Rocate Quotes & Sayings

By extrapolating a little from Freud, it becomes possible to think of nationalism as a kind of narcissism. A nationalist takes the neutral facts about a people - their language, habitat, culture, tradition and history- and turns these facts into a narrative, whose purpose is to illuminate the self-consciousness of a group, to enable them to think of themselves as a nation with a claim to self-determination. A nationalist, in other words, takes "minor differences"- indifferent in themselves- and transforms them into major differences. For this purpose, traditions are invented, a glorious past is gilded and refurbished for public consumption, and a people who might not have thought of themselves as a people at all suddenly begin to dream of themselves as a nation. — Michael Ignatieff

When you are in accord with nature, nature will yield its bounty. This is something that is coming up in our own consciousness now ... recognizi ng that by violating the environment in which we are living, we are really cutting off the energy and source of our own living. And it's this sense of accord, so that living properly in relation to what has to be done in this world one fosters the vitality of the environment. — Joseph Campbell

The silence rings - it is musical & thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible - I hear the unspeakable. — Henry David Thoreau

The opening scene in A New Hope, when you see the huge ship, it goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on ... that is like a joke of awesomeness. — Cass Sunstein

A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a Happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little better for anything else. — John Locke

Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever. — Vernor Vinge

Our tree's only source of energy is the sun: after light photons stimulate the pigments within the leaf, buzzing electrons line up into an unfathomably long chain and pass their excitement one to the other, moving biochemical energy across the cell to the exact location where it is needed. The plant pigment chlorophyll is a large molecule, and within the bowl of its spoon-shaped structure sits one single precious magnesium atom. The amount of magnesium needed for enough chlorophyll to fuel thirty-five pounds of leaves is equivalent to the amount of magnesium found in fourteen One A Day vitamins, and it must ultimately dissolve out of bedrock, which is a geologically slow process. — Hope Jahren

Red goes with everything and red goes with nothing. — Chloe Thurlow

I got dressed to begin another day. Over and over, we begin again. (Kitchen, 103) — Banana Yoshimoto

Peacekeeping funds are an important and necessary part of what America does for humanity and the rest of the world. — Michael McCaul

Because, you see, if the man were an invention - a fabrication - how much easier to make him disappear! — Agatha Christie

Jacopo Belbo didn't understand that he had had his moment and that it would have to be enough for him, for all his life. Not recognizing it, he spent the rest of his days seeking something else, until he damned himself. — Umberto Eco