Quotes about roll (841 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Life ain't a rehearsal, the camera's always rolling”

Drake (1986) Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor

"Miss Me", Thank Me Later, Lil Wayne (2010)
2010s

Life

“If it's illegal to rock and roll, then throw me in jail.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

“It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in O2 : Breathing New Life Into Faith (2008) by Richard Dahlstrom, Ch. 4 : Artisans of Hope: Stepping into God's Kingdom Story, p. 63; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote. It is also used in The White Rose (1991) by Lillian Garrett-Groag, a monologue during Sophie's interrogation.
Disputed
Context: The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

Life , People

“Some guy said to me: Don't you think you're too old to sing rock n' roll?

I said: You'd better check with Mick Jagger.”

Cher (1946) American singer and actress

Guy , Thinking , Singing

“You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Mercy (1996)

Love , Marriage

“It’s sad to think what the state of rock and roll will be twenty years from now. It just seems like when rock and roll is dead the whole world’s gonna explode. It’s already so rehashed and so plagariazed that it’s barely alive now. It’s disgusting. I mean, kids don’t even really care about rock and roll as much as they used to, as the other generations have. It’s already turned into nothing but a fashion statement and an identity for kids to use as a tool for them to fuck and have a social life. And at that point I really can’t see music being of any importance to a teenager, really.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

Dead , Music , Thinking , World

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Source: On the Road: the Original Scroll

Star

“Let your tears roll tonight, but tomorrow you will start the battle again. What defeats us, always, is just our own sorrow.”

Amin Maalouf (1949) Francophone Lebanese writer based in France

Source: The First Century After Beatrice

Tear

“I don't want to take my time going to work. I got a motorcycle and a sleeping bag and 10 or 15 girls. What the hell I want to go off and go to work for? Work for what? Money? I've got all the money in the world. I'm the king, man! I run the underworld, guy! I decide who does what and where they do it at! What am I gonna run around and act like I'm some teeny-bopper somewhere for somebody else's money? I make the money, man. I roll the nickels. The game is mine! I deal the cards.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-U2-cAUMM

Money , World , Guy , Girl

“I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.”

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

Source: Nemesis

Knowledge , Universe

“I lived in Hollywood and I had all that, the Rolls Royce and the Ferrari and the pad in Beverly Hills. I had the surf board and the Beach Boys and the bishkis and the Neil Diamond and the ramskam and the Jimmy shriffen [ph. ] and the Elvis Presley's best of bestlies and all them guys. The Dean and Martins and the Nancy Sinatras and the cops and sovereigns, "Will you do it to me? I hear you do it good honey" and all that kind of "Will you come up to my house later?" So I went through all that and I seen that was a bigger prison than the one I just got out of and I really didn't care to go back in prison. See, prison doesn't begin and end at the gate. Prison is in the mind. It's locked in one world that's dead and dying, or it's open to a world that's free and alive.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

NBC interview (1987)

World , Guy , Boy , Housing

“Justice is a machine that, when someone has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself.”

John Galsworthy Justice

Justice, Act II (1910)

Justice

“Oh, no. Oh, thank you, none of that foreign muck. What? Garlic bread? Garlic bread? Garlic? Bread? Am I hearin' you right? Garlic bread? No, thank you, I've got some milk roll in t'case that'll do me. The toasty loaf. The garlic bread!”

Peter Kay (1973) English writer, producer, actor and comedian

[on foreign food]
Live At The Top Of The Tower [2000]

“What happened to fantasy for me is what also happened to rock and roll. It found a common denominator for making maximum money. As a result, it lost its tensions, its anger, its edginess and turned into one big cup of cocoa.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Money , Anger

“When his rolls royce was mobbed by fans the chauffeur said:
''do you want me to get them off the car?''
and Lennon replied: ''No - they paid for it, they can wreck it”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Cars

“… I just know that, right now, … the biggest record selling business there is is rock and roll.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Pop Chronicles: Show 55 - Crammer: A lively cram course on the history of rock and some other things http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19838/m1/, interview recorded 1956 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

Business

“Rock and roll is a music, and why should a music contribute to … juvenile delinquency? If people are going to be juvenile delinquents, they're going to be delinquents if they hear … Mother Goose rhymes.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Pop Chronicles, Show 7 - The All American Boy: Enter Elvis and the rock-a-billies. Part 1 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19754/m1/, interview recorded 1956 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

People , Music

“The art of concentrating strength at one point, forcing a breakthrough, rolling up and securing the flanks on either side, and then penetrating like lightning, before the enemy has time to react, deep into his rear.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

Strategies he promoted which have been called Blitzkrieg (Lightning War), as quoted in Europe Since 1914 (1966) by Gordon Alexander Craig

Art , Time

“You must learn to talk clearly. The jargon of scientific terminology which rolls off your tongues is mental garbage.”

Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962) American university teacher (1879-1962)

As quoted in ‪Encore : A Continuing Anthology‬ (December 1943) edited by Smith Dent, "Fischerisms" p. 709

Learning

“I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

Amos (prophet) Hebrew prophet

5:21-24 NIV
Book of Amos

Justice , Music

“You know, my temperature's risin'
and the jukebox blows a fuse
My heart's beatin' rhythm
and my soul keeps on singin' the blues
Roll Over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Roll Over Beethoven" (1956) · Live performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT3kCVFFLNg
Song lyrics

Soul , Heart

“Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

Problem , Forgetting

“The lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of Göring’s bombing planes.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Part II : Shopkeepers At War, § II
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Cars

“If love is a gamble, baby let me roll my dice.”

Dua Lipa (1995) English singer and songwriter

Source: instagram.com/dualipa

Baby , Love

“The journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Context: PIPPIN: I didn't think it would end this way.
GANDALF: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
PIPPIN: What? Gandalf? See what?
GANDALF: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
PIPPIN: Well, that isn't so bad.
GANDALF: No. No, it isn't.

World , Death

“I’m no expert with females”—the others
rolled their eyes at that—“but I believe an attempted decapitation communicates the
need for some space.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Lothaire

Communication

“We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

“There was nothing like a Saturday - unless it was the Saturday leading up to the last week of school and into summer vacation. That of course was all the Saturdays of your life rolled into one big shiny ball.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Rising Tides

Life , School , Summer

“Now he knew: They were real. Who’d make up a thing like this? Okay, one of them was a cheese that rolled around of its own accord, but nobody was perfect.”

Terry Pratchett book Wintersmith

Source: Wintersmith

Perfection

“The rock and roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Interview on London Plus (24 September 1984) - YouTube video http://youtube.com/watch?v=CR2N040drg0

World , Music , Business

“Sorrow comes in great waves… but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Strong

“Lie on the bridge and watch the water flowing past. Or run, or wade through the swamp in your red boots. Or roll yourself up and listen to the rain falling on the roof. It's very easy to enjoy yourself.”

Tove Jansson book Moominvalley in November

Source: Moominvalley in November

Lie , Water , Past

“because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars…”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Star

“It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Time

“When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not Guilty'.”

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

“Thunder rolled.. It rolled a six.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

“I've learned that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

Life , Learning

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Fesgao remarked, his dark eyes unreadable.
Aly rolled her eyes. Why did everyone say that to her? “People always forget the rest of the saying,” she complained. “‘And satisfaction brought it back.”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

Source: Trickster's Choice

People , Cats , Forgetting

“My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Source: John Lennon: In His Own Words

Guy , Cry

“Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 164
Context: Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it. A strength which becomes clearer and stronger through its experience of such obstacles is the only strength that can conquer them. Resistance is only a waste of strength.

People , Way

“Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Lie , Grass , Time

“I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: A Thousand Mornings

Love , Dependency , Sea

“The sea, the sea, the sea. It rolled and rolled and called to me. Come in, it said, come in.”

Sharon Creech book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer

Sea

“Will rolled up his sleeves. "We'll probably have to knock down the door--"
"Or," said Jem, reaching out and giving the knob a twist, "not."
The door swung open onto a rectangle of darkness.
"Now, that's simply laziness," said Will.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“I immersed myself in books and rock 'n' roll, the adolescent salvation…”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

Books

“If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

1972 Mike Douglas Show http://www.thebeatlesrarity.com/2012/06/11/beatles-rarity-of-the-week-john-lennon-performs-with-chuck-berry-1972/, quoted in: Lawrence, Ken (2005) John Lennon: In His Own Words, p. 107.

“Yeah, come on & let the good times roll
We're gonna stay here till we soothe our souls.
If it take all night long.”

Sam Cooke (1931–1964) American singer-songwriter and entrepreneur

Good Times
Song lyrics, Ain't That Good News (1964)

Soul , Time , Night

“There is, however, one car company that has never lost sight of its role in the marketplace. Rolls-Royce. Sir Henry Royce, who founded the company back in 1904, really was a one-man quote machine. "Strive for perfection in everything you do." "Accept nothing as nearly right or good enough." "The quality remains long after the price is forgotten."”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it."
Rolls-Royce, p. 19
I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Dreams , Cars , Quotes , Perfection

“Ron's funnier than Robin Williams. The hard thing is not to laugh when the camera is rolling.”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

on Rupert Grint

“Me still alone, me sip on the rum
Me wonder when the boat she come
To bring me love, oh sweet little thing
She rock 'n' roll, she dance and sing
She hold me tight, she touch me lips
Me eyes they close, me heart she flip
Havana moon, Havana moon”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Havana Moon" (1957)
Song lyrics

Love , Singing , Heart , Dance

“If the auto industry advanced as rapidly as the semiconductor industry, a Rolls Royce would get half a million miles per gallon, and it would be cheaper to throw it away than to park it.”

Gordon Moore (1929) American businessman, co-founder of Intel and author of the eponym law

Moore's Law | ZEISS International http://www.zeiss.com/semiconductor-manufacturing-technology/en_de/products-solutions/lithography-optics/about-optical-lithography/moore_s-law.html (quoting an unidentified statement pertaining to Moore's Law.)

“I shall never forget the impression which our first landing on the beach of California make upon me. The sun had just gone down; it was getting dusky; the damp night wind was beginning to blow, and the heavy swell of the Pacific was setting in, and breaking in loud and high "combers" on the beach… we put our oars in the boat, and, leaving one to watch it, walked about the beach to see what we could of the place. The beach is nearly a mile in length between the two points, and of smooth sand… It was growing dark, so that we could just distinguish the dim outlines of the two vessels in the offing; and the great seas were rolling in in regular lines, growing larger and larger as they approached the shore, and hanging over the beach upon which they were to break, when their tops would curl over and turn white with foam, and, being at one extreme of the line, break rapidly to the other, as a child's long card house falls when a card is knocked down at one end.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. book Two Years Before the Mast

Two Years Before the Mast (1840)

Sun , Housing , Sea , Night

“I started in, got it [former Monet's house, where he lived 1878 - 1881 in Vetheuil; [Mitchell bought the house and used it mainly first in the weekends] in summer of 67, Yeah, well, and then I started... I was still painting at Fremicourt and I remember starting the 'Sunflowers' [series, c. 1969-72], which I saw in Vetheuil and painted them in Fremicourt, you see... The thing about [the studio in] Fremicourt, also about St. Marks: I had to roll [large] paintings to get them out, which was a real drag, because of thickness [of the paint which cracked]. And when I started painting in Vetheuil, you can just take the [stretched] paintings out [in open air]. Well, that really changed unconsciously an awful lot of... Walk them out stretched, it's great.”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

second side of the first tape
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

Change , Summer , Painting , Housing

“Heaven grants us this hour: now from our gate
all mists have cleared; on high, clouds roll away.”

Nguyễn Du The Tale of Kieu

Source: The Tale of Kiều (1813), Lines 3121–3122; quoted by Joe Biden, while welcoming Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong in Washington (July 2015), as reported in "The Tale of Kieu, lotus and the US President" by Bui Hoang Tam, dtinews.vn (25 May 2016) http://dtinews.vn/en/news/027/45323/the-tale-of-kieu--lotus-and-the-us-president.html: "Thank heaven we are here today, to see the sun through parting fog and clouds."

“I beheld such a sight as I had never beheld before, and which no living person can have seen save in the delirium of fever or the inferno of opium. The building stood on a narrow point of land — or what was now a narrow point of land — fully three hundred feet above what must lately have been a seething vortex of mad waters. On either side of the house there fell a newly washed-out precipice of red earth, whilst ahead of me the hideous waves were still rolling in frightfully, eating away the land with ghastly monotony and deliberation.”

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

Fiction, The Crawling Chaos (1921)

Water , Housing , Personality , Madness

“When all the dark clouds roll away
And the sun begins to shine
I see my freedom from across the way
And it comes right in on time
Well it shines so bright and it gives so much light
And it comes from the sky above
Makes me feel so free makes me feel like me
And lights my life with love.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Brand New Day
Song lyrics, Moondance (1970)

Love , Life , Way , Feeling

“Each state of the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it is shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it; eternity is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth dwells in the sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny of the human race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily creation.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Letter 4: Theosophy of Julius
The Philosophical Letters

Truth , Time , Sun , Future

“It's an interesting fact that fewer than 17 % of Real cats end their lives with the same name they started with. Much family effort goes into selecting one at the start ("She looks like a Winnifred to me"), and the as the years roll by it suddenly finds itself being called Meepo or Ratbag.”

Terry Pratchett book The Unadulterated Cat

The Unadulterated Cat (1989)

Family , Cats , Effort

“The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome. In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare — in all countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long roll of "assaults" and "drunk and disorderlies" his name seldom appears …”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Peace , Appearance , Country

“O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven: but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more: whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art, perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O sun, in the strength of thy youth!”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"Carthon", pp. 163–164
The Poems of Ossian

Youth , World , Beauty , Art

“I appreciate being picked one of the top 100 performers, but who is number one and who is number two doesn't matter to me anymore. Because it won't be who I think it should be. The Rolling Stones started with me, but they're going to always be in front of me. The Beatles started with me — at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany, before they ever made an album — but they're going to always be in front of me. James Brown, Jimi Hendrix — these people started with me. I fed them, I talked to them, and they're going to always be in front of me.”

Little Richard (1932) American pianist, singer and songwriter

On Rolling Stone list on 100 Greatest Artists, 100 Greatest Artists | Little Richard | Rolling Stone http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-artists-of-all-time-19691231/little-richard-20110420
Song lyrics, Others

People , Star , Thinking

“And in that moment we all thought of the space that her round arms would occupy moving backward and forward with the rolling pin over the dough, her bosom leaning over the great mound of flour and eggs, […] and we thought of the space the flour would occupy, and the wheat for the flour, and the fields to raise the wheat, and the mountains from which the water would flow to irrigate the fields; […] of the space it would take for the Sun to arrive with its rays, to ripen the wheat; of the space for the Sun to condense from the clouds of stellar gases and burn; of the quantities of stars and galaxies and galactic masses in flight through space which would be needed to hold suspended every galaxy, every nebula, every sun, every planet, and at the same time we thought of it, this space was inevitably being formed, at the same time that Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0 was uttering those words: "… ah, what noodles, boys!" the point that contained her and all of us was expanding in a halo of distance in light-years and light-centuries and billions of light-millennia, and we were being hurled to the four corners of the universe, […] and she, dissolved into I don't know what kind of energy-light-heat, she, Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0, she who in the midst of our closed, petty world had been capable of a generous impulse, "Boys, the noodles I would make for you!," a true outburst of general love, initiating at the same moment the concept of space and, properly speaking, space itself, and time, and universal gravitation, and the gravitating universe, making possible billions and billions of suns, and of planets, and fields of wheat, and Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0s, scattered through the continents of the planets, kneading with floury, oil-shiny, generous arms, and she lost at that very moment, and we, mourning her loss.”

Italo Calvino book Cosmicomics

Pages 46-47, "All at One Point".
Cosmicomics (1965)

Love , World , Mountain , Star

“This is Vedic civilization: plain living, high thinking. And poor thinking, poor in thought, poor in behavior, and living with motorcar and this, that, nonsense. It is all nonsense civilization. A first-class Rolls Royce car, and who is sitting there? A third-class negro. This is going on. You’ll find these things in Europe and America. This is going on. A first-class car and a third-class negro. That’s all. Is it not?”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Room Conversation, October 5, 1975, Mauritius PrabhupadaBooks.com http://prabhupadabooks.com/conversations/1975/oct/mauritius/october/05/1975?d=1
Quotes from other Sources, Quotes from other Sources: Racism and Homophobia

Cars , Behavior , Thinking

“Once a thing's been done it's been done, so while this nostalgia — I mean for the '60s and '70s, you know, looking backwards for inspiration, copying the past — how's that rock 'n' roll? Do something of your own. Start something new, you know? Live your lives now. Know what I mean?”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

BBC interview, used in a Citroën ad, as quoted in "John Lennon Appearance In Car Ad Stirs Controversy" by Monica Herrera in Billboard (4 March 2010) http://www.billboard.com/column-viralvideos/john-lennon-appearance-in-car-ad-stirs-controversy-1004072693.story#/column-viralvideos/john-lennon-appearance-in-car-ad-stirs-controversy-1004072693.story. Though there has been no official dispute that he made this statement, a YouTube video has claimed that the audio used in the advertisement is not original http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipyUk5-wlFg.
Disputed

Nostalgia , Past

“Unless they are universal, the reforms to be carried out are utopian and mortal. National reforms are only fragments of reforms. There must be no half measures. Half measures are laughter-provoking in their unbounded littleness when it is a question for the last time of arresting the world's roll down the hill of horror. There must be no half measures because there are no half truths. Do all, or you will do nothing.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXII - Light

Truth , World , Question , Laughter

“Classical musicians go to the conservatories, rock´n roll musicians go to the garages.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Interview at Swedish Radio, programme Nightflite (circus 1980) http://home.swipnet.se/bengt-jonsson/zappaint.htm#Bobby

“I had gotten up to two, maybe three, packs (of cigarettes) a day. And my lungs were bothering me and I'd had pneumonia two or three times. And I was also smoking pot, and I decided, well, one of them's got to go. And so I took a pack of Chesterfields and took all the Chesterfields out, rolled up 20 big fat ones and put it in there, and I haven't smoked a cigarette since then”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Willie Nelson: Road Rules And Deep Thoughts, NPR Staff, NPR.org, National Public Radio, November 18, 2012, November 18, 2012 http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=165223056,

Time

“No matter how long you play rock and roll, songs might change just as long as the balls are there, the rock balls. And that's what's important to us”

Bon Scott (1946–1980) Rock musician

Interview with Record Review, 1979.

Change

“If you tell your troubles to God, you put them into the grave; they will never rise again when you have committed them to Him. If you roll your burden anywhere else, it will roll back again like the stone of Sisyphus.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 596.

God

“It was wonderful, a stunning happy ending to what began as just another tragic rock & roll story, as if Bob Dylan had been arrested in Miami for jacking off in a seedy little XXX theater while stroking the spine of a fat young boy.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

Boy , Happiness

“I wanna roll with him a hard pair we will be.
A little gambling is fun when you're with me (I love it).
Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun.
And baby when it's love if it's not rough it isn't fun, fun.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Poker Face, written by Lady Gaga and RedOne
Song lyrics, The Fame (2008)

Love , Baby

“When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer. That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. And it betrays who we are as a country… What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future. Those with money and power will gain greater control over the decisions that could send a young soldier to war, or allow another economic disaster, or roll back the equal rights and voting rights that generations of Americans have fought, even died, to secure. As frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background. We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want, or the security we want, but most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world.”

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

2016, State of the Union address (January 2016)

Money , War , World , Decision

“I sit here in the upper circle surrounded by copper and gold, and smile with joy under my fly net as all the light, glory and quivering brightness passes slowly and freely before my eyes. Nothing happier than this. I shout and laugh at my immense wealth, all free and without responsibility. Who could steal this from me? No one. Oh that I could roll some up— as at present.”

Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) Australian artist

Reported in Mollie Hetherington, Famous Australians (1983), p. 252.

Smile , Light , Joy , Flying

“The ball of snow when, as it rolls, it descends from the snowy mountains, increases in size as it falls.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

Mountain

“I'm just a Rock and Roll Rebel,
I tell you no lies,
they say I worship the devil,
they must be stupid or blind”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Rock and Roll Rebel, written by Ozzy Osbourne.
Song lyrics, Bark at the Moon (1983)

Stupidity

“The art of 'figuring' or 'picturing' is not a fine art. An artist who is lobbying as a 'creature of circumstances' or log rolling as a 'victim of fate' is not a fine master artist. No one ever forces an artist to be pure.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), pp. 156-157

Fate , Art

“The blighter that is at the end of the sea
On the pitch-black night raised itself flying;
Round the vessel it flew three times,
Three times it flew creaking,
And said, 'Who dared pierce
Into my dens that I do not reveal,
My black ceilings of the end of the world?'
And the helmsman said, trembling,
'His Majesty King John the Second!'

'Whose sails are these then which I rub against?
Whose the keels I see and hear?'
Said the blighter, and rolled three times,
Three times it rolled filthy and bulky,
'Who attempts what is solely my power,
I who abide where no one ever could see me
And who drip the fears of the depthless sea?'
And the helmsman trembled, and said,
'His Majesty King John the Second!'

Three times he raised his hands from the helm,
Three times he had them rooted on the helm,
And said after trembling three times,
'Here at the helm I am more than myself:
I am a People who wants the sea that is yours;
And more than the blighter, that my soul fears
And rolls on the darkness of the end of the world,
Orders the will, that ties me at the helm,
Of His Majesty King John the Second!'”

Fernando Pessoa book Mensagem

Poem "O Mostrengo" http://www.inverso.pt/Mensagem/MarPortugues/mostrengo.htm, lines 1–9, trans. Charles Eglington ( Listen to the poem on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5Ihd-ECpYM)
Message

People , World , Fear , Soul

“Today is Sunday.
For the first time they took me out into the sun today.
And for the first time in my life I was aghast
that the sky is so far away
and so blue
and so vast
I stood there without a motion.
Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion
leaning against the white wall.
Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to roll
Or about strife or freedom or my wife right now.
The soil, the sun and me…
I feel joyful and how.”

Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963) Turkish poet

From Today is Sunday

Life , Feeling , Freedom , Time

“I roll up in yo city and get my push on”

Bun B (1973) American rapper from Texas; 1/2 of UGK

The Game Belongs to me
Too Hard to Swallow (1992), Underground Kingz (2007)

“By wearing a mark of ash one were to reach heaven, a donkey (that rolls in ash) should reach there surely.”

Sarvajna Kannada poet, pragmatist and philosopher

Tripadis

“I'll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and, uh… and, uh… heartless manipulators, about music… that takes up the energies, and the bodies, and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds, of young men, who give what they have to it, and give everything they have to it. And it's a… it's a term that's based on contempt; it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll. I don't know Johnny Rotten.. but I'm sure, I'm sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise… is in fact… the brilliant music of a genius… myself. And that music is so powerful, that it's quite beyond my control. And, ah… when I'm in the grips of it, I don't feel pleasure and I don't feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Have you ever, have you ever felt like that? When you just, when you just, you couldn't feel anything, and you didn't want to either. You know, like that? Do you understand what I'm saying, sir?”

Iggy Pop (1947) American rock singer-songwriter, musician, and actor

Peter Gzowski's 90 Minutes Live interview (1977)

Men , Pain , Pleasure , Music

“Not only does God play dice with the world—He does not let us see what He has rolled.”

Stanisław Lem book Imaginary Magnitude

Imaginary Magnitude" (1981), "Lecture XLIII", tr. Marc E. Heine (1984)

God , World

“And they don't really know even what they're talkin' about
And I can't image what empty heads can achieve
Leave me alone, don't want your promises no more
'Cos rock & roll is my religion and my law
Won't ever change, may think it's strange
You can't kill rock & roll, it's here to stay”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

You Can't Kill Rock and Roll, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley.
Song lyrics, Diary of a Madman (1981)

Religion , Law , Thinking , Change

“She makes me get up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to let any air git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a cellar-door for — well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and sweat and sweat — I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell — everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 35

Hate , Shoe , Sleep , Time

“I learnt to see philosophical systems in the context of the social milieu which produced them. I therefore learnt to look for social contention in philosophical systems. It is of course possible to see the history of philosophy in diverse ways, each way of seeing it being in fact an illumination of the type of problem dealt with in this branch of human thought. It is possible, for instance, to look upon philosophy as a series of abstract systems. When philosophy is so seen, even moral philosophers, with regrettable coyness, say that their preoccupation has nothing to do with life. They say that their concern is not to name moral principles or to improve anybody's character, but narrowly to elucidate the meaning of terms used in ethical discourse, and to determine the status of moral principles and ru1es, as regards the obligation which they impose upon us. When philosophy is regarded in the light of a series of abstract systems, it can be said to concern itself with two fundamental questions: first, the question 'what there is'; second, the question how 'what there is' may be explained. The answer to the first question has a number of aspects. It lays down a minimum number of general under which every item in the world can and must be brought. It does this without naming the items themselves, without furnishing us with an inventory, a roll-call of the items, the objects in the world. It specifies, not particu1ar objects, but the basic types of object. The answer further implies a certain reductionism; for in naming only a few basic types as exhausting all objects in the world, it brings object directly under one of the basic types.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Source: Consciencism (1964), Philosophy In Retrospect, pp. 5-6.

Life , World , Way , History

“Look, we're all the same; a man is a fourteen-room house — in the bedroom he's asleep with his intelligent wife, in the living-room he's rolling around with some bareass girl, in the library he's paying his taxes, in the yard he's raising tomatoes, and in the cellar he's making a bomb to blow it all up.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Lyman, Act 2
The Ride Down Mount Morgan (1991)

Girl , Intelligence , Housing

“Well I looked at my watch, it was 9:54
I said, "Dance ballerina girl, go go go!"
And we rolled, reelin' and a rockin'
We was reelin' and a rockin'
Rollin' till the break of dawn”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Reelin' and Rockin"' (1958)
Song lyrics

Girl , Dance

“It is true that I want to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the very wealthiest Americans and go back to the rate that they paid under Bill Clinton. John McCain calls that socialism. What he forgets, conveniently, is that just a few years ago, he himself said those Bush tax cuts were irresponsible. He said he couldn't in good conscience support tax cuts where the benefit went to the wealthy at the expense of middle class Americans who most need the tax relief. That's his quote. Well, he was right then, and I am right now.”

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

Comments at a campaign rally in Tampa; Florida (20 October 2008) http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2008/10/20/394027.html
2008

Quotes , Support , Forgetting

“With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

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

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: I have not lost faith. I'm not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven't lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I can still sing "We Shall Overcome" because Carlyle was right: "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right: "Truth pressed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right: "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne." Yet, that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the bible is right: "You shall reap what you sow." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid because the words of the Lord have spoken it. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we're free at last!" With this faith, we'll sing it as we're getting ready to sing it now. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore. And I don't know about you, I ain't gonna study war no more.

World , Faith , Justice , Beauty

“It was all my identities, all rolling in over me.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

Be Here Now (1971)
Context: I recall starting to "come down" and this huge red wave rolled in across the room. … It was all my identities, all rolling in over me. I remember holding up my hand and saying, "NO, NO, I don't want to go back." It was like this heavy burden I was going to take on myself. And I realized I didn't have the key — I didn't know the magic words, like "Abracadabra" or "Hocus Pocus" or whatever it was going to be that would stop that wave.

“Fading, with the Night, the memory of a dead love, and the withered leaves of a blighted hope, and the sickly repinings and moody regrets that numb the best energies of the soul: and rising, broadening, rolling upward like a living flood, the manly resolve, and the dauntless will, and the heavenward gaze of faith — the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen!
"Look Eastward! Aye, look Eastward!"”

Lewis Carroll book Sylvie and Bruno

Source: Sylvie and Bruno (1889), Chapter 25 : Looking Eastward

Love , Faith , Hope , Soul

“With effort, we can roll back poverty and the roadblocks to opportunity. Americans don’t accept a free ride for anybody, nor do we believe in equality of outcomes. But we do expect equal opportunity.”

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

2015, Bloody Sunday Speech (March 2015)
Context: With effort, we can roll back poverty and the roadblocks to opportunity. Americans don’t accept a free ride for anybody, nor do we believe in equality of outcomes. But we do expect equal opportunity. And if we really mean it, if we’re not just giving lip service to it, but if we really mean it and are willing to sacrifice for it, then, yes, we can make sure every child gets an education suitable to this new century, one that expands imaginations and lifts sights and gives those children the skills they need. We can make sure every person willing to work has the dignity of a job, and a fair wage, and a real voice, and sturdier rungs on that ladder into the middle class. And with effort, we can protect the foundation stone of our democracy for which so many marched across this bridge –- and that is the right to vote.

Effort

“It is the misfortune of active men that their activity is almost always a bit irrational. For example, one must not inquire of the money-gathering banker what the purpose for his restless activity is: it is irrational. Active people roll like a stone, conforming to the stupidity of mechanics.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Human, All Too Human (1878)

Money , People , Men , Stupidity

“By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal, differing more widely from each other than those which roll round the infinite and which, whether their name be Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us their unique rays many centuries after the hearth from which they emanate is extinguished.This labour of the artist to discover a means of apprehending beneath matter and experience, beneath words, something different from their appearance, is of an exactly contrary nature to the operation in which pride, passion, intelligence and habit are constantly engaged within us when we spend our lives without self-communion, accumulating as though to hide our true impressions, the terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Par l’art seulement, nous pouvons sortir de nous, savoir ce que voit un autre de cet univers qui n’est pas le même que le nôtre et dont les paysages nous seraient restés aussi inconnus que ceux qu’il peut y avoir dans la lune. Grâce à l’art, au lieu de voir un seul monde, le nôtre, nous le voyons se multiplier, et autant qu’il y a d’artistes originaux, autant nous avons de mondes à notre disposition, plus différents les uns des autres que ceux qui roulent dans l’infini et qui, bien des siècles après qu’est éteint le foyer dont il émanait, qu’il s’appelât Rembrandt ou Vermeer, nous envoient encore leur rayon spécial.Ce travail de l’artiste, de chercher à apercevoir sous la matière, sous de l’expérience, sous des mots, quelque chose de différent, c’est exactement le travail inverse de celui que, à chaque minute, quand nous vivons détourné de nous-même, l’amour-propre, la passion, l’intelligence, et l’habitude aussi accomplissent en nous, quand elles amassent au-dessus de nos impressions vraies, pour nous les cacher entièrement, les nomenclatures, les buts pratiques que nous appelons faussement la vie.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VII: The Past Recaptured (1927), Ch. III: "An Afternoon Party at the House of the Princesse de Guermantes"

Intelligence , Nature , Art , Self-confidence