“It isn't that we do what we want. It's that we're allowed to want at all.”
Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty
Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty
Message on mimeographed copies of lyrics distributed to fans in the 1930s, as quoted by Pete Seeger in an NPR interview "Pete Seeger remembers Woody" (1996)
Context: This song is Copyrighted in U. S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ours, cause we don't give a darn. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.
“It isn't that we do what we want. It's that we're allowed to want at all.”
Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty
Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty
“Listen,' he said. 'It's important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do.”
Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
“We want to thank everyone who wrote good things about it the day you heard it--both of you.”
Reggie Fils-Aimé (1961) American businessman
Joking about the reaction to the Wii's name when it was first announced
On Wii
Source: E3 2006
Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician
"Love Strong"
The Poets And The Prophet (2006)
Hannah Song American activist
LiNK’s Hannah Song: Forever Committed to a Cause https://web.archive.org/web/20160414025408/ttp://www.mochimag.com/article/links-hannah-song-forever-committed-to-a-cause (2010)
Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist
Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 183: Serge Fauchereau (1988) in Arp, p. 20 commented: 'Even though his work was nonrepresentational, Arp disapproved of the term 'abstract art' being applied to it, as he often explained with the above quote'.
Context: We do not wish to copy nature. We do not want to reproduce, we want to produce. We want to produce as a plant produces a fruit and does not itself reproduce. We want to produce directly and without meditation. As there is not the least trace of abstraction in this art, we will call it concrete art.
H. G. Wells book World Brain
Preface, p. xvi
World Brain (1938)
Context: We do not want dictators, we do not want oligarchic parties or class rule, we want a widespread world intelligence conscious of itself. To work out a way to that world brain organization is therefore our primary need in this age of imperative construction.
Edward Bond (1934) English writer best known as a dramatist
Preface to Lear (1972; London: Methuen, 1983) p. lvii
“We do what we have to so we can do what we want to.”
Denzel Washington (1954) actor, screenwriter, director, producer
“If you are worried about the prospect of war in Europe - we do not want that at all.”
Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister
"Lavrov Says Russia Does Not Want War in Europe" https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-05-11/lavrov-says-russia-does-not-want-war-in-europe, US News/Reuters, 11 May 2022 <br class="br">About the Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022