Quotes & Sayings About The State Of Our World

We are in love with the word. We are proud of it. The word precedes the formation of the state. The word comes to us from every avatar of early human existence. As writers, we are obliged more than others to keep our lives attached to the primitive power of the word. From India, out of the Vedas, we still hear: On the spoken word, all the gods depend, all beasts and men; in the world live all creatures ... The word is the name of the divine world. — Norman Mailer

everything that is in the world, there is a correspondence on every level of existence. The macrocosm is a reflection of the microcosm, and the way we experience the outer world is a reflection of our inner state: it is our mirror. If we are in harmony with ourselves, then we will be in harmony with the outer world, i.e. God. If we change from within, then everything around us also changes. I certainly knew how true this was. — Kristiane Backer

Our world isn't about ideology anymore. It's about complexity. We live in a complex bureaucratic state with complex laws and complex business practices, and the few organizations with the corporate willpower to master these complexities will inevitably own the political power. On the other hand, movements like the Tea Party more than anything else reflect a widespread longing for simpler times and simple solutions - just throw the U.S. Constitution at the whole mess and everything will be jake. For immigration, build a big fence. Abolish the Federal Reserve, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education. At times the overt longing for simple answers that you get from Tea Party leaders is so earnest and touching, it almost makes you forget how insane most of them are. — Matt Taibbi

GRACE is a word we can keep in our minds when we walk, dance, swim, talk, sing, do anything at all - to enable us to get in 'the zone' where everything flows more easily - where everything feels lighter, and we are in a peak state.
Grace allows us to follow our inner guidance - be true to who we are - and give our gifts lightly to the world. It's one of those magic words! — Jay Woodman

How different the world would look, how different the state of our nation would be, if there were more sanctified priestly souls! These are souls who have the power to bless, for they intercede with sanctified hearts. They never begin their daily time of intercessory prayer without having first brought to the cross all that is unholy in their lives, so that their old self can be crucified there with Jesus, the sacrificial Lamb. — Basilea Schlink

The Jews who will it shall achieve their State. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die. The world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. — Theodor Herzl

The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they're full of bicycle trails. And this is happening to the world, and I think it is very very dangerous for our future generations, those of us who believe that the world is not only necessary to us in its pristine state, but it is in itself an act of some kind of spiritual thing. I said once, and I think this is true, the world did not have to be beautiful to work. But it is. What does that mean?
[from 'A Thousand Mornings' With Poet Mary Oliver for NPR Books] — Mary Oliver

The short answer to our question is that we are not entering a post-American world. It is not possible for this (or any) book to see "the future," because there are so many possible futures dependent on unpredictable events and they play a larger role the further out one tries to look. Thus it is important to specify a time horizon. For example, if the "American century" began in 1941, will the United States still have primacy in power resources and play the central role in the global balance of power among states in 2041? My guess is "yes." In that sense, the American century is not over, but because of transnational and non-state forces, it is definitely changing in important ways that are described below. But first, we must look at the charge that the United States is in decline. — Joseph S. Nye Jr.

No terror state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. — Donald Rumsfeld

We were smothered in advice. We were told the food to take, otherwise we would starve; what lines of communications to leave open; secret methods of getting our stuff out. And the hardest thing in the world to explain was that all we wanted to do was to report what Russian people were like, and what they wore, and how they acted, what the farmers talked about, and what they were doing about rebuilding the destroyed parts of their country. This was the hardest thing in the world to explain. We found that thousands of people were suffering from acute Moscowitis - a state which permits the belief of any absurdity and the shoving away of any facts. Eventually, of course, we found that the Russians are suffering from Washingtonitis, the same disease. We discovered that just as we are growing horns and tails on the Russians, so the Russians are growing horns and tails on us. — John Steinbeck

I personally have seen flamingos throughout the state of Utah perched proudly on lawns and in the gravel gardens of trailer courts. These flamingos, of course, are not Phoenicopterus ruber, but pink, plastic flamingos that can easily be purchased at any hardware store.
It is curious that we need to create an environment foreign from our own. In 1985, over 450,000 plastic flamingos were purchased in the United States. And the number is rising.
Pink flamingos teetering on suburban lawns - our unnatural link to the natural world. — Terry Tempest Williams

Lao-tzu advised, "As soon as you have a thought, laugh at it," because reality is not what we think. We perceive the world through a window colored by beliefs, interpretations, and associations. We see things not as they are but as we are. The same brain that enables us to contemplate philosophy, solve math equations, and create poetry also generates a stream of static known as discursive thoughts, which seem to arise at random, bubbling up into our awareness. Such mental noise is a natural phenomenon, no more of a problem than the dreams that appear in the sleep state. Therefore, our schooling aims not to struggle with random thoughts but to transcend them in the present moment, where no thoughts exist, only awareness. Our mind's liberation awaits not in some imagined future but here and now. — Dan Millman

It is striking how our language reveals the visual nature of our thoughts about the future state of affairs. When we invent the future, we try to get a mental picture of what things will be like long before we have begun the journey. Visions are our windows on the world of tomorrow. — James M. Kouzes

I think the fear of being seen as childish or crazy severely limits our enjoyment of the world around us, thus inducing a state of boredom that in turn gives rise to much of the stupidity and meanness that oftem seem to epitomize the human condtion. In fact, these ills merely signify that the dues we pay for adult respectability are far too high, and bring some 'benefits' of questionable value. — D. Patrick Miller

It is our duty to endeavor always to promote the general good; to do to all as we would be willing to be done by were we in their circumstances; to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God. These are some of the laws of nature which every man in the world is bound to observe, and which whoever violates exposes himself to the resentment of mankind, the lashes of his own conscience, and the judgment of Heaven. This plainly shows that the highest state of liberty subjects us to the law of nature and the government of God. — Samuel West

False humility is a form of psychosis which was imprinted on most of us since birth. It is a mental illness because it locks us in a victim state of keeping our light turned down, denying who we really are and silently begging for permission to simply show up as ourselves in the world. But there is good news. This is a jail whose lock is broken. We can walk free whenever we know the truth, and by so doing we show others an example of an end to madness. An example of freedom. — Jacob Nordby

Warriorship is an infinitely nuanced subject. A true warrior desires nothing so much as to be perfectly appropriate, "in sync" with space and time in each and every moment. The perfection of warrior timing results in a kind of invisibility. Walking between the super strings of karma, or bound activity, the warrior engages in kriya, or spontaneous action. This is the actionless action spoken of so eloquently by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. Only the natural perfection of kriya ensures that a warrior's actions will be of real benefit to those she serves. Walking between and in a state of total non-distraction, a warrior's invisibility is identical to her invincibility. In the warrior heart is a dynamic stillness that is unperturbed by any arising of this world, by any impediment or seeming obstacle. Even when we have not realized this perfection, it is our warrior hearts, still mostly unknown to us, that lead us steadily on to realization. — Shambhavi Sarasvati

Despair is the state in which anxiety and restlessness are immanent to existence. Nobody in despair suffers from "problems", but from his own inner torment and fire. It's a pity that nothing can be solved in this world. Yet there never was and here never will be anyone who would commit suicide for this reason. So much for the power that intellectual anxiety has over the total anxiety of our being! That is why I prefer the dramatic life, consumed by inner fires and tortured by destiny, to the intellectual, caught up in abstractions which do not engage the essence of our subjectivity. I despise the absence of risks, madness and passion in abstract thinking. How fertile live, passionate thinking is! Lyricism feeds it like blood pumped into the heart! — Emil M. Cioran

After watching the State of the Union address the other night [1994], I'm reminded of the old adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Only in this case, it's not flattery, but grand larceny: the intellectual theft of ideas that you and I recognize as our own. Speech delivery counts for little on the world stage unless you have convictions, and, yes, the vision to see beyond the front row seats. — Ronald Reagan

There cannot be enduring peace, prosperity, equality and brotherhood in this world if our aims are so separate and divergent, if we do not accept that in the end we are people, all alike, sharing the Earth among ourselves and also with other sentient beings, all of whom have an equal role and stake in the state of this planet and its players. — Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck

In its exterior relations - abroad - this government is the sole and exclusive representative of the united majesty, sovereignty, and power of the States, constituting this great and glorious Union. To the rest of the world, we are one. Neither State nor State government is known beyond our borders. Within, it is different. — John C. Calhoun

Our people are not calculated to be confined in garrisons or kept in any particular service; they soon grow troublesome and uneasy by reflecting on their folly in bringing themselves into a state of subjection when they might have continued free and independent'. This was a society unlike any in the world, in which people placed great value on their status as independent individuals, beholden to no man. They were suspicious of standing armies and impatient of discipline, and while they realized the need to resist the enemy, they preferred to do so on their own terms at a time and place of their own choosing. It did not make for the kind of army on which generals could pin great hopes. — Richard M. Ketchum

There is no "tropical island paradise" I know of which remotely matches up to the fantasy ideal that such a phrase is meant to conjure up, or even to what we find described in holiday brochures. It's natural to put this down to the discrepancy we are all used to finding between what advertisers promise and what the real world delivers. It doesn't surprise us much any more. So it can come as a shock to realise that the world we hear described by travellers of previous centuries (or even previous decades) and biologists of today really did exist. The state it's in now is only the result of what we've done to it, and the mildness of the disappointment we feel when we arrive somewhere and find that it's a bit tatty is only a measure of how far our own expectations have been degraded and how little we understand what we've lost. The people who do understand what we've lost are the ones who are rushing around in a frenzy trying to save the bits that are left. — Douglas Adams

In our modern world of interdependent nations, hardly any state can wage war successfully without raising loans and buying war materials of every kind in the markets of other nations. — Arthur Henderson

Hope is a settled state of mind, in which we see the world in its true light, and look forward to our final homecoming in heaven. — Alister E. McGrath

Anarchy is all around us. Without it, our world would fall apart. All progress is due to it. All order extends from it. All blessed things that rise above the state of nature are owned to it. The human race thrives only because of the lack of control, not because of it. I'm saying that we need ever more absence of control to make the world a more beautiful place. It is a paradox that we must forever explain. — Jeffrey Tucker

I am no ecological Pollyana. I have borne, and will continue to bear, feelings of wholehearted melancholy over the ecological state of the earth. How could I not? How could anyone not? But I am unwilling to become a hand-wringing nihilist, as some environmental 'realists' seem to believe is the more mature posture. Instead, I choose to dwell, as Emily Dickinson famously suggested, in possibility, where we cannot predict what will happen but we make space for it, whatever it is, and realize that our participation has value. This is grown-up optimism, where our bondedness with the rest of creation, a sense of profound interaction, and a belief in our shared ingenuity give meaning to our lives and actions on behalf of the more-than-human world. — Lyanda Lynn Haupt

That our selves and all men are apt and prone to differ it is no new Thing in all former Ages in all parts of this World in these parts and in our deare native Countrey and mournfull state of England.
That either part of partie is most right in his owne eye his Cause Right his Cariage Right, his Argumts Right his Answeres Right is as woefully and constantly true as the former. And experience tells us that when the God of peace hath taken peace from the Earth one sparke of Action word or Cariage is too too powrefull to kindle such a fire as burns up Families Townes Cities Armies, Navies Nations and Kingdomes.
[Letter of Roger Williams to Town of Providence, March 28, 1648] — Roger Williams

The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts, to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge. — Louis Agassiz

From all these friends, I could not escape learning some of the statistics that I preferred not to know. Forty-one people at the mall had been wounded. Nineteen had died.
Everyone said it was a miracle that only nineteen perished.
What has gone wrong with our world when nineteen dead can seem like any kind of miracle? — Dean Koontz

We were in a state of suspended animation: Oblivious to the world around us, time seemingly standing still, and our perceptions focused only on a couple specific parts of our anatomy. In fact, only one part. My tongue seemed numb, but the feeling in my core was building in an incredible crescendo.

Finally, my orgasm exploded. I heard myself scream, as if from another dimension. My head became light, and I thought I would pass out. — Simone Freier

We create the world around us based on our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and emotions. Evil, dark forces, dark energy etc. are forms of the "negative" and are all a projections of the self. There is no separation. Once one realizes this, these energies start to fade and eventually disappear. What's left is wholeness, contentment, self-realization, gratitude and a perpetual state of well-being. There is a popular saying amongst the healing community "where the mind goes, energy flows". Use this mantra to your benefit. Lose the "non-sense" of all despair and anguish and catapult your self to a higher place that is incapable of entertaining the "negative" or "destructive". Achieving this (even in increments) will only transform you to into a better positive place — Gary Hopkins

There is a deep and natural craving in the human heart that can be satisfied nowhere except in God. Our being in this world is a test, a preparation for the deepest state of spiritual communion. But most of us, suppressing our deepest longings and disdaining God, seek satisfaction from this world. Such a path can lead only to despair. — Sundar Singh

The world is a dysfunctional place in so many ways. It is unstable. So even though that chaos can be reflected in our own homes, I suppose we have to fight that by creating our own versions of safety, which can also turn into ignoring the state of the world. — Jennifer Gilmore

Many people hold onto a grudge because it offers the illusion of power and a perverse feeling of security. But in fact, we are held hostage by our anger. It is never too late to forgive. But you can forgive too soon. I am especially wary of what I call "saintly forgiveness." Premature forgiveness is common among people who avoid conflict. They're afraid of their own anger and the anger of others. But their forgiveness is false. Their anger goes underground. I define forgiving as letting someone back into your heart. This returns us to a loving state -- and not merely within the relationship -- we feel good about ourselves and the world. True forgiveness isn't easy, but it transforms us significantly. To forgive is to love and to feel worthy of love. In that sense, it is always worthwhile. — Robert Karen

I think that a young state, like a young virgin, should modestly stay at home, and wait the application of suitors for an alliance with her; and not run about offering her amity to all the world; and hazarding their refusal. Our virgin is a jolly one; and tho at present not very rich, will in time be a great fortune, and where she has a favorable predisposition, it seems to me well worth cultivating. — Benjamin Franklin

Free a man of the constraints that limit and inhibit his development, and you have a free human being. Freedom is the natural state of man." He looked away from the boy for a moment and recalled his youth, his own search for self. "My boy," he imparted with a ferocious passion that shook them both by the throat, "there is nothing negative about our human potential - do you understand me? God Himself created you the way you are. Do not let anyone in this world convince you otherwise. And you are capable of anything, my boy. There is and shall always be a disparity among the gifts God has granted men, but we all deserve equal consideration. All men, no matter how low, how basic, or how tormented, deserve compassion, dignified brotherhood, and respect.
"But part of respecting all men is respecting ourselves. Recognizing that God has blessed you. By embracing these gifts, we live as God lives, with love for all He has created - with an open heart. — Alexandra Silber

A ghost is a human being who has passed out of the physical body, usually in a traumatic state and is not aware usually of his true condition. We are all spirits encased in a physical body. At the time of passing, our spirit body continues into the next dimension. A ghost, on the other hand, due to trauma, is stuck in our physical world and needs to be released to go on. — Hans Holzer

5Our standard of living, our very survival here, is based upon raw exploitation of working-class women - white black, and third world - in all parts of the world. Our hands are not clean. We must also come to terms with the that still largely unexamined, undisclosed faith in the idea of America, that no matter how unbearable it is here, it is better than anywhere else; that's slippage between third world and third rate. We eat bananas. Buy flowers. Use salt to flavour our food. Drink sweetened coffee. Use tires for the cars we drive. Depend upon state-of-the-art electronics. Travel. We consume and rely upon multiple choice to reify consumption. All those things that give material weight to idea of America - conflating capitalism and democracy, demarcating 'us' from 'them'. — M. Jacqui Alexander

Those who seek only the rapture of divine union and quiescence of the mystic state are likewise not on our path. Such navel gazers lose the script for why they are even incarnated in the first place. To the sorcerer there is not much point in moments of primordial awareness if it does not carry over into the living levels of consciousness; no purpose to receiving the uncreated and clear light, if one cannot reflect it outward through world and deed; and no purpose in being a sovereign if you cannot leave the kingdom better than you found it. — Jason G. Miller

That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact. Why it did not upset I am unable to offer any reason. I have often thought about the matter since, but I have never succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon.
Possibly the result may have been brought about by the natural obstinacy of all things in this world. The boat may possibly have come to the conclusion, judging from a cursory view of our behaviour, that we had come out for a morning's suicide, and had thereupon determined to disappoint us. That is the only suggestion I can offer. — Jerome K. Jerome

Things whose enormity nobody could have imagined in the idyllic harmlessness of the first decade of our country have happened and have turned our world upside down. Ever since, the world has remained in a state of schizophrenia. Not only has civilized Germany disgorged its terrible primitivity, but Russia is also ruled by it, and Africa has been set on fire. No wonder that the Western world feels uneasy.
Modern man does not understand how much his "rationalism" (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of the psychic "underworld." He has freed himself from "superstition" (or so he believes), but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for this break-up in world-wide disorientation and dissociation. — C. G. Jung

As long as a handful of U.S. scientists, most receiving funds from the fossil fuel industry, get equal time with hundreds of the world's leading climate scientists, the public inevitably ends up with a misimpression about the state of our scientific understanding. — Joseph J. Romm

I try and remind our viewers that climate is always in a state of flux and yes, the world has warmed over the last 25 years but claiming that Katrina is a product of global warming is absurd. We have had much stronger hurricanes hit the United States in the past, the Labor Day or Keys hurricane of 1935 and Camille in 1969 to name just two. There is much more development now on our shores. — Topper Shutt

Our world today is in the grip of anti-capitalism. State bureaucracies ruling over anti-market policies have grown into ideological and political elites who arrogantly presume to know and dictate how we should all live and work. — Richard Ebeling

Writing about our life in the House of Arcamand in the City State of Etra, I fall back into it and see it as I saw it then, from inside and from below, with nothing to compare it to, and as if it were the only way things could possibly be. Children see the world that way. So do most slaves. Freedom is largely a matter of seeing that there are alternatives. — Ursula K. Le Guin

In the present state of the world, it is evident that the control we have gained of physical energies, heat, light, electricity, etc., without having first secured control of our use of ourselves is a perilous affair. Without the control of our use of ourselves, our use of other things is blind; it may lead to anything. — John Dewey

Garden books are quite unconscious that besides telling us how to turn our patch of earth into a garden, they are also expressing the way their age looks at the world, the state of their society. — Nan Fairbrother

Our health care system is the finest in the world, but we still have too many uninsured Americans, too high prices for prescription drugs, and too many frivolous lawsuits driving our physicians out of state or out of business. — Judy Biggert

If Germany won it would change the course of our civilization and make the United States a military nation [and] it would check his policy for a better international ethical code — Woodrow Wilson

In our days many men have lived in this cruel manner, crushed against the bottom, but each for a relatively short period; so that we can perhaps ask ourselves if it is necessary or good to retain any memory of this exceptional human state.
To this question we feel that we have to reply in the affirmative. We are in fact convinced that no human experience is without meaning or unworthy of analysis, and that fundamental values, even if they are not positive, can be deduced from this particular world which we are describing ... — Primo Levi

[T]he Swiss people are the best practitioners of the ideals of non-aggression. The Swiss national government posts are parttime positions. Most decisions are made at the canton (state) level. Swiss per capita income is the highest in the world, showing that non-aggression pays. How did the Swiss come to adopt a relatively non-aggressive constitution in an aggressive world? In the mid-1800s, they imitated our constitution and stuck with it! — Mary Ruwart

Young people today are being robbed. Of their rights. Of their freedom. Of their dignity. Of their futures. The culprits? My generation and our predecessors, who either created or failed to stop the world straddling engine of theft, degradation, manipulation, and social control we call the welfare state. — Tom G. Palmer

These two opposed forms of social organization, the modern state and the market, have evolved together through recent centuries, and their mutual interactions have become increasingly crucial to the character and dynamics of international relations in our world. — Robert Gilpin

We will stand up for our friends in the world. And one of the most important friends is the State of Israel. My administration will be steadfast in support Israel against terrorism and violence, and in seeking the peace for which all Israelis pray. — George W. Bush

Generations cometh and generations passeth, but the earth abideth forever. While successive generations live and die, and all things change, man can never rest until death claims us. I choose to use my time alone to contemplate human existence, probe the human condition, and trace what it means to be one man in our modern world. There can be no profit from my labor, no lasting yield realized from this laborious and painful sojourn. We will leave everything behind. The earth shall dissolve all of our acquisitions and obliterate all traces of our petty affections. Passage of time shall alter, not annihilate the products of any artistic labors. The substance of our artistic enterprises shall continue forward in a renewed and redefined state. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The world is no longer man's theatre. Man has been made into a helpless spectator. The two evil forces he has created- science and the state- have combined into one monstrous body. We're at the mercy of our monster... — Eugene Burdick

Part of what makes America great is that we stand by the countries that share our values around the world. That's why throughout its history, the State of Israel has had no greater friend than the United States of America. — Denis McDonough

The problem is this: when we separate Jesus from his ideas for an alternative social structure, we inevitably succumb to the temptation to harness Jesus to our ideas - thus conferring upon our human political ideas an assumed divine endorsement. With little awareness of what we are doing, we find ourselves in collusion with the principalities and powers to keep the world in lockstep with the ancient choreography of violence, war, and death. We do this mostly unconsciously, but we do it. I've done it. And the result is that we reduce Jesus to being the Savior who guarantees our reservation in heaven while using him to endorse our own ideas about how to run the world. This feeds into a nationalized narrative of the gospel and leads to a state-owned Jesus. Thus, our understanding of Christ has mutated from Roman Jesus to Byzantine Jesus to German Jesus to American Jesus, etc. — Brian Zahnd

Third World is a state of the mind and until we change our attitude as Africans, if there is a fourth, fifth and even sixth world, we will be in it. — Patrick L.O. Lumumba

Would my head were a head of lettuce. I drove the last car over the Sagamore Bridge before the state police closed it off. The Cape Cod Canal all atempest beneath. No cars coming, no cars going. The bridge cables flapping like rubber bands. You think in certain circumstances a few thousand feet of bridge isn't a thousand miles? The hurricane wiped out Dennis. Horace thanked God for insurance. I saved our little girl. You want me to say, Hurrah! Hurrah! but I can't, I won't, because to save her once isn't to save her, and still she thumps as if the world was something thumpable. As if it wasn't silence on a fundamental level. Yap on, wife, yap on. Thump, daughter, thump. Louder, Orangutan, louder. I can't hear you. — Peter Orner

I wasn't lonely. Loneliness, I think, has very little to do with location. It's a state of mind. In the centre of every city are some of the loneliest people in the world. If anything, because our whole planet was just outside the window, I felt even more aware of and connected to the seven billion other people who call it home. — Chris Hadfield

New Rule: The rest of the world can go back to being completely jealous of America. Our majority white country just freely elected a black president, something no other democracy has ever done. Take that Canada! Where's your nubian warrior president? Your head of state is a boring white dude named Steven Harper, and mine is a kick-ass black ninja named Barack Hussein Obama! — Bill Maher

There is no surer evidence of an unconverted state than to have the things of the world uppermost in our aim, love, and estimation. — Joseph Alleine

For the most part, of course, the presence of the great spiritual universe surrounding us is no more noticed by us than the pressure of air on our bodies, or the action of light. Our field of attention is not wide enough for that; our spiritual senses are not sufficiently alert. Most people work so hard at developing their correspondence with the visible world, that their power of correspondence with the invisible is left in a rudimentary state. — Evelyn Underhill

The role of love has been misunderstood for a long time. Love is not something we should do to be good or to make the world a better place out of some abstract moral responsibility, or because we should give up our hedonism. Connecting with energy feels like excitement, then euphoria, and then love. Finding enough energy to maintain that state of love certainly helps the world, but it most directly helps us. It is the most hedonistic thing we can do. — James Redfield

There are many things in this world that are an outrage, to be sure, but death at our current life expectancy doesn't strike me as one of them. Maybe I sound like some Victorian who felt that forty years ought to be enough for any man, but one of the marks of a life well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind. — David Rakoff

By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of providence are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve, we are never wholly new ... — Edmund Burke

When we entered the material world, God lent us a body to act as a vessel and encase our souls. Our body is our temple and, miraculously, it is in a state of constant renewal.
Fat cells are replaced at the rate of 10% each year. Skin cells are renewed every two to four weeks. Our 9,000 taste buds are renewed every 10-14 days. Our skeleton is renewed every two years. Every day billions of cells replace the ones that came before them. We are in this miracle of creation and renewal every second of our lives ... unless we mess up that renewal.
God not only gave us a constantly renewing body, but he also provided a profoundly rich, diverse and constantly-renewing food supply. — Celso Cukierkorn

Of course, many acts which are sins against God are also injuries to our fellow-citizens, and must on that account, but only on that account, be made crimes. But of all the sins in the world, I should have thought homosexuality was the one that least concerns the State. We hear too much of the State. Government is at its best a necessary evil. Let's keep it in its place. — C.S. Lewis

Loneliness ... has very little to do with location. It's a state of mind. In the centre of every city are some of the loneliest people in the world ... because our whole planet was just outside the window, I felt even more ... connected to the seven billion other people ... — Chris Hadfield

To me, the grotesque is like a sonic manifestation of reality. I don't know how you could look out onto our world and see only beauty. And I like beautiful things. I like the aesthetically harmonious. But I am much more attracted to something that is off-kilter. It is a truer reflection of not only nature, but the human spirit - the state of the world. I just think everything feels a little off. — Carrie Brownstein

Philosophers call this state of isolation and disconnection "species loneliness" - a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship. As our human dominance of the world has grown, we have become more isolated, more lonely when we can no longer call out to our neighbors. It's no wonder that naming was the first job the Creator gave Nanabozho. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Ma'am is yet another horrible-sounding word in the lexicon of words that women are stuck with to describe various aspects of their body/life/mental state/hair. Vagina. Moist. Fallopian tubes. Yeast infection. Clitoris. Frizz. These are all terrible words, and yet they are our assigned descriptors. Who made up these words? Women certainly didn't. If, at the beginning of time, right after making vaginas, God had asked me, 'What would you like your most intimate and enjoyable part of yourself to be called?',' I most certainly wouldn't have said, 'Vagina.' No woman would, because vagina sounds like a First World War term that was invented to describe a trench that has been mostly blown apart but is still in use. Even off the very top of my head I feel like I could have come up with something better, like for instance the word papoose, which actually as I'm typing it feels like an incredibly brilliant word for vagina. — Jessi Klein

In point of fact there are a certain number of values and of forces which are of decisive importance in our world civilization: the primacy of production, the continual growth of the power of the State and the formation of the National State, the autonomous development of technics , etc. These, among others far more than the ownership of the means of production or any totalitarian doctrine are the constitutive elements of the modern world. So long as these elements continue to be taken for granted, the world is standing still. — Jacques Ellul

It's important to remember something: California is not a state built on moderation. We invented motion pictures. We made an electric sports car. We're both the brain (Silicon Valley) and the heart (Hollywood, alas) of this great nation, and meanwhile we grow everyone's strawberries. We're open to innovation. We're open to new ideas. We're open to odd couples - and to strays from all parts of the world. Look at our last governor: an Austrian body builder and son of a Nazi married to John F. Kennedy's niece. Anything can happen. — Scott Hutchins

Freedom from stress, freedom from anxiety, freedom from depression; freedom is autonomy from all that stagnates growth in this ever complex and noisy world. By the fear of being in the unknown, we often overlook and forget the serene view of being on the raft: the glowing virgin stars, the gentle ways that the waves moves, and the endless possibilities that exist under the sun. The fundamental principle of freedom is to be lost and our state of mind never differs too far from this analogy of being stranded in the middle of the ocean. — Forrest Curran

Scientific knowledge has taught [humans] much since the days of the Deluge, and it will increase their power still further. And, as for the great necessities of Fate, against which there is no help, they will learn to endure them with resignation. Of what use to them is the mirage of wide acres in the moon, whose harvest no one has ever yet seen? As honest smallholders on this earth they will know how to cultivate their plot in such a way that it supports them. By withdrawing their expectations from the other world and concentrating all their liberated energies into their life on earth, they will probably succeed in achieving a state of things in which life will become tolerable for everyone and civilization no longer oppressive to anyone. Then, with one of our fellow-unbelievers, they will be able to say without regret: 'We leave Heaven to the angels and the sparrows. — Sigmund Freud

The bodybuilding world has lost one of its greatest legends. I had a chance to speak with Steve Michalik a year ago at The Upper State Bodybuilding competition. We laughed and shared our personal opinions about bodybuilding [today's scene and how it was in the past]. Steve, we'll miss you. R.I.P. — Lee Haney

A human beings' perception of reality emanates from viewing the universe, which is in a constant state of creation and destruction. The universe in which we move and work in outlasts human interests, hopes, expectations, and joy, and all forms of aversion, effort, pain, and humiliation. The world outlasts our dreams, love songs, bouts of inanity and anxiety, it outlast regrets, remorse, and shame. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Thus, then, on the night of the tenth of May, at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State, which henceforth I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having surrendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs. — Winston Churchill

Those who today murdered our people in an ambush not only plotted to murder some Jews but intended to provoke us ... The Arabs stand to gain from such a development. They want the country to be in a state of perpetual pogrom ... Any further bloodshed [by the Jews] will only bring political advantage to the Arabs and harm us ... Our strength is in the defense ... and this strength will give us political victory if England and the world will know that we are defending ourselves rather than attacking. — David Ben-Gurion

Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the best in the world, too few American students are pursuing degrees in science and technology. Compounding this problem is our failure to provide sufficient training for those already in the workforce. — Bill Gates

Something else emerges from this discussion about us as human individuals: we're not fixed, stable intellects riding along peering at the world through the lenses of our eyes like the pilots of people-shaped spacecraft. We are affected constantly by what's going on around us. Whether our flexibility is based in neuroplasticity or in less dramatic aspects of the brain, we have to start acknowledging that we are mutable, persuadable and vulnerable to clever distortions, and that very often what we want to be is a matter of constant effort rather than attaining a given state and then forgetting about it. Being human isn't like hanging your hat on a hook and leaving it there, it's like walking in a high wind: you have to keep paying attention. You have to be engaged with the world. — Nick Harkaway

If the German nation wants to end a state of affairs that threatens its extermination in Europe, it must not fall into the error of the pre-War period and make enemies of God and the world; it must recognize the most dangerous enemy and strike at him with all its concentrated power. And if this victory is obtained through sacrifices elsewhere, the coming generations of our people will not condemn us. — Adolf Hitler

We ought to be opening up our borders to skilled labour from all parts of the world because [the state of the world is as follows: ] if we were to do that we would increase the supply of skilled workers that our schools have been unable to create and as a consequence of that we would lower the average wage of skills and reduce the degree of income inequality in this country. — Alan Greenspan

With our collective shock, what we saw seemed to be frozen into a state of suspended animation. Indelibly etched into our memories in terror, forever! My life was in slow motion, it was as if I was no longer in my body and this was a rather bad dream! It is almost impossible to describe with words what I saw, but I will try. This very experience is the one that has continued to shake me awake during the dense night of my lifetime. — Alfred Nestor

This is a decent and honorable country - and resilient, too. We've been through a lot together. We've met challenges and faced dangers, and we know that more lie ahead. Yet we can go forward with confidence - because the State of our Union is strong, our cause in the world is right, and tonight that cause goes on. God bless. — George W. Bush

Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar's, demands still more insistently that we render him what is God's - that is a sacrifice we dare not make! — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

But nothing is lasting in this world. Even joy begins to fade after only one minute. Two minutes later, and it is weaker still, until finally it is swallowed up in our everyday, prosaic state of mind, just as a ripple made by a pebble gradually merges with the smooth surface of the water. — Nikolai Gogol

The irony that always amazes me when I see people up in arms about our war against Islamo-fascism is how they don't understand that the social freedoms they take for granted will be the first casualties of Islamic influence and control. The only social liberal thinkers in the Muslim Arab Islamo-fascist world are dead ones. Women's freedoms and their protection under the law, freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and other human rights will be the first to suffer. Oh yes, sorry, I forgot. . . there will always be the ACLU to depend on to keep the radical Muslims from taking these rights away. How foolish of me. Almost lost my head there. — Brigitte Gabriel

When we raise our vibration to the state of "Being Love," we change and our world shifts into something so delicious and intoxicating that words hardly do justice to its description. — Leeza Donatella

Many guilty consciences have been created by the slave trade. Europeans know that they carried on the slave trade, and Africans are aware that the trade would have been impossible if certain Africans did not cooperate with slave ships. To ease their guilty consciences, Europeans try to throw the major responsibility for the slave trade on to the Africans. One major author on the slave trade (appropriately titled Sins of Our Fathers) explained how many white people urged him to state that the trade was the responsibility of African chiefs, and that Europeans merely turned up to buy captives- as though without European demand there would have been captives sitting on the beach by the millions! Issues such as those are not the principal concern of this study, but they can be correctly approached only after understanding that Europe became the center of a world-wide system and that it was European capitalism which set slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in motion. Pg. 82 — Walter Rodney

I remember being in the Ontario Legislature and the Liberals yelling over at me about the fact that the dollar was rising, and that was bad for business, and didn't I realize that. And I thought, 'What are you talking about?' The value of the currency in part, large part, reflects the world's view of the state of our economy. — Jim Flaherty

By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars. Throughout our two hundred plus years, public policy debate has focused on political and economic issues, on which there can be compromise ... — Barry Goldwater

Sorrow is God's plowshare that turns up and subsoils the depths of the soul, that it may yield richer harvests. If we had never fallen, or were in a glorified state, then the strong torrents of Divine joy would be the normal force to open up all our souls' capacities; but in a fallen world, sorrow, with despair taken out of it, is the chosen power to reveal ourselves to ourselves. Hence it is sorrow that makes us think deeply, long, and soberly. — Lettie Cowman

What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love of liberty ... You're the state where the shot heard round the world in Lexington and Concord. — Michele Bachmann

There was no question in my mind. This state of complete and utter love is our collective birthright, the state we are born to inhabit, the way of being that is eagerly awaiting humanity at the end of a long, perilous journey. We either walk toward love as a way of being, or we walk away from it. There are only two directions. This decision shapes our life and our world. — Jeff Brown

History lessons remind us that the states in which we live, their institutions, even their laws, have come to us through conflict, often of the most bloodthirsty sort. Our daily diet of news brings us reports of the shedding of blood, often in regions quite close to our homelands, in circumstances that deny our conception of cultural normality altogether. We succeed, all the same, in consigning the lessons both of history and of reportage to a special and separate category of "otherness" which invalidate our expectations of how our own world will be tomorrow and the day after not at all. Our institutions and our laws, we tell ourselves, have set the human potentiality for violence about with such restraints that violence in everyday life will be punished as criminal by our laws, while its use by our institutions of state will take the particular form of "civilised warfare. — Steven Pinker

Our standards of morality are begotten of the past needs of society, but is society to remain always the same? The observance of communal traditions involves a constant sacrifice of the individual to the state. Education, in order to keep up the mighty delusion, encourages a species of ignorance. People are not taught to be really virtuous, but to behave properly. We are wicked because we are frightfully self-conscious. We nurse a conscience because we are afraid to tell the truth to others; we take refuge in pride because we are afraid to tell the truth to ourselves. How can one be serious with the world when the world itself is so ridiculous! — Okakura Kakuzo