Quotes about room
page 20

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto photo
Jesse Jackson photo
Jesse Jackson photo
Stephen King photo
Theresa May photo

“I ask everyone in this room to back the deal so we can complete our historic duty - to deliver on the decision of the British people and leave the European Union with a smooth and orderly exit.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Brexit: Theresa May vows to stand down if deal is passed https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47725529 BBC News (27 March 2019)
2010s, On Brexit

Johann Most photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
W.E.B. Du Bois photo
Nicolas Chamfort photo

“An honest fellow stripped of all his illusions is the ideal man. Though he may have little wit, his society is always pleasant. As nothing matters to him, he cannot be pedantic; yet is he tolerant, remembering that he too has had the illusions which still beguile his neighbor. He is trustworthy in his dealings, because of his indifference; he avoids all quarreling and scandal in his own person, and either forgets or passes over such gossip or bickering as may be directed against himself. He is more entertaining than other people because he is in a constant state of epigram against his neighbor. He dwells in truth, and smiles at the stumbling of others who grope in falsehood. He watches from a lighted place the ludicrous antics of those who walk in a dim room at random. Laughing, he breaks the false weight and measure of men and things.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

L'honnête homme, détrompé de toutes les illusions, est l'homme par excellence. Pour peu qu'il ait d'esprit, sa société est très aimable. Il ne saurait être pédant, ne mettant d'importance à rien. Il est indulgent, parce qu'il se souvient qu'il a eu des illusions, comme ceux qui en sont encore occupés. C'est un effet de son insouciance d'être sûr dans le commerce, de ne se permettre ni redites, ni tracasseries. Si on se les permet à son égard, il les oublie ou les dédaigne. Il doit être plus gai qu'un autre, parce qu'il est constamment en état d'épigramme contre son prochain. Il est dans le vrai et rit des faux pas de ceux qui marchent à tâtons dans le faux. C'est un homme qui, d'un endroit éclairé, voit dans une chambre obscure les gestes ridicules de ceux qui s'y promènent au hasard. Il brise, en riant, les faux poids et les fausses mesures qu'on applique aux hommes et aux choses.
Maximes et Pensées, #339
Maxims and Considerations, #339

Dave Barry photo
Jeet Thayil photo
Samuel T. Cohen photo

“As you can well imagine, any nuclear bombing study that neglected to target Moscow would be laughed out of the room. (That is, no study at that time; 10 or 15 years later senior policy officials were debating how good an idea this might be. If you wiped out the political leadership of the Soviet Union in the process, who would you deal with in arranging for a truce and who would be left to run the country after the war?) Consequently, two of RAND’s brightest mathematicians were assigned the task of determining, with the help of computers, in great detail, precisely what would happen to the city were a bomb of so many megatons dropped on it. It was truly a daunting task and called for devising a mathematical model unimaginably complex; one that would deal with the exact population distribution, the precise location of various industries and government agencies, the vulnerability of all the important structures to the bomb’s effects, etc., etc. However, these two guys were up to the task and toiled in the vineyards for some months, finally coming up with the results. Naturally, they were horrendous.”

Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010) American physicist

Harold Mitchell, a medical doctor, an expert on human vulnerability to the H-bomb’s effects, told me when the study first began: “Why are they wasting their time going through all this shit? You know goddamned well that a bomb this big is going to blow the fucking city into the next county. What more do you have to know?” I had to agree with him.
F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)

Zakir Hussain (politician) photo
Christian Dior photo
M. Balamuralikrishna photo
Ellen Page photo
Sandra Fluke photo
Rod Blagojevich photo

“Nobody could work a room like Rod—nobody.”

Rod Blagojevich (1956) Former Governor of Illinois

Jan Schakowsky, to Chicago Magazine, 2009
Source: Chicago Straight, David, Bernstein, June 2009, Chicago magazine, Tribune Media Group, June 29, 2015 http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/June-2009/Chicago-Straight/,

Laura Antoniou photo
Steven Gerrard photo

“Steven Gerrard was awesome today. We were just laughing in the dressing room that at one stage we thought he was heading his own crosses in.”

Steven Gerrard (1980) English footballer

Gareth Southgate on Gerrard after a Premiership game between Middlesbrough and Liverpool in 2005. Peter Gill. "Lordy, It's The Quotes Of The Week", Football365.com, August 16, 2005 (article offline; cache http://web.archive.org/web/20051028201926/http://www.football365.com/features/interviews/story_159958.shtml).

Jerome K. Jerome photo

“But if we look a little deeper we shall find there is a pathetic, one might almost say a tragic, side to the picture. A shy man means a lonely man—a man cut off from all companionship, all sociability. He moves about the world, but does not mix with it. Between him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impassable barrier—a strong, invisible wall that, trying in vain to scale, he but bruises himself against. He sees the pleasant faces and hears the pleasant voices on the other side, but he cannot stretch his hand across to grasp another hand. He stands watching the merry groups, and he longs to speak and to claim kindred with them. But they pass him by, chatting gayly to one another, and he cannot stay them. He tries to reach them, but his prison walls move with him and hem him in on every side. In the busy street, in the crowded room, in the grind of work, in the whirl of pleasure, amid the many or amid the few—wherever men congregate together, wherever the music of human speech is heard and human thought is flashed from human eyes, there, shunned and solitary, the shy man, like a leper, stands apart. His soul is full of love and longing, but the world knows it not. The iron mask of shyness is riveted before his face, and the man beneath is never seen. Genial words and hearty greetings are ever rising to his lips, but they die away in unheard whispers behind the steel clamps. His heart aches for the weary brother, but his sympathy is dumb. Contempt and indignation against wrong choke up his throat, and finding no safety-valve whence in passionate utterance they may burst forth, they only turn in again and harm him. All the hate and scorn and love of a deep nature such as the shy man is ever cursed by fester and corrupt within, instead of spending themselves abroad, and sour him into a misanthrope and cynic.”

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Dylan Moran photo
Howard Carter photo

“With trembling hands, I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner… widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in… at first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle to flicker. Presently, details of the room emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold – everywhere the glint of gold.”

Howard Carter (1874–1939) British egyptologist

For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand in suspense any longer, inquired anxiously "Can you see anything?", it was all I could do to get out the words "Yes, wonderful things".
Tutankhamen and the Glint of Gold http://www.fathom.com/feature/190166/index.html
Diary, 26 November 1922.

Ingmar Bergman photo
Bill Bryson photo

“Making models was reputed to be hugely enjoyable… But when you got the kit home and opened the box the contents turned out to be of a uniform leaden gray or olive green, consisting of perhaps sixty thousand tiny parts, some no larger than a proton, all attached in some organic, inseparable way to plastic stalks like swizzle sticks. The tubes of glue by contrast were the size of large pastry tubes. No matter how gently you depressed them they would blurp out a pint or so of a clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself to some foreign object—a human finger, the living-room drapes, the fur of a passing animal—and become an infinitely long string. Any attempt to break the string resulted in the creation of more strings. Within moments you would be attached to hundreds of sagging strands, all connected to something that had nothing to do with model airplanes or World War II. The only thing the glue wouldn’t stick to, interestingly, was a piece of plastic model; then it just became a slippery lubricant that allowed any two pieces of model to glide endlessly over each other, never drying. The upshot was that after about forty minutes of intensive but troubled endeavor you and your immediate surroundings were covered in a glistening spiderweb of glue at the heart of which was a gray fuselage with one wing on upside down and a pilot accidentally but irremediably attached by his flying cap to the cockpit ceiling. Happily by this point you were so high on the glue that you didn’t give a shit about the pilot, the model, or anything else.”

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 81

Richard Feynman photo

“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know?”

It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.
from lecture "What is and What Should be the Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society", given at the Galileo Symposium in Italy (1964)
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“To stroll on wharves, and in alleys and in streets and in the houses, waiting-rooms, even saloons, that is not a pleasant pastime unless for an artist.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

As such, one would rather be in the dirtiest place where there is something to draw, than at a tea party with charming ladies. Unless one wants to draw ladies, then a tea party is all right even for an artist.
quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands in Spring 1882; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 34 (letter 190)
1880s, 1882

Ernest Rutherford photo
Emily Brontë photo

“Still, as I mused, the naked room,
The alien firelight died away;
And from the midst of cheerless gloom
I passed to bright, unclouded day.”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

Stanza vi.
A Little While, a Little While (1846)

Thomas Carlyle photo

“I purpose now, while the impression is more pure and clear within me, to mark down the main things I can recollect of my father. To myself, if I live to after-years, it may be instructive and interesting, as the past grows ever holier the farther we leave it. My mind is calm enough to do it deliberately, and to do it truly. The thought of that pale earnest face which even now lies stiffened into death in that bed at Scotsbrig, with the Infinite all of worlds looking down on it, will certainly impel me. It is good to know how a true spirit will vindicate itself with truth and freedom through what obstructions soever; how the acorn cast carelessly into the wilder-ness will make room for itself and grow to be an oak. This is one of the cases belonging to that class, "the lives of remarkable men," in which it has been said, "paper and ink should least of all be spared."”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

I call a man remarkable who becomes a true workman in this vineyard of the Highest. Be his work that of palace-building and kingdom-founding, or only of delving and ditching, to me it is no matter, or next to none. All human work is transitory, small in itself, contemptible. Only the worker thereof, and the spirit that dwelt in him, is significant. I proceed without order, or almost any forethought, anxious only to save what I have left and mark it as it lies in me.
1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Luis Alberto Urrea photo

“The kitchen was the United States; the living room was Mexico…One side was struggling with all her might to make me an American boy, and the other side, with all of his might, was trying to keep me a Mexican boy.”

Luis Alberto Urrea (1955) Mexican-American poet

On feeling like a border wall ran through his childhood home in “Mexican-American Author Finds Inspiration In Family, Tragedy And Trump” https://www.npr.org/2018/03/05/590839936/mexican-american-author-finds-inspiration-in-family-tragedy-and-trump in NPR (2018 Mar 5)

Luis Alberto Urrea photo
Margaret Cho photo

“I was on the floor in the emergency room, and the woman came up to me and said "Hi, my name is Gwen and I'm here to wash your vagina!"”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, I'm The One That I Want Tour

James McBride (writer) photo

“I tell them that a simple story is the best story, and that time and place is really crucial to good storytelling. Establish your stories in a specific time and place and get your characters set solidly within that framework before you let them start moving from one room to the next...”

James McBride (writer) (1957) American journalist

On the writing advice he gives to his students in "James McBride's Advice For New Writers: 'A Simple Story Is The Best Story'" https://www.npr.org/2020/02/29/810052791/james-mcbrides-advice-for-new-writers-a-simple-story-is-the-best-story in NPR (2020 Feb 29)

David Sedaris photo

“Someone in the back of the room started singing "God Bless America."”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

The thing about "God Bless America" is that, after a certain point, nobody really knows the words. There's always a weird mumbling that follows "Stand beside her and guide her," and lasts until "From the mountains to the prairies."

12.09.2001 - p.455
Theft by Finding: Diaries, Volume 1 (1977-2002) (2017)

Philip K. Dick photo
T.S. Eliot photo
Jason Reynolds photo
Dylan Moran photo
William Wordsworth photo
Seneca the Younger photo
Robert B. Reich photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
William Lane Craig photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Herman Kruyder photo

“Only now I see what I am capable of and I don't understand that I have been able to make this canvas in my small front room.”

Herman Kruyder (1881–1935) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Herman Kruyder:) Nu pas zie ik waartoe ik in staat ben en ik begrijp niet dat ik het doek in mijn kleine voorkamer [1928, in Blaricum] heb kunnen maken.

Kruyder, c. 1931; as quoted by Regnault in his Memories; as cited in Herman Kruyder 1881 – 1935: gedoemde scheppingen, ed. Mabel Hoogendonk; (ISBN 90-400-9905-7), Waanders, Zwolle 1997, p. 30

Kruyder's reaction after seeing his own painting 'Groot landschap uit Limburg' hanging in a large room of the house of his art-buyer P.A. Regnault
dated quotes

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Warren Leopold photo

“Bureaucracy is killing the creativity in this country. All the forms you have to fill out now don't leave any room for imagination.”

Warren Leopold (1920–1998)

[Westlund, Darren, Cambria Treasures, Warren Leopold, Cambira, CA, Small Town Surrealist Productions, 1990, 42, ASIN: B000E263NM, 2019-03-17, https://www.amazon.com/Cambria-Treasures-Interviews-Noteworthy-Cambrians/dp/B000E263NM]

“…My house is my laboratory, set apart from the rest of the world, and when my son was small I spent most of my time there. I often wrote poems while doing housework. I always had pencils and paper throughout the house: in the laundry, in the dining room, in the kitchen…”

Lucha Corpi (1945)

On how she included domesticity in her poems in the book Truthtellers of the Times: Interviews with Contemporary Women Poets https://books.google.com/books?id=LkVO9mmfwZYC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq

Jackson Browne photo

“In the morning when I closed my eyesYou were sleeping in paradiseAnd while the room was growing lightI was holding still with all my might”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

Call it a Loan (Browne, David Perry Lindley) Hold Out (1980)

Plutarch photo
Teal Swan photo
Brad Garrett photo
Edith Sitwell photo
Harry Gordon Selfridge photo
Massin Akandouch photo
Hans Rosling photo

“There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.”

Hans Rosling (1948–2017) Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker

On the HIV epidemic http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_the_truth_about_hiv.html

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Rod Dreher photo

“[C]ircles have been contaminated by hatred and paranoia. Refuse and reject that right now. If you make room in your heart and mind for it, it will take you down, and take down all those that follow you.”

Rod Dreher (1967) American journalist

2020s
Source: "Information and the Cultural Revolution" https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/information-cultural-revolution-live-not-by-lies/ (January 2021), The American Conservative

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo

“No lawmaker should be cashing in on their public service and selling their contacts and expertise to the highest bidder... don't think it should be legal at ALL to become a corporate lobbyist if you've served in Congress. Keeping it real, the elephant in the room with passing a lobbying ban on members requires a nearly-impossible discussion about congressional pay.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

AOC Calls for Ban on Revolving Door as Study Shows Two-Thirds of Recently Departed Lawmakers Now K Street Lobbyists https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/30/aoc-calls-ban-revolving-door-study-shows-two-thirds-recently-departed-lawmakers-nowCommon Dreams, Eoin Higgins,] (30 May 2019)
2019

Bruno Heller photo
Cynthia Barnett photo

“Here are three meaningful actions we can all take on water: Use less. Pollute less. And from our backyards to our cities, make places that leave room for water in nature...”

Cynthia Barnett (1966) American journalist

Source: https://www.jou.ufl.edu/alumni-and-friends/cjc-environment-voices/cynthia-barnett/

Thelma Schoonmaker photo

“You get to contribute so significantly in the editing room because you shape the movie and the performances," she says. "You help the director bring all the hard work of those who made the film to fruition. You give their work rhythm and pace and sometimes adjust the structure to make the film work – to make it start to flow up there on the screen. And then it's very rewarding after a year's work to see people react to what you've done in the theater.”

Thelma Schoonmaker (1940) American film editor

iVillage Entertainment, The Last Temptation of Thelma, Lan N., Nguyen, March 15, 2005, dead, https://web.archive.org/web/20061022085303/http://entertainment.ivillage.com/features/0,,7hghlrfw,00.html, October 22, 2006, mdy-all http://entertainment.ivillage.com/features/0,,7hghlrfw,00.html,

Ryan Holiday photo
Isaac Mashman photo
James Clear photo

“There will always be room for high quality work. Excellence is perpetually scarce.”

James Clear (1986) American author and speaker

Source: https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1261267255364653058

Toni Morrison photo
Arden Cho photo

“I love acting. Modeling is fun, too, but I feel like there is more room to stretch yourself and open yourself up to new experiences with acting. That's why I got into acting in the first place.”

Arden Cho (1985) Korean-American actress and singer

As quoted in "Interview: Rising Star Arden Cho Talks Joining “Teen Wolf” and Asian Representation in Hollywood" in Complex (6 January 2016) https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2014/01/arden-cho-teen-wolf-mtv

John Green photo
Napoleon Hill photo
John Mulaney photo

“I don't know what my body is for other than just taking my head from room to room.”

John Mulaney (1982) American actor and comedian

Kid Gorgeous (2018)

John Mulaney photo
Yunjin Kim photo

“There have been times when casting directors were talking loudly on the phone right outside the room where I was auditioning. I didn’t know what to do.”

Yunjin Kim (1973) South Korean-American actress, born 1973

As quoted in "Kim Yun-jin still hungry for the next role" in The Korea Herald (30 March 2017) http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170330000974

Dee Bradley Baker photo

“You don’t tear up the room because there’s a sweet spot for the microphones, and you can’t deviate very far from that or else the engineer gets mad. You have to act with your whole body, but keep it right in the zone.”

Dee Bradley Baker (1962) American voice actor

Denver’s “Clone Wars,” “Phineas and Ferb” voice actor on working (from home) through a pandemic https://theknow.denverpost.com/2020/08/21/dee-bradley-baker-interview/243747/ (August 21, 2020)

Harry Graham photo

“Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,
Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes;
Now, although the room grows chilly,
I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy.”

Harry Graham (1874–1936) British writer

Tender-Heartedness
Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (1899)

Natalie Goldberg photo
Paolo Monti photo

“Finally, to help the memories came a machine, the photographic device, once bulky like a piece of furniture in the middle of the room, today light, shiny and precise as a weapon. Precise. And faithful?”

Paolo Monti (1908–1982) Italian photographer

"Mariel", in Camera, n. 10, October 1956; quoted in Conversazioni https://www.beic.it/mostre/monti/conversazioni.html, BEIC.
Original: (it) Finalmente ad aiutare i ricordi venne una macchina, l'apparecchio fotografico un tempo ingombrante come un mobile in mezzo alla stanza, oggi leggero, lucido e preciso come un'arma. Preciso. E fedele?

“It was very difficult not to want to go into acting because it is in my blood and I still feel to this day that a dressing room is like another home.”

Sabina Franklyn (1954) British actress

Sabina Franklyn Table Manners Interview https://theatresoutheast.com/sabina-franklyn-interview/ (June 22, 2015)

Nima Arkani-Hamed photo

“The hierarchy problem is the elephant in the room. ... And it originally showed up in the context of doublet–triplet splitting problem.”

Nima Arkani-Hamed (1972) American-Canadian physicist

[Where in the World are SUSY & WIMPS? - Nima Arkani-Hamed, 20 July 2017, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKVXxcbJ4YY] (12:36 of 1:40:31)

Henry James photo
Stephen Colbert photo

“When you’re in this room, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s soaked in history. It just washes over you. I mean, it’s not even like it’s in the past. You’re in history. You’re in it.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Source: " Stephen Colbert Tells Rep. Adam Schiff What Russian Oligarch Revealed About Trump 'Pee Tape' https://www.huffpost.com/entry/stephen-colbert-adam-schiff-pee-tape_n_616e2de7e4b00cb3cbd6ead0" (2021?)+videos

Satchel Paige photo

“Cool Papa was so fast that he could turn off the light switch and get into bed before the room got dark.”

Satchel Paige (1906–1982) American baseball player and coach; Negro Leagues

Source: "On Today's Scene: Paige Admits He's Feeling His Age" by William Gildea, The Washington Post (Apr 29, 1969), p. D2

Charles Fillmore photo

“American dollars should be spent on Americans’ safety and security, and if the national security threat is having an armed gunman in our school rooms, then we need to put our children first and stop sending our dollars overseas.”

Christina Hagan (1988) Member of the Ohio House of Representatives

Source: NRA-Endorsed Christina Hagan: ‘Stop Sending Our Dollars Overseas,’ Pay Armed Veterans to Protect Schools https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/04/24/nra-endorsed-christina-hagan-stop-sending-our-dollars-overseas-pay-armed-veterans-to-protect-schools/ (24 April 2018)

Ben Aaronovitch photo
Marcus Aurelius photo

“Injustice ... regardless to whomever acted upon or performed against, is still injustice. The unjust person is never relieved of the responsibility of these acts under the pretext that the injustice is done against a heterodox and not to a believer. As our Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospels said do not oppress or accuse anyone falsely; do not make any distinction or give room to the believers to injure those of another belief.”

Metrophanes III of Constantinople (1520–1580) Patriarch of Constantinople

Statement condemning the mistreatment of Jews on the Island of Crete by Orthodox powers.
Source: An Orthodox Christian View of Non-Christian Religions https://www.goarch.org/-/an-orthodox-christian-view-of-non-christian-religions by Rev. Dr. George C. Papademetriou; Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

Nicolas Chamfort photo

“Speaking of women's favours, M. de ... used to say: It is an auction room business, and neither feeling nor merit are ever successful bidders.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Maxims and Considerations, #362
Original: (fr) Il me semble, disait M. de…, à propos des faveurs des femmes, qu'à la vérité, cela se dispute au concours, mais que cela ne se donne ni au sentiment, ni au mérite.
Original: (fr) Maximes et Pensées, #362

Edgar Guest photo
Yoko Ono photo

“The sound of shutters going up around her mind, armored against anything short of a nuke, was very nearly audible in the room.”

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 47, “Plea of Insanity” (p. 146)