Goparaju Ramachandra Quotes & Sayings

Further, economic systems to which Marx gives primary importance, have never arranged themselves by themselves. It is men who do the ordering according to their attitudes, desires and understanding of things. Changes take place, not independent of man's will, but on account of man's wills. Civilization has progressed by man's interference with material conditions. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Right wins only when we dare and act. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Who takes the blame: the leader who talks of poverty but lives in luxury, or the poor who choose a leader of that type? — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Your dad didn't die, so I won't be able to explain it to you. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Hallucinations and illusions are not facts useful for scientific investigation. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Television is so influential that when an audience sees you day-in and day-out there's a certain acceptance that sets in; you're no longer a threatening personality. They become more willing to accept whatever you present. — Doc Severinsen

I spent the 1960s and 1970s seeking myself - the working-class tradition of self-education. — Ken Livingstone

Oscar Wilde said that the gods punish us in two ways: first, they don't give us what we want, then, they do. He forgot the third way: we finally see the cost of getting it. — Perry Brass

We respect law, when the law respects our needs. Whenever legality clashes with morality, legality should be opposed and morality should be upheld. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

His sumptuous tents, and those of his satraps, afforded an immense booty to the conqueror; and an incident is mentioned which proves the rustic but martial ignorance of the legions in the elegant superfluities of life. A bag of shining leather, filled with pearls, fell into the hands of a private soldier; he carefully preserved the bag, but he threw away its contents, judging that whatever was of no use could not possibly be of any value. — Edward Gibbon

Positive secularism is not tolerance of all religions, but it is the total denial of religious beliefs: it is the emergence of homogeneous human outlook which is based upon verifiable facts of life. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Death Anyway meant "What the hell, even Hemingway sucked on a shotgun ... " Death Anyway, when you came down to it, meant why in God's name would you want to be Pre-Law, Pre-Med, or Pre-Anything, when any microbe could see that just being alive was no more than Pre-Death.( ... ) That was the world, to me. If you showed up - if you did what they told you to do - you'd still end up with your skull in bloody gauze or your balls hanging from a branch. So why bother? Nothing mattered. Death anyway ... — Jerry Stahl

If anything protects society even in our time, and even reforms the criminal himself and transforms him into a different person, again it is Christ's law alone, which manifests itself in the acknowledgement of one's own conscience. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to defend it. — John Hughes

The love of individual freedom has stood in the way of the appreciation of social obligations. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

The language of theism which was familiar to the people, gave Gandhi the advantage of easy communication with the people, but it is atheistic in principle. It could have been the starting point for the atheistic movement in the modern age. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real. Therefore, atheism shifts the basis of morality from faith in god to obligations of social living. Moral conduct is not a passport to heaven; it is social necessity. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

You are not Christians. You are not Jews. You are not Muslims. And you certainly aren't atheists. You all have the same god, and its name is 'government.' You're all members of the most evil, insane, destructive cult in history. If there ever was a devil, the state is it. And you worship it with all your heart and soul. — Larken Rose

With iron and blood, it seems, and from the rich depths of the earth, John Griswold has fashioned a classic American novel, its dignified intonations of our young nation's sweat and tears evocative of the indelible storytelling of Dos Passos, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair. — Bob Shacochis

Satyagraha means insistence on what one knows to be the truth. The insistence implies the exercise of free will as the need of social obligation. If one is content to know the truth himself, he does not become a votary of Satyagraha. A Satyagrahi should not only know the truth but should insist upon it in social relations. So Satyagraha is activation of truthfulness. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Because morality is a social necessity, the moment faith in god is banished, man's gaze turns from god to man and he becomes socially conscious. Religious belief prevented the growth of a sense of realism. But atheism at once makes man realistic and alive to the needs of morality. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The insistence on truthfulness does not disturb the freedom of the individual. The social obligation implied in Satyagraha turns the freedom of the individual into moral freedom. An atheist is free to say or to do what he likes, provided he does what he says and says what he does. So, in the context of social relations, the freedom of the individual is moral freedom. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

All my life I've been involved with racial politics. I was a Freedom Rider in the South. I was the author of books on gang violence, I was a community organizer in Newark, New Jersey, and when I spoke to the Black Caucus, congressional and state, I realized they were going all the way for Hillary [Clinton] and so was the Latino caucus in Sacramento and I asked myself this question: "Do I really want to cast my vote against these people who have been central to my life and to the soul of the country?" And so I went with them. Period. — Tom Hayden

I think I'm a people person. I get very attached to people. And I've become so attached to all the people on my show, the cast, the crew and the producers. — Victoria Pratt

People say I'm shrill and strident. — Richard Dawkins

Existentialist philosophy recognizes the existence of the individual as the real purpose of human life. The recognition is basically atheistic and it encourages the individual to free himself from the impositions of custom, governmental authority, economic pressures, and cultural inhibitions. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao