Quotes about anywhere
page 2

Jack Welch photo
Heath Ledger photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous—that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn't. It makes no difference how well they mean or how cordial they are—they simply get on my nerves unless they chance to represent a peculiarly similar combination of tastes, experiences, and heritages; as, for instance, Belknap chances to do... Therefore it may be taken as axiomatic that the people of a place matter absolutely nothing to me except as components of the general landscape and scenery. Let me have normal American faces in the streets to give the aspect of home and a white man's country, and I ask no more of featherless bipeds. My life lies not among people but among scenes—my local affections are not personal, but topographical and architectural. No one in Providence—family aside—has any especial bond of interest with me, but for that matter no one in Cambridge or anywhere else has, either. The question is that of which roofs and chimneys and doorways and trees and street vistas I love the best; which hills and woods, which roads and meadows, which farmhouses and views of distant white steeples in green valleys. I am always an outsider—to all scenes and all people—but outsiders have their sentimental preferences in visual environment. I will be dogmatic only to the extent of saying that it is New England I must have—in some form or other. Providence is part of me—I am Providence—but as I review the new impressions which have impinged upon me since birth, I think the greatest single emotion—and the most permanent one as concerns consequences to my inner life and imagination—I have ever experienced was my first sight of Marblehead in the golden glamour of late afternoon under the snow on December 17, 1922. That thrill has lasted as nothing else has—a visible climax and symbol of the lifelong mysterious tie which binds my soul to ancient things and ancient places.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Lillian D. Clark (29 March 1926), quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 186
Non-Fiction, Letters

Thelonious Monk photo

“I don't know where it's going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens.”

Thelonious Monk (1917–1982) American jazz pianist and composer

When questioned as to the future of jazz, as quoted in Jet magazine (31 March 1960), p. 30

Leon Trotsky photo

“Capital was really safer in Russia than anywhere else. … No true Marxist would allow sentiment to interfere with business.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

During a 1921 meeting with American businessman Armand Hammer, as quoted in Hammer: Witness to History by Hammer and Neil Lyndon (1988), p. 160

Bertrand Russell photo

“There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, nor vastness anywhere; only triviality for a moment and then nothing.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Attributed to Russell in Ken Davis' Fire Up Your Life! (1995), p. 33
Attributed from posthumous publications

Natalie Portman photo

“I grew up in the classic American-Jewish suburbia, which has a whole different sense of what it means to be Jewish than anywhere else in the world.”

Natalie Portman (1981) Israeli-American actress

Interview, Jewish Chronicle, 6 July 2007 http://thejc.com/home.aspx?AId=44797&ATypeId=1&search=true2&srchstr=Natalie%20Portman&srchtxt=1&srchhead=1&srchauthor=1&srchsandp=1&scsrch=0

Jan Hus photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Tom Baker photo
David Irving photo
Rush Limbaugh photo
Barack Obama photo

“And so we can preserve great traditions -- music, food, dance, language, art -- but if there’s a tradition anywhere in Africa, or here in the United States, or anywhere in the world that involves treating people differently because you’re scared of them, or because you're ignorant about them, or because you want to feel superior to them, it's a bad tradition. And you have to challenge it. And you can't accept excuses for it. […] But the truth of the matter is, is that if you’re treating people differently just because of who they love and who they are, then there’s a connection between that mindset and the mindset that led to racism, and the mindset that leads to ethnic conflict. It means that you’re not able to see somebody else as a human being. And so you can’t, on the one hand, complain when somebody else does that to you, and then you’re doing it to somebody else. You can’t do it. There’s got to be some consistency to how you think about these issues. And that’s going to be up to young people -- because old people get stuck in their ways. […] And that doesn’t mean that everything suddenly is perfect. It just means that, young people, you can lead the way and set a good example. But it requires some courage, because the old thinking, people will push back at you. And if you don’t have the convictions and the courage to be able to stand up for what you think is right, then cruelty will perpetuate itself.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Young African Leaders Initiative Presidential Summit Town Hall speech (August 2015)

Jerome David Salinger photo

“There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.”

Franny and Zooey (1961), Zooey (1957)
Context: I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

Barack Obama photo

“America has changed over the years. But these values that my grandparents taught me — they haven’t gone anywhere. They’re as strong as ever, still cherished by people of every party, every race, every faith. They live on in each of us.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, DNC Address (July 2016)
Context: America has changed over the years. But these values that my grandparents taught me — they haven’t gone anywhere. They’re as strong as ever, still cherished by people of every party, every race, every faith. They live on in each of us. What makes us American, what makes us patriots is what’s in here. That’s what matters. … And that’s why we can take the food and music and holidays and styles of other countries, and blend it into something uniquely our own. That’s why we can attract strivers and entrepreneurs from around the globe to build new factories and create new industries here. That’s why our military can look the way it does — every shade of humanity, forged into common service. That’s why anyone who threatens our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues, will always fail in the end.
That is America. That is America. Those bonds of affection; that common creed. We don’t fear the future; we shape it. We embrace it, as one people, stronger together than we are on our own.

Alan Watts photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Speech in the United States House of Representatives (12 January 1848)
1840s
Context: Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.

Nelson Mandela photo
Sheikh Hasina photo

“Maintaining decency, we could go anywhere and do all of our works -- Islam gives that liberty and scope to women …women have to create their own fate and work out their own future.”

Sheikh Hasina (1947) Prime Minister of Bangladesh

Hasina said on a function at Osmani Memorial Auditorium. The Ministry of Children and Women Affairs organised the function on the occasion of Begum Rokeya Day, (9 December 2015). http://www.thedailystar.net/country/women-must-create-their-own-fate-pm-184663

Kurt Vonnegut photo

“I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Cold Turkey (2004)
Context: For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

Vince Lombardi photo
Etty Hillesum photo
Ricky Gervais photo
Indíra Gándhí photo
Allan Boesak photo

“Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”

Allan Boesak (1946) South African anti-apartheid activist

As long as one person suffers unjustly, the whole world suffers. The existence of injustice, violence, and exploitation contaminates and diminishes the whole human community.
Source: Comfort and Protest (1987), p. 66

Allisyn Ashley Arm photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Noemi photo

“I'm just a passenger, I'm gonna let you drive me. Anywhere the mood takes you, I'm gonna let you guide me.”

Noemi (1982) Italian singer, screenwriter and music video director

da Passenger
Made in Londom

“Angry men with pointy things sent to secure a foreign city are pretty much alike anywhere. That's what I've heard. So far nothing's convinced me different.”

Sherwood Smith (1951) American fantasy and science fiction writer

Source: King's Shield (Inda #3, 2008)

William Saroyan photo

“I don't expect you to understand anything I'm telling you. But I know you will remember this — that nothing good ever ends. If it did, there would be no people in the world — no life at all, anywhere. And the world is full of people and full of wonderful life.”

Source: The Human Comedy (1943)
Context: Death is not an easy thing for anyone to understand, least of all a child, but every life shall one day end. But as long as we are alive, as long as we are together, as long as two of us are left, and remember him, nothing in the world can take him from us. His body can be taken, but not him. You shall know your father better as you grow and know yourself better. He is not dead, because you are alive. Time and accident, illness and weariness took his body, but already you have given it back to him, younger and more eager than ever. I don't expect you to understand anything I'm telling you. But I know you will remember this — that nothing good ever ends. If it did, there would be no people in the world — no life at all, anywhere. And the world is full of people and full of wonderful life.

Colum McCann photo
Carlo Rovelli photo
William Faulkner photo
Marilyn Monroe photo

“If I'd observed all the rules I'd never have got anywhere.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Variant: If I'd observed all the rules, I'd never have got anywhere.

“He wasn't mine anywhere except in my heart.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Jimmy Breslin photo
Terry Goodkind photo
Fannie Flagg photo
John Updike photo

“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

The New Yorker (March 29, 1976)

Julia Quinn photo

“Weakness never got anyone anywhere.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Viscount Who Loved Me

Camille Paglia photo
Marilyn Monroe photo
Rachel Caine photo

“Hang on - Slow down. I'm not going anywhere. You know that, right? You don't have to put out to keep me here. Well, as long as you eventually…" Shane said.

"Shut up" Claire said.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Variant: Shane talking to Claire -

"Hang on - Slow down. I'm not going anywhere. You know that, right? You don't have to put out to keep me here. Well, as long as you eventually..."
"Shut up" Claire said.
Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

Philip K. Dick photo
Markus Zusak photo

“It's not the place, I think. It's the people. We'd have all been the same anywhere else.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Rick Riordan photo

“A hero can go anywhere, challenge anyone, as long as he has the nerve.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Ultimate Guide

Douglas Adams photo
John Steinbeck photo
Michael Chabon photo
Jon Kabat-Zinn photo
Dashiell Hammett photo

“Reading is a gift. It's something you can do almost anytime and anywhere. It can be a tremendous way to learn, relax, and even escape. So, enough about the virtues of reading. Time to read on.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Source: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens: Simple Ways to Keep Your Cool in Stressful Times

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousnes (1960)
Context: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Therefore, no American can afford to be apathetic about the problem of racial justice. It is a problem that meets every man at his front door.

“I try to find meaning anywhere I can. It's the only way I know how to validate my existence.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

“It is not possible that you could ever find yourself anywhere where God was not fully present, fully active, able and willing to set you free.”

Emmet Fox (1886–1951) American New Thought writer

Source: Find and Use Your Inner Power

Francesca Lia Block photo
D.J. MacHale photo
Edna St. Vincent Millay photo
Jack Kerouac photo
Jack Kerouac photo
Alice Hoffman photo
Anthony Bourdain photo
Pablo Neruda photo
Haruki Murakami photo
James Joyce photo

“I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

Source: About his wife, Nora. Selected Letters of James Joyce. http://www.slate.com/id/2181165

Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Roald Dahl photo

“If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter
David Sedaris photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Richelle Mead photo
Tom Robbins photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Frederick Buechner photo
Langston Hughes photo
Henry Miller photo
Dr. Seuss photo

“Not here not there not anywhere!”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
William H. Gass photo
Philip Larkin photo

“Something, like nothing, happens anywhere.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian
Charles Bukowski photo
Sharon Shinn photo
Kim Harrison photo
Rachel Caine photo
Richard Bach photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Laura Ingalls Wilder photo
Jon Krakauer photo
Cassandra Clare photo

“There are no wrong roads to anywhere.”

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth