Isweb Quotes & Sayings

It may be of interest to future generals to realize that one makes plans to fit circumstances stances and does not create circumstances to fit plans. That way danger lies. — William Duggan

There's a false narrative that only the political class has the wisdom and the ability to be commander-in- chief. But if you go back and you study the design of our country, it was really designed for the citizen statesman. — Benjamin Carson

The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent. — Aldrich Ames

None in this age will amass wealth except those having five traits ofcharacter. High hopes; abnormal greediness; excessive miserliness, lack of fearing Allaah; and forgetfulness of the coming world. — Sufyan Al-Thawri

[Fire] is lightfooted and shamanic, dancing between the visible and invisible, undoing matter one collapsed molecule at a time, wreaking utter destruction with a touch softer than breath. Its poor cousins, wind and water, are one-dimensional rubes by comparison. Wind is all push, push, push. Water is suffocating, but passively so. And even when water gets it together to be a torrent or a tsunami, it is but wet wind. Fire is at once elemental and otherworldly. Fire dances on the grave of all it destroys. Fire is serious voodoo. — Michael Perry

He was conscious of an emptiness that made him see Komako's life as beautiful but wasted, even though he himself was the object of her love; and yet the woman's existence, her straining to live, came touching him like naked skin. He pitied her, and he pitied himself. — Yasunari Kawabata

Congress would give the people what they wanted if the people knew what they wanted, and if Congress could give it to them. — Evan Esar

Consciousness has power to create physical changes and requires no other medium than itself. It can reach the entire universe, inferring that consciousness energy is the very nature of the universe. — Ilchi Lee

So, if someone like Richard Dawkins indignantly protests that his passion about these sorts of things -- the passion that drives the "God Delusion" -- should not be taken as a religious passion, I am happy to accept that. I do nevertheless think that often Dawkins and company show the sociological characteristics of the religious. This comes across particularly in what Freud calls the narcissism of small differences, the hatred of those who are close to them but not quite close enough. Just as evangelicals can differ bitterly over the true meaning of the host, so the New Atheists loathe people like me who (like them) have no religious belief but who think that science as such does not refute religion.
[Is Darwinism a Religion? - Michael Ruse] — Michael Ruse

The planetary phase of history has begun, but the future shape of global society remains profoundly uncertain. Though perhaps improbable, a shift toward a planetary civilization of enriched lives, human solidarity, and environmental sustainability is still possible. — Paul Raskin

That gimcrack little desk, probably sham antique Louis XIV. She had said something to him once about there being a secret drawer in it. Secret drawer! That would not fool the police long. — Agatha Christie