Valent Quotes & Sayings

If you're not upsetting anyone, you're not changing the status quo. — Seth Godin

But Father Time is real. And, in truth, he cannot age. Beneath the unruly beard and cascading hair - signs of life, not death - his body is lean, his skin unwrinkled, immune to the very thing he lords over. — Mitch Albom

Humans need their lives to make sense and to have meaning and purpose. Lack of meaning and purpose can override both the natural pace of progression to death and the instinctive struggle for life. People may sacrifice their lives in order to achieve meaning and purpose, or they may commit suicide in order to avoid meaninglessness. The role of medicine here is to expose false beliefs for which people may sacrifice themselves, and to help find realistic meanings that make life worthwhile. — Paul Valent

Prosperity can change man's nature; and seldom is any one cautious enough to resist the effects of good fortune.
[Lat., Res secundae valent commutare naturam, et raro quisquam erga bona sua satis cautus est.] — Quintus Curtius Rufus

There were times in my life when I said, "Oh God, I'm making a terrible, terrible mistake here." And on another level it looked as if that's exactly what I had done. All of us can look back across our lives and see what we thought was a disaster was actually a blessing - from a long-term perspective, it was a blessing. With practice, we can shorten the length of time between "what a dumb mistake I've made" and "what a brilliant choice that was. — Richard Bach

The most intriguing candidate for that "something else" is called the Broken Windows theory. Broken Windows was the brainchild of the criminologist James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. Wilson and Kelling argued that crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes. In a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive panhandling, they write, are all the equivalent of broken windows, invitations to more serious crimes: — Malcolm Gladwell

When you give your heart to the ocean, you either drown, or spend your life wishing you had drowned. — Elizabeth Fama

Something about Bekka and Haylee reminded her of Candace's line between ingenious and insane. Ingenuity inspired their dreams, and insanity gave them the courage to pursue them. It was something Melody wanted for herself. — Lisi Harrison

It was a fire of conscience, and meanings that made up packages of hell which seared into the mind. And what could we do? Supply a variety of survival strategies that made sense of the cacophony of survival? — Paul Valent

Thank God I've never been taken to task on a talk-radio show. I won't go on a talk-radio show. — Guy Maddin

It took years after I'd graduated from Amherst to realize that people were actually far more complicated and interesting than books, that almost everyone else suffered the same secret fears and inadequacies as I, and that feeling alone and inferior was actually the great valent bond between us all. I wish I'd been smart enough to understand that when I was an adolescent. — David Foster Wallace

And yet, a fissure, a split world, whose significance was yet obscure, had revealed itself to me. in the dark split were seeds of dim, unknown knowledge, without labels, a neuronal web of pre-thinking. — Paul Valent

An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one. — George Mikes

Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are not utopian ideals. They are critical to global peace and security. — Ban Ki-moon

People don't get me
it's more rule than exception
God bless exceptions — Beth Myrle Rice

I don't think that any deal was needed: Iran was not a threat. Even if Iran were a threat, there was a very easy way to handle it - by establishing a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, which is something that nearly everyone in the world wants. — Noam Chomsky

You have to acknowledge a problem exists before you can actually go about finding a solution. — Demi Moore

You have to create your own luck. You have to be aware of the opportunities around you and take advantage of them. — Bruce Lee

We simply cannot afford any further delay in providing the IMF with the resources it requires to help contain the threat of further financial and political instability around the world. — Robert Rubin

The surest sign that you're working with the life-affirming kind of discipline, rather than the spirit-depressing kind, is that you don't complain very much about doing what it takes. — Danielle LaPorte

That light is bright enough to light up a little speck of the night sky so a man can see it a ways away. That's what God expects us to do. We're to be lights in the dark, cold days that are this world. Like fireflies in December.
— Jennifer Erin Valent