rozoff

A politician is someone who knows everything about running a campaign and nothing about running a country. — James Rozoff

To be young and to experience the feeling of being alive is a sweet feeling. To feel alive and to have a purpose and a goal to that life is better still. — James Rozoff

It is wisdom to know who you are, but not to the point of excluding who you might become. — James Rozoff

Science is the process of obscuring the marvelous with explanations. — James Rozoff

A thousand truths can be assembled in such a way as to create a colossal lie. — James Rozoff

There is no greater thing than to be oneself, and it is never too late to do so. — James Rozoff

There is no unstoppable force but time, no impenetrable object except that which separates us from the past. — James Rozoff

Intelligence is overrated. Two dogs who sniff each others' butts learn more about each other in a moment than many humans understand about those they've known for a lifetime. — James Rozoff

Once art served to educate and edify, now it distracts and amuses. — James Rozoff

Facts, like living things, have a value in and of themselves and demand respect. Yet some people use them as means to an end, and dismiss them as soon as they are done using them. — James Rozoff

A truth told once is no match for a lie oft repeated. — James Rozoff

People perceive the divine according to their own biases. That doesn't make the experience any less real. — James Rozoff

Life is like a box of chocolates: You get through what little actual good stuff there is right away, then you constantly fool yourself into believing there's still something good in whatever's left. — James Rozoff

Once you realize that life and love are not things you can possess but forces that emanate through us and through all creation, then you can begin to appreciate the miracle you are a part of. You can release the burden and appreciate what you have had, have now and will have. Only trying to hold on to what you do not have causes pain. Letting go permits you to experience the incredible joy that comes to you at each and every moment. — James Rozoff

Where there is hope there is life. — James Rozoff

Stories nowadays are put in to squares, just like everything else. Stories are ever changing. They are like rivers that flow, but mankind is busy trying to dam them up and as a result, they become stagnant. They divert the water into square swimming pools, and then add chemicals to it in order to keep it sterile. — James Rozoff

No, not conquer, that is too foolish a world. Any man who scales a mountain is still but a man, a transient speck compared to the immensity and permanence of a mountain . — James Rozoff

Security is an illusion, but it is a pleasant one. — James Rozoff

Humans recite the words to the play they are in without ever bothering to read the script. — James Rozoff

It really was amazing, thought Mindy, the way modern electronics made it so easy to ignore those people who were physically so close. — James Rozoff

As time and space are bent by gravity, so too is truth bent by power. — James Rozoff

Contrary to popular belief, you can make people think, but they will hate you for it. — James Rozoff

Our country is the only one that truly permits you to speak bad of your country, so you really shouldn't say anything bad about it. — James Rozoff

We have created a world we don't like, don't understand and don't trust, and we are too frightened to try to change it. — James Rozoff

True ideas seem to suffer from repetition, while stupid ones tend to flourish. — James Rozoff

Before Ayn Rand coined the term "objectivists", we just called them "selfish assholes". — James Rozoff

Sometimes you come to realize you understand something but you can't explain it to anyone, not even yourself. This is perhaps the most sacred kind of understanding. — James Rozoff

Stories are like DNA, they shape the culture that they're a part of. A society is not a society without its own unique stories. But we allow machines to make our stories, nowadays, or at least to tell them. We allow things to shape our understanding of who we are. We are entertained, not nurtured. We are given Twinkies for our mind, things that amuse but do not enlighten. It tickles our taste buds, but it does not enrich us. — James Rozoff

Nothing is taken at face value anymore, everything must be dissected. Perhaps it is the rise of advertisement over church and state. Things once spoken were spoken with strength and authority. Now they are spoken with stealth and with guile. They are spoken not to the rational mind but to the sub-conscious, the mind within the mind. — James Rozoff

If patriotism is a scoundrel's last refuge, then the concept of freedom is his first sales pitch. — James Rozoff

The intellect seeks to throw its own interpretation of the real over reality, and in so doing carves the world up into artificial little cubes. — James Rozoff

To be myself, to follow my desires to the best of my abilities. That's the only end worth shooting for. Success and failure lie beyond us, they may be signposts that direct us, but they are foolish goals in themselves. To truly be who I have been made to be, made myself to be, ah, that is the only mission worthy of all the life that flows within. — James Rozoff

Ours has been an expansionist society, but that narrative must change as we run out of places to expand into. But our culture is like a cart stuck in the same old rut that has been leading us in one direction. The longer we've been using a path, the deeper the ruts get, the harder it is to escape them. We've been moving ever Westward, but there's only so far we can go in that direction before we fall into the ocean. It's a direction that we cannot continue on forever, but the breaking of those ruts will require a major rupture. The old narrative is dying, and it will be quite a crushing of gears before things are re-adjusted. A shared story is needed for a civilization to endure. — James Rozoff

Perhaps religion provides the justification for wars, but science provides the weapons. — James Rozoff

The media is socially liberal, economically conservative, and always pro-war. — James Rozoff

Good enough may be an acceptable end, but it should never be an acceptable goal. — James Rozoff

The definition of stupid is the inabilitly to see another side to an argument other than one's own. — James Rozoff

Technology is the idol of our age. The Bible describes the evils of worshipping things built by the hand of man. Back then, it was a simple statue, today it is far more insidious. And for every problem technology creates, we look to technology for solutions. — James Rozoff

Every man is ultimately groping in the dark, believing he has some understanding. Perhaps it is better thus. Perhaps we would go mad to realize what a thin skein of atmosphere protects us from the emptiness of outer space, what a thin layer of reason protects us from a reality far beyond our comprehension. — James Rozoff

Love is the enjoyment one experiences by looking at the world through the eyes of another. — James Rozoff

Those who rule have always had an interest in shaping the perceptions of those they wish to rule. But never in the history of humanity has their toolbox been so full. Advances in technology and psychology have enabled the messages of the rulers to permeate our consciousness to a degree no prior society could have imagined. — James Rozoff

He who dies with the most toys...dies a child. — James Rozoff

Will is a gift from God, desire from the devil. — James Rozoff

If God rewards the faithful with earthly rewards, then what leverage does the devil have? — James Rozoff

I pity the atheist, for he can never fully appreciate a sinful pleasure. — James Rozoff

Forget scientists. The next space launch we should send up painters, poets and musicians. I'd be more interested in what they discover than anything that takes place in a test tube. — James Rozoff

I don't want us to be the species that ruins it for the rest. What we do not consume we poison. Sometimes we do both. Perhaps that is how we shall end, by consuming the poisons we have created. — James Rozoff

Art helps you connect to the world, not escape from it. That is the difference between art and entertainment. — James Rozoff

It is a single paradigm, and single paradigms, no matter how helpful in and of themselves, can be dangerous. They become the thing they are supposed to represent in the mind of the believer. In religion, it is known as idolatry, worshipping the statue that is merely the representation of the real. Most people only give themselves so much to a single point of view, whether they admit it to themselves or not. To believe, to truly believe, is to do. When one accepts a single paradigm, he becomes a true believer. There is nothing quite so rare ... or so dangerous. — James Rozoff

Heaven is fleeting, but Hell is an eternity. Hell becomes the more so the longer one lives it. — James Rozoff

Ignorance is a horrible thing. But arrogance, the belief that knowing a little more than the ignorant makes you wise, is more horrible still. — James Rozoff

Man has always sought to be a part of something larger than himself, and so has tried to change himself in order to fit in. What he does not realize is that he is a part of everything merely by being himself. — James Rozoff

When you've known somebody since childhood, you never have to worry about them seeing the child that still exists inside of you. They've already seen it. And since they still know and associate with you, it means they accept that child inside you that is never really going to go away. — James Rozoff

Here is the paradox of it: the more of an individual you become the more you realize we are interrelated, that success of one requires the success of all. — James Rozoff

Is love a state of being we aspire to or the action required to attain that state? — James Rozoff

You've got to stop thinking of consciousness as your own. You're only thinking for yourself when you are by yourself. As soon as you are in the presence of others, your consciousness is linked at some level to those others. — James Rozoff

There is a third choice besides being busy and killing time, something profound. — James Rozoff

I write pre-apocalyptic fiction. In other words, I'm not interested in a future where everything is blown to hell, I'd rather write something that helps to prevent it from happening. — James Rozoff