Forum Quotes & Sayings

Politics is - once in a while - a forum for serious debate about political philosophy. — P. J. O'Rourke

One study by the Forum Corporation in Boston showed that 70 percent of customers leave because of poor service and only 15 percent because of price or product quality. — Stephen Spinelli Jr.

Musicians and composers have become more adept than ever before to take influence from the figures that they have become devoted to. To them, they are their muses. They are willing to listen to them and to take heed of them when they are looking to be more creative. Today the gender limitations that came with muses have been eliminated and eschewed in favor of an open forum for creativity in today's culture. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

When I was a boy, my grandfather taught me the list of kings: Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius the Elder, Servius Tullius. Tarquinius the Proud was to be the last, the very last, cast out and replaced forever by something called a republic. A mockery! A mistake! An experiment that failed! Today is the republic's final day. Tomorrow, men will shout in the Forum, 'All hail King Coriolanus! — Steven Saylor

Further, we have to ask if community is possible when, as noted earlier, social media is so based on self. 'For all the rhetoric about cyber-community, the internet is less a forum for shared public life than an area for individuals to express their egos and find information in tune with their personal needs and desires.'

Further, 'Instead of renewing community, these ever expanding cybernetic systems tend to band people together in like-minded or similarly interested groups. They equip us with new means of pursuing our own interests more than they nurture communities of diverse people who nevertheless seek shared lives and common ends.'

Schultze, Habits — Kyle Tennant

It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available. — Thomas Mann

My friends are always honest with me about films. But I really wanted to talk to regular people and kind of have a forum to interact with them; not just about films, but about everything. — Bruce Willis

It is important not only to have the awareness and to feel impelled to become involved, it's important that there be a forum out there to which one can relate, an organization- a movement. — Angela Davis

Divine symbols which have been given to mankind from time to time speak to that forum of truth which is within our hearts, and waken our consciousness to divine ideas entirely beyond words. — Max Heindel

Global warming is such a politically charged issue that we are losing our perspective on the issue and more importantly losing an open forum from which to discuss the issue. If we lose the right or comfort level to openly discuss and debate this issue we will not be able to tackle it efficiently and economically. — Topper Shutt

I don't see why Christians should censor themselves out of any forum in which our perspectives can be heard. I disagree with the theology of many groups that I address; Jews, for example, who do not accept Jesus, or atheists. — Gary Bauer

Perhaps you should exhibit some of the character you are showing this evening in a more public forum," he said. "I'll admit you seem far more intriguing than I have ever given you credit for, my lady, and intrigue is the spark of desire. — Sarah MacLean

From the olive-strewn forum, one could see the village down below. Not a sound came from it; wisps of smoke rose in the limpid air. The sea also lay silent, as if breathless beneath the unending shower of cold, glittering light. From the Chenoua, a distant cock crow alone sang the fragile glory of the day. Across the ruins, as far as one could see, there were nothing but pitted stones and absinthe plants, trees and perfect columns in the transparence of the crystal air. It was as if the morning stood still, as if the sun had stopped for an immeasurable moment. In this light and silence, years of night and fury melted slowly away. I listened to an almost forgotten sound within myself, as if my heart had long been stopped and was now gently beginning to beat again. — Albert Camus

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.' — Marcus Tullius Cicero

It's going to be interesting to watch presidential elections in around 2040, when voters can dig up candidates' teenage angst pics and posts from old social media and discussion forum archives. — Mikko Hypponen

Meanwhile, the annual U.N. climate summit, which remains the best hope for a political breakthrough on climate action, has started to seem less like a forum for serious negotiation than a very costly and high-carbon group therapy session, a place for the representatives of the most vulnerable countries in the world to vent their grief and rage while low-level representatives of the nations largely responsible for their tragedies stare at their shoes. — Anonymous

Indeed, the UNGA has acquired perhaps its most obvious significance as a protest forum for dissatisfied would-be nations (such as the Palestinians since 1970s). — Jussi M. Hanhimaki

This is not a call for working faster or doing more overtime or making do with fewer people," he said in one town hall forum. — Ed Catmull

It is a way now, approximately, of being at home. The forum has become one of the most consistent places of her life, like a familiar cafe that exists someone outside geography and beyond time zones.
There are perhaps twenty regular posters on F:F:F:, and some muchlarger and uncounted number of lurkers. And right now there are three people in Chat. But there's no way of knowing exactly who until you are in there, and the chat room she finds not so comforting. It's strange even with friends, like sitting in a pitch-dark cellar conversing with people at a distance of about fifteen feet. the hectic speed, and the brevity of the lines in the thread, plus the feeling that everyone is talking at once, at counmter-purposes, deter her. — William Gibson

There are a few 'Raw Shark Texts' tattoos floating around the Internet now, so I'm gathering them up to post on my forum. It's a strange thought, knowing that readers are tattooing themselves with something I've created, but it feels wonderful to have added something that people care about to the world. — Steven Hall

The internet is now a forum for public prosecution. — David Cronenberg

The planned sit-down reception is an artificial forum where one is presented with a limited number of persons with whom he can hold a conversation. — Jerzy Kosinski

Actual human discourse happens within a number of contexts, not in some sort of unified public forum. — Rowan Williams

I read every fan forum and every blog, and every message board, and every chat room. I read it all. There's nothing online that I'm not aware of. — Joe Budden

....in 1991 we coauthored the Hannover Principles, design guidelines for the 2000 World's Fair that were issued at the World Urban Forum of the Earth Summit in 1992. Foremost among them was "Eliminate the concept of waste" - not reduce, minimize, or avoid waste, as environmentalists were then propounding, but eliminate the very concept, by design — Michael Braungart

Resveratrol is fascinating stuff. One of the best sources of information about it is the Immortality Institute. They have a forum where some people are in the 500 Club, as they call it. They've been taking 500 milligrams for years. It's a really great source of data. — Timothy Ferriss

That the Roman empire was, like all its predecessors, a form of extortion by force, an enriching of well-connected Romans (who "make a desolation and call it peace") at the expense of hapless conquered peoples, would also not have carried much weight with most readers. Hadn't Philip of Macedon's first conquest been the seizure of the Balkan gold mines? Hadn't Alexander's last planned campaign been for the sake of controlling the lucrative Arabian spice trade? How could anyone demur over such things? What would be the point of holding out against the nature of man and of the universe itself? Augustus set up in the midst of the Roman Forum a statue of himself that loomed eleven times the size of a normal man,10 and similarly awesome statues were erected in central shrines throughout the empire. Augustus was not a normal man; he was a god, deserving of worship. And, like all gods, he was terrifying. — Thomas Cahill

The economics of television syndication and DVD sales mean that there's a tremendous financial pressure to make programs that can be watched multiple times, revealing new nuances and shadings on the third viewing. Meanwhile, the Web has created a forum for annotation and commentary that allows more complicated shows to prosper, thanks to the fan sites where each episode of shows like 'Lost' or 'Alias' is dissected with an intensity usually reserved for Talmud scholars. — Steven Johnson

WTO is not the forum for labour standards. Next, the U.S. will argue the time zone difference is an unfair competitive advantage enjoyed by India that enables our software engineers to work while the Americans sleep. — Jairam Ramesh

They had no idea what it was like to live in a place that boasted one of the most sophisticated digital policing systems in the world, but no proper mail service. Emirates with princes in silver-plated cars and districts with no running water. An Internet where every blog, every chat room, every forum is monitored for illegal expressions of distress and discontent. — G. Willow Wilson

Effort should be made to see that the forum-type programs (the 'Today Show,' 'Meet the Press,' etc.) afford at least as much opportunity for supporters of the American system to participate as these programs do for those who attack it. — Lewis F. Powell Jr.

If I should ever decide in the future to discuss my deep Christian beliefs and condemnation and sinfulness, I would use another forum besides Playboy. — Jimmy Carter

Television has given Pakistan a truly open national forum for the first time in its history. Ideas are debated, leaders are assessed and criticised, and a nation of 170 million people is finally discovering, together, what it thinks. — Mohsin Hamid

Russians are easy to spot, even if you dress them like Buckingham Palace guards. They are "the white people who look seriously ticked off," as Army Ranger vet Ellis Jones, RKC, has put it on our forum. — Pavel Tsatsouline

It is the censor's business to make a judgment about the propriety of the content or message of the proposed expressive activity. The regulation here does not authorize any judgment about the content of any speeches ... A park is a limited space, and to allow unregulated access to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the park's utility as a forum for speech. Just imagine two rallies held at the same time in the same park area using public-address systems that drowned out each other's speakers. — Richard Posner

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. — C.P. Cavafy

When I became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Roman authors, I thought it incumbent upon me to do something towards the honor of the place of my nativity, and to vindicate the rhetoric of this ancient forum of our Metropolis from the aspersions of the illiterate by composing A Treatise of the Alercation of the Ancients; wherein I have demonstrated that the purity, sincerity, and simplicity of their diction is nowhere so well preserved as amongst my neighbourhood. — John Arbuthnot

USA TODAY hopes to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation. — Al Neuharth

In a forum online I saw a thread about favourite smells. There was the usual stuff about fresh cut grass, babies, and whatever, but slowly a controversial contingent arose which named the smell of their own balls as their favourite aroma. — Drew Nellins Smith

The Italians have had 2,000 years to fix up the Forum and just look at the place! — P. J. O'Rourke

The United Nations continues to sense as the forum where nations whose interests clash may lay their cases before world opinion. — Haile Selassie

In our discussions here at the forum there was no trace of the futile debate about what is better, capitalism or socialism ... We should seek a synthesis of ideas and values that have proven their viability ... — Mikhail Gorbachev

It's my mission to try and give people fighting the disease the same gifts of laughter and a positive attitude I had. Hopefully, my career as a comic will give me the forum to touch these people. — Robert Schimmel

We are in a democracy, and I think for all issues, whatever matters that the opposition may have apprehension on, there is a forum, and it is called Parliament. — Pallam Raju

Since I have no agenda and nobody tells me what to do I get to say anything I want to and I like it very much when my forum allows me to broach subjects to the public that have never been done before. — Marc Morrone

There is no better example of social and economic policy discussion as an idle pastime for the rich than the World Economic Forum at Davos. These guys make the millionaire schmoozers at the Aspen Ideas Festival look like short-order cooks. — Timothy Noah

I owe no duty to the forum, the election ground or the senate; I am ... no barking pleader, no judge, no soldier, no king; I have withdrawn from the populace. My only business is with myself. I have no care save not to care. The better life you would more enjoy in seclusion than in publicity. But you will decry me as indolent ... None is born for another, being destined to die for himself. — Tertullian

I always wonder why condescending snarkiness is the chosen method of communication for so many forum users. It seems to me like these things would be much better expressed in non-confrontational, polite manner. — Gavin Dunne

As a source of innovation, an engine of our economy, and a forum for our political discourse, the Internet can only work if it's a truly level playing field. Small businesses should have the same ability to reach customers as powerful corporations. A blogger should have the same ability to find an audience as a media conglomerate. — Al Franken

One of my greatest talents is recognizing talent in others and giving them the forum to shine. — Tory Burch

That's what I love about the Internet. Even if it's small-scale and you're just posting on a forum, that's an uncensored expression. That's what I love. — Felicia Day

Playboy strategically selected the Forum Shops at Caesars in Las Vegas to debut our first U.S. store because it is one of the most successful retail shopping destinations in the world. It is clear that Playboy and Las Vegas are a powerful match, presenting the chance for consumers and visitors to experience all of the glamour, sexiness, style and fun associated with both. — Christie Hefner

I admire someone like Beyonce. She has amazing commitment. I needed to accept that I probably did not fit into that forum. Doing that 'The Cherry Thing' record was a big part of finding that place where I belong, where I may shine, but I never doubted it was there. — Neneh Cherry

Globalization has not only lost its promise but is embittering many. The forces representing human solidarity and community have no choice but to step in quickly to convince the disenchanted masses that, as the banner of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre proclaims, 'Another world is possible!' — Walden Bello

I don't think they're more temperamental people now. With social media we hear a lot more about it. The nastiness you get online, there were always mean girls - always - they didn't have such a big forum as they do now. Mean girls ought to get a life, I think. — Jacki Weaver

[W]e have a democracy that uses free elections to put in place known obstructionists, and a media that disproportionately gives a forum to economically driven ideology over sound science. — Noam Chomsky

It's interesting with my blog, because it feels to me less like a blog and more like a forum, because my readers are so funny and leave hysterical comments. And I'm not being humble when I say that very often, the comments are so much better than the post originally was. — Jenny Lawson

In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth, women are not merely tolerated but valued.
(From a speech read on video on August 31, 1995 before the NGO Forum on Women, Beijing, China) — Aung San Suu Kyi

My favorite conference so far has been Davos, the World Economic Forum. The people there were really incredible. — Robert Scoble

We don't have access to a national forum that we had in those days, through the news magazines which were the television news of the time. It's very disturbing to me that we've sort of been pushed to the corners. — Carlisle Floyd

I am of the generation of writers who can get instant feedback from readers within hours of publication. The fan forum is extraordinary - readers from all over the world coming together to discuss, argue and debate scenes and characters from a novel. They add a layer to the story that I cannot write and yes, I will participate in that conversation and answer questions. After all, they are the people I'm writing for and their enthusiasm and questions really pushes me to raise the bar. — Michael Scott

You shouldn't have an overbearing FCC. Let the market work itself. By allowing companies to compete in an unregulated forum, you're going to allow the faster deployment of new services and new equipment consumers are going to want. — Fred Upton

During a recent life development forum we offered a session on Christian practices. In one of the four weeks we introduced the practice of making the sign of the cross on ourselves. This gesture has become a very powerful experience for me. It is rich with meaning and history and is such a simple way to proclaim and pray my faith with my body. — Doug Pagitt

Ideas matter - and philosophy is the art of thinking about them rigorously. In my view, that should be done in as public a forum as possible. — Sam Harris

US Vice President Joe Biden gave the US government's real view of its regional and Syrian allies with undiplomatic frankness when speaking at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard University's Institute of Politics on October 2. He told his audience that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and UAE were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. — Patrick Cockburn

When I was 18 years old, in a more innocent time, my first backpacking trip through Europe, I sneaked into the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum after nightfall and spent several hours in there avoiding the guards patrolling. — Guy Gavriel Kay

The advance of our technology is coincidental with the loss of our appetite for ethical questions that ought to attend the implications of these new powers. . . In the name of diversity, any idea is regarded as worthy as any other; any nonsense is entitled to a forum, a full hearing, and equal time. — Thomas Lynch

Having been heavily involved in the planning of a couple of G.O.P. conventions, my view is, we should just scrap 'em. Cancel 'em. Just figure out an appropriate forum for the nominee to give an acceptance speech and be done with it. — Mark McKinnon

Pulling a crystalline, cogent rule out of the murk of the court's First Amendment, public forum, and Establishment Clause doctrine is an act of creation too complicated for mere mortals. — Dahlia Lithwick

The plot is deceptively simple. Condensed even fur- ther, it might read as a personal ad in some questfinder's forum: Unlikely hero to save world from cataclysm. Seeks motley assortment of companions. Sidequests guaranteed. — Michael P. Williams

What is the biggest public forum in the United States? We were told it's the Super Bowl. The ad shows kids working at blue-collar jobs, and the final statement is just written text: Who's going to pay for the trillion dollar deficit? — Joan Blades

In June 1972, I went with friends to see the Rolling Stones at the Los Angeles Forum. After the concert, as we crossed through the parking lot, a guy in a brown Mercedes stopped in the middle of the street and got out. He came up to me and asked if I had ever modeled. — Rene Russo

We believe in equality for all, and privileges for none. This is a belief that each American regardless of background has equal standing in the public forum, all of us. Because we believe this idea so firmly, we are an inclusive, rather than an exclusive party. Let everybody come. — Barbara Jordan

Mr. Grace sounded like a very small child, helpless, hopeless. I had made him fuck himself with his own big tool, like one of those weird experiences you read about in the Penthouse Forum. I had taken off his witch doctor's mask and made him human. But I didn't hold it against him. To err is only human, but it's divine to forgive. I believe that sincerely. — Richard Bachman

There were certainly those who rubbed their eyes in astonishment. But when we held a company discussion forum with Joschka Fischer, interest was high. Six hundred senior managers came to the meeting. In the end, there was tremendous applause for Fischer, because he offered a precise analysis of the challenges our industry faces worldwide. — Norbert Reithofer

Subordination of the state to Christian values is precisely what the early Puritans, even those in the tradition of the Mayflower Pilgrims, aimed to do. The First Amendment notwithstanding, large numbers of the American public (especially churchgoing Protestant Christians) have embodied this Puritan way of thinking, viewing America as a "Christan nation." Relatively recent poll data bear out the enduring character of these Puritan convictions. According to a Pew Forum poll held just prior to the 2004 election, over one-half of the public would have reservations voting for a candidate with no religious affiliation (31 percent refusing to vote for a Muslim and 15 percent for a Catholic). — Mark Ellingsen

The editorial page is where you'll find our opinions, while the letters columns and the space for Op-Ed contributors are a forum for debate and discussion. — Andrew Rosenthal

There is a responsibility that goes with winning the Nobel Prize, and the responsibility is that if you have a forum, you should use it wisely. — James Heckman

take the opposite approach: Voters' lack of decisiveness changes everything. Voting is not a slight variation on shopping. Shoppers have incentives to be rational. Voters do not. The naive view of democracy, which paints it as a public forum for solving social problems, ignores more than a few frictions. It overlooks the big story inches beneath the surface. When voters talk about solving social problems, they primary aim is to boost their self-worth by casting off the workaday shackles of objectivity. — Bryan Caplan

In its 2013 annual report on "Global Risks," the World Economic Forum (host of the annual superelite gathering in Davos), stated plainly, "Although the Alaskan village of Kivalina - which faces being 'wiped out' by the changing climate - was unsuccessful in its attempts to file a US$ 400 million lawsuit against oil and coal companies, future plaintiffs may be more successful. Five decades ago, the U.S. tobacco industry would not have suspected that in 1997 it would agree to pay $368 billion in health-related damages. — Naomi Klein

The Internet seems like a safe house for the opposite mentality, for cynics and for jerks and for people who want to lash out. And it's a valid thing. It's a valid forum and I'm not going say that they aren't valid feelings. But it's sad. Considering the potential that something like the Internet, that connects so many people, has for good. I think it's sad that it's used so often for nothing but unfounded, overzealous negativity ... — Chris Gethard

What they say is, life goes on, and that is mostly true. The mail is delivered and the Christmas lights go up and the ladders get put away and you open yet another box of cereal. In time, the volume of my feelings would be turned down in gentle increments to a near quiet, and yet the record would still spin, always spin. There was a place for Rose so deeply within myself that it was another country, another world, with its own light and time and its own language. A lost world. Yet its foundations and edges were permanent-the ruins of Pompeii, the glorious remnants or the Forum. A world that endured, even as it retreated into the past. A world visited, imagined, ever waiting, yet asleep — Deb Caletti

The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine ... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them. — Conor Cruise O'Brien

Conservatives believe in smaller government and in the power of the electorate. So I think that we're less likely to try to use a dramatic forum to warp people's political views. — David Mamet

I recall asking the late eminent liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, in a public forum in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, if he would say that America was, all things considered, a better, i.e., more moral, society than Soviet society. He said he would not. — Dennis Prager

I don't think workaholic is in the dictionary as an affliction, but it's obviously someone who has a disease, and I don't feel diseased by it. I just think that I enjoy life and life has many offerings. I feel lucky to be able to have a forum to share a lot of these ideas. — Greg Graffin

you know how I feel about the United Nations. From the beginning, it's functioned as a one-world-order organization whose sole function is to look down its collective nose at the one nation that funds it, the United States. The UN has advocated the transfer of wealth out of the United States, the elimination of international borders, the establishment of a single global currency, international gun control, and the elimination of American jobs. It's become a friendly forum for radical and scientifically absurd ideas like global warming and has advocated cockamamie international tax schemes like cap-and-trade. It has done everything it can to end the sovereignty of the United States. — Don Brown

Scott's friends on the forum didn't know his big picture. They read a phrase like "It's going to kill me to live without him" for its precise meaning, and nothing else. They didn't read more than those nine words into the message. They didn't take offense, didn't try to talk him out of it. Didn't resent it for its presumed relativity.

"Of course it is," they said. And it was the same way they'd responded to every other thing he'd told them about himself: his thoughts on parenting, on marriage and sex, on education and race. They read what he wrote, and only what he wrote, and they responded. Not always in agreement - he'd had plenty of heated discussions over the past year on this issue or that. But he didn't need yes-men any more than he needed someone to read twenty-one extra words into the nine he'd written. — Julie Lawson Timmer

Sometimes I do feel exposed. I have this kind of theory about different channels or levels of relaying experience - when I tell someone, one on one, in a personal context, about something that's happened to me - that has a very different valence, a different charge, than when/if I've said it in a public forum. — Leslie Jamison

I don't want people to feel like they have to state something in a certain way because so-and-so might be around on the site. It's nice when people have a forum to discuss things among themselves. If you had a certain special-occasion blog I could probably contribute ... I normally post on my site if I'm writing about music, and if you have a specific issue you're addressing or you want me to write about certain topics, then I'd be happy to try. — Hilary Hahn

In ancient times there was no public education, except that of the forum, the theater, and the street, and the general degree of illiteracy was very high ... the early men of science were left very much to themselves and such a phrase as "the scientific culture of Alexandria in the third century B.C." does not cover any reality. In a sense, this is still true today; the real pioneers are so far ahead of the crowd (even a very literate crowd) that they remain almost alone ... — George Sarton

I'm a Freddie Mercury fan. (In response to an interviewer backstage at a Queen concert at the LA Forum, who asked: Can I tell my viewers that Michael Jackson is a Queen fan? — Freddie Mercury

The public forum is not, of course, the most helpful place to conduct a profitable confrontation with one's parents. If we are to allow the feelings of childhood to be revived, we need an enlightened witness and not the pent-up, undigested hatred of formerly abused children who, as adults, totally identify with the perpetrators. To expose oneself defenselessly to public view while harboring such feelings from childhood can amount to a kind of self-inflicted punishment, something one seeks when, in spite of everything, one still feels guilty at having expressed the criticism and is prepared to accept hate reactions as a well deserved punishment. — Alice Miller

You see, before I became prime minister, the Australian prime minister only attended ever two meetings in the world: the British Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the South Pacific Forum. — Paul Keating

We have taken God out of our education system. We have taken Him out of government. You have lawyers that sue you every time you mention the name of Jesus Christ in any public forum. — Franklin Graham

Los Angeles is just a more open place. The way L.A. functions is that people give you a forum. They say, Show us what you can do. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

I never would rule out a great character or a great story. I don't care what the forum is. If I get to tell a story that I'm excited about, I'm in. — Katherine Heigl

If you think art is a competitive forum, then you're going to stop doing it if you're not good. But if it's not competitive, it's something that you'll keep doing. — Zephyr Teachout

The urgency of the global situation is such that the foundation work of activating the totality of humankind via the Global Cooperative Forum must happen now, so that, during the next few years, there can be global conversion of all systems to a right functioning in the context of the total system. — Adi Da

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any forum that would require me to stop talking for three hours. — Henry A. Kissinger