The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
I think that whenever a nation feels itself to be at is zenith, it starts to feel a creeping sense of anxiety.
When all the world appears to be in a tumult, and nature itself is feeling the assault of climate change, the seasons retain their essential rhythm. Yes, fall gives us a premonition of winter, but then, winter, will be forced to relent, once again, to the new beginnings of soft greens, longer light, and the sweet air of spring.
Consciousness itself is an infinite regress. This explains coincidences.
In all the great periods of the drama perfect freedom of choice and subject, perfect freedom of individual treatment, and an audience eager to give itself to sympathetic listening, even if instruction be involved, have brought the great results.
I have ideas in mind, things that I'm working toward. There have to be goals; there has to be a challenge. Just playing, in and of itself, is great. But there has to be some motivation to it.
There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.
I think poetry is the only domain where a writer you like can truly be said to influence you, because you read and reread a poem so many times that it simply drills itself into your head.
There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.
Despotism is the only form of government which may with safety to itself, neglect the education of its infant poor.
In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
The works of previous artists have come from their own experiences or insights but haven't given the experience itself. They had set themselves up as a sort of interpreter to the layman... Our interest is in a form where you realize that the media are just perception.
The virus that causes AIDS is the trickiest pathogen scientists have ever confronted. It mutates furiously, it has decoys to evade the immune system, it attacks the very cells that are trying to fight it, and it quickly hides itself in your genome.
I guess music, particularly the blues, is the only form of schizophrenia that has organised itself into being both legal and beneficial to society.
We're the only branch of government that explains itself in writing every time it makes a decision.
I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.
Rock guitarists usually do not wish to think trains of thought about anything but their own guitar playing during a long solo, and I could not play this way if I were not able to divide my attention between my ever changing musical environment and my instrument itself.
A third force, developing itself more slowly, becomes even more potent than the rest: the power of gold.
One of the things that has plagued bitcoin is not bitcoin itself but the companies built on top of it.
I believe there is no doctrine more dangerous to the Church today than to convey the impression that a revival is something peculiar in itself and cannot be judged by the same rules of causes and effect as other things.
Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political - legislative and administrative - decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself.
The act of conducting in itself, of waving my arms in the air and being in charge, I didn't miss. I missed the sensual pleasure of being in contact with music.
The Negro revolution is controlled by foxy white liberals, by the Government itself. But the Black Revolution is controlled only by God.
No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.
Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
Death used to announce itself in the thick of life but now people drag on so long it sometimes seems that we are reaching the stage when we may have to announce ourselves to death. It is as though one needs a special strength to die, and not a final weakness.
In a way, the whole tangible universe itself is a vast residue, a skeleton of countless lives that have germinated in it and have left it, leaving behind them only a trifling, infinitesimal part of their riches.
Suspicion is one of the morbid reactions by which an organism defends itself and seeks another equilibrium.
It's into the same bag as E.T. and Yoda, wherein you're trying to create something that people will actually believe, but it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to do the thing itself.
A set is a Many that allows itself to be thought of as a One.
A blurb might bring a reader to a book, but then the book itself has to do the rest of the work.
I wrote Murder at the Windmill. And it was accepted and we made it and it was the first film I made with Danny Angel, well the only film I actually made... I made a lot of it at the Windmill itself.
I consider that all which lives must feed itself and nourish itself in a manner suitable to the way in which it lives.
As bad as it feels, it's familiar to you. And the depression itself is making you unable to reach out. So, I've definitely experienced that in my life.
The king is so subtle with his words that he would confound the apostolic religion itself. He will find the weak points of the pope's character and will trip him up to his destruction.
The presentations and conceptions of the average man of the world are formed and dominated, not by the full and pure desire for knowledge as an end in itself, but by the struggle to adapt himself favourably to the conditions of life.
