A.n.r. Robinson Quotes & Sayings

You may have noticed that people in bus stations, if they know you also are alone, will glance at you sidelong, with a look that is both piercing and intimate, and if you let them sit beside you, they will tell you long lies about numerous children who are all gone now, and mothers who were beautiful and cruel, and in every case they will tell you that they were abandoned, disappointed, or betrayed--that they should not be alone, that only remarkable events, of the kind one reads in a book, could have made their condition so extreme. And that is why, even if the things they say are true, they have the quick eyes and active hands and the passion for meticulous elaboration of people who know they are lying. Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever been otherwise. Loneliness is absolute discovery. — Marilynne Robinson

If a rise in wages does not raise prices, a fall will not reduce them. — Joan Robinson

If I was the Jackie Robinson of golf, I sure didn't do a very good job of it. Jackie was followed by hundreds of great black ballplayers who have transformed their sport ... But there are hardly any black kids coming up through the ranks of golf today. — Charlie Sifford

People look at black pride in America and sport's impact on it. In the major cities it took off the first time Jackie Robinson stole home. In the deep South, it started with Eddie Robinson, who took a small college in northern Louisiana with little or no funds and sent the first black to the pros and made everyone look at him and Grambling. — Jerry Izenberg

What use was there in calling a day by a certain name, or thinking of it as anything but weather? They knew what time of the year it was when the timothy bloomed, when the birds were fledging. They knew it was morning when the sun came up. What more was there to know? If Doll was going to be lost forever, Lila wanted to be right there with her, holding to the skirt of her dress. She had — Marilynne Robinson

People still look at Michael Jackson as being a Motown artist. — Smokey Robinson

I never was a cheerleader. I'm an athlete. I'm probably not coordinated enough to be a cheerleader but that doesn't matter. I've always wanted to compete. And if I compete, I want to win. I was born competitive and that's in my blood. Whatever car I'm in, whatever series I'm running, whatever track I'm racing I want to be a factor. I want people to know that Shawna Robinson was there. — Shawna Robinson

causing a refugee crisis rated at ten thousand katrinas. One — Kim Stanley Robinson

BMX is kind of a big guy sport, you know. — Donny Robinson

Ideology is a straight-edge ruler in a fractal universe. — Marilynne Robinson

Someone once said there was a comparison between Sugar Ray Leonard and Sugar Ray Robinson. Believe me, there's no comparison. Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest. — Sugar Ray Leonard

I was reading Emily Dickinson and Edwin Arlington Robinson, but these weren't the poets that influenced me. I think Gwendolyn Brooks influenced me because she wrote about Chicago, and she wrote about poor people. And she influenced me in my life by giving me a blurb. I would see her in action, and she listened to every single person. She didn't say, "Oh, I'm tired. I gotta go." She was there, and present, with every single person. She's one of the great teachers. — Sandra Cisneros

Someone once said that democracy was the flawed solution to a perfect mess ... — Andrew J. Robinson

While the past is the past, it often affects our decisions later on in life. — K.A. Robinson

I'm not interested in a persona. — Chris Robinson

We had been assured by our elders that intelligence was a family trait. All my kin and forebears were people of substantial or remarkable intellect, thought somehow none of them had prospered in the world. Too bookish, my grandmother said with tart pride, and Lucille and I read constantly to forestall criticism, anticipating failure. If my family were not as intelligent as we were pleased to pretend, this was an innocent deception, for it was a matter of indifference to everybody whether we were intelligent or not. People always interpreted our slightly formal manner and our quiet tastes as a sign that we wished to stay a little apart. This was a matter of indifference, also, and we had our wish. — Marilynne Robinson

It was the kind of light that rests on your shoulders the way a cat lies on your lap. So familiar. — Marilynne Robinson

Is this narcissism? Solipsism? Idiocy (from the Greek word idios, for self)? Would Turing acknowledge it as a proof of human behavior? Well, perhaps. They drove Turing to suicide too. — Kim Stanley Robinson

I've often been sorry to see a night end, even while I have loved seeing the dawn come. — Marilynne Robinson

As of late, 'Boyz n the Hood' really impacted me because I grew up in that same neighborhood. It was the first time I saw a true reflection of me, my neighborhood and my surroundings. — Wendy Raquel Robinson

I've said that education is a living process that can best be compared to agriculture. Gardeners know that they don't make plants grow. — Ken Robinson

Those black eyebrows! Oh, what if her baby inherited those eyebrows? She'd have to get a special brush. — Maggie Robinson

That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things. There's a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn't really expect to find it, either. — Marilynne Robinson

It's always nice to do a family movie, because I do a lot of R-rated stuff. — Craig Robinson

In times like these," he would say, "everyone becomes a sort of intellectual, as matters so dire demand to be thought through. That's the glory of these times. They have woken us up. — Kim Stanley Robinson

N MY early boyhood I was enraptured by the great fairytale illustrators of the period: Arthur Rackham, Edmond Dulac, Kay Nielsen. As a schoolboy, I was to discover Aubrey Beardsley, and I was extremely fond of an edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream with most imaginative drawings by Heath Robinson, — John Gielgud

But I believe also the rewards of obedience are great, because at the root of real honor is always a sense of the sacredness of the person who is the object... When you love someone to the degree you love her, you see her as God sees her, and that is an instruction in the nature of God and humankind and of Being itself. — Marilynne Robinson

It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is. — Robinson Jeffers

Apocalyptic thinking happens on the left as well as on the right, and in environmentalism, that's a terrible approach to take. Because it isn't true. — Kim Stanley Robinson

That old black coat he always wore to preach in was the one he put over her shoulders one evening when they were walking along the road together and he was throwing rocks at the fence posts the way a boy would do, still shy of her. But on a Sunday morning, with the sermon in front of him he'd spent the week on and knew so well he hardly need to look at it, he was a beautiful old man, and it pleased her more than almost anything that she knew the feel of that coat, the weight of it. — Marilynne Robinson

Dostoyevsky described hell as perhaps nothing more than a room with a chair in it. This room has several chairs. A young man sits in one. — Bruce Robinson

Had I not come out with an inspirational CD, you perhaps would have never known that I feel like I feel, that all songs, all the music I've ever done is a gift from God. — Smokey Robinson

When I was a child, I read books. My reading was not indiscriminate. I preferred books that were old and thick and hard. I made vocabulary lists. — Marilynne Robinson

Yes. My mother was and still is a Folk Singer. She was very involved in the political movements for Unions and Civil rights. She sang with Pete Seeger among others. My father was an Actor. — Vicki Sue Robinson

Here you had John McCain and Lindsey Graham in a very principled way standing up and defending Barack Obama. You had people like Gene Robinson and a lot of other liberals, who said, and this I personally agree with, however flawed Rand Paul was as a messenger, we need a debate about this. The administration has not been forthcoming enough about its drone policy. — E. J. Dionne

Mostly in movies an actor has to come to a mark, an X, and deliver his line - but that's so artificial, that's not how people really behave. — Bruce Robinson

We do not know what it's like to be a bat, we do not know what it's like to be in coma. we can't even say that we know what it's like to be sleeping. We can say what it's like to be restored to consciousness after sleeping. If there are no dreams during our sleep then the sleeping life is an empty life. We might say of such a life that it's not like being anything. We protect that life on the assumption that come the morning its normal functions will be restored. Suppose it was the case however that such functions were only restored every two days... every eight days... twice a year but only briefly. I assume the point is clear. Actions that end life are irretrievable. If we are mistaken at that point there is no going back. — Daniel N. Robinson

Oddly enough, George Pal always began and ended something with The Bible. All his pictures had a religious undertone. God was always there, protecting us. — Ann Robinson

They could do anything. That, however, was part of what made it difficult to bring [it] to a close. Infinite possibility was going to collapse, in the act of choosing, to the single world line of history. The future becoming the past: there was something disappointing in this passage through the loom, this so-sudden diminution from infinity to one, the collapse from potentiality to reality which was the action of time itself. The potential was so delicious - the way they could have, potentially, all the best parts of all...time, combined magically into some superb, as-yet-unseen synthesis - or throw all that aside, and finally strike a new path to the heart of just government. . . .To go from that to the mundane problematic...was an inevitable letdown, and instinctively people put it off. — Kim Stanley Robinson

It's nice to come into a town and be referred to as the manager of the Cleveland Indians instead of as the first black manager. — Frank Robinson

Josh wanted to be the one to break the color barrier. When the Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson he knew it was over for him. He wasn't going to make the big leagues, and he also knew that because of his health and his bad knees his career with the Grays was about over. He didn't know what to do with himself. They say a man can't die of a broken heart, and I guess that's true. But I'll tell you this, all of this sure lessened Josh's will to keep going, to keep fighting to stay alive. — Ted Page

Atoms have a nucleus, made of protons and neutrons bound together. Around this nucleus shells of electrons spin, and each shell is either full or trying to get full, to balance with the number of protons-to balance the number of positive and negative charges. An atom is like a human heart, you see. — Kim Stanley Robinson

A narrow pond would form in the orchard, water clear as air covering grass and black leaves and fallen branches, all around it black leaves and drenched grass and fallen branches, and on it, slight as an image in an eye, sky, clouds, trees, our hovering faces and our cold hands. — Marilynne Robinson

I pulled a book by Robinson Jeffers off the shelf one day. It was powerfully moving. Tears ran down my face. That's when I became a poet. — William Everson

You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years - generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco - and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad - ROBINSON CRUSOE. When I want advice - ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much - ROBINSON CRUSOE. I have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my service. On my lady's last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and ROBINSON CRUSOE put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain.
— Wilkie Collins

working more than 40 hours a week was stupid, wasteful, dangerous, and expensive - and the most telling sign of dangerously incompetent management to boot," Robinson writes. Further, more than a hundred years of research shows that "every hour you work over 40 hours a week is making you less effective and productive over both the short and the long haul." Really! Even though most people think this makes intuitive sense, they are still surprised to hear that it is actually true. This common sense is so widely ignored that overwork - and the problems with health, happiness, and productivity that it brings - is epidemic. — Christine Carter

Mr. Robinson was a polished sort of person. He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone - which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney. — Susanna Clarke

In 1905, I was privileged to be given a place in the private laboratory of my revered teacher, Professor W. H. Perkin, Jr. at the University of Manchester. — Robert Robinson

But this time of the year she was in her vaults, underground, and here she resided alone, spending most of her life in darkness, like a tongue — Bruce Robinson

Owning capital is not a productive activity. — Joan Robinson

There was some sort of maze-learning experiment involved in my final grade and since I remember the rat who was my colleague as uncooperative, or perhaps merely incompetent at being a rat, or tired of the whole thing, I don't remember how I passed. — Marilynne Robinson

There's a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn't expect to find it, either. — Marilynne Robinson

An excess of reason is itself a form of madness — Kim Stanley Robinson

A person's native tongue influences the way he or she perceives music. The same succession of notes may sound different depending on the language the listener learned growing up.12 As evidence, speakers of tonal languages including Mandarin are more likely than Westerners to have perfect pitch. In one study, 92 percent of Mandarin speakers who began the music lessons at or before the age of five had perfect pitch compared to 8 percent of English speakers with comparable music training. — Ken Robinson

Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe. - H. G. Wells — Ken Robinson

Their lives spun off the tilting world like thread off a spindle, breakfast time, suppertime, lilac time, apple time. — Marilynne Robinson

Morality is a check upon the strongest temptations. — Marilynne Robinson

Eden Robinson is one of those rare artists who comes to writing with a skill and maturity that has taken the rest of us decades to achieve. — Thomas King

No one answers when I knock. But I left a cake and a card on the porch last night, and this morning when I was jogging I noticed that it was gone."
"That could mean anything. Maybe raccoons took it," I suggest and then want to do a forehead smack. Discovering vampires has really thrown a wrench in my concept of reality if my first theory is cake-stealing raccoons. — A.M. Robinson

For five years he [Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)] served as personal secretary to, yes, Francis Bacon. In fact, I've noted over a course of years that the job of a secretary can be utterly fulfilling just in case one's boss happens to be Francis Bacon. — Daniel N. Robinson

Money was invented as a lubricant for the barter system, but we're way overdue for a lube and oil change. — Daniel N. Robinson

R. V. L. Hartley, the inventor of the Hartley oscillator, was thinking philosophically about the transmission of information at about this time, and he summarized his reflections in a paper, "Transmission of Information," which he published in 1928. — John Robinson Pierce

In 1971, after seven years in college, with that magic piece of paper clutched triumphantly in my fist, the best job I was able to get was night watchman on a sewer project in Babylon, N.Y. guarding a hole in the ground to prevent anyone from stealing it. God bless the American educational system! — Spider Robinson

Let me just say this right now, in case there's any confusion in 2016: If you're a white person and you have references on standby to verify that you're allowed to say the N-word, you are probably the last person on planet Earth who should be saying nigga. — Phoebe Robinson

I was first influenced by a friend in fifth grade when he brought a Walkman to school and was listening to 'Paradise City' by Guns 'N Roses, which he had concealed within his hoodie. He put the headphones over my ears and I was completely blown away by what I heard. I'll never forget that. — Darren Robinson

I'm very expressive.
i deserve to feel pretty.
i kissed the blarney stone.
i am strong. i am brave.
im a good friend. I'm a good sister. I'm a good wife. i am a good in-law. I'm a good daughter. i am a good niece. I'm a good beagle mother. i am a good granddaughter.
i work hard for it, honey.
im superfly TNT motherfucker.
im a pilot of the airwaves.
im a better third baseman that brooks robinson.
I B-E-A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E.
i have exceptionally beautiful feet, eyes, ears, hips, hair, teeth, breasts. and shoulders. and fingernails. in a different pen, she added, and eyelashes and eyebrows, plus in yet another pen, and nose. and chin. — Rob Sheffield

Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water. — Marilynne Robinson

I don't plan on writing biographies of great sports stars who are still playing ball. But I did write one on Jackie Robinson, who was playing ball in the 20th century. — David A. Adler

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it's not random. — Ken Robinson

The Wikks are regular kids given a Galactic size challenge. Readers will follow Oliver, Tiffany, and twins, Mason and Austin as they trek through eerie catacombs, mysterious ruins, and creepy castles that defy imagination. One part Indiana Jones, a handful of Swiss Family Robinson, and some Intergalactic excitement, the Quest for Truth is a riveting tale of just how far mankind will go for the ultimate prize. — Wayne Thomas Batson

Who would wave a flag to be rescued if they had a desert island of their own? That was the thing that spoilt Robinson Crusoe. In the end he came home. There never ought to be an end. — Arthur Ransome

With time and experience comes a different perception of what's going on around you. — Chris Robinson

So you attempt what De Bruik attempted, in her Free Radical Binds to Macromolecule." "We all attempt what De Bruik attempted, in one way or another." In Free Radical De Bruik had represented the macromolecule, an RNA strand, as a passacaglia, a ground base repeated again and again, in patterns of four that alternated regularly. This was a simple icon, a metaphor in which the repeated ground base stood for the repeated proteins in the RNA; fine. And the free radical's part was a test for any trumpet player. — Kim Stanley Robinson

I am in a state of categorical unbelief. I don't even believe God doesn't exist, if you see what I mean. (Jack Boughton) — Marilynne Robinson

He walked towards me. My heart was pounding like a nineties warehouse rave. — Lucy Robinson

The only difference was, you could play the music again and again; a life plays only once. — Peter Robinson

It's funny, after a while, you get tired of having to fight someone because they don't like the way you look. — Chris Robinson

Grief was an actual weight, he thought. It felt like a physical burden. You carried it with you all day, unsheddable. Your shoulders, by nightfall, felt dragged down." p 320 — Roxana Robinson

Memory is a haunting. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Me, I have a science fiction writer's conviction that the damn robot is supposed to speak
human, not the other way around. — Spider Robinson

If you search diligently enough, you're likely to find a character with a particular necessary flaw. — Edna Robinson

it's better than a stick in the eye — Spider Robinson

Are you looking for a Negro who won't fight back? — Jackie Robinson

My best business decision is always to have been unembarrassed about negotiating a decent deal. Not being coy or shy about money is second nature to me. — Anne Robinson

I've always liked the silence. It means that you are comfortable enough with a person that you don't feel the need to fill up the space with words. You can just exist together. — K.M. Robinson

Then it's a matter of troubleshooting, grasping the bull by the horns, seizing the nettle, coping and hoping, damning torpedoes and trying any old thing. — Kim Stanley Robinson

I don't think I'm a home run hitter. Most of my home runs are line drives. If I hit it, thanks God. But it's not the kind of thing that I think about. I just go out there and try to have a better season than I had before. Home runs are not in my mind. — Robinson Cano

I wanted to double-check with you that your mailing address is still the same as the one you sent us back in April? If you're a college student I know address changes are really common at this time of year! — Marilynne Robinson

It's lawmakers know better than anyone that laws are more a matter of practical compromise than any kind of moral imperative. — Kim Stanley Robinson

If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong? — Ken Robinson

Most institutions of higher learning in the West were founded by and for religious denominations. The supposed alienation of education and faith is a recent phenomenon. At the same time, neither education nor the lack of it predisposes one to faith. — Marilynne Robinson

Is anger always just fear flung outward at the world? Can anger ever be a fuel for right action? Can anger make good? We — Kim Stanley Robinson

After much reflection, we are coming to the conclusion, preliminary and perhaps arbitrary, that the self, the so-called I that emerges out of the combination of all the inputs and processing and outputs that we experience in the ship's changing body, is ultimately nothing more or less than this narrative itself, this particular train of thought that we are inscribing as instructed by Devi. There is a pretense of self, in other words, which is only expressed in this narrative; a self that is these sentences. We tell their story, and thereby come to what consciousness we have. Scribble ergo sum. — Kim Stanley Robinson

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul
our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment
our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

And I got to play lead with Gene Barry - a fellow who has never, ever been hard on the eyes! — Ann Robinson

The Atlantic is a stormy moat, and the Mediterranean,
The blue pool in the old garden,
More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice
Of ships and blood and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific:
The ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.
Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs
Nor any future world-quarrel of westering
And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, battle-falcons,
Are a mote of dust in the great scale-pan.
Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland plunging like
dolphins through the grey sea-smoke
Into pale sea, look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet: this
dome, this half-globe, this bulging
Eyeball of water, arched over to Asia,
Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close; this
is the staring unsleeping
Eye of the earth, and what it watches is not our wars. — Robinson Jeffers

I do assume that a character or a place is inexhaustible and will always reward further attention. — Marilynne Robinson

Richard Felder is co-developer of the Index of Learning Styles. He suggests that there are eight different learning styles. Active learners absorb material best by applying it in some fashion or explaining it to others. Reflective learners prefer to consider the material before doing anything with it. Sensing learners like learning facts and tend to be good with details. Intuitive learners like to identify the relationships between things and are comfortable with abstract concepts. Visual learners remember best what they see, while verbal learners do better with written and spoken explanations. Sequential learners like to learn by following a process from one logical step to the next, while global learners tend to make cognitive leaps, continuously taking in information until they get it. — Ken Robinson

Robinson Crusoe, the first capitalist hero, is a self-made man who accepts objective reality and then fashions it to his needs through the work ethic, common sense, resilience, technology, and, if need be, racism and imperialism. — Carlos Fuentes

You can't just give someone a creativity injection. You have to create an environment for curiosity and a way to encourage people and get the best out of them. — Ken Robinson