Quotes about commitment

A collection of quotes on the topic of commitment, people, doing, use.

Quotes about commitment

“To trust is a profound commitment, and to trust is to make oneself vulnerable... It’s such an optimistic act, because you’re putting your faith in the hands of someone or something which you expect to remain constant, even if the circumstances change.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

Faith, Making love, Change

“I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”

Genghis Khan (1162–1227) founder and first emperor of the Mongol Empire

As quoted in Ta'Rikh-i-Jahan Gusha [History of the World Conqueror] by 'Ala-ad-Din 'Ata-Malik Juvaini (ca. 1252-1260), translated by J.A. Boyle (1958), p. 105
Context: O people, know that you have committed great sins, and that the great ones among you have committed these sins. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.

God

“Seven Steps to Success
1) Make a commitment to grow daily.
2) Value the process more than events.
3) Don't wait for inspiration.
4) Be willing to sacrifice pleasure for opportunity.
5) Dream big.
6) Plan your priorities.
7) Give up to go up.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Pleasure, Dreams, Waiting, Success

“All I want to tell young people is that you're not going to be anything in life unless you learn to commit to a goal. You have to reach deep within yourself to see if you are willing to make the sacrifices.”

Louis Zamperini (1917–2014) Italian-American middle distance runner

Source: Devil at My Heels

Life, People, Learning

“The tragedy is that women so committed to survival cannot recognize that they are committing suicide.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Women, Suicide

“I thought that the only action a man could perform without shame was to take his life; that he had no right to diminish himself in the succession of days and the inertic of misery. No elect, I kept telling myself, but those who committed suicide.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Life, Suicide, Success

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life, Death, Money, People

“If I'm president, I'll leave UN. That institution is of no use. It's an organization of communists, of people that don't have any commitment at least to South America.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Bolsonaro diz que vai tirar Brasil da ONU se for eleito presidente https://g1.globo.com/politica/eleicoes/2018/noticia/2018/08/18/bolsonaro-diz-que-vai-tirar-brasil-da-onu-se-for-eleito-presidente.ghtml. G1 (18 August 2018).

People

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed. ”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Love, World, Dreams, Courage

“Don't be cautious, don't be kind
You committed, I'm your crime
Push my button anytime
You got your finger on the trigger, but your trigger finger's mine”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

"Copycat"
Dont Smile At Me (2017)

“When you're young and healthy you can plan on Monday to commit suicide, and by Wednesday you're laughing again.”

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

Source: My Story

Suicide

“Basketball isn't easy. All my life I've been striving to make myself better. It's a full time commitment. To be the best, you have to work the hardest. You have to chase what seems impossible over and over and over again, because giving up is not an option, and when you feel like you've reached your limit, it's only the beginning, that's when the time to dig deep, to find the courage to push some more, because if you've got the drive, the discipline, and the resolve to do what it takes to make yourself great, then the rewards are endless.”

LeBron James (1984) American basketball player

Courage, Time, Life, Making love

“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Stupidity, Fashion, Fraud

“To have committed every crime but that of being a father.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“Commit yourself to lifelong learning. The most valuable asset you'll ever have is your mind and what you put into it.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Learning

“The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages. As a precaution to ever committing major acts of evil it is our solemn duty never to do what we're told, this is the only way we can be sure.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece (2005)

People, World, Way, Evil

“when we gaze in unbounded admiration on that ineffable mercy of His, which with unwearied patience endures countless sins which are every moment being committed under His very eyes, or the call with which from no antecedent merits of ours, but by the free grace of His pity He receives us;”

John Cassian (360–435) Christian monk and theologian

Source: Conferences of John Cassian

Patience

“I wish more of us could understand that our increasing isolation, no matter how much it seems to express pride and self-affirmation, is not the answer to our problems. Rather, the answer is a revival of our ancient commitment to God, who rules over all the peoples of the world and exalts no one over any other, and to the moral and spiritual values which were once legendary in America. We must reach out our hand in friendship both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy. We must believe in the power of education. We must respect just laws. We must love ourselves, our old and our young, our women as well as our men.
I see nothing inconsistent between being proud of oneself and one's ancestors and, at the same time, seeing oneself first and foremost a member of the commonwealth of all races and creeds.”

Arthur Ashe (1943–1993) American tennis player

Source: Days of Grace: A Memoir (1994), p. 186

Love, Women, Men, God

“It is useless for you to ask me single facts. Whatever has been committed against Italy and the Italians for the past ten years was willed and permitted by me, whenever I did not personally take part in the acts themselves. … The raids, too, were ordered by me and some of them carried out by me.”

Omar Mukhtar (1858–1931) Libyan resistance leader

Trial proceedings (15 September 1931)

Past, Parting, Personality

“A lot of actors ask me “what do you do? How do you get into the business?” My only answer is don’t be discouraged. … You have to commit your life to it, almost, and never give up. It’s a cliché, but it’s true.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Life, Business

“I call God to witness that all I have written and preached, has been to rescue souls from sin. There can be no turning back. My Lord walked the path of truth and duty, even though it took Him to Calvary. Can I, one of his humble followers, turn back now? To witness to God's truth is more important than life. Joyfully then, will I confirm with my blood all the writings and preachings of truths that I've held. Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit.”

Jan Hus (1369–1415) Czech linguist, religion writer, theologist, university educator and science writer

Last words before John Hus died singing, being martyred July 6, 1415

Life, God, Truth, Soul

“When you speak in His presence about your past sins, He does not even understand your language. Only the present and the future have any interest for Him... I have committed crimes and have blood on my conscience. I told Jesus about it again and again. But because He had long ago washed all this away, there was no possibility of communication between us. He did not understand what I was talking about.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

If Prison Walls Could Speak (1972)

Communication, Understanding, Past, Future

“No matter what happens, keep smilin', but if you wanna commit suicide, skydivin' is the best option, jump outta the plane with no parachute, and maybe when you're fallin' you might have some regrets, but don't you think about it, you and I know that it's worth it.”

E.M.S (1995) Nigerian rapper, singer and record producer

Hidden (2017)

Thinking, Suicide

“Most of people talk, we do things. They plan, we achieve. They hesitate, we move ahead. We are living proof that when human beings have the courage and commitment to transform a dream into reality, there is nothing that can stop them. Dubai is a living example of that”

Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (1949) Emirati politician

Inspirational Quotes to lighten our load, http://neuralorganizationtherapy.com/Inspirational_Quotes.html, Neural Organization Therapy

People, Dreams, Courage, Reality

“The Republican and Democratic parties are alike capitalist parties — differing only in being committed to different sets of capitalist interests”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

they have the same principles under varying colors, are equally corrupt and are one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to labor.
The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

“This is hard work:
1. Inspiring
2. Learning
3. Teaching
4. Trusting
5. Empowering
6. Sponsoring
7. Committing
8. Unselfishly giving
9. Loving
10. Nurturing”

Ralph Smart

Love, Making love, Learning

“Staring at him the
way she might stare at a beloved place she
was not sure she would ever see again, trying
to commit the details to memory, to paint
them on the backs of her eyelids that she
might see it when she shut her eyes to sleep.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Way, Sleep, Memory, Painting

“It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure.'
'Why not?'
'It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would commit suicide.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Fear, Suicide

“Only optimists commit suicide, the optimists who can no longer be... optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why should they have any to die?”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Suicide

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657 note: 1940s, Male and Female (1949)

Motivational, For Team, Success, For women

“Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work… a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.”

Barbra Streisand (1942) American singer, actress, writer, film producer, and director

Men, Feeling, Passion

“Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win out in the end because they've stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments.”

Kevin Costner (1955) American actor, singer, musician, producer, director, and businessman

Men

“To escape responsibility for violence we imagine it is enough to pledge never to be the first to do violence. But no one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else.”

René Girard (1923–2015) French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science

Source: The One by Whom Scandal Comes

Imagination, Personality

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Reflections on Gandhi (1949)
Source: In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950

Love, Life, Perfection, Loyalty

“Have this faith that someone is there to take away your weaknesses. Ok, you slipped once, twice, thrice. It does not matter. Keep moving ahead. People take vows never to commit mistakes again. Breaking the vows makes it worse. Surrendering is better”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (1956) spiritual leader

People, Faith

“Those who abjure violence can only do so by others committing violence on their behalf.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

“Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn't what romantic songs tell us it is - love simply is.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love

“Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love

Love, Knowledge

“Did you really want to die?"
"No one commits suicide because they want to die."
"Then why do they do it?"
"Because they want to stop the pain.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Pain, Suicide

“It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action and discipline that enabled us to follow through.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied — as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels — that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong.”

Hannah Arendt book Eichmann in Jerusalem

Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) epilogue.
Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)

Feeling

“I myself, from the very beginning,
Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium
Or a reflection in someone else's mirror,
Without flesh, without meaning, without a name.
Already I knew the list of crimes
That I was destined to commit.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Dreams

“Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.”

Thomas Bernhard book Correction

Source: Correction

People, Suicide

“A commitment to sexual equality with men is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

"I Want a Twenty-Four Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape" http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.html (1983). <br class="br">Context: I want to see this men's movement make a commitment to ending rape because that is the only meaningful commitment to equality. It is astonishing that in all our worlds of feminism and antisexism we never talk seriously about ending rape. Ending it. Stopping it. No more. No more rape. In the back of our minds, are we holding on to its inevitability as the last preserve of the biological? Do we think that it is always going to exist no matter what we do? All of our political actions are lies if we don't make a commitment to ending the practice of rape. This commitment has to be political. It has to be serious. It has to be systematic. It has to be public. It can't be self-indulgent.

Men

“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

“In particular, at this point also urge governing authorities and parents to rule well and to send their children to school. Point out how they are obliged to do so and what a damnable sin they commit if they do not, for thereby, as the worst enemies of God and humanity, they overthrow and lay waste both the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world. Explain very clearly what kind of horrible damage they do when they do not help to train children as pastors, preachers, civil servants, etc., and tell them that God will punish them dreadfully for this. For in our day and age it is necessary to preach about these things. The extent to which parents and governing authorities are now sinning in these matters defies description. The devil, too, intends to do something horrible in all this.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Foreword to the small catechismus, as quoted in the Preface, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (2000) by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, p. 19

God, Children, Age, World

“Pornography is used in rape - to plan it, to execute it, to choreograph it, to engender the excitement to commit the act.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Testimony before the New York Attorney General's Commission on Pornography in 1986.

“[In the world below…] those who appear to have lived neither well not ill, go to the river Acheron, and mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. Those again who have committed crimes, which, although great, are not unpardonable—who in moment of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or a mother, and have repented for the remainder of their lives, or who have taken the life of another under like extenuating circumstances—these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of Cocytus, patricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and they are borne to the Acherusian Lake, and here they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to receive them, and to let them come out of the river into the lake. And if they prevail, then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried back again into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasingly, until they obtain mercy from those whom they have wronged: for this is the sentence inflicted upon them by their judges.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life, Pain, World, Penalty

“What then is the place and role of the writer in this cruel, dynamic, split world on the brink of its ten destructions? After all we have nothing to do with letting off rockets, we do not even push the lowliest of hand-carts, we are quite scorned by those who respect only material power. Is it not natural for us too to step back, to lose faith in the steadfastness of goodness, in the indivisibility of truth, and to just impart to the world our bitter, detached observations: how mankind has become hopelessly corrupt, how men have degenerated, and how difficult it is for the few beautiful and refined souls to live amongst them?
But we have not even recourse to this flight. Anyone who has once taken up the WORD can never again evade it; a writer is not the detached judge of his compatriots and contemporaries, he is an accomplice to all the evil committed in his native land or by his countrymen.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)

Men, Truth, World, Faith

“The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits 'atrocities' but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it claims to control the past as well as the future.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune (4 February 1944)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/hiwbtw/</sup> <br class="br">As I Please (1943–1947)

Truth, Past, Future

“The other night my daughter Lorna reminisced about the time I regressed to complete infantilism. We were having dinner and tapioca pudding was served. A wild glint came into my eyes and in the presence of my wife and children I shrieked at the top of my voice, “I love this more than anything in the world!” I had to be withdrawn from tapioca pudding slowly. It was one of the few times I wasn’t committed to achieve withdrawal.”

Oscar Levant book The Memoirs of an Amnesiac

The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965)

Love, Children, World, Time

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book The Gulag Archipelago

The Gulag Archipelago (1973).

People, Evil, Heart

“Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

Change

“The whole idea of revenge and punishment is a childish day-dream. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Revenge is Sour" http://orwell.ru/library/articles/revenge/english/e_revso, Tribune (9 November 1945)

Dreams, Idea, Revenge, Sense

“God is the solitude of men. There was only me: I alone decided to commit Evil; alone, I invented Good. I am the one who cheated, I am the one who performed miracles, I am the one accusing myself today, I alone can absolve myself; me, the man.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 10, sc. 4
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

Men, God, Solitude, Evil

“The Russians are primitive folk. Besides, Bolshevism is something that stifles individualism and which is against my inner nature. Bolshevism is worse than National Socialism — in fact, it can't be compared to it. Bolshevism is against private property, and I am all in favor of private property. Bolshevism is barbaric and crude, and I am fully convinced that that atrocities committed by the Nazis, which incidentally I knew nothing about, were not nearly as great or as cruel as those committed by the Communists. I hate the Communists bitterly because I hate the system. The delusion that all men are equal is ridiculous. I feel that I am superior to most Russians, not only because I am a German but because my cultural and family background are superior. How ironic it is that crude Russian peasants who wear the uniforms of generals now sit in judgment on me. No matter how educated a Russian might be, he is still a barbaric Asiatic. Secondly, the Russian generals and the Russian government planned a war against Germany because we represented a threat to them ideologically. In the German state, I was the chief opponent of Communism. I admit freely and proudly that it was I who created the first concentration camps in order to put Communists in them. Did I ever tell you that funny story about how I sent to Spain a ship containing mainly bricks and stones, under which I put a single layer of ammunition which had been ordered by the Red government in Spain? The purpose of that ship was to supply the waning Red government with munitions. That was a good practical joke and I am proud of it because I wanted with all my heart to see Russian Communism in Spain defeated finally.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (28 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

Men, Hate, War, Education

“For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don't really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don't regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn't anything to be forgiven.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Secret of Father Brown

The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)
Source: The Secret of Father Brown (1927) The Chief Mourner of Marne

Forgiveness, Thinking

“There is no servant except that there exists a white spot upon his heart. So when he commits a sin, a black spot arises into that white spot. Then when he repents, this black spot moves away. But if he continues on committing sins, the blackness of this spot increases till such time that it overwhelms and overrides the whiteness. When the whiteness is all covered over (by the blackness), the owner of it (the heart) does never at all return towards beneficence and goodness. And This is what God means when he says: "Nay! rather, what they used to do has become like a rust upon their hearts."”

Muhammad al-Baqir (677–733) fifth of the Twelve Shia Imams

Qur'an, 83:14
Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol.73, p. 332
Religious Wisdom

God, Time, Heart

“It is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life.”

George Orwell book Burmese Days

Source: Burmese Days (1934), Ch. V

Life, Education, Way

“A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell — mouths mercy, and invented hell — mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!”

Mark Twain book The Mysterious Stranger

The Mysterious Stranger (1916)

Life, God, Children, People

“There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when 'our' side commits it.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

“I shall add that only he who has decided to commit suicide can start a nuclear war in the hope of emerging a victor from it. No matter what the attacker might possess, no matter what method of unleashing nuclear war he chooses, he will not attain his aims. Retribution will inevitably ensue.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in Soviet Strategy and the New Military Thinking (1992) by Derek Leebaert and Timothy Dickinson, p. 68

War, Hope, Suicide

“Peace and love are possible only between equals. The real enemies of peace are those weak people, who, because of their weakness, incite the strong. If we are weak, we commit the sin of disturbing world peace. The real cause of our degradation is our mental weakness.”

K. B. Hedgewar (1889–1940) Founding leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

Dr. K.B. Hedgewar, Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

Love, People, World, Peace

“Do women need sovereignty—not only over their own bodies as currently understood in the United States…; but control of a boundary further away from their bodies, a defended boundary? Do women need land and an army…; or a feminist government in exile…? Or is it simpler: the bed belongs to the woman; the house belongs to the woman; any land belongs to the woman; if a male intimate is violent he is removed from the place where she has the superior and inviolate claim, arrested, denied parole, and prosecuted….. Could women "set a high price on our blood"? Could women set any price on our blood? Could women manage self-defense if not retaliation? Would self-defense be enough? Could women execute men who raped or beat or tortured women?…. [¶]…. Could the acts of women in behalf of women … have a code of honor woman-to-woman that weakens the male-dominant demands of nationalism or race-pride or ethnic pride? Could women commit treason to the men of their own group: put women first, even the putative enemy women? Do women have enough militancy and self-respect to see themselves as the central makers of legal codes, ethics, honor codes, and culture?”

Andrea Dworkin book Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation

Source: Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation (2000), p. 246.

Women, Men, Housing

“I go back and forth between [being a vegan and not being a vegan]. I try lots of different things. I really feel that you need to kind of listen to your body and what your body is telling you to eat. So I was a vegan for about two years. … Well, everything with being vegan and vegetarian is a really big commitment. You have to do what you feel is best and what you believe in and what your body is telling you that it needs. I really think everyone should do what’s best for them, and what’s best for me may not be best for someone else. But like I said, you just have to do what makes you feel good.”

Lea Michele (1986) actress, singer

“Lea Michele: From Gleek to Do-Gooder,” interview with Shape (July 2012) http://www.shape.com/celebrities/interviews/lea-michele-gleek-do-gooder.

Feeling, Thinking

“Those who have driven away from the altar of God people whom He has chosen to make different, commit an ugly sin! The sin called Apartheid.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Also quoted in Nelson Mandela: from freedom to the future: tributes and speeches (2003), edited by ‎Kader Asmal & ‎David Chidester. Jonathan Ball, p. 332
1990s, Speech at the Zionist Christian Church Easter Conference (1992)
Context: Yes! We affirm it and we shall proclaim it from the mountaintops, that all people – be they black or white, be they brown or yellow, be they rich or poor, be they wise or fools, are created in the image of the Creator and are his children! Those who dare to cast out from the human family people of a darker hue with their racism! Those who exclude from the sight of God's grace, people who profess another faith with their religious intolerance! Those who wish to keep their fellow countrymen away from God's bounty with forced removals! Those who have driven away from the altar of God people whom He has chosen to make different, commit an ugly sin! The sin called Apartheid.

God, People

“When people were committed to the idea that in the field of religion only one plan must be adopted, bloody wars resulted. With the acknowledgment of the principle of religious freedom these wars ceased.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)
Context: When people were committed to the idea that in the field of religion only one plan must be adopted, bloody wars resulted. With the acknowledgment of the principle of religious freedom these wars ceased. The market economy safeguards peaceful economic co-operation because it does not use force upon the economic plans of the citizens. If one master plan is to be substituted for the plans of each citizen, endless fighting must emerge. Those who disagree with the dictator's plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.

War, People, Religion, Idea

“If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
: BRITISH TORY. Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
: COMMUNIST. If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
: IRISH NATIONALIST. Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
: TROTSKYIST. The Stalin regime is accepted by the Russian masses.
: PACIFIST. Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

War, People, Secret, Fools

“Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart — one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not?”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Black Cat

Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?
The Black Cat (1843)

Soul, Time, Heart, Stupidity

“Was there no sword, nothing with which to batter down these walls, this protection, this begetting of children and living behind curtains, and becoming daily more involved and committed, with books and pictures? Better burn one’s life out like Louis, desiring perfection; or like Rhoda leave us, flying past us to the desert; or choose one out of millions and one only like Neville; better be like Susan and love and hate the heat of the sun or the frost-bitten grass; or be like Jinny, honest, an animal. All had their rapture; their common feeling with death; something that stood them in stead. Thus I visited each of my friends in turn, trying, with fumbling fingers, to prise open their locked caskets. I went from one to the other holding my sorrow — no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our life — for their inspection. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken — I to whom there is not beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely. There I sat.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Bernard, section IX
The Waves (1931)

Tree, Hate, Making love, Sun

“The women's movement is like other political movements in one important way. Every political movement is committed to the belie that there are certain kinds of pain that people should not have to endure. They are unnecessary. They are gratuitous. They are not part of the God-given order. They are not biologically inevitable. They are acts of human will. They are acts done by some human beings to other human beings.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

"Feminism: An Agenda" (1983)
Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976-1987

God, Pain, People, Women

“The pursuit of success is marked by numerous characteristics; including, perseverance, commitment, education, and wisdom, to name a few. The road to failure can also be described with countless personality traits, including, unreliable, indolence, ignorance, and ineptitude.
However, during my thirty years as an administrator I have witnessed the most significant rationale for failure that cannot be described in a single word. It is a characteristic some people possess, often referred to by psychologists as the, need-to-be-liked-syndrome. Unfortunately, for some, their existence is predicated upon pleasing others, and seeking approval and recognition. They have become an inmate or prisoner to the thoughts and opinions of others.
In other words, they lack self-value, and therefore must receive it from others. When you do not value yourself, then it will be difficult to obtain joy and contentment in one’s life. Remember; you have worth and value.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1997

Success, Personality, People, Failure

“Foresight, energy, commitment to a single goal, the choice and use of Huns, and commitment to a goal worth the effort become the characteristics of an excellent commander.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

Turkish Wikipedia
https://quotestats.com/topic/attila-hun-quotes/

Effort

“For religion is the book and the words within it. It is innocent from any committed action(s).”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Religion, Books

“Unless I understand the Cross, I cannot understand why my commitment to what is right must be precedence over what I prefer.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

2000s
Source: [I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love, 2005, 9781418515812, http://books.google.com/books?id=lhWCB2v3UlQC&pg=PA43&dq=%22Unless+I+understand+the+Cross%22, 43]

Understanding

“You'd think, 'What if I make a mistake today, I'll regret it'. I don’t believe in regret, I feel everything leads us to where we are and we have to just jump forward, mean well, commit and just see what happens.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Feeling, Thinking

“I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Variant: You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Courage

“The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

For Parents, Love, Smile, Parent

“In defiance of Miss Maccalariat I'd like to commit hanky-panky with you, Miss Adora Belle Dearheart… well, certainly hanky, and possibly panky when we get to know one another better.”

Terry Pratchett book Going Postal

Source: Going Postal

“The general root of superstition : namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Sylva Sylvarum Century X (1627)
Source: The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon
Context: It is true that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

Men, Memory, Forgetting

“A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

"The Poets' Corner III," The Pall Mall Gazette http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/1307/ (May 30, 1887)

Suicide

“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.”

Iris Murdoch book The Black Prince

The Black Prince (1973); 2003, p. 10.

“If you had enough money, you could hardly commit crimes at all. You just perpetrated amusing little peccadilloes.”

Terry Pratchett book Men at Arms

Source: Men at Arms

Money