Sheldon's Quotes & Sayings

Pell Grants aren't 'welfare,' they are a gateway to opportunity for some of our nation's best and brightest students. — Sheldon Whitehouse

The fundamentalists, in their struggle against the modernists, had identified the "Social Gospel" and the concern for social justice expressed in Charles Sheldon's seminal work asking "What would Jesus do?" as a hallmark of heresy. Rice and other fundamentalists viewed the "Social Gospel" as tantamount to believing in salvation through "works" rather than faith. Salvation, they averred, was the result of God's unearned grace rather than anything humans might do for themselves. They charged the modernists with imagining salvation might be achieved by working to improve society. — Andrew Himes

For those who wish to stay and work in computer science or technology, fields badly in need of their services, let's roll out the welcome mat. — Sheldon Adelson

There were a lot of botched kills throughout the eastern part of Kentucky when the work fell outside his control. Six or seven years ago, a man from Perry County was shot point blank in the head and left for dead in the middle of downtown. Problem was, the bullet had traveled between the man's scalp and his skull halfway across his head and exited the same way it had entered on the other side. The whole thing had left him with only fingernail-sized contusions on both sides of his head. He identified the guy who shot him and saw him arrested and convicted of attempted murder.
Now, it's true that a situation like that was a rare one, but part of doing a job right was minimizing the chance for something to go wrong. — Sheldon Lee Compton

I have Asperger's; what's your excuse?
- Ben Sheldon — Rachel Fershleiser

Life is like a novel. It's filled with suspense. You have no idea what is going to happen until you turn the page. — Sidney Sheldon

So it is that God tugs at a pilgrim's sleeve telling him to remember that he is only human. He must be his own man, remain in exile, and belong to himself. He must pay attention to his own feelings and to the meaning of what he does, if he is to be for himself, and yet for others as well. — Sheldon B. Kopp

Almost every product promises to change your life: it will make you more beautiful, cleaner, more sexually alluring, and more successful. Born again, as it were. The messages contain promises about the future, unfailingly optimistic, exaggerating, miracle-promising - the same ideology that invites corporate executives to exaggerate profits and conceal losses, but always with a sunny face. The virtual reality of the advertiser and the "good news" of the evangelist complement each other, a match made in heaven. — Sheldon S. Wolin

As far as I remember, there was no actual lyric written to that.At the very beginning of "Fiddler on the Roof," there's a violin solo, an unaccompanied violin solo. — Sheldon Harnick

He had made money his god. As soon as that god was gone out of his little world there was nothing more to worship; and when a man's object of worship is gone he has no more to live for. — Charles M. Sheldon

To find riches is a beggar's dream, but to find love is the dream of kings. — Sidney Sheldon

Apologists for activist government never tire of telling us that the
benevolent state is our protector and that without it wed be at the mercy of
monsters. It is about time that we understood that the U.S. government does
more to endanger the American people than any imagined monsters around the
world ... by pursuing its Grand Foreign Policy of meddling anywhere and
everywhere. — Sheldon Richman

God is British to the bone, and every fellow here knows it. You can't exploit him to save yourself, you blaspheming cadaverous-prig; you disgusting shambles of porcelain-skin, unwholesome-fat and puny-bones. Your blatant disregard for God's word shan't earn you any favours here! — Joss Sheldon

The foolish think the Eagle weak, and easy to bring to heel. The Eagle's wings are silken, but its claws are made of steel. — Sidney Sheldon

Women's value has been under-recognized for far too long. — Sidney Sheldon

Americans live under the delusion that enterprise here is both private and free. It may be nominally private, but it's anything but free. Unfortunately, most people don't know what freedom is. So they are unfazed when they hear that before you can do anything of a commercial nature, you need government permission. — Sheldon Richman

According to the IRS, the wealthiest 400 Americans, who earned an average of roughly $270 million in 2008, paid an average tax rate of just 18.2 percent that year. That's about the same rate paid by a single truck driver in Rhode Island. It's not right, and we need to restore fairness to our tax code. — Sheldon Whitehouse

One of my favorite Christian authors, Sheldon Vanauken, a friend of C. S. Lewis, said years ago that when you get a new car you should also get a hammer. Take that hammer and go out and put the first dent in the brand new car yourself. Then you're not afraid to use it anymore. That way you don't have to park at the end of the parking lot to protect from door dings, because you've already put the first dent in it yourself. Vanauken's point was this: things are not to be loved, they're to be used. The corollary to that is this: people are not to be used, they're to be loved. — Randy Harris

How arrogant - how very far from humility - would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess? Hope for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly - that's not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible. — Sheldon Whitehouse

My father said I should become a doctor and do science in my spare time, which in retrospect might not have been a bad idea, but I wasn't interested in taking care of people's ills. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

Realistically, there is a danger, of course, when you're going into someone's living room as the same guy every week. But I don't fear it because, I mean, there's really nothing I can do about it. I can try to combat it through the work, and maybe make sure I don't do Sheldon 2.0 in any other projects. But it's just really hard for me to find any negative side effects from this experience. — Jim Parsons

At my father's club, sitting before the fire, we had spoken of 'moments made eternity', meaning what are called timeless moments, moments precisely without the pressure of time--moments that might be called, indeed, timeful moments. And we had clearly understood that the pressure of time was our nearly inescapable awareness of an approaching terminus-the bell about to ring, the holiday about to end, the going down from Oxford foreseen...Life itself is pressured by death, the final terminus. Socrates refused to delay his own death for a few more hours: perhaps he knew that those few hours under the pressure of time would be worth little....Awareness of duration, of terminus, spoils Now. — Sheldon Vanauken

Note that life after death, which still seems to you the essential thing, was itself a late revelation. God trained the Hebrews for centuries to believe in Him without promising them an after-life, and blessings on Him, he trained me in the same way for about a year. It is like the disguised prince in the fairy tale who wins the heroine's love before she knows he is anything more than a woodcutter. What would be a bribe if it came first had better come last. — Sheldon Vanauken

I am a man of science, not someone's snuggle-bunny! — Chuck Lorre

Must Jesus bear the cross alone And all the world go free? No, there's a cross for every one, And there's a cross for me. — Charles M. Sheldon

I'm beginning to think that if you're going to have a role model you should probably pick someone who's already dead so they can't disappoint you. — Dyan Sheldon

I don't cry when I lose. There's always a new hand coming up. — Sheldon Adelson

You know, it's not fair. Women are judged inferior until we prove ourselves, and men are judged superior until they prove what assholes they are. — Sidney Sheldon

Democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs. What is at stake in democratic politics is whether ordinary men and women can recognize that their concerns are best protected and cultivated under a regime whose actions are governed by principles of commonality, equality, and fairness, a regime in which taking part in politics becomes a way of staking out and sharing in a common life and its forms of self-fulfillment. Democracy is not about bowling together but about managing together those powers that immediately and significantly affect the lives and circumstances of others and one's self. — Sheldon S. Wolin

This is a story about understanding overcoming compulsion, love overcoming revulsion; and oneness overcoming abuse. About the rare sort of kind-geniality, and brave-morality; which we all possess but seldom use.

A story about detractors who will be defeated, challenges which will be completed; and principles which will be proclaimed. About acts of persecution, and threats of execution; which will all be constrained.

This is the beginning of Alfred Freeman's story, the beginning of a life full of glory; and the beginning of Alfred himself. Because Alfred is being born, in his human form; with peaceful-eyes and perfect-health. — Joss Sheldon

From an early age, I knew I would become a scientist. It may have been my brother Sam's doing. He interested me in the laws of falling bodies when I was ten and helped my father equip a basement chemistry lab for me when I was fifteen. I became skilled in the synthesis of selenium halides. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

I don't have sophisticated tastes. I have average tastes. If you looked in my collection of DVDs, you'd see 'Jaws' and 'Star Wars.' In the book library, you'd see John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon. And if you look in my fridge, it's, like, children's food - chips, milkshakes, yogurt. — Simon Cowell

If it's half as good as the half we've known, here's Hail! to the rest of the road. — Sheldon Vanauken

We're brought up to expect a happy ending. But there are no happy endings. There's only death waiting for us. We find love and happiness, and it's snatched away from us without rhyme or reason. We're on a deserted space ship careening mindlessly among the stars. The world is Dachau, and we're all Jews. — Sidney Sheldon

When Annie's treatin, you best be eatin. — Stephen King

Anyone who believes in the natural and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is obliged to accept that individuals have the right to buy and sell alcohol. That's why all the regulations that people take for granted-the restrictions on hours of operation, the ban on Sunday sales, the minimum distance from schools and churches, the minimum age, and the protection of local wineries from competition by wineries in other states-are illegitimate. — Sheldon Richman

A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn't easy. You may ask 'Why do we stay up there if it's so dangerous?' Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition! — Sheldon Harnick

To appreciate how income taxation reduces prosperity form what it could be, imagine a 100 percent tax on incomes. We wouldn't expect much prosperity in such a society. People would have no incentive to earn money. They would devote resources to hiding the little they did earn. No investments would be made. No savings would exist to increase living standards. People's activities would be grossly influenced by the tax.
If we lower the rate from 100 percent, the principle does not change. . . If you want less of something, tax it. — Sheldon Richman

A wise man once said that human beings were programmed to like boundary conditions - places like tree houses, mountain cabins, or transgressive gay bars. Boundary conditions exist in places where you can stay in one element and look at another different and fascinating element for as long as you wanted. That's why people like beach towns like Cape May; you can sit and look at the ocean, or go in the ocean and look back at the land, whatever's more fun. If that's true, then maybe that's why people go to funerals. Funerals are the boundary condition between life and afterlife. Sheldon Berkman had crossed the boundary between — Curtis Edmonds

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God. — Sidney Sheldon

That's the rankest psychologism, and was conclusively revealed as hogwash by Gottlob Frege in the 1890s! — Sheldon Cooper

String theory's biggest prediction is that gravity exists. That's good. That's a lot more than preceding theories could do. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

Why is Netanyahu pushing war? Among several reasons, demonizing Iran reduces pressure on Israel to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians. Many Israelis prefer building Jewish settlements on Palestinians' land instead. Moreover, Israel's rulers oppose any development-such as an Iranian-U.S. detente-that could diminish Israel's U.S.-financed hegemony in the region. War with Iran would be a catastrophe all around. Netanyahu and his hawkish American allies-the same people who gave us the disastrous Iraq war and ISIS-must be repudiated. — Sheldon Richman

For me, businesses are like buses. You stand on a corner and you don't like where the first bus is going? Wait ten minutes and take another. Don't like that one? They'll just keep coming. There's no end to buses or businesses. — Sheldon Adelson

He's not a bold decision maker like Newt Gingrich is. Every time I talk to him, he says 'well let me think about it.' — Sheldon Adelson

Her blouse, and he saw the bruised imprints of two fingers. Just then a gang of blacks came out from among the trees carrying the wounded man on a rough stretcher. "Romantic, isn't it?" Sheldon sneered, following Joan's startled gaze. "And now I'll have to play surgeon and doctor him up. Funny, this twentieth-century — Jack London

He's on the school bus and Uncle Wade is standing outside the window. The bus hasn't pulled out yet and Uncle Wade is punching the air and ducking his head and giving him a thumbs up sign and then a big smile. The big smile says do not worry. It says you can do this. ... His smile says a lot and so do his punching hands and his hooked thumbs, and before everything else it can possibly say, it says the thing Nick needs most. The big smile says I love you. — Sheldon Lee Compton

Chemistry is good for fun - it's like baseball. It has its role for small children, but I can't see an adult being concerned with it. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

You should have seen the coachload I looked over. There was a mortician wearing odd shoes, one brown, one yellow. And a moon-faced gump sporting a hat made from the skin of a barber's pole, all stripy. Only thing missing was his bubble pipe - and probably he'll be given that where he was going." - Colonel Sheldon
"Where was he going?" -Ambassador
"I don't know, your excellency. They refused to say." -Sheldon
"Well, that is a valuable addition to the sum total of our knowledge. Our minds are now enriched by the thought that an anonymous individual may be presented with a futile object for an indefinable purpose when he reaches his unknown destination." -Ambassador — Eric Frank Russell

I think that's because believable action is based on authenticity, and accuracy is very important to me. I always spend time researching my novels, exploring the customs and attitudes of the county I'm using for their setting. — Sidney Sheldon

A man in the jungle at night, as someone said, may suppose a hyena's growl to be a lion's; but when he hears the lion's growl, he knows damn well it's a lion. — Sheldon Vanauken

It's a wonderful honor to win an Ignobel Prize. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

You can't get there from here, and besides there's no place else to go. — Sheldon B. Kopp

I was scared. Do you know what it's like to hold someone else's life in
your hands? It's like playing God. Can you think of anything scarier than
that? — Sidney Sheldon

If there is any secret to my success, I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel, and therefore I think my readers care about them. — Sidney Sheldon

When you write a movie, you have a hundred collaborators. But when you write a novel, it's yours. — Sidney Sheldon

electrical wires the night before our presentation. So just as Sharon Sheldon was starting to give her introduction and Lance started to make low, rumbling noises with his armpit, my volcano's battery somehow melted, burst into flames, and burned a big, black, stinky hole straight through Miss Piffle's desk. I didn't think it was such — Dave Keane

I would never betray you," she responded automatically, then bit her lip.
He raised one eyebrow.
"Okay, other that boinking your enemy, I would never betray you," she qualified.
He huffed a laugh, "Boinking?"
"I believe that's one of Sheldon's terms. — Dianne Duvall

It's unfair that I've been treated unfair, but it doesn't stop me. — Sheldon Adelson

Tax relief through deductions is very precarious. It is a way for the government to let you keep a little cash without conceding that it is your money. Tax deductions can be taken away. . . "An income tax deduction is a matter of legislative grace," the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1943. In other words, all income belongs to the state. If it allows you to use some of it for purposes it chooses, be grateful. But don't think it is yours as a matter of right. That is where the Sixteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution has delivered us. — Sheldon Richman

We have seen the big loan servicers drag their feet in the Obama administration's well-intentioned mortgage modification program. — Sheldon Whitehouse

When you don't have accountability, there's no limit to the things that people will say. One of the restraints on the vitriol and the filth that so often is part of the American political debate is that candidates have to stand by their ads. — Sheldon Whitehouse

Not now.It's too late.It was always too late. — Sidney Sheldon

Sheldon entered the living room with Jenna's son, John
"What'd we miss?" Sheldon asked with a smile.
While Seth and David abandoned the group, all eyes went from Sheldon to Tracy to Sheldon to Tracy and back to Sheldon again.
It was like watching a tennis match.
And poor Tracy ...
Lisette had never seen her look so stricken.
"Well?" Sheldon prodded, when no answer came.
Sean cleared his throat. "Tracy's been having sex dreams about you."
Krysta swatted her brother on the back of the head. — Dianne Duvall

against Cameron's — Sidney Sheldon

There's never been a real destination resort in Asia, and when we open the Venetian Macao, it will be the first. — Sheldon Adelson

The adult May fly lives only a few hours, just long enough to mate. He has neither mouth nor stomach, but needs neither since he does not live long enough to need to eat. The eggs the May fly leaves hatch after the parent has died. What is it all about. What's the point? There is no point. That's just the way it is. It is neither good nor bad. Life is mainly simply inevitable. (41) — Sheldon B. Kopp

Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of another person's suffering. It is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his pain. (23) — Sheldon B. Kopp

Some conservatives are surprised to find people on the Left supporting the war in Afghanistan. It's not surprising at all ... It is hard for the government to prosecute a war and not expand ... Conservatives may think they can support war and oppose the expansion of the state, but that is like trying to square the circle. What makes them think they can contain the expansion? — Sheldon Richman

Noa Noah shook his head and grinned. "He no savvee me Tahitian," he explained. "He savvee me wear pants all the same white man." "You'll have to give him a course in 'Sartor Resartus,'" Sheldon laughed, as he came down and began to make friends with Satan. It chanced just then that Adamu Adam and Matauare, two of Joan's — Jack London

If I were to retire, I would keep my family's interest in the company the same and say, Don't sell. — Sheldon Adelson

I had a screening in Baltimore where one of the hardest individuals just broke into tears at the end. That's the response you want. — Sheldon Candis

Each person's only hope for improving his lot rests on recognizing the true nature of his or her basic personality, surrendering to it, and becoming who he or she really is. — Sheldon B. Kopp

People want to know about what's going on with what's in the universe, what are particles like, what are the basic rules of nature. It's a lot of curiosity out there. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

In a novel, on the other hand, you not only have to describe the rooms, but the clothes, the characters and what they are thinking. It's a much more in-depth process. — Sidney Sheldon

I think that it's very, very hard for the NRA to continue to defend the position that people who are on the terrorist watch list should be allowed to buy firearms in this country. That's their position. I don't know how they stand by it. — Sheldon Whitehouse

What was so odd was that quite a lot of people, not just sheep but highly intelligent people, did apparently believe it. T. S. Eliot, for instance. Or Eddington - in fact, quite a few physicists, the very last people one would expect to be taken in by it. Philosophers, too. Was it possible - was there any chance - that there was more to it than I had thought? No, certainly not. Of course not! Still, it was odd. Damned odd. — Sheldon Vanauken

Escape is not a dirty word. None of us can face what's happening head-on all of the time. — Sheldon B. Kopp

There is the image of the man who imagines himself to be a prisoner in a cell. He stands at one end of this small, dark, barren room, on his toes, with arms stretched upward, hands grasping for support onto a small, barred window, the room's only apparent source of light. If he holds on tight, straining toward the window, turning his head just so, he can see a bit of bright sunlight barely visible between the uppermost bars. This light is his only hope. He will not risk losing it. And so he continues to staring toward that bit of light, holding tightly to the bars. So committed is his effort not to lose sight of that glimmer of life-giving light, that it never occurs to him to let go and explore the darkness of the rest of the cell. So it is that he never discovers that the door at the other end of the cell is open, that he is free. He has always been free to walk out into the brightness of the day, if only he would let go. (192) — Sheldon B. Kopp

We are here to do God's work. He's not here to do ours. — Sheldon Whitehouse

It's bEtter tO hAte me 4 whO i Am,thAn tO lUv 4 wAt i'm pretNdng tO bE ... — Sidney Sheldon

The therapist can interpret, advise, provide the emotional acceptance and support that nurtures personal growth, and above all, he can listen. I do not mean that he can simply hear the other, but that he will listen actively and purposefully, responding with the instrument of his trade, that is, with the personal vulnerability of his own trembling self. This listening is that which will facilitate the patient's telling of his tale, the telling that can set him free. (5) — Sheldon B. Kopp

So Englishmen saw it. Lincoln's insincerity was regarded as proven by two things: his earlier denial of any lawful right or wish to free the slaves; and, especially, his not freeing the slaves in 'loyal' Kentucky and other United States areas or even in Confederate areas occupied by United States troops, such as New Orleans. — Sheldon Vanauken

Never let a friendly fox into your hen-house. One day he's going to get hungry. — Sidney Sheldon

What the string theorists do is arguably physics. It deals with the physical world. They're attempting to make a consistent theory that explains the interactions we see among particles and gravity as well. That's certainly physics, but it's a kind of physics that is not yet testable. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

For each of us, the only hope resides in his own efforts, in completing his own story, not in the other's interpretation. (63) — Sheldon B. Kopp

It's coming face to face with death that magnifies the values of life force.. — Sidney Sheldon

The truly free market is the worker's best friend. — Sheldon Richman

{T}here hung that mirror still. Splotches like mold or something had collected from the corners toward the middle, but Brown was able to see enough of himself in it to feel a fair amount of disgust. No more than the usual amount. He scratched at his chin growth. Did a rat eat your razors? That's what his daddy would say. He wished his chin jutted out more like Clint Eastwood or James Dean or whotheheckever. Instead, you could barely see his chin, it hid so far back against his neck. — Sheldon Lee Compton

Get over here. Sheldon's had an idea." "Who's Sheldon?", said Isabelle. — Cassandra Clare

There's this sense of excitement because you invent and control the characters. You decide whether they live or die. I find this type of creative process tremendously stimulating. — Sidney Sheldon

When Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell first proposed the grants that now bear his name, he envisioned a way to help students attend our country's wonderful colleges and universities, so they could share in the American Dream. — Sheldon Whitehouse

C.S. Lewis in his second letter to me at Oxford, asked how it was that I, as a product of a materialistic universe, was not at home there. 'Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Then, if we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest? It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed by it
how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home. — Sheldon Vanauken

Constantin Demiris had arranged with the authorities for her body to be buried on the grounds of the cemetery on Psara, his private island in the Aegean. Everyone had remarked on what a beautiful, sentimental gesture it was. In fact, Demiris had arranged for the burial plot to be there so that he could have the exquisite pleasure of walking over the bitch's grave. — Sidney Sheldon

Both Heaven and Hell are retroactive, all of one's life will eventually be known to have been one or the other. — Sheldon Vanauken

People with an investment in government power will torture logic like a medieval inquisitor rather than face the facts ... There's a simple way to keep money out of politics: Keep politics out of our money. — Sheldon Richman

The government's coercive taxing power necessarily creates two classes: those who create and those who consume the wealth expropriated and transferred by that power. — Sheldon Richman

Brown pulled the bag closer to his side. He had nothing but good memories from his time overseas. That's the truth nobody knew. Since coming home he'd been labeled a baby-killer and a murderer, and things had been bad enough for him and his family when he went into the military. — Sheldon Lee Compton

There's something called From 'Alchemy to Quarks,' which will teach you everything you have to know, you want to know, about physics. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

The question of energy is an important one. The big issue is how to get it, how not to destroy the environment, and how to survive as a species. It's a big deal. — Sheldon Lee Glashow