Quotes about promise
page 5

“Something always happens. You still have to promise stuff anyway. If you have to work to make the promises true… it's like a spell. You have to say the words every time you want the results.”

Diane Duane book High Wizardry

Source: High Wizardry

Time

“Character is both developed and revealed by tests, and all of life is a test… You will be tested by major changes, delayed promises, impossible problems, unanswered prayers, undeserved criticism, and even senseless tragedies.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, Problem, Change

“Earning trust is not easy, nor is it cheap, nor does it happen quickly. Earning trust is hard and demanding work. Trust comes only with genuine effort, never with a lick and a promise.”

Max DePree (1924–2017) American businessman and writer

Source: Leading Without Power: Finding Hope in Serving Community

Effort

“She wore a gown the color of storms, shadows, and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Color

“You promised, Seaweed brain. We would not get separated! Ever again!”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Variant: You promised, Seaweed Brain. We would not get separated! Ever again!”

“You’re impossible!”

“Love you too!
Source: The House of Hades

“But we danced, under wigs and between unfinished walls, through broken promises and around empty cupboards.”

Sherman Alexie book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Source: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Dance

“My books promised me that life wasn’t just made up of workday tasks and prosaic things. The world is bigger and more colorful and more important than that.”

Laura Amy Schlitz (1955) children's author

Life, Books, World, Color

“Amy Cahill didn't believe in omens. But black snow was falling, the earth was rumbling beneath her feet, her brother was meowing, and her uncle Alistair was prancing on the beach in pink pajamas.
She had to admit, the signs were not promising.”

Peter Lerangis book The Viper's Nest

Source: The Viper's Nest

“Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.”

Christopher Hitchens Letters to a Young Contrarian

Source: Letters to a Young Contrarian

Falseness

“Nick glowered at Ash. "Are we through now, Dad? Can I go play with my friends if I promise to be a good boy? I'll even try and make it home by curfew."

Ash laughed evilly. "Oh, absolutely, son. In fact, here come your new playmates now.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Warrior

Home, Boy

“Jamie: You have to promise you won't fall in love with me.
Landon: That's not a problem.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Variant: You have to promise you won't fall in love with me.
Source: A Walk to Remember

Love, Problem

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Hope

“Our lovemaking was always risk and promise-for if he held my life in his hands when he lay with me, I held his soul, and knew it.”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

Life, Soul

“The pressure of his touch through my jacket and my sweater was more assurance than any promise ever made to me. It was a touch that said, I have your back and I am here for you. If a girl wasn't careful, she could fall in love with a touch like that.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Love, Girl

“Is there any good news?' Tesla said.
Who ever promised that? Who ever said there'd benews?”

Clive Barker book The Great and Secret Show

Source: The Great and Secret Show

“You're free to join us, but only if you promise not to stare at the new kid." Miles laughs.
"Staring is very rude. Didn't anyone ever tell you that?”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

“This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.”

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

1960s, (1963)

God, Children, Justice, Democracy

“Every letter was a love letter. Of course, as love letters went, this one could have been better. It was not very promising, for instance, that Madeleine claimed not to want to see him for the next half-century.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

Love

“We have become a sloppy bunch of people. We say things we don’t mean. We make promises we don’t keep.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

People

“He was marrying my girl, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I just had to watch it happen, because he was my brother, because I promised..”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Girl

“Like any man, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land.”

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

1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)
Context: Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like any man, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Life, God, People, Mountain

“Give me an opportunity to fail," Saiman said. "I promise my corpse won't interrupt your 'I told you so' speech.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

“you'll see, jane,' he promised her. 'you'll forget me, and it won't hurt tomorrow. besides, you said it yourself: love means you cαn never be apart. so we'll never be apart, jane, becαuse i love you so much. i'll always, always love you.”

James Patterson book Sundays at Tiffany's

Source: Sundays at Tiffany's

Love, Hurt, Forgetting

“Faith is ultimately a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols

God, Truth, Faith, Knowledge

“Are you her boyfriend?”
…
No, I’m her fiancé.” Nate said.
We’ve been promised to each other since birth,” Summer added.
Our wedding isn’t until March.”

Brandon Mull The Candy Shop War

Source: The Candy Shop War

Birth, Wedding, Summer

“It was one of the warm nights at the end of summer that makes promises that won't be kept.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Wizard Heir

Summer, Night

“I promise to always turn back toward you.”

Kate DiCamillo (1964) American children's writer

Source: Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

“Of all the rash and midnight promises made in the name of love, none, Boone now knew, was more certain to be broken than "I'll never leave you.”

Clive Barker book Cabal

Source: Cabal

Love

“We’d met at a carefree time, a moment full of promise, in its place now were the harsh lessons of the real world.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

World, Time

“But the words are easy and soothing, promising tomorrow will be more hopeful than this awful piece o time we call today.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Hope, Time

“God has promised to supply our needs. What we don’t have now we don’t need now.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: The Path of Loneliness: Finding Your Way Through the Wilderness to God

God

“- If I tell you, will you let met go?
- You bet, partner. […]
- You promised!
- Nope. I said ""you bet."" You did… and you lost.”

Scott Snyder (1976) American writer

American Vampire, Vol. 1

“Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.”

Philip G. Zimbardo book The Lucifer Effect

Source: The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

Fear, Law, Freedom

“In a world where vows are worthless. Where making a pledge means nothing. Where promises are made to be broken, it would be nice to see words come back into power.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

World

“Her name is. And she has taught me more as a mistress than[Justice] ever did! She has taught me thatis meaningless without. is honest. makes no promises and breaks none. Unlike,.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

Source: V for Vendetta, Vol. II of X

Justice

“Maybe you could casually mention to Zoe that I'm not now, nor have I
ever been, an axe murderer."
"I'll see if I can work it into our next conversation," Flynn promised.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Key of Knowledge

“Tomorrow. The word hangs in the air for a moment, both a promise and a threat. Then it floats away like a paper boat, taken from her by the water licking at her ankles.”

Thrity Umrigar book The Space Between Us

Source: The Space Between Us

Water

“The Writer's Oath

I promise solemnly:

1. to write as often and as much as I can,

2. to respect my writing self, and

3. to nurture the writing of others.

I accept these responsibilities and shall honor them always.”

Gail Carson Levine (1947) American writer

Source: Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly

“Stay with me.”
“We’re married,” she whispered. “Of course I’ll stay.”
“You could decide to leave me.”
“I won’t.” “Promise me.”
“I have promised. I do promise.”

Jennifer Ashley (1974) American author

Source: The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

“We are none of us promised anything but the last breath we take.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

“Never trust people who promise to make you rich in a day. They are generally crazy swindlers”

Carlo Collodi book The Adventures of Pinocchio

Source: Pinocchio

People

“I promise myself that I will enjoy every minute of the day that is given me to live.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

“The truth of some promises is not as important as whether or not you can believe in them, with all your heart.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Truth, Heart

“Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“It was the promise of maybe, maybe one day.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H.”

Dan Savage (1964) American sex advice columnist and gay rights campaigner

Source: Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America

Happiness, Freedom

“God never said that we wouldn’t have unfair situations, that we wouldn’t experience loss. But He promised if we would stay in faith, He would restore everything that was stolen.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

God, Faith, Loss

“I look coolly in to the blue eyes of the person who is now my greatest opponent, the person who would keep me alive at his own expense. And I promise myself I will defeat his plan.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Personality

“He promises a lamp unto our feet, not a crystal ball into the future.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear

Future

“God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his.”

John Crowley book Little, Big

Source: Little, Big

Life, God, Books

“You promised you would protect her Nico said.
He might as well have stabbed me with a rusty dagger. It would've hurt less than reminding me of my promise.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Hurt

“Walk with care in dark places, and do not put your faith in anyone who promises you the forgiveness of the Lord or a certain place in Paradise.”

Clive Barker book Mister B. Gone

Source: Mister B. Gone

Faith, Forgiveness

“Don't ever promise more than you can deliver, but always deliver more than you promise.”

Lou Holtz (1937) American college football coach, professional football coach, television sports announcer

“She gives him what he can only call a sweet smile. 'So you are determined to go on being bad. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. I promise, no one will ask you to change.”

J.M. Coetzee book Disgrace

Source: Disgrace

Smile, Change, Madness

“I'm just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

“Tomorrow is promised to no one.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

“O, there is lovely to feel a book, a good book, firm in the hand, for its fatness holds rich promise, and you are hot inside to think of good hours to come.”

Richard Llewellyn book How Green Was My Valley

Source: How Green Was My Valley

Love, Books, Feeling, Thinking

“I hardly think a girl is much of a threat. I presume you searched her for weapons? But if she attempts to suffocate me with her straw mattress, I promise to call out for help.”

Mary Hoffman book City of Masks

Source: City of Masks

Search, Girl, Thinking, Help

“Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Source: The Second Sex

Freedom

“She would tell him what she wanted in her life--her hopes and dreams for the future--and he would listen intently and then promise to make it all come true. And the way he said it made her believe him, and she knew how much he meant to her.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Life, Dreams, Hope, Way

“For a woman, love is the highest dream, and if a man promises to build a ladder tall enough to reach it, she believes him, hikes up her skirt, and follows him to the stars.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: The Shoemaker's Wife

Love, Dreams, Star

“I don't like seeing you cry. You will stop."
I'll give you a promise," he said gruffly. "And then you will cease your worrying."
You will have confidence in my ability to protect you," he ordered.
You will have faith in me. I command it.”

Julie Garwood (1946) American writer

Source: Ransom

Faith, Confidence, Cry

“Things break all the time.
Day breaks, waves break, voices break.
Promises break.
Hearts break.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Time, Heart

“What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss and Peeta (p. 388; closing words of the main text)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Context: I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.
So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?"
I tell him, "Real."

Life, Spring, Loss

“Just let it happen and, I promise you, all that is magic will appear.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Source: This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography, And Life Through The Distorted Lens Of Nikki Sixx

Appearance

“You promise." "I swear on the angel. The hell with that. I swear on us." "Why us?" "Because there isn't anything I believe in more.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Angels, Hell

“Does she stay because she loves him as meat loves salt? Or does she stay because he has now promised her the kingdom? It is hard for her to tell the difference.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Love

“The promise of eternal life makes people forsake the life they're given.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Life, People

“The future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises.”

Steven Erikson book House of Chains

House of Chains (2002)

Future

“Some promises aren’t worth keeping.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

“And if the man who once upon a time had been a boy who promised he'd never fall in love with another girl as long as he lived kept his promise, it wasn't because he was stubborn or even loyal. He couldn't help it.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Love, Girl, Boy, Time

“The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Past

“A man will always promise to do more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.”

Philippa Gregory book The White Queen

Source: The White Queen

Understanding

“Even the technology that promises to unite us, divides us. Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

Feeling

“… though I cannot promise to take you home," said North Wind, as she sank nearer and nearer to the tops of the houses, "I can promise you it will be all right in the end. You will get home somehow.”

George MacDonald book At the Back of the North Wind

Source: At the Back of the North Wind

Home, Housing

“Campaign promises are, by long democratic tradition, the least binding form of human commitment.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On campaign promises: Republican Party v. White, 536 U.S. 765 http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/01-521.ZO.html (2002) (majority opinion). <br class="br">2000s

“The French regarded this as a betrayal. It was. They spoke of being cheated by their wartime allies. They were. Clemenceau whose outspoken sympathies for Britain and America (he had been a newspaper correspondent in the United States shortly after the Civil War, had learned American English and married an American) had earned charges from the Right before the war that he was an Anglo-Saxon "tool", was embittered and disillusioned. As the Premier who had pulled France together in the closing period of the war, he realized what so many Frenchmen tended to forget, that without British and American help the war could not in the end have been won. He saw too that without Anglo-American promises of military aid in the future it would be beyond France's power to repel the next German invasion. He had been promised that aid in return for giving up the security of the Rhine, which his generals had demanded. Now France had neither.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

War, Learning, Betrayal, Future

“I call upon the American people to affirm with me this American Promise -- that we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, Proclamation 4417 (1976)
Variant: I call upon the American people to affirm with me this American Promise -- that we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated.

People, Justice, Error, Learning

“The doctrine he was going to be teaching, starting tonight, was not the sort of ideology that would stir souls; no one would die for this religion. It would only attracts converts by promising a return to old tradition and by seeming to be the religion of the future.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Religion, Soul, Future

“This new quantum mechanics promised to explain all of chemistry. And though I felt an exuberance at this, I felt a certain threat, too. “Chemistry,” wrote Crookes, “will be established upon an entirely new basis…. We shall be set free from the need for experiment, knowing a priori what the result of each and every experiment must be.” I was not sure I liked the sound of this. Did this mean that chemists of the future (if they existed) would never actually need to handle a chemical; might never see the colors of vanadium salts, never smell a hydrogen selenide, never admire the form of a crystal; might live in a colorless, scentless, mathematical world? This, for me, seemed and awful prospect, for I, at least, needed to smell and touch and feel, to place myself, my senses, in the middle of the perceptual world.”

Oliver Sacks book Uncle Tungsten

Source: Uncle Tungsten (2001), pp. 312–313

World, Color, Feeling, Mathematics

“The history of the Republican Party is marked by vacillation between its founding principle of opportunity and its domination by the wealthy elite. The party came together in the 1850s in opposition to the wealthy slaveholders who controlled the federal government. Democrats acting on their behalf insisted that America’s primary principle was the Constitution's protection of property, and they pushed legislation to let planters monopolize the country’s resources at the expense of the working. … Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity. Northerners and hardscrabble Westerners flocked to that vision, and elected Lincoln to the White House in 1860.”

Heather Cox Richardson American historian

"Bring Back the Party of Lincoln" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/opinion/bring-back-the-party-of-lincoln.html?_r=0 (3 September 2014), The New York Times, New York

History, Idea, Housing, Dependency

“Grishkin is nice: her
Russian eye is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Whispers of Immortality"; "Grishkin" has been identified by Ezra Pound as having been "Serafima Astafieva" a Russian dancer.
Poems (1920)

“Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“In 1973, the United States Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade. In the sweep of a pen, the Supreme Court promised all American women that there would never again be another Jane Roe, beginning distant courts for the basic human right to decide for herself whether to terminate a pernancy. Never again, the Court promised, may the State presume to intrude on a decision so intimate and significant that it may well determine the remainder of a young woman's life.”

Gloria Allred (1941) American civil rights lawyer

Gloria Allred. 1990 Gloria Allred testimony before United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Publication Title: Hearings on the Nomination of David H. Souter to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, September 13, 14, 17, 18, and 19, 1990. Category: Congressional Committee Materials. Collection: Additional Government Publications. Publication name: Supreme Court Nomination Hearings. Date issued: September 13, 1990. Congress. 101st Congress, 2nd Session. www.gpo.gov http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER/pdf/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER-5-2-1.pdf, more info at S. Hrg. 101-1263 at www.gpo.gov http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER-2-4-1-5-3

Life, Women, Decision, Distant

“Full and free exercise of this right by the citizen is ordinarily also his duty; for its exercise is more important to the nation than it is to himself. Like the course of the heavenly bodies, harmony in national life is a resultant of the struggle between contending forces. In frank expression of conflicting opinion lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action; and in suppression lies ordinarily the greatest peril.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Dissent, Gilbert v. Minnesota, 254 U.S. 325, 338 (1920).
Judicial opinions

Life, Wisdom, Exercises

“President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans… And to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-08-31
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/30/160357612/transcript-mitt-romneys-acceptance-speech
Transcript: Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speech
NPR
2012

Family, Help

“On the one side, the Mexican side, Mexican peasants are tantalized by the American possibility of change. On the other side, the American side, the tyranny of American optimism has driven Americans to neurosis and depression, when the dream is elusive or less meaningful than the myth promised. This constitutes the great irony of the Mexican-American border: American sadness has transformed the drug lords of Mexico into billionaires, even as the peasants of Mexico scramble through the darkness to find the American dream.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Sadness, Dreams, Optimism, Change

“Every American must believe in the promise of America. And to reach this noble, necessary goal, there is a role for government. America doesn't need more big government, and we've learned that more money is not always the answer. If a program is failing to serve people, it makes little difference if we spend twice as much or half as much. The measure of true compassion is results.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, Compassionate Conservatism (April 2002)

Money, People, Learning

“Religious ritual invariably offers a sacrificial display of commitment to supernatural agents that is materially costly and emotionally convincing. Such ritual conveys willingness to cooperate with a community of believers by signaling an open-ended promise to help others whenever there is true need. These expensive and sincere displays underscore belief that the gods are always vigilant and will never allow society to suffer those who cheat on their promises. Such a deep devotion to the in-group habitually generates intolerance toward out-groups. This, in turn, leads to constant rivalry and unending development of new and syncretic religious forms.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 16
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

God, Communication, Suffering, Help

“Let us learn wisdom from this illustrious example. We have passed the Red Sea of slaughter; our garments are yet wet with its crimson spray. We have crossed the fearful wilderness of war, and have led our four hundred thousand heroes to sleep beside the dead enemies of the Republic. We have heard the voice of God amid the thunders of battle commanding us to wash our hands of iniquity, to 'proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.' When we spurned his counsels we were defeated, and the gulfs of ruin yawned before us. When we obeyed his voice, he gave us victory. And now at last we have reached the confines of the wilderness. Before us is the land of promise, the land of hope, the land of peace, filled with possibilities of greatness and glory too vast for the grasp of the imagination. Are we worthy to enter it? On what condition may it be ours to enjoy and transmit to our children's children? Let us pause and make deliberate and solemn preparation. Let us, as representatives of the people, whose servants we are, bear in advance the sacred ark of republican liberty, with its tables of the law inscribed with the 'irreversible guaranties' of liberty. Let us here build a monument on which shall be written not only the curses of the law against treason, disloyalty, and oppression, but also an everlasting covenant of peace and blessing with loyalty, liberty, and obedience; and all the people will say, Amen.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)

Wisdom, God, War, Children

“I tell you what, if any of you survive here, I promise you this: As sure as I have a hole in my bloody arse, when it gets down to the two of you, all these people who are saying nice things about you at the moment, will not! So start thinking about yourself!”

Alan Sugar (1947) British business magnate, media personality, and political advisor

The Apprentice, Series 2

People, Thinking

“This is an ironic choice for a president-elect who has promised to change Washington, make politics more civil and govern from the center.”

Rahm Emanuel (1959) politician, investment banker, White House Chief of Staff

House Minority Leader John Boehner on Obama's hiring Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff, as quoted in San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/06/MN6C13VKH5.DTL&type=politics. <br class="br">About

Change

“Posito I assume and when I say posito, I have the right to assume the unlikely; therefore posito, I assume that Mr. A. A., whose promises supposedly have not weakened him, went to work and wrote the system. Posito, I assume, and when I say posito, I have the right to assume what is more unreasonable than the most unreasonable; therefore; posito, I assume that if Mr. A. A. did not write the system, then Mr. B. B. wrote it-then what? Let us linger for a moment on this thought, with which, of course, we have all been familiar for several years: the thought of the prospect for the hope of the system. Therefore, in order to be very brief, posito, I assume that the system appeared here in Copenhagen, then what? Then one would indeed have to read it, unless Mr. C. C. would instantly be kind and philanthropic enough to promise a summary of the system and also position us in the point of view; then we would again be saved by the promise. If this does not happen, then of course one would have to read it. How troublesome, and who would finally benefit from that?”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Prefaces, Nichol, 1997 p. 39-40
1840s, Prefaces (1844)

Hope, Appearance, Reading

“Two years before the war the then Government of Lord Oxford was confronted with an epidemic of strikes. The quarrel of one trade became the quarrel of all. This was the sympathetic strike…In the hands of one set of leaders, it perhaps meant no more than obtaining influence to put pressure on employers to better the conditions of the men. But in the hands of others it became an engine to wage what was beginning to be called class warfare, and the general strike which first began to be talked about was to be the supreme instrument by which the whole community could be either starved or terrified into submission to the will of its promoters. There was a double attitude at work in the same movement: the old constitutional attitude…of negotiations, keeping promises made collectively, employing strikes where negotiations failed; and on the other hand the attempt to transform the whole of this great trade union organization into a machine for destroying the system of private enterprise, of substituting for it a system of universal State employment…What was to happen afterwards was never very clear. The only thing clear was the first necessity to smash up the existing system. This was a profound breach with the past, and in its origin it was from a foreign source, and, like all those foreign revolutionary instances, it has been very largely secretive and subterranean. This attitude towards agreements and contracts has been a departure from the British tradition of open and straight dealing. The propaganda is a propaganda of hatred and envy.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 164-165.
1926

Men, War, Secret, Communication

“There is only as much space, only as much time, only as much desire, only as many words, only as many pages, only as much ink to accept all of us at light-speed hurrying into the Promised Land of oblivion that is waiting for us sooner or later.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Silent Equality http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21405/Silent_Equality <br class="br">From the poems written in English

Light, Time, Waiting, Speed

“I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And we won't be using a man like Secretary Kerry that has absolutely no concept of negotiation, who's making a horrible and laughable deal, who's just being tapped along as they make weapons right now, and then goes into a bicycle race at 72 years old, and falls and breaks his leg. I won't be doing that. And I promise I will never be in a bicycle race. That I can tell you.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

“They were apt to be disappointed with the way he fulfilled his promises to them, for he intended, if he could, to sweep both the bickering rivals from power. But he did not ask pure and total saintliness of himself in his dealings with those whose chief role in the government appeared to be to impede and obstruct.”

Robert Silverberg book Lord Valentine's Castle

Book 4 “The Book of the Labyrinth”, Chapter 7 (p. 383)
Lord Valentine's Castle (1980)

Disappointment, Way, Appearance

“Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans, and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa… Whilst we were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty… whilst we swore irreconcilable hostility to her enemies… whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free or die… we were imposing on our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained.”

St. George Tucker (1752–1827) Bermudan lawyer and judge

A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it, in the State of Virginia (1796)

Death, Men, God, Hostility

“To satisfy your curiosity, I can explain very plainly. But since Christians believe that Jesus was born of a virgin by the Holy Spirit, and God's primary object of this dispensation is Christians (it is His will that we lead Christians first because they are the ones who have been keeping the promise of the Second Coming), it is our mission to tell them first, whether they refuse or accept. If I explain everything plainly about the birth of Jesus, it may put a stumbling block in the way of many Christians accepting God's new dispensation. Therefore, I don't want to explain everything too plainly here.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Master Speaks (1967) Part 7: Bible Interpretation http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Books/sm-mast/MSTRSP-7.htm (transcriptions of Q&A sessions in March-April 1965)

God, Way, Birth

“A really critical mind will not be content to remark the patent absurdity of the tales about supernatural beings and events in the "New Testament," but will go on to examine the purposes those tales were devised to serve. It requires no great critical acumen to perceive the appalling malice shown in Bolshevik promises that "the last shall be first"; the proletarian rancor of almost continual harping on the threat that rich men will be fried forever hereafter if they do not give all that they have to the poor and become paupers themselves; the frantic hatred of reason evinced by hostility to "the Greeks" who "seek after wisdom" and try to understand nature and the real world instead of drugging themselves with narcotic fantasies; the frightful malevolence of a god "who has made foolish the wisdom of this world" to profit a squalid and mindless rabble; and the hatred of all culture and civilization implicit in the election of illiterate boors as apostles and the insistence in the Drivel on the Mount on the need for bird-brains that "take no thought for the morrow" and, indeed, emulate the intellectual processes of vegetables.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"The Bear in the Bush", Liberty Bell (September 1990)
1990s

Wisdom, Men, God, Hostility

Quotes about promise page 5

Quotes about promise
page 5