Quotes about road
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“And it is here under this oak where Evangeline waited for her lover, Gabriel, who never came. This oak is an immortal spot, made so by Longfellow's poem, but Evangeline is not the only one who has waited here in disappointment.
Where are the schools that you have waited for your children to have, that have never come? Where are the roads and the highways that you send your money to build, that are no nearer now than ever before? Where are the institutions to care for the sick and disabled? Evangeline wept bitter tears in her disappointment, but it lasted through only one lifetime. Your tears in this country, around this oak, have lasted for generations. Give me the chance to dry the eyes of those who still weep here!”

Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator

Speech given during the 1928 gubernatorial election; quoted in Hugh Davis Graham, Huey Long (1970), p. 40.

Money, Children, School, Disappointment

“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.”

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

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)

Health, Age, School, Cars

“And I can't even go to the grocery store without some ones that's clean and a shirt with a team/It seems we living the American dream but people highest up got the lowest self esteem/The prettiest people do the ugliest things for the road to riches and diamond rings.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

All Falls Down
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

People, Dreams

“Scepticism is always a back road leading to some credo or other.”

Mason Cooley (1927–2002) American academic

City Aphorisms, Fourth Selection (1987)

“The Sovereignty of the Father is like a woman who is carrying a jar full of grain. While she was walking on a distant road, the handle of the jar broke, the grain streamed out behind her onto the road. She did not observe it, she had noticed no accident. When she arrived in her house, she set the jar down—she found it empty.”

Thomas the Apostle Apostle of Jesus Christ

97
Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?)

Distant, Housing

“We have an odd relationship with words. We learn a few when we are small, throughout our lives we collect others through education, conversation, our contact with books, and yet, in comparison, there are only a tiny number about whose meaning, sense, and denotation we would have absolutely no doubts if, one day, we were to ask ourselves seriously what they meant. Thus we affirm and deny, thus we convince and are convinced, thus we argue, deduce, and conclude, wandering fearlessly over the surface of concepts about which we have only the vaguest of ideas, and, despite the false air of confidence that we generally affect as we feel our way along the road in the verbal darkness, we manage, more or less, to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.”

José Saramago book The Double

The Double (2002)

Books, Education, Way, Feeling

“Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalized and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Said to be a quote from Das Kapital in an anonymous email, this attribution has been debunked at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/consumerdebt.asp with the earliest occurrence found being a post by Gpkkid on 23 December 2008 http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/do-bailouts-encourage-ponzi-schemes/#comment-24005; it was used as a basis of a satirical article "Americans to Undergo Preschool Reeducation in Advance of Country’s Conversion to Communism" at NewsMutiny http://www.newsmutiny.com/pages/Communist_Reeducation.html, but the author of article on the satiric website says that he is not author of the quote http://www.clockbackward.com/2009/02/04/did-karl-marx-predict-financial-collapse/ Misattributed

Communication, Housing

“The art road is paved with thorns.”

Layal Abboud (1982) Lebanese pop singer

June 10, 2009; alkhaleej.ae http://www.alkhaleej.ae/supplements/page/9522cefb-de34-4270-a674-ae2dd76da0ad 2009

Art

“America, this is our moment. This is our time, our time to turn the page on the policies of the past, our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face, our time to offer a new direction for this country that we love. The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.”

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

Barack Obama’s Remarks in St. Paul http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/us/politics/03text-obama.html (3 June 2008) 2008

Love, War, Children, People

“The structure known, but not yet accessible by synthesis, is to the chemist what the unclimbed mountain, the uncharted sea, the untilled field, the unreached planet, are to other men. The achievement of the objective in itself cannot but thrill all chemists, who even before they know the details of the journey can apprehend from their own experience the joys and elations, the disappointments and false hopes, the obstacles overcome, the frustrations subdued, which they experienced who traversed a road to the goal. The unique challenge which chemical synthesis provides for the creative imagination and the skilled hand ensures that it will endure as long as men write books, paint pictures, and fashion things which are beautiful, or practical, or both.”

Robert Burns Woodward (1917–1979) American chemist

Robert Burns Woodward, "Art and Science in the Synthesis of Organic Compounds: Retrospect and Prospect," in Pointers and Pathways in Research (Bombay:CIBA of India, 1963).

Men, Books, Beauty, Hope

“Two Years He Walks The Earth. No Phone, No Pool, No Pets, No Cigarettes. Ultimate Freedom. An Extremist. An Aesthetic Voyager Whose Home Is The Road. Escaped From Atlanta. Thou Shalt Not Return, Cause "The West Is The Best." And Now After Two Rambling Years Comes The Final And Greatest Adventure. The Climactic Battle To Kill The False Being Within And Victoriously Conclude The Spiritual Revolution! Ten Days + Nights Of Freight Trains And Hitchhiking Bring Him To The Great White North. No Longer To Be Poisoned By Civilization He Flees, And Walks Alone Upon The Land To Become Lost In The Wild [double underline under "Wild"]. Alexander Supertramp May 1992.”

Christopher McCandless (1968–1992) American hiker and explorer

Carved into a sheet of plywood inside the "Magic Bus", May 2, 1992

Home, Freedom, Victory, Falseness

“There is no promised road leading to definite results. What's important is how to keep open as many options as possible.”

Makoto Kobayashi (physicist) (1944) Japanese physicist

Interview, IPMU News No 5 (March 2009)

“Ah me, why did they build my house by the road to the market town?”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

4 The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)

Housing

“By one road or another, by conviction, by its supposed inevitability, by its alleged success, or even quite unreflectively, almost all politics today have become Rationalist or near-Rationalist.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Success

“We got all the influences for it [Global a Go-Go] from Willesden High Road. When you go out for milk and cigarettes you go through three countries because all the shops and cafes are playing their own music, like going through hell.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

About Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros' album Global a Go-Go (2001) and about the song writing process.
Strummer talks war and music (13 November 2001)

Music, Hell, Country

“Such laws as the franchise-tax law in this State, which the Court of Appeals recently unanimously decided constitutional -- such a law as that passed in Congress last year for the purpose of establishing a Department of Commerce and Labor, under which there should be a bureau to oversee and secure publicity from the great corporations which do an interstate business -- such a law as that passed at the same time for the regulation of the great highways of commerce so as to keep these roads clear on fair terms to all producers in getting their goods to market -- these laws are in the interest not merely of the people as a whole, but of the propertied classes. For in no way is the stability of property better assured than by making it patent to our people that property bears its proper share of the burdens of the State; that property is handled not only in the interest of the owner, but in the interest of the whole community.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

People, Law, Way, Communication

“How thick the fog is. I can't see the road. All the people in the world could pass by and I would never know. I wish it was always that way. It's getting dark already. It will soon be night, thank goodness.”

Eugene O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night

Page 104 (Act 3)
Long Day's Journey into Night (1955)

People, World, Way, Night

“If the Conservative Party were your refrigerator, all your food would go bad. If it were your car or bicycle, you would be stranded by the side of the road. If it were your accountant, you would be bankrupt. If it were your lawyer, you would be in prison. If any consumer good, service or profession so consistently and predictably disappointed or failed in its ostensible main purpose, people would turn their backs on it. It would be overtaken, replaced and driven out of business by a better competitor.”

Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist

From 'The Cameron Delusion' (2010)

People, Food, Disappointment, Cars

“Any road', said Carlyle, 'even this road to Entepfuhl, will take you to the end of the world'. But the Entepfuhl road, if taken in its entirety, and to the end, goes back to Entepfuhl; so Entepfuhl, where we already were, is that very end of the world we were seeking.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

The Book of Disquiet
Original: "Qualquer estrada", disse Carlyle, "até esta estrada de Entepfuhl, te leva até ao fim do mundo". Mas a estrada de Entepfuhl, se for seguida toda, e até ao fim, volta a Entepfuhl; de modo que o Entepfuhl, onde já estávamo, é aquele mesmo fim do mundo que íamos buscar.
Ibid., p. 142

World

“I don't consider myself a great singer--but I have a connection with the audience. There's the artist, and then a void and the audience; but I like to be part of the audience. I'd like to be them, and I'd like them to be me for an hour and a half. I get criticized for being the antichrist, causing kids to commit suicide, but that's total bullsh-t. My intentions are not that. Every year they have Halloween, and all I do is take Halloween night out on the road every night. It's like a Halloween party every night. If that was the case on Halloween night, the police cells would be full--everyone would have turned Satanic for the night!”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Launch.com October 8 2003

Suicide, Parting, Night

“As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.
We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.
For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.”

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

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)

People, Lie, Age, Faith

“In reading this author [ Montaigne ] and comparing him with Epictetus, I have found that they are assuredly the two greatest defenders of the two most celebrated sects of the world, and the only ones conformable to reason, since we can only follow one of these two roads, namely: either that there is a God, and then we place in him the sovereign good; or that he is uncertain, and that then the true good is also uncertain, since he is incapable of it.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne

God, World, Reading

“Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
They hung my black young lover
To a cross roads tree.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Song for a Dark Girl" (l. 1-4), from Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927)

Way, Lovers, Tree, Heart

“The trouble is, Roosevelt hasn't taken all of my ideas; just part of them. I'm about one hundred yards ahead of him. We're on the same road, but I'm here and he's there.”

Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator

Huey Long (Williams p. 637)

Idea, Parting

“And as I looked ahead, the people changed into elks and bison and all four-footed beings and even into fowls, all walking in a sacred manner on the good red road together.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)

People, Change

“The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be — this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.”

Parmenides (-501–-470 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Frag. B 2.2-6, quoted by Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus I, 345

Truth, Thinking

“In this book I have tried to achieve one purpose: to explain how war is waged on the field from the field command post. For it is there, midway between the conference table and the foxhole, that strategy is translated into battlefield tactics; there the field commander must calculated the cost of rivers, roads and hills in terms of guns, tanks, tonnage- and most importantly in terms of the lives and limbs of his soldiers. How, then, did we reach our critical decisions? Why and how did we go where we did? These are the critical questions I have been asked most often. And these are the questions that gave me justification for writing this book.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Source: A Soldier's Story (1951), p. ix.

War, Books, Question, Decision

“If we choose the wrong road, we choose the wrong destination.”

Dallin H. Oaks (1932) Apostle of the LDs Church

Be Not Deceived https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2004/10/be-not-deceived, Dallin H. Oaks, October 2004

“The Road of life is rocky and you may stumble too,
so while you talk about me, someone else is judging you.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Song lyrics, Judge Not (single, 1961)

Life

“Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the socialist dictatorship.** Terrorism and Communism : A Reply to Karl Kautsky (1920; 1975), p. 153* The road to socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state … Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the state, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i. e., the most ruthless form of state, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction.”

Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism

Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), p. 177

Life, Communication

“The roads that we are using today were all built by Smith. All the infrastructure is Smith’s. We never suffered the way we are suffering now because Smith took care of the economy that supported all people and they had enough to eat. When he left power the [British] pound was on a par with the Zimbabwean dollar, but President Mugabe has killed all that.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Patrick Kombayi, Opposition Politician and former Gweru Mayor, Article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1570403/Zimbabweans-praise-generous-Ian-Smith.html in The Telegraph, 2007. About

People, Way, Support, Suffering

“When I came to Mogadishu…[t]here was one road built by the Italians. If you try to force me to stand down, I will leave the city as I found it. I came to power with a gun; only the gun can make me go.”

Siad Barre (1919–1995) Head of State of Somalia

As quoted by Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi (2001), Culture and customs of Somalia, p. 41

“William Blake once said the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. And that’s where I dwell. John Morrison is enlightened.”

John Hennigan (1979) American professional wrestler

Wisdom

“I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee's life of the poet. She died young — alas, she never wrote a word… Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to-night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 6, p. 117)

Life, Women, Children, Sister

“We begin to think cosmically. Our sympathetic feelers reach out into the dim distance. The bacteria of the "Weltschmerz," are upon us. So far, however, universal harmony has been attained only in a single sphere of international relationship. That is the postal service. Its mechanism is working satisfactorily, but — how remote are we still from that scrupulous respect of the sanctity of the mail bag! And how much farther again is the next milestone on the road to peace — an international judicial service equally reliable as the postal!”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

Peace, Thinking, Universe

“When we do something we have never done, we are already on the road to healing. We must break the routines.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.
I promise you, we as a people will get there.”

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

2008, Election victory speech (November 2008)

People, Hope

“And every business can take action. All the business leaders who are here and our global economy companies have a responsibility to make sure that their supply chains, stretching into the far corners of the globe, are free of forced labor. […] Every faith community can take action as well, by educating their congregations, by joining in coalitions that are bound by a love of God and a concern for the oppressed. And like that Good Samaritan on the road to Jericho, we can’t just pass by, indifferent. We’ve got to be moved by compassion. We’ve got to bind up the wounds. Let’s come together around a simple truth -- that we are our brother’s keepers and we are our sister’s keepers. And finally, every citizen can take action: by learning more; by going to the website that we helped create -- SlaveryFootprint. org; by speaking up and insisting that the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the products we buy are made free of forced labor; by standing up against the degradation and abuse of women.”

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

2012, Remarks at Clinton Global Initiative (September 2012)

Love, Women, God, Truth

“Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who've been around awhile know it's just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it's never even there in the first place.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: All Hail and Hallelujah

Love, People, Thinking, Change

“Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you? Surely, nowhere but among a nimble nation could you have been born in a country which has taken itself in earnest and has evenly spread far and wide over half of the globe, so that once you start counting the milestones you may count on till a speckled haze dances before your eyes… Rus, are you not similar in your headlong motion to one of those nimble troikas that none can overtake? The flying road turns into smoke under you, bridges thunder and pass, all fall back and is left behind!… And what does this awesome motion mean? What is the passing strange steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?… Rus, whither are you speeding to? Answer me. No answer. The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy; the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way.”

Nikolai Gogol book Dead Souls

Vol. I, ch. 11
Dead Souls (1842)

Dreams, Way, Home, Dance

“The advancement of agriculture, commerce and manufactures, by all proper means, will not, I trust, need recommendation. But I cannot forbear intimating to you the expediency of giving effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad, as to the exertions of skill and genius in producing them at home; and of facilitating the intercourse between the distant parts of our country by a due attention to the Post Office and Post Roads.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

First Annual Address, to both House of Congress (8 January 1790)
1790s

Home, Distant, Parting, Country

“It is a kind of law of nature. The goal one aims for can rarely be reached by a direct road.”

Matsushita Konosuke (1894–1989) Japanese businessman

Source: Quest for prosperity: the life of a Japanese industrialist. 1988, p. 47

Law, Nature

“My assistant showed me a video called Forks and Knives (sic) or something, about (cutting out) meat and dairy products, so I thought, 'I'll give this a shot!' … I feel OK actually, I feel better about myself, you know? I go on binges… That's the reason why I decided to cut out meat out and dairy because I've limited what I can have because when you're on the road and you're travelling, you grab buns and… burgers are everywhere… so now I've just narrowed the margin. … I'm not saying I'm gonna do it forever; I might go back - when my wife learns to cook, so that'll be never!”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

On his new vegan diet in order to get healthier, in an interview on his wife Sharon's US daytime talkshow The Talk (25 October 2011), as quoted in "Ozzy Osbourne Trying Out Vegan Diet", in Contactmusic.com (25 October 2011) http://www.contactmusic.com/ozzy-osbourne/news/ozzy-osbourne-trying-out-vegan-diet_1252586

Travel, Feeling, Learning, Cooking

“Death is a bend in the road,
To die is to slip out of view.
If I listen, I hear your steps
Existing as I exist.

The earth is made of heaven.
Error has no nest.
No one has ever been lost.
All is truth and way.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

A morte é a curva da estrada,
Morrer é só não ser visto.
Se escuto, eu te oiço a passada
Existir como eu existo.A terra é feita de céu.
A mentira não tem ninho.
Nunca ninguém se perdeu.
Tudo é verdade e caminho.
"A morte é a curva da estrada" (23 May 1932), in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)

Death, Truth, Way, Error

“Thing thrown to a corner, rag fallen on the road, my ignoble being feigns itself in front of life.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 64
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Coisa arrojada a um canto, trapo caído na estrada, meu ser ignóbil ante a vida finge-se.

Life

“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

Love, Life, People, Family

“Great men in teaching weak men to reflect have set them on the road to error.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 179.

Men, Error

“Course numb is an old hat, old as my oldest memories.
See that one's my mother, and that one's my father, and that one in the hat, that's me.
It's a skill I'd hoped to abandon, when I got out on the open road,
But any more pent up emotion and I think I'm gonna explode.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Studying Stones
Song lyrics

Hope, Thinking, Memory

“There's a killer on the road
His brain is squirming like a toad.”

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

"Riders on the Storm" from the album L.A. Woman (1971).

“Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this [surrender], but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face — that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand — the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin — just in the face of this enemy?”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)

Life, War, People, Peace

“In countries held together by borders drawn by colonial powers, with ethnic enclaves and tribal divisions, politics and elections can sometimes appear to be a zero-sum game. And so, given the difficulty in forging true democracy in the face of these pressures, it’s no surprise that some argue the future favors the strongman, a top-down model, rather than strong, democratic institutions. […] I believe the road of true democracy remains the better path. I believe that in the 21st century, economies can only grow to a certain point until they need to open up -- because entrepreneurs need to access information in order to invent; young people need a global education in order to thrive; independent media needs to check the abuses of power. Without this evolution, ultimately expectations of people will not be met; suppression and stagnation will set in. And history shows that strongmen are then left with two paths -- permanent crackdown, which sparks strife at home, or scapegoating enemies abroad, which can lead to war.”

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

2016, United Nations Address (September 2016)

War, People, Education, Democracy

“If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize at one effort the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own — the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple — a few plain words — "My Heart Laid Bare."”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

But — this little book must be true to its title. Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Books, World, Effort, Universe

“There is one story left, one road: that it is. And on this road there are very many signs that, being, is uncreated and imperishable, whole, unique, unwavering, and complete.”

Parmenides (-501–-470 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Frag. B 8.1-4, quoted by Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics, 144

“My abandonment of former beliefs was, however, never complete. Some things remained with me, and still remain: I still think that truth depends upon a relation to fact, and that facts in general are nonhuman; I still think that man is cosmically unimportant, and that a Being, if there were one, who could view the universe impartially, without the bias of here and now, would hardly mention man, except perhaps in a footnote near the end of the volume; but I no longer have the wish to thrust out human elements from regions where they belong; I have no longer the feeling that intellect is superior to sense, and that only Plato's world of ideas gives access to the 'real' world. I used to think of sense, and of thought which is built on sense, as a prison from which we can be freed by thought which is emancipated from sense. I now have no such feelings. I think of sense, and of thoughts built on sense, as windows, not as prison bars. I think that we can, however imperfectly, mirror the world, like Leibniz's monads; and I think it is the duty of the philosopher to make himself as undistorting a mirror as he can. But it is also his duty to recognize such distortions as are inevitable from our very nature. Of these, the most fundamental is that we view the world from the point of view of the here and now, not with that large impartiality which theists attribute to the Deity. To achieve such impartiality is impossible for us, but we can travel a certain distance towards it. To show the road to this end is the supreme duty of the philosopher.”

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

Source: 1950s, My Philosophical Development (1959), p. 213

Truth, World, Travel, Feeling

“A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”

Alice Munro book Selected Stories

Selected Stories, 1968-1994 (1996)

World, Sense, Time, Housing

“I have experience and I am employing it in the service of a Chilean road for Chile's problems. We always take advantage of experience wherever it comes from, but adapting it to our reality. I am putting it to use in a Chilean way, for the problems of Chile. We are not anyone's mental colonists.”

Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician

Interview with Saul Landau (1971)

Way, Problem, Reality

“And I would like to say we've got no lesson on that score to take from the McConnells, from anyone that has been dominating Quebec like a bunch of Rhodesians! The white group. If we have colours here you feel it and that is something we will not stand any more. This paternalistic, WASP … and it is that, typically, WASP arrogance of the ones that have been leading our government and to the slush funds that they contribute to leaving both of our hacked bodies by the road for too long.”

René Lévesque (1922–1987) Quebec politician

The Champions, Part 2: Trappings of Power

Feeling

“The native and untaught suggestions of inquisitive children do often offer things, that may set a considering man's thoughts on work. And I think there is frequently more to be learn'd from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed, and the prejudices of their education.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 121
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Men, Children, Education, Question

“I was reading even before I could spell properly, even though I couldn't necessarily understand what I was reading. Being able to identify a word I knew was like finding a signpost on the road telling me I was on the right path, heading in the right direction. And so it was, in this rather unusual way, Diário by Diário, month by month, pretending not to hear the jokey comments made by the adults in the house, who were amused by the way I would stare at the newspaper as if at a wall, that my moment to astonish them finally came, when, one day, nervous but triumphant, I read out loud, in one go, without hesitation, several consecutive lines of print.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Mal sabendo ainda soletrar, já lia, sem perceber que estava lendo. Identificar na escrita do jornal uma palavra que eu conhecesse era como encontrar um marco na estrada a dizer-me que ia bem, que seguia na boa direcção. E foi assim, desta maneira algo invulgar, Diário após Diário, mês após mês, fazendo de conta que não ouvia as piadas dos adultos da casa, que se divertiam por estar eu a olhar para o jornal como se fosse um muro, que a minha hora de os deixar sem fala chegou, quando, um dia, de um fôlego, li em voz alta, sem titubear, nervoso mas triunfante, umas quantas linhas seguidas.
Source: Small Memories (2006), pp. 87–88

Way, Understanding, Reading, Housing

“I just said that the Hawkins girl's head was severed and taken up the road about twenty-five to fifty yards and buried in a location about ten yards west of the road, on a rocky hillside. Did you hear that?”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

Discussing the murder of Georgann Hawkins to Detective Robert Keppel, days before his execution. Quoted in Keppel, Robert (2005) The Riverman, Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer. Simon and Schuster, pp. 29

Girl

“Oh thinkin’ about all our younger years.
There was only you and me.
We were young and wild and free.
Now nothing can take you away from me.
We've been down that road before.
But that's over now.
You keep me coming back for more.And baby you're all that I want.
When you're lying here in my arms,
I’m finding it hard to believe we're in heaven.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

Heaven
Song lyrics, Reckless (1984)

Lying, Baby

“Democracy is the road to socialism.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Attributed to Marx in recent years, including in Communism (2007) by Tom Lansford, p. 48, but the earliest occurrence of this yet located is in The Communist Review (1952) by the Communist Party of Great Britain, p. 15, where it is used to characterize the Communist agenda.
Disputed

Democracy

“Fair stands the ancient Rectory,
The Rectory of Croft,
The sun shines bright upon it,
The breezes whisper soft.
From all the house and garden
Its inhabitants come forth,
And muster in the road without,
And pace in twos and threes about,
The children of the North.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Lays of Sorrow No. 2, opening lines
The Rectory Umbrella

Children, Sun, Housing

“To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq.”

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

2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)
Context: To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our troops and the determination of our diplomats, we are hopeful about Iraq’s future. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.

“It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.”

Herodotus book Histories

Book 8, Ch. 98
variant: Not snow, no, nor rain, nor heat, nor night keeps them from accomplishing their appointed courses with all speed. (Book 8, Ch. 98)
Paraphrase: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" ”
Appears carved over entrance to Central Post Office building in New York City.
The Histories

Men, Horse, Speed

“America, I know the road will be long, but I know we can get there. Yes, we will stumble, but I know we’ll get back up. That’s how a movement happens. That’s how history bends. That's how when somebody is faint of heart, somebody else brings them along and says, come on, we’re marching.”

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

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)

History, Heart

“There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant

"A Defence of Heraldry"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. Men do not quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never dispute that the hawthorn says the best and wittiest thing about the spring.

Beauty, Heart

“Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter XI, Part I, p. 174.

“A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between.”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Deputy Governor Danforth
The Crucible (1953)
Context: A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time — we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world.

Personality

“He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

St. 3
The Rose (1893), The Rose of the World
Context: Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.

World

“Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Leonard Cohen Penned Letter to 'So Long, Marianne' Muse Before Her Death" by Daniel Kreps, in Rolling Stone (7 August 2016) http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/leonard-cohen-pens-final-letter-to-so-long-marianne-muse-w433144 Context: Well Marianne it's come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. … And you know that I've always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.

Love

“Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Against Unworthy Praise http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1433/ The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) Context: p>O heart, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What's not for their applause Being for a woman's sake. Enough if the work has seemed, So did she your strength renew, A dream that a lion had dreamed Till the wilderness cried aloud, A secret between you two, Between the proud and the proud.What, still you would have their praise! But here's a haughtier text, The labyrinth of her days That her own strangeness perplexed; And how what her dreaming gave Earned slander, ingratitude, From self-same dolt and knave; Aye, and worse wrong than these. Yet she, singing upon her road, Half lion, half child, is at peace.</p

Peace, Singing

“Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.”

William Beveridge Beveridge Report

Pt. 1, 8
Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942)
Context: Organisation of social insurance should be treated as one part only of a comprehensive policy of social progress. Social insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

Disease, Way

“I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

The Green Mile (1996)
Context: I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin' to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I cain't.

Pain, Feeling

“There are only two roads, victory for the working class, freedom, or victory for the fascists which means tyranny.”

Buenaventura Durruti (1896–1936) Spanish anarchist

Van Paassen interview (1936)
Context: There are only two roads, victory for the working class, freedom, or victory for the fascists which means tyranny. Both combatants know what's in store for the loser. We are ready to end fascism once and for all, even in spite of the Republican government.

Freedom, Victory

“Again, and maybe the last time on this earth, I recall the great vision you sent me. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds. Hear me, not for myself, but for my people; I am old. Hear me that they may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shielding tree!”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: To the center of the world you have taken me and showed the goodness and the beauty and the strangeness of the greening earth, the only mother — and there the spirit shapes of things, as they should be, you have shown to me and I have seen. At the center of this sacred hoop, you have said that I should make the tree to bloom.
With tears running, O Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather — with running tears I must say now that the tree has never bloomed. A pitiful old man, you see me here, and I have fallen away and have done nothing. Here at the center of the world, where you took me when I was young and taught me; here, old, I stand, and the tree is withered, Grandfather, my Grandfather!
Again, and maybe the last time on this earth, I recall the great vision you sent me. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds. Hear me, not for myself, but for my people; I am old. Hear me that they may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shielding tree!

People, Bird, Tree, Singing

“Only you can make sure the democracy you inherit is as good as we know it can be. But it requires your dedicated, informed, and engaged citizenship. This citizenship is a harder, higher road to take. But it leads to a better place.”

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

2013, Commencement Address at Ohio State University (May 2013)
Context: Only you can make sure the democracy you inherit is as good as we know it can be. But it requires your dedicated, informed, and engaged citizenship. This citizenship is a harder, higher road to take. But it leads to a better place. It is how we built this country – together. It is the question President Kennedy posed to the nation at his inauguration; the dream that Dr. King invoked. It does not promise easy success or immediate progress. But it has led to success, and it has led to progress.
That brings me to the second thing I ask of you – I ask you to persevere.

Democracy

“The road up and the road down is one and the same.”

Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

Fragment 60
Variant translations:
The road up and the road down are one and the same.
The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same.
The way up and the way down are one and the same.
Numbered fragments

“I thought of all those wise men, poets, artists before me who had suffered, wept, and smiled on the road to truth.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV
Context: I thought of all those wise men, poets, artists before me who had suffered, wept, and smiled on the road to truth. I thought of the Latin poet who wished to reassure and console men by showing them truth as unveiled as a statue. A fragment of his prelude came to my mind, learned long ago, then dismissed and lost like almost everything that I had taken the pains to learn up till then. He said he kept watch in the serene nights to find the words, the poem in which to convey to men the ideas that would deliver them. For two thousand years men have always had to be reassured and consoled. For two thousand years I have had to be delivered. Nothing has changed the surface of things. The teachings of Christ have not changed the surface of things, and would not even if men had not ruined His teachings so that they can no longer follow them honestly. Will the great poet come who shall settle the boundaries of belief and render it eternal, the poet who will be, not a fool, not an ignorant orator, but a wise man, the great inexorable poet? I do not know, although the lofty words of the man who died in the boarding-house have given me a vague hope of his coming and the right to adore him already.

Men, Truth, Smile, Suffering

“To me, the term ‘middle-class’ connotes a safe, comfortable, middle-of-the road policy. Above all, our language is ‘middle-class’ in the middle of our road. To drive it to one side or the other or even off the road, is the noblest task of the future.”

Christian Morgenstern (1871–1914) German author

Future

“The road to socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state … Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the state, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i. e., the most ruthless form of state, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction.”

Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism

Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), p. 177

Life

“For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road and encumbering them.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Perfection, Falseness, Parting, Communication

“Happiness is such a fleeting point of view—there’s no such thing as continual happiness. There are only moments of happiness—from contentment to ecstasy. And if by happiness you mean ecstasy … Yes, I’ve known ecstasy, and it’s a blessing to be able to say it because those who can say it are very few. But ecstasy doesn’t last long and is seldom ever repeated. If by happiness you mean an ordinary contentment, then yes—I’m fairly contented. Not satisfied—contented. Satisfied is a word I use only in reference to my country, and I’ll never be satisfied for my country. For this reason I go on taking difficult paths, and between a paved road and a footpath that goes up the mountain, I choose the footpath. To the great irritation of my bodyguards.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Indira Gandhi in New Delhi, February 1972

Mountain, Country, Happiness

“His humble origins as well his family’s background of being artisans of previous generations meant that he grew up with a healthy respect for work done with one’s hands. He learned to stitch clothes, crush stones, plough fields, lay roads and dig wells, understanding the needs and aspirations of the common man like few others have done in childhood.”

Zail Singh (1916–1994) Indian politician and former President of India

Source: First among equals President of India, p. 69.

Childhood, Family, Clothes, Understanding

“I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.”

George Wallace (1919–1998) 45th Governor of Alabama

Attributed in George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire.
Attributed

School, Parting

“It is the privilege of true genius, and certainly of the genius that opens a new road, to make without punishment great mistakes.”

Voltaire Le Siècle de Louis XIV

"Siècle de Louis XIV," ch. 32 (1751), qtd. in Arthur Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Representation," Criticism of the Kantian philosophy (1818)
Citas
Original: (fr) C'est le privilège du vrai génie, et surtout du génie qui ouvre une carrière, de faire impunément de grandes fautes.

Making love

“The number of paths and roads to one’s planned destination are innumerable but distinct from one another; some take longer and create an arduous journey. All missions require a plan.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1976