Mccloskey Quotes & Sayings

Because its hard to realize now that that was the end of the great depression, you know. All of a sudden all of this is in front of me and I'm solvent, you know. I'm making some money and I know where my next meal is coming from, and I have a new pair of shoes and that's it. — Robert McCloskey

My wife and I have spent half our lives, half our adult lives, trying to save special parts of California. — Pete McCloskey

So you'll excuse me if I have to disagree with you. It is not okay-it will not ever be okay-and whereas I'm more than willing to live with the fact that I was a walking, talking lie for decades, the idea that it sacrificed what could have been between us ... is absolutely, positively not okay to me. — J.R. Ward

Thus, it is suggested, a deeper understanding of the conditions affecting the speed and ultimate extent of an innovation's diffusion is to be obtained only by explicitly analyzing the specific choice of technique problem
which its advent would have presented to objectively dissimilar members of the relevant (historical) population of potential adopters. — Deirdre N. McCloskey

She told him that from this angle the treetops looked like cauliflower and she had once heard them beckon her to jump, promising her that if she did, they'd bounce her back in the air again. Some days, like today, he was petrified she'd listen to them. — Melina Marchetta

There is a secret earth gyrm, a place where the unbelievable, the unthinkable, the terrible, takes place every day. A place hidden by the veils of ignorance and cowardice and fear. On occasions we glimpse it, when its hidden terrors fall through that veil into plain sight, but mostly we just dismiss it as something else, somewhere else, to be dealt with by someone else. Long ago I found the veil and lifted it. And knowing as I do what is behind, what those behind it get away with, with impunity ... I cannot grow old basking on the bank of some safe-haven, no. — Shaun Hick

So, you never can tell what will happen when you learn to play the harmonica. — Robert McCloskey

As a gift to His people, the King painted their seven colors in the shape of a bridge in the sky, as a symbol for the real bridge that the people had just crossed. — E. Mellyberry

We're bugs struggling in the river, brightly visible to the trout below. — Anne Lamott

Nor during the Age of Innovation have the poor gotten poorer, as people are always saying. On the contrary, the poor have been the chief beneficiaries of modern capitalism. It is an irrefutable historical finding, obscured by the logical truth that the profits from innovation go in the first act mostly to the bourgeois rich. — Deirdre N. McCloskey

In my time, we served with noble and ethical leaders: Gerry Ford, Bob Michael, John Rhodes, men of impeccable honesty. We didn't have anybody locked up for a violation of ethics. — Pete McCloskey

Well, perhaps the greatest achievement, and we didn't know it at the time, was we held an Earth Day in 1970, and out of that Earth Day a lot of students got involved in saving the environment, or trying to. — Pete McCloskey

The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite. — Thomas Jefferson

The emotional pattern seems to be something like, "[Karl] Polanyi, a person of the left like me, says many true things, beautifully. Therefore his tales about what happened in economic history must be true." Marx before him got similar treatment. Lately the more eloquent of the environmentalists, such as Wendell Berry, get it too. People want to believe that beauty is truth. A supporting emotional frame on the left arises from the very idea of historical progress: "We must be able to do so much better than this wretched capitalism." It is not true, but it motivates. — Deirdre N. McCloskey

The change in rhetoric has constituted a revolution in how people view themselves and how they view the middle class, the Bourgeois Revaluation. People have become tolerant of markets and innovation. — Deirdre N. McCloskey

One suspects that the conservatives of left and right don't much like the "mass" and its badly informed preferences. Let us take care of you, they cry. Let tradition celebrated by wise elders, or planning implemented by wise experts, guide you, oh you sadly misled mass. (The ruling lords and the monopolists view the clerisy's conservative theorizing with delight, resting assured that the elders and the planners will inadvertently shield their rents.) — Deirdre N. McCloskey

The Republican Party is not in the hands of the Jewish lobby in America as the Democratic Party must look quite often to Jewish money to finance candidates. — Pete McCloskey

We were environmentalists of the Teddy Roosevelt theory. We believed in separation of church and state. We believed in the independence of the Supreme Court not being subject to politicians. — Pete McCloskey

An actor should never be larger than the film he's in. — Christian Bale

I loved dancing the tango at the 1994 Nurses Ball Talent Show. I thought I'd be dancing with Brad Maule (Tony) but the writers revved up the passion by pairing me with Leigh McCloskey, my lover Damian. During dress rehearsal, for a goof, Leigh and Brad ran into each others arms instead! — Jacklyn Zeman

Congressmen are like diapers - You need to change them often, and for the same reason — Pete McCloskey

The result was, when Congress convened in January 1971, everyone was now an environmentalist. They had seen a new force, college students, who favored the environment. — Pete McCloskey

You are just as qualified as any expert to make a judgment and have a feeling or a response to any work of art. — Bill Viola

What kind of guardian are you? Shouldn't you have gone to the bathroom with him?" Isabelle demanded.
Jordan looked horrified. "Dudes," he said, "do not follow other dudes to the bathroom. — Cassandra Clare

I lived with them in my studio in New York. And of course if I were doing that book today or even ten years, fifteen years later, I would have gone to where the wild ducks were and where I could study them - I would have gone to the country somewhere. — Robert McCloskey

EMBRACING SUFFERING If we let the suffering come up and just take over our mind, we can be quickly overwhelmed by it. — Thich Nhat Hanh

That was the - It was an exciting time because it was as though I was sort of tied up in a paper bag or in a gunny sack with a rope around the neck of it, and all of a sudden with the acceptance of that first book everything sort of spilled out! — Robert McCloskey

It was more exciting to get that first book published, I think. — Robert McCloskey

I've seen firsthand coming here with empty pockets but full of dreams, full of desire, full of will to succeed, but with the opportunities that I had, I could make it. This is why we have to get back and bring California back to where it once was. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

That businesspeople buy low and sell high in a particularly alert and advantageous way does not make them bad unless all trading is bad, unless when you yourself shop prudently you are bad, unless any tall poppy needs to be cut down, unless we wish to run our ethical lives on the sin of envy. — Deirdre N. McCloskey

Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character. — Ayn Rand

I get a lot of letters. Not only from children but from adults, too. Almost every week, every month, clippings come in from some part of the world where ducks are crossing the street. — Robert McCloskey

Apology accepted. If you're finished Mrs. Porter ---"
"Allegra."
"Fine. If you're finished, Allegra, I'd like to go."
"I'm not."
Good Lord, but the woman was a blister that refused to pop. — Chris Karlsen