Quotes about talk
page 25

Richard Feynman photo
Michael T. Flynn photo

“One night at Socko and a year of probation were no comparison to the punishment at home. My rehabilitation was one of the fastest in adolescent history. I had it coming, and it taught me that moral rehab is possible. I behaved during my term of probation and stopped all of my criminal activity. But I would always retain my strong impulse to challenge authority and to think and act on my own whenever possible. There is room for such types in America, even in the disciplined confines of the United States Army. I’m a big believer in the value of unconventional men and women. They are the innovators and risk takers. Apple, one of the world’s most creative and successful high-tech companies, lives by the vision of transformation through exception. “Here’s to the crazy ones,” Apple’s campaign says. “The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” If you talk to my colleagues, they’ll tell you that I’m cut from the same cloth. My military biography starts badly. I was a miserable dropout in my freshman year of college (1.2 GPA), enlisted in a delayed-entry Marine Corps program, went to work as a lifeguard at a local beach, and then came the first of several miracles: an Army ROTC scholarship. Little did I know that my rebellious activities, such as skipping class and sundry other mistakes, would lead me to playing basketball (which I was very good at) with an ROTC instructor who saw something in me. Not only that, he took surprising initiative.”

Michael T. Flynn (1958) 25th United States National Security Advisor

Introduction
The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies (2016)

Anne Rice photo

“Good? What are you talking about, 'Good'?”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

"That it's good, that it does some good, that there is good in it! Dear God, even if there is no meaning in this world, surely there can still be goodness! It's good to eat, to drink, to laugh, to be together!"
Interview With The Vampire (1976)

Richard Rodríguez photo
Ray Bradbury photo
J.M.W. Turner photo

“My dear Chantrey, - I intended long before this (but you will say, Fudge) to have written: but even now very little information have I to give you in matters of Art, for I have confined myself to the painting department at Corso; and having finished one, am about the second, and getting on with Lord E.'s, which I began the very first touch at Rome; but as the folk here talked that I would show them not, I finished a small three feet four [painting] to stop their gabbling..”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote in Turner's letter from Rome, 6 Nov. 1828, to his friend Francis Chantrey; as cited in The Life of J. M. W. Turner R.A. , Walter Thornbury - A new Edition, Revised https://ia601807.us.archive.org/24/items/gri_33125004491185/gri_33125004491185.pdf; London Chatto & Windus, 1897, p. 10
1821 - 1851

Gloria Estefan photo
Michael Lewis photo

“Any talk about God that fails to make God's liberation of the oppressed its starting point is not Christian.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), p. 4

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Robert P. George photo
Matthew Hayden photo
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Michael Savage photo

“I intend to make this day forward the first day of the rest of my life. We can change our lives. You say, 'Well, what's wrong with your life, Michael?' Well, it's not that there's anything wrong with my life, but it's not what I want it to be. I don't feel that I'm inspiring people in the way I want to inspire them. You see, you can inspire through hate; you can inspire through love, hope, humor – the positives. I look at the history of the world, and I look at the world today, and I realize that if we don't inspire each other through positive attributes – love, hope and humor – we're gonna descend into the barbarism of the Left and the barbarism of ISIS. You like me to be hard, you like me to be tough, you like me to give you the breaking news, you like me to be cynical, you like me to analytical, you like me to give you stuff that you don't hear anywhere else – I get that. But there's a limit to that. There's a lot of area beyond all that.I think of Christmas. Christianity is the religion of peace. Christianity is the true religion of peace. 'Turn the other cheek.' 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' These are messages that come from Christianity. What can you do in an age of deceit and lies and terror? You can go to church again. However un-needing you think you really are, you know in your heart that there's something missing in you. You know that you crave something greater. Because the human being is not a dog. We are unique creatures. And we need something different than the bear, the dog, the snake and the eagle. What is that thing that we need? It's that 'thing' called God.The media has promulgated the idea, and promoted the idea, that we only need food and fornication. And so when people are empty that's what they seek. And when they are really empty, what happens? They become drug addicts. They start with marijuana, they end up with heroin, crack, you name it. As God has been driven out of America, drugs have entered America. What does an empty soul look to do? An empty soul looks to fill itself. Just as an empty vessel needs to be filled with a liquid to be complete, an empty human being needs to fill itself to be complete. And how does it fill itself? I know, again, many of you will laugh because you're cynical; it's through those things I'm talking about – inspiration. Do you think a musician can play one day without inspiration from somewhere? The greatest artists in the history of the world were not drug-addicts. They were usually God-addicts. Look at the greatest art in history, you'll find most of them were super religious people, who literally saw God in their living room, and they took the power of God and that was transmitted through the paintbrush, or through that piece of marble. How could a man like Rodin take a piece of inert stone, and inside that stone see the essence of the human form, and sculpt from that block of inert stone, a marble, the portrait of a human being that looks so real – a hundred years later I go and look at them in the museum, and literally inside that carved eye I can see the person; how is that possible? How? It's a different show than I've ever done in my 21 years, because each day to me – I must tell you – I see as my last day, my last day on Earth.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015

Mary Pickford photo

“[Talking pictures are] like putting lip rouge on the Venus de Milo.”

Mary Pickford (1892–1979) Canadian-American actress

Associated Press, "Mary Pickford Sees Talkies as Lipstick on Milo", Los Angeles Times, 18 March 1934, p. 1. Cf. "Los Angeles Times", 20 March 1934, p. A4: "Talking pictures are like lip rouge on the Venus de Milo."
Widely attributed in this form (e.g., A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn: A Biography (1989), Ch. 11) and described as having been said in the 1920s, but the 18 March 1934 AP story quotes it as said that day.
Variant: Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.

Gabrielle Roy photo
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Clarence Thomas photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Clay Shirky photo
Zhou Enlai photo

“For us, it is all right if the talks succeed, and it is all right if they fail.”

Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) 1st Premier of the People's Republic of China

On President Richard Nixon’s visit to China (5 October 1971), as quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988) edited by James Beasley Simpson.

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Richard Rodríguez photo
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Mo Yan photo
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Michel De Montaigne photo

“In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk— they are all part of the curriculum.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne, Chapter III, pg. 24 (Translated by Marvin Lowenthal
Attributed

Francis Bacon photo
John Fante photo
Ayumi Hamasaki photo

“If you are afraid of changes
Watch from a distance
Whether or not I might do something
If you're going to talk about me behind my back
It is what it is.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Alterna
Lyrics, (Miss)Understood

Shashi Tharoor photo
Bram van Velde photo

“I don't like talking. I don’t like people talking to me... Painting is silence.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Steven M. Greer photo
Bob Dylan photo

“You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Like a Rolling Stone

Andy Warhol photo
Rob Van Dam photo
Charles Baudelaire photo

“I have always been astonished that women are allowed to enter churches. What talk can they have with God?”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

J'ai toujours été étonné qu'on laissât les femmes entrer dans les églises. Quelle conversation peuvent-elles avoir avec Dieu?
Journaux intimes (1864–1867; published 1887), Mon cœur mis à nu (1864)

Albert Camus photo
Mitt Romney photo
Jennifer Beals photo
Laura Dern photo
William Kunstler photo

“When we talk about justice in America we're really talking about justice brought about by the people, not by judges who are tools of the establishment or prosecutors who are equally tools of the establishment or the wardens or the police officers.”

William Kunstler (1919–1995) American lawyer and civil rights activist

Quoted in Tom Crisp, The Book of Bill: Choice Words Memorable Men (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2009), p. 204.

Lewis H. Lapham photo
Mel Gibson photo

“I became an actor despite that. But with this look, who's going to think I'm gay? It would be hard to take me for someone like that. Do I sound like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?”

Mel Gibson (1956) American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter

Discussing the perception that many actors are gay in an interview with El Pais magazine, December 1991.

Thom Yorke photo

“Drying up in conversation,
You will be the one who cannot talk,
All your insides fall to pieces,
You just sit there wishing you could still make love.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

High and Dry
Lyrics, The Bends (1995)

George Bird Evans photo

“When people talk about 'the sanctity of the individual' they mean 'the sanctity of the statistical norm.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

Aron Ra photo
Pat Murphy photo
Pat Condell photo
Richard Huelsenbeck photo
Lily Allen photo

“And if you have a minute why don't we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
'Cause this could be the end of everything,
So why don't we go
Somewhere only we know?”

Lily Allen (1985) English singer, songwriter, actress, and television presenter

This song, Somewhere Only We Know, originated with the group Keane, in 2004, although Allen did a very popular version of it, on a YouTube video in 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mer6X7nOY_o.
Misattributed

Khalil Gibran photo

“My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

Sand and Foam (1926)

Herm Edwards photo

“When we score seven points, I’ll say we’re slow starting. If we score 21 points, I’ll say, ‘Whoa, we scored a lot of points.’ Twenty-one points – that’s a lot of points. Thirty points? That isn’t even a football game. That’s Arena Football. We’re talking about real football.”

Herm Edwards (1954) American football player, coach and analyst

With Kansas City
Source: Herm's Game of Chess http://web.archive.org/web/20090112034939/http://www.kcchiefs.com/news/2007/09/06/rand_herms_game_of_chess/ www.kcchiefs.com, 6 September 2007

Ethan Nadelmann photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
James Branch Cabell photo

“Coth admitted that, say what you might as to the Manuel who had really lived, the squinting rascal did as a rule know what he was talking about.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Book Five : "Mundus Vult Decepi", Ch. XXIX : The Grumbler's Progress
The Silver Stallion (1926)

Paul Schmidt photo

“Our foreign policy was an improvisation. Like Schacht's financial policy, it lacked foresight. The Nazis kept talking about a thousand-year Reich, but they couldn't think ahead for five minutes!”

Paul Schmidt (1899–1970) German translator, Nazi

To Leon Goldensohn (13 March 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Phil Liggett photo
Clay Shirky photo
John Elkann photo

“(talking about his children) I'm interested in avoiding two types of behaviour: one is the sense of guilt and the other is a sense of entitlement. If these two are avoided, then the rest is up to them.”

John Elkann (1976) Italian businessman

"Unlikely heir who saved the family jewels" http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0693507a-4830-11e0-b323-00144feab49a.html#axzz1GZU7VVRA, Financial Times, 03-06-11

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John Esposito photo

“We find statements by religious, polital leaders and the media that incite Islamophobia. I'm going to give you some, otherwise we wind up talking in very true but general statements. And I think we need to hear the actual words, because these are the words that people, who are in churches, people who are watching the media, hear. And if they don't have a context within which to place them, they will draw us out of conclusions. While George Bush and Tony Blair may distinguish between Islam and extremism, Franklin Graham tells us that "Islam is a very evil religion. All the values that we as a nation hold dear, they don't share those same values at all … these countries that have the majority of Muslims." You might think of Franklin Graham as an individual, but if you are in the Muslim world, you know that Franklin Graham gave the invocation at the first inauguration of president Bush, that Franklin Graham a year and a half later was asked to speak on Good Friday at the Pentagon. That sends a signal. Pat Robertson: "This man [Muhammad] was an absolute wild-eyed fanatic, he was a robber and a brigand. And to say that these terrorists distort Islam … they are carrying out Islam. I mean: This man [Muhammed] was a killer and to think that this is a peaceful religion is fraudulent." Benny Hinn at a pro-Israel rally: "This not a war between Arabs and the Jews, this is between God and the devil."”

John Esposito (1940) writer and professor of Islamic studies

And there are many others.
Speech at the UN seminar on Islamophobia in 2004

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Winston S. Churchill photo
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Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“Armed men don’t sit down and talk.”

Source: The Eye of the Heron (1978), Chapter 8 (p. 107)

Petula Clark photo
Abd al-Karim Qasim photo
Anbumani Ramadoss photo

“In our country, we do sex. But we don't want to talk about it and that is why we have a billion population.”

Anbumani Ramadoss (1968) Indian politician

On the protests against sex education in India, as quoted in " The great Indian sex debate http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6928326.stm", BBC News (20 August 2007)

Everett Dean Martin photo
Kate Clinton photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Robert Frost photo

“In reading the economics journals and talking with newly-minted PhDs, it is as if Keynesian economics never existed.”

David Colander (1947) American economist

[David Colander, “Functional Finance, New Classical Economics and Great Great Grandsons” (2002).
2000s

J.M. DeMatteis photo
Tom Clancy photo

“I'd rather talk to people who do things than complain about other people who do things. I say they're idiots.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

1990s, Schafer interview (1995)

Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo
Ryū Murakami photo
Jeff Foxworthy photo
Colum McCann photo
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Indra Nooyi photo
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John F. Kennedy photo

“These burdens and frustrations are accepted by most Americans with maturity and understanding. They may long for the days when war meant charging up San Juan Hill-or when our isolation was guarded by two oceans — or when the atomic bomb was ours alone — or when much of the industrialized world depended upon our resources and our aid. But they now know that those days are gone — and that gone with them are the old policies and the old complacency's. And they know, too, that we must make the best of our new problems and our new opportunities, whatever the risk and the cost.
But there are others who cannot bear the burden of a long twilight struggle. They lack confidence in our long-run capacity to survive and succeed. Hating communism, yet they see communism in the long run, perhaps, as the wave of the future. And they want some quick and easy and final and cheap solution — now.
There are two groups of these frustrated citizens, far apart in their views yet very much alike in their approach. On the one hand are those who urge upon us what I regard to be the pathway of surrender-appeasing our enemies, compromising our commitments, purchasing peace at any price, disavowing our arms, our friends, our obligations. If their view had prevailed, the world of free choice would be smaller today.
On the other hand are those who urge upon us what I regard to be the pathway of war: equating negotiations with appeasement and substituting rigidity for firmness. If their view had prevailed, we would be at war today, and in more than one place.
It is a curious fact that each of these extreme opposites resembles the other. Each believes that we have only two choices: appeasement or war, suicide or surrender, humiliation or holocaust, to be either Red or dead. Each side sees only "hard" and "soft" nations, hard and soft policies, hard and soft men. Each believes that any departure from its own course inevitably leads to the other: one group believes that any peaceful solution means appeasement; the other believes that any arms build-up means war. One group regards everyone else as warmongers, the other regards everyone else as appeasers. Neither side admits that its path will lead to disaster — but neither can tell us how or where to draw the line once we descend the slippery slopes of appeasement or constant intervention.
In short, while both extremes profess to be the true realists of our time, neither could be more unrealistic. While both claim to be doing the nation a service, they could do it no greater disservice. This kind of talk and easy solutions to difficult problems, if believed, could inspire a lack of confidence among our people when they must all — above all else — be united in recognizing the long and difficult days that lie ahead. It could inspire uncertainty among our allies when above all else they must be confident in us. And even more dangerously, it could, if believed, inspire doubt among our adversaries when they must above all be convinced that we will defend our vital interests.
The essential fact that both of these groups fail to grasp is that diplomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another. Either alone would fail. A willingness to resist force, unaccompanied by a willingness to talk, could provoke belligerence — while a willingness to talk, unaccompanied by a willingness to resist force, could invite disaster.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Address at the University of Washington

Jeff Foxworthy photo
Ramakrishna photo

“Once someone gave me a book of the Christians. I asked him to read it to me. It talked about nothing but sin. Sin is the only thing one hears at your Brahmo Samaj too… He who says day and night, ‘I am a sinner, I am a sinner’, verily becomes a sinner… Why should one only talk about sin and hell, and such things?”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

October 27, 1882, to Keshub Chunder Sen. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Volume 1, Madras, 1985, p. 138. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters Ch.13
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942)