Atzmon Quotes & Sayings

It's much more difficult to make a judgment on yourself than on anyone else. If you can manage to judge yourself well, you're a truly wise person. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

In the barbershop, there's democracy. You're a professor; you're an engineer; you're a garbage man, have at it. You got something to say, get down with it. — Michael Eric Dyson

I think a lot about the poems I wasn't able to write ... I masturbrated ... Solitude is essentially a matter of pride; you bury yourself in your own scent. The issue is the same for all real poets. If you've been happy for too long, you become banal. By the same token, if you've been unhappy for a long time, you lose your poetic power ... Happiness and poverty can only coexist for the briefest time. Afterword either happiness coarsens the poet or the poem is so true it destroys his happiness. — Orhan Pamuk

The call-ups to labor camps was the work of the Jewish Community Council. The military would request a certain number of men, to be sent to a certain location. Within a few days the Jewish Council provided the number of men. As soon as a group returned, some weeks later they would be sent again. It was hard labor, but people were not killed there. Rumors spread that everybody would be deported within the next few weeks. The chances of survival were uncertain from day to day. — Pearl Fichman

After one month with a saxophone shoved in my mouth, my military combatant's enthusiasm disappeared completely. Instead of flying choppers behind enemy lines, I started to fantasise about living in New York, London or Paris. — Gilad Atzmon

You could buy a suckling pig with it, if you want to. You could raise it, and it would raise a litter of pigs, worth four, five dollars apiece. Or you can trade that half-dollar for lemonade, and drink it up. You do as you want, it's your money. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

It was Greenspan who through some excessive deregulation prepared the monetary ground for the rise of the subprime mortgage companies: a lending market that specialises in high-risk mortgages and loans.
'Innovation', said Greenspan in April 2005, 'has brought about a multitude of new products, such as subprime loans and niche credit programs for immigrants'.
It is almost touching to find out that Greenspan cares so much about immigrants. — Gilad Atzmon

Greenspan advised the American people to buy - he repeated the old mantra: 'spending is patriotic'. He also managed to convince them that if they did not have the money, that shouldn't stop them. They would 'pay later'. To a certain extent he was correct, we are all having to 'pay later' ... we may even never stop paying. — Gilad Atzmon

Business is not a spiritual matter, and my business decisions are not based on spiritual considerations. When I founded the Essence of Life, a project aimed at teaching tolerance and respectful dialogue, the person appointed to head it was Irit Atzmon, a former colonel in the army. Can anything be more down-to-earth than that? — Shari Arison

Not only has my latest book, The Wandering Who?, rocked the boat, but it also has managed to unite Alan Dershowitz and Abe Foxman with Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal. That is pretty encouraging: it means that peace may prevail after all. — Gilad Atzmon

Democracy today, especially in the English-speaking world, is a political system that specialises in positioning inadequate, unqualified and dubious types in leadership positions. — Gilad Atzmon

Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life. — Joseph Campbell

A few years back, an American Jewish feminist academic sent me a request for an interview... The professor presented herself as a gender scholar, another postmodernist discipline that fails to inspire my intellect. However, I was curious to see what a person who happens to be academically qualified in being a woman might come up with. — Gilad Atzmon

I was at a restaurant in Glasgow, and I was walking down the stairs. A woman passed me and said, 'Oh my God, what are you doing here?' I didn't know who she was, and I was like, 'Sorry?' She goes, 'Oh no, sorry, I follow you on Twitter. I just didn't expect to see you here.' — Caitriona Balfe

An antisemite used to be someone who hates Jews; nowadays an antisemite is someone Jews hate. — Gilad Atzmon

We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population. — David Ben-Gurion

Broken Window Theory: Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars. — James Q. Wilson

Out of a shardstrewn
madness
I stand up
and look upon my hand,
how it draws the one
and only
circle — Paul Celan

If your coworkers are great, encouraging people, then it's most likely going to rub off on you. But if they're miserable, negative human beings, you'll probably notice yourself adopting some of those traits. It's hard to be the one shining light in a sea of darkness, and eventually the light can burn out. — Andrew Bernauer

If we don't know that there is such a person as God, we don't know the first thing (the most important thing) about ourselves, each other and our world. This is because the most important truths about us and them, is that we have been created by the Lord, and utterly depend upon him for our continued existence. — Alvin Plantinga

I began to practise day and night, and the more I did, the more I was overwhelmed by the tremendous achievement of that great family of black American musicians I was beginning to know closely. — Gilad Atzmon

Unlike old-fashioned Britain, where Tony Blair recruited Lord Levy to encourage his 'Friends of Israel' to donate their money to a party that was just about to launch a criminal war, in America Alan Greenspan provided his president with an astonishing economic boom. It seems that the prosperous conditions at home divert the attention from the disastrous war in Iraq.
Greenspan is not an amateur economist, he knew what he was doing. He knew very well that as long as Americans were doing well, buying and selling homes, his President would be able to continue implementing the 'Wolfowitz doctrine' and PNAC philosophy, destroying the 'bad Arabs' in the name of 'democracy', 'liberalism', 'ethics', and even 'women's rights'. — Gilad Atzmon

She said I didn't have to perform for her. She didn't have to say that. I knew it was true. Who else do you marry but the person who pulls you off the stage? — Donald Miller

Then you'll love chess. Chess is checkers on steroids. — Rick Yancey

I like to talk. Talking is kind of my thing. If talking had been a sport option at Wexford, I would have been captain. But sports always have to involve running, jumping, or swinging your arms around. You don't get PE points for the smooth and rapid movement of the jaw. — Maureen Johnson