Being On The Fence Quotes & Sayings

Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject. — Edward Abbey

I live in a constant endeavor to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much more when he laughs, it adds some thing to his fragment of life. — Laurence Sterne

When you're given a newspaper column, you're not being paid to sit on a fence and scratch your chin and say 'On the one hand this' and 'On the other hand that.' You're getting paid for your opinion. — Carl Hiaasen

It is lucky that it is not windy today. Strange, how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live. It is raining, but it is not windy. Or else, it is raining and it is also windy: but you know that this evening it is your turn for the supplement of soup, so that even today you find the strength to reach the evening. Or it is raining, windy and you have the usual hunger, and then you think that if you really had to, if you really felt nothing in your heart but suffering and tedium - as sometimes happens, when you really seem to lie on the bottom - well, even in that case, at any moment you want you could always go and touch the electric wire-fence, or throw yourself under the shunting trains, and then it would stop raining. — Primo Levi

Good fences make good neighbors, and these were apparently good enough that they had not felt the need for razor wire at the top. I crested the fence, threw myself into the yard beyond, fell, rolled to my feet, and ran with the expectation of being garroted by a taut clothesline.
I heard panting, looked down, and saw a gold retriever running at my side, ears flapping. The dog glanced up at me tongue rolling, grinning, as though jazzed by the prospect of an unscheduled play session. — Dean Koontz

Sides are being divided now. It's very obvious. So if you're on the other side of the fence, you're suddenly anti-American. It's breeding fear of being on the wrong side. — Sam Shepard

And I'm afraid it really is a jungle too," pursued the Consul, "in fact I expect Rousseau to come riding out of it at any moment on a tiger." "What's that?" Mr Quincey said, frowning in a manner that might have meant: And God never drinks before breakfast either.
"On a tiger," the Consul repeated.
The other gazed at him a moment with the cold sardonic eye of the material world. "I expect so," he said sourly. "Plenty tigers. Plenty elephants too ... Might I ask you if the next time you inspect your jungle you'd mind being sick on your own side of the fence? — Malcolm Lowry

I'm not a wife, or a mother, or a pillar of the ton," she waved her unharmed arm as though the life she was describing was just beyond the room. "I'm invisible. So, why not stop being such a craven wallflower and start trying all the things that I've always dreamed of doing? Why not go to taverns adn drink scotch and fence? I confess, those things have been much more interesting than all the loathsome teas and balls and needlepoint with which I have traditionally occupied my time." She met his gaze again. "Does this make sense?"
He nodded seriously. "It does. You're trying to find Callie. — Sarah MacLean

I sort of ride the fence on that whole steroid era issue. I don't have a definite opinion like some of my fellow Hall of Famers. Some of the guys were very, very adamant about a person being associated with steroids: 'They'll never be in the Hall of Fame. If they are, I'll never come back.' — Mike Schmidt

After school the very next day, El Rey's mobile home was gone. I laid in bed and wondered what happens to people when they go, if they become like shadows, if they fade away when they disappear from your life. The only thing I could see was the broken picket fence. The only sound I could hear was the cry of birds being killed in the night. — Joe Meno

Like the garlic mustard in my garden and the roses on my fence, love has a funny way of blooming after years of being buried. — Sarah Strohmeyer

How could I remain unyielding? His words penetrated the flimsy barriers I'd set up around my heart. I'd meant to set up a barbed wire fence, but the barbs ended up being covered with marshmallows. He slipped through my defenses easily. He touched his forehead to my hand, and my marshmallow heart melted. — Colleen Houck

The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being. — Karl Marx

My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade. — Quincy Jones

The grounds had an iron fence set in a stone knee wall, which was just wide enough for a small person to sit on, and Turner was a small person, and Reacher was used to being uncomfortable. — Lee Child

The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt - your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being. — Karl Marx

The great joy of doing 'The Daily Show' for me is that I get to sit on the fence between cultures. I am commenting on the absurdity of both sides as an outsider and insider. Sometimes I'm playing the brown guy, and sometimes I'm not, but the best stuff I do always goes back to being a brown kid in a white world. — Aasif Mandvi

It would seem peculiar, or perverse, within an Aristotelian framework of efficient causation to allege that 'Any thing may produce any thing. ' Although a doctor doctoring a patient might produce healing in a patient, the doctor doctoring will not eventuate in a fence's being made white; nor will a painter's painting bring about a beach tree's shedding its leaves. A properly specified efficient cause, in Aristotle's terms, carries with it an explanation of why some motion or change was initiated, and does so in such a way as to make perspicuous the connection between the activity in the agent and the alteration in the patient. — Anonymous

The enemies you make by taking a decided stand generally have more respect for you than the friends you make by being on the fence — Henry A. Kissinger

Betelgeuse. Sirius. Orion. Antares. The sky is very large, and you are very small. Let the words wash
through him, the voice and its memories pass over him, shivering his skin like the touch of a ghost,
vanishing into darkness.
The Pleiades. Cassiopeia. Taurus. Heaven is wide, and you are very small. Dead, but none the less
powerful for being dead. He spread his hands wide, gripping the fence - those were powerful, too.
Enough to beat a man to death, enough to choke out a life. But even death was not enough to loose the
bands of rage.
With great effort, he let go. Turned his hands palm upward, in gesture of surrender. He reached
beyond the stars, searching. The words formed themselves quietly in his mind, by habit, so quietly he
was not aware of them until he found them echoed in a whisper on his lips. — Diana Gabaldon

Normality may lie in being a selectively deaf self-righteous victim of your own cognitive dissonance...but then again...who wants to be an open minded but self-doubting fence-sitter paralyzed by internal conflict? life eh? — Tweedy Peanut

This is my 20th year in the sport. I've known swimming and that's it. I don't want to swim past age 30; if I continue after this Olympics, and come back in 2016, I'll be 31. I'm looking forward to being able to see the other side of the fence. — Michael Phelps

Depending on which side of the fence you're on, you could argue that the sexual liberation of the late '60s, led to women being emancipated in some ways. That they found a voice during that time, with feminism. It's complicated. — Steve Coogan

I often like to address a number (1..5 works, or 1..10) based on the severity of the problem as well. One being, "That wasn't so bad, my pony just threw a shoe." Ten being, "My pony got his head caught in the fence. This cowboy was pissed. — Ryan Le

The grey is certainly inspired by the photo-paintings, and, of course, it's related to the fact that I think grey is an important colour - the ideal colour for indifference, fence-sitting, keeping quiet, despair. In other words, for states of being and situations that affect one, and for which one would like to find a visual expression. — Gerhard Richter

Don't worry about being able to identify each of these plants (in your designs for clients). The world is full of botanists and horticulturists. All you have to do is design. You don't have to be a botanist; you don't have to be a bulldozer driver; you don't have to be a fence builder; you don't have to be an architect. What the designer has to do is look at the relationships. — Bill Mollison

Still putting out the O'Reilly fires of me being a traitor and using Casey's name dishonorably, my in-laws sent out a press statement disagreeing with me in strong terms; which is totally okay with me, because they barely knew Casey. We have always been on separate sides of the fence politically and I have not spoken to them since the election when they supported the man who is responsible for Casey's death. The thing that matters to me is that our family - Casey's dad and my other 3 kids are on the same side of the fence that I am. — Cindy Sheehan

Do you know what a free mind is? Have you ever observed your own mind? It is not free, is it? You are always watching to see what your friends say about you. Your mind is like a house enclosed by a fence or by barbed wire. In that state no new thing can take place. A new thing can happen only when there is no fear. And it is extremely difficult for the mind to be free of fear, because that implies being really free of the desire to imitate, to follow, free of the desire to amass wealth or to conform to a tradition - which does not mean that you do something outrageous. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

He often said he had to be a writer because he wasn't good at anything else. He was not good at being an employee. Back in the mid-1950's, he was employed for Sports Illustrated, briefly. He reported back to work, was asked to write a short piece on a racehorse that jumped over a fence and tried to run away. Kurt stared at the blank piece of paper all morning and then typed, "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," and walked out, self-employed again. — Mark Vonnegut

One presenter was reporting on the fatal shooting of a suspected organized crime figure behind a downtown strip club, which involved much breathless speculation laid over meaningless pictures, mostly of the closed gate in the pink fence, above a ticker that said Moscow Comes to Phoenix, which Reacher figured would annoy Ukrainians everywhere, the two countries being entirely separate now, and proud of it, at least in one direction. — Lee Child

Pseudobiceros bedfordi, which engages in a sperm battle when mating. Each is equipped with two penises, with which they fence, attempting to smear sperm onto the other without being fertilized themselves. The ejaculate burns a hole in the skin of the recipient, which is sometimes cavernous enough to cause the loser to tear in half. The problem is that the flatworms all want to be male. The female, almost by definition, invests more of her resources in the offspring, which means that individuals pass on more of their genes if they succeed in fertilizing others, while avoiding being fertilized themselves. This equates to spraying sperm around liberally without becoming pregnant. — Nick Lane

When we learn how to store electricity, we will cease being apes ourselves; until then we are tailless orangutans. You see, we should utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy. Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property. — Thomas A. Edison

I really liked it." She covers her mouth in horror.
"If I like sex, do you think it means I can't be a feminist?"
"No." I shake my head. "Because being a feminist
I think it means being in charge of your sexuality. You decide who you want to have sex with. It means not trading your sexuality for ... other things."
"Like marrying some gross guy who you're not in love with just so you can have a nice house with a picket fence."
"Or marrying a rich old geezer. Or a guy who expects you to cook him dinner every night and take care of the children," I say, thinking of Samantha.
"Or a guy who makes you have sex with him whenever he wants, even if you don't," Miranda concludes.
We look at each other in triumph, as if we've finally solved one of the world's great problems. — Candace Bushnell

I'm tired," I said. My voice shook as I tried to restrain my tears. "I'm tired of all of it. The running, the paranoia, being scared all the time, and the sleepless nights. I want a normal life. Is that too much to ask?"
"No, it's not. More than anyone, I believe you deserve it. The friends, the family - the house with a white picket fence, if you want it - you should have all of it."
I shook my head. "I am not talking about those things. I just want to live without fear, love without consequence, and not be blamed for the actions of my past in my future. I want to experience being me. — Loni Flowers

My friend Emma, who likes things to add up neatly, claims that this is because my parents died when I was too young to take it in: they were there one day and gone the next, crashing through that fence so hard and fast they left it splintered for good. When I was Lexie Madison for eight months she turned into a real person to me, a sister I lost or left behind on the way; a shadow somewhere inside me, like the shadows of vanishing twins that show up on people's X-rays once in a blue moon. Even before she came back to find me I knew I owed her something, for being the one who lived. — Tana French

I could never understand how we could put 120,000 Japanese behind a fence in World War II. I remember being bewildered about that. — Phil Donahue

Sacrebleu, Clara, what are you doing to me?" he whispered. Why did she have to see so damned much? Why did she have to understand him so well, yet not understand?
"But you are not that boy, Morgan, no matter what you fear. You could never be him again. You've risen above it."
"Have I? Is that why I can be a fence so convincingly that even you were fooled?"
"That was your duty, and I understand duty. We do things for duty that we might not choose to do. Don't be ashamed of being good at what you do. I wish there were more Morgan Blakelys fighting for the soul of Spitalfields. — Sabrina Jeffries

Oh, what? So, because I'm not going to leave my wife for you, I don't even qualify as bisexual?"

"You could, but you're not." The only thing that kept me from trying to outpace him again was the crowd and the fact that I was afraid someone would overhear.

"And just why is that?"

"Because to call a spineless, wishy-washy closet case like you 'bi' would be an insult to bifolk everywhere." I shook my head in disgust. "You're a fucking stereotype, you know that? Bisexuals are fighting to get rid of the misperception of themselves as being greedy or on the fence, and here you are undoing all that. — Amelia C. Gormley

That was torture
being able to see, and smell, and hear, and being trapped in a cage. Like standing on the wrong side of the fence, only a few feet from freedom, and knowing you'll never cross it. Yeah. Like that. — Lauren Oliver

You went from worrying about being weak to wanting a fence with me?"
"I don't give a flying fuck about being weak. You're the only thing I care about. You make me whole. You make me feel. You make me ... " He searched for the word. "Everything." He pulled her tighter to him. "It's always been you, Holly. And it always will be. Say yes."
"Yes," she said instantly. "To everything. — Jill Shalvis

Walking under Dusk, Moonlit leaf shadows were cast on my skin from the trees above, every step I took was taking a step deeper into magic. Silent whispers of mystical mouthes pulling me in deeper. Then the lights from inside the house turned on. A few seconds later, the fence lights went on. Just like that, the leafy ghosts on my skin ran away and the faery voices ran home. It seems like the creations of man kill magic in so many ways - even the light bulb does this! Oh to be a race of people designing magical things, if someone could capture pieces of Moonlight and place it in a jar; or other things like that, then we could stop killing the magic and be filled with it instead. Or maybe we are already always filled with it. It's the bringing out that we have trouble with. Stop being a doorknob, darling! Be magical, instead! — C. JoyBell C.

What kind of a world are we going to leave the next generation? I, at least, want my children to look back and say, "My daddy was being arrested at the White House fence and booed off commencement stages. He was trying." — Chris Hedges

There's capital controls and there's people control. So every time you think of a fence keeping all those bad people out, think about those fences maybe being used against us, keeping us in. — Ron Paul