Quotes about wait
page 20

Isaac Asimov photo

“SWA Magazine: Talking about spacecraft, what do you think about the shuttle program?
Asimov: Well, I hope it does get off the ground. And I hope they expand it, because the shuttle program is the gateway to everything else. By means of the shuttle, we will be able to build space stations and power stations, laboratory facilities and habitations, and everything else in space.
SWA Magazine: How about orbital space colonies? Do you see these facilities being built or is the government going to cut back on projects like this?
Asimov: Well, now you've put your finger right on it. In order to have all of these wonderful things in space, we don't have to wait for technology - we've got the technology, and we don't have to wait for the know-how - we've got that too. All we need is the political go-ahead and the economic willingness to spend the money that is necessary. It is a little frustrating to think that if people concentrate on how much it is going to cost they will realize the great amount of profit they will get for their investment. Although they are reluctant to spend a few billions of dollars to get back an infinite quantity of money, the world doesn't mind spending $400 billion every years on arms and armaments, never getting anything back from it except a chance to commit suicide.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

An Interview with Isaac Asimov (1979)

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Grandmaster Flash photo
Marc Maron photo
Gioachino Rossini photo

“Wait until the evening before opening night. Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a copyist waiting for your work or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair. In my time, all the impresarios in Italy were bald at thirty.”

Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) Italian composer

Aspettate fino alla sera prima del giorno fissato per la rappresentazione. Nessuna cosa eccita più l'estro come la necessità, la presenza d'un copista, che aspetta il vostro lavoro e la ressa d'un impresario in angustie, che si strappa a ciocche i capelli. A tempo mio in Italia tutti gli impresari erano calvi a trent'anni.
From an undated letter, published in Luigi Rognoni Gioacchino Rossini (1968) p. 337. Translation from Josiah Fisk and Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (1997) p. 67.
On the right time to write an overture.

“Our society, it turns out, can use modern art. A restaurant, today, will order a mural by Míro in as easy and matter-of-fact a spirit as, twenty-five years ago, it would have ordered one by Maxfield Parrish. The president of a paint factory goes home, sits down by his fireplace—it looks like a chromium aquarium set into the wall by a wall-safe company that has branched out into interior decorating, but there is a log burning in it, he calls it a firelace, let’s call it a fireplace too—the president sits down, folds his hands on his stomach, and stares at two paintings by Jackson Pollock that he has hung on the wall opposite him. He feels at home with them; in fact, as he looks at them he not only feels at home, he feels as if he were back at the paint factory. And his children—if he has any—his children cry for Calder. He uses thoroughly advanced, wholly non-representational artists to design murals, posters, institutional advertisements: if we have the patience (or are given the opportuity) to wait until the West has declined a little longer, we shall all see the advertisements of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith illustrated by Jean Dubuffet.
This president’s minor executives may not be willing to hang a Kandinsky in the house, but they will wear one, if you make it into a sport shirt or a pair of swimming-trunks; and if you make it into a sofa, they will lie on it. They and their wives and children will sit on a porcupine, if you first exhibit it at the Museum of Modern Art and say that it is a chair. In fact, there is nothing, nothing in the whole world that someone won’t buy and sit in if you tell him it is a chair: the great new art form of our age, the one that will take anything we put in it, is the chair. If Hieronymus Bosch, if Christian Morgenstern, if the Marquis de Sade were living at this hour, what chairs they would be designing!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”, pp. 19–20
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Dan Abnett photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Jay Samit photo

“Problems are just businesses waiting for the right entrepreneur to unlock the value.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p.109

Edward Hirsch photo

“Poetry is a voicing, a calling forth, words waiting to be vocalized.”

Edward Hirsch (1950)

How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry (1998)

Roger Ebert photo
Stephen King photo

“He was waiting to choke you on a marble, to smother you with a dry-cleaning bag, to sizzle you into eternity with a fast and lethal boogie of electricity- Available At Your Nearest Switch plate Or Vacant Light Socket Right Now. There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nerdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too- Shower With A Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Who's out there? you howled in the dark when you were all frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back: Don't be afraid, it's just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let's go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation- in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name's Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want- hell, we're old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can't stay, got to see a woman about a breech birth, then I've got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha.”

Pet Sematary (1983)

Olaudah Equiano photo
Slavoj Žižek photo
Eddie Izzard photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
William Cowper photo

“To wait for life is the pathway to death.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 6 (p. 73)

Tony Blair photo
Michael Ignatieff photo
Roger Ebert photo
Rani Mukerji photo
T.S. Eliot photo
John Major photo
Rab Butler photo
Katherine Mansfield photo

“Tomorrow is waiting to reveal itself depending on the actions of just one day… TODAY!”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 124

José Ortega Y Gasset photo
Mike Huckabee photo
Paul Ryan photo
Jane Yolen photo
Billy Joel photo
Albert Einstein photo

“There has been an earth for a little more than a billion years. As for the question of the end of it I advise: Wait and see!”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

19 June 51, p. 34
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Robert Greene (dramatist) photo
John Banville photo
Ernest King photo

“I expect the officers of the Atlantic Fleet to be the leaders of what may be called the pioneering spirit- to lead in the determination that the difficulties and discomforts- personnel, materiel, operations, waiting- shall be dealt with as "enemies" to be overcome by our own efforts.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Excerpt from Atlantic Fleet Confidential Memorandum 2CM-41, sent on 24 March 1941. As quoted in History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume One: The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939-May 1943 (1948) by Samuel Eliot Morison, p. 52

Kate Havnevik photo

“Oh, here we go
They're all waiting for a cure”

Kate Havnevik (1975) Norwegian singer-songwriter

Timeless
Song lyrics

Mohammed VI of Morocco photo

“In Morocco, I am perfectly known. Moroccans know my character and my ideas, they know absolutely everything of me. This notion of mystery is entertained by some press: to sell, a label must be assigned. I was assigned this label of mystery, just because I decided that, before speaking, I will wait to better know.”

Mohammed VI of Morocco (1963) King of Morocco

Original French: Au Maroc, on me connaît parfaitement. Les Marocains connaissent mon caractère et mes idées, ils savent absolument tout de moi. Cette notion de mystère est entretenue par une certaine presse : pour vendre, il faut mettre une étiquette. On m’a donc collé une étiquette, celle du mystère, simplement parce que j’ai décidé que, avant de parler, j’attendrais de mieux savoir.
Interview with Le Figaro–September 2001 http://www.maroc.ma/fr/discours-royaux/interview-accord%C3%A9e-par-sa-majest%C3%A9-le-roi-mohammed-vi-au-quotidien-fran%C3%A7ais-%C2%AB-le

Jim Butcher photo
William Golding photo
Martin Amis photo
Yoshida Kenkō photo
Taylor Swift photo
Bruce Springsteen photo

“And your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds.
Remember how I kept you waiting when it was my turn to be the god.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"For You"
Song lyrics, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)

Cesare Pavese photo

“Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

William Morley Punshon photo
Douglas Coupland photo

“Here's your quote: "Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!"
Hey, over here! Have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But wait, there's more!”

Thomas Pynchon (1937) American novelist

Playing himself (depicted with a paper bag over his head) on an episode of The Simpsons, "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife".

Frederic Dan Huntington photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Mike Oldfield photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo

“Thine was the prophet's vision, thine
The exaltation, the divine
Insanity of noble minds,
That never falters nor abates,
But labors and endures and waits,
Till all that it foresees it finds
Or what it can not find creates.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Kéramos http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/TheCompletePoeticalWorksofHenryWadsworthLongfellow/chap22.html, st. 9 (1878).

Eugene J. Martin photo
Peter F. Hamilton photo
Lisa Randall photo

“Secrets of the cosmos will begin to unravel. I, for one, can't wait.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

Source: Warped Passages: Unraveling the Universe's Hidden Dimensions (2005), Ch. 25.

Earl Warren photo

“The only reason that there has been no sabotage or espionage on the part of Japanese-Americans is that they are waiting for the right moment to strike.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Testimony on Internment of people of Japanese Ancestry before the House Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration (Tolan Committee) in 1941; of this statement Warren later said, in The Memoirs of Earl Warren (1977):
I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens. Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings, I was conscience-stricken. It was wrong to react so impulsively, without positive evidence of disloyalty, even though we felt we had a good motive in the security of our state. It demonstrates the cruelty of war when fear, get-tough military psychology, propaganda, and racial antagonism combine with one's responsibility for public security to produce such acts. I have always believed that I had no prejudice against the Japanese as such except that spawned by Pearl Harbor and its aftermath.
1940s

Ai Weiwei photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“Defiling their shadows, infidels, accursed of Allah, with fingernails that are foot-long daggers, with mouths agape like cauldrons full of teeth on the boil, with eyes all fire, shaitans possessed of Iblis, clanking into their wars all linked, like slaves, with iron chains. Murad Bey, the huge, the single-blowed ox-beheader, saw without too much surprise mild-looking pale men dressed in blue, holding guns, drawn up in squares six deep as though in some massed dance depictive of orchard walls. At the corners of the squares were heavy giins and gunners. There did not seem to be many horsemen. Murad said a prayer within, raised his scimitar to heaven and yelled a fierce and holy word. The word was taken up, many thousandfold, and in a kind of gloved thunder the Mamelukes threw themselves on to the infidel right and nearly broke it. But the squares healed themselves at once, and the cavalry of the faithful crashed in three avenging prongs along the fire-spitting avenues between the walls. A great gun uttered earthquake language at them from within a square, and, rearing and cursing the curses of the archangels of Islam on to the uncircumcized, they wheeled and swung towards their protective village of Embabeh. There they encountered certain of the blue-clad infidel horde on the flat roofs of the houses, coughing musket-fire at them. But then disaster sang along their lines from the rear as shell after shell crunched and the Mamelukes roared in panic and burden to the screams of their terrified mounts, to whose ears these noises were new. Their rear dissolving, their retreat cut off, most sought the only way, that of the river. They plunged in, horseless, seeking to swim across to join the inactive horde of Ibrahim, waiting for. action that could now never come. Murad Bey, with such of his horsemen as were left, yelped off inland to Gizeh.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

Enver Hoxha photo

“In Cambodia, the Cambodian people, communists and patriots, have risen against the barbarous government of Pol Pot, which was nothing but a group of provocateurs in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Chinese revisionists, in particular, which had as its aim to discredit the idea of socialism in the international arena… The anti-popular line of that regime is confirmed, also, by the fact that the Albanian embassy in the Cambodian capital, the embassy of a country which has given the people of Cambodia every possible aid, was kept isolated, indeed, encircled with barbed wire, as if it were in a concentration camp. The other embassies, too, were in a similar situation. The Albanian diplomats have seen with their own eyes that the Cambodian people were treated inhumanly by the clique of Pol Pot and Yeng Sari. Pnom Pen was turned into a deserted city, empty of people, where food was difficult to secure even for the diplomats, where no doctors or even aspirins could be found. We think that the people and patriots of Cambodia waited too long before overthrowing this clique which was completely linked with Beijing and in its service.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

In regard to Cambodia, our Party and state have condemned the bloodthirsty activities of the Pol Pot clique, a tool of the Chinese social-imperialists. We hope that the Cambodian people will surmount the difficulties they are encountering as soon as possible and decide their own fate and future in complete freedom without any 'guardian'. (Selected Works Vol. VI, p. 419.)
Writings, Other

John Mayer photo
Cory Booker photo

“We make a grave mistake when we assume this spirit of connectedness is automatic or inevitable. It is not a birthright. A united country is an enduring struggle. It takes collective work and individual sacrifice. It is not enough to call on others or wait for a leader to emerge who will exalt our national values. I believe this is the question we face, as citizens of this nation: what will we do to affirm this most critical American virtue?”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

In [Booker, Cory, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good, https://books.google.com/books?id=iFekDQAAQBAJ, 2017, Random House Publishing Group, 978-1-101-96518-4], as quoted in [Yanklowitz, Rabbi Shmuly, Standing Together In the Era of National Division: Review of United by Cory Booker, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuly-yanklowitz/standing-together-in-the-_b_9359900.html, 21 August 2018, The Huffington Post, March 3, 2016]
2016

Don Soderquist photo

“I believe there are hundreds and thousands of stories just waiting to be written by organizations and companies who have leaders that inspire people to accomplish things that seem impossible. The only way that can happen, though, is if the leader believes it is possible—has even a mustard seed of faith—and can convince his people that the seemingly impossible is indeed possible.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 106.
On Leading Well

Walter Savage Landor photo

“The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

To Robert Browning (1846).

Ron Paul photo

“Chris Matthews: Let me ask you this: the '64 civil rights bill. Do you think a [em]ployer, a guy runs his shop down in Texas has a right to say, "If you're black, you don't come in my store". That was the libertarian right before '64. Was it the balanced society?
Ron Paul: I believe that property rights should be protected. Your right to be on TV is protected by property rights because somebody owns that station. I can't walk into your station. So right of freedom of speech is protected by property. The right of your church is protected by property. So people should honor and protect it. This gimmick, Chris, it's off the wall when you say I'm for property rights and states' rights, therefore I'm a racist. I mean that's just outlandish. Wait, Chris. Wait, Chris. People who say that if the law was there and you could do that, who's going to do it? What idiot would do that?
Chris Matthews: Everybody in the South. I saw these signs driving through the South in college. Of course they did it. You remember them doing it.
Ron Paul: Yeah, I but also know that the Jim Crow laws were illegal and we got rid of them under that same law, and that's all good. Government —
Chris Matthews: But you would've voted against that law.
Ron Paul: Pardon me?
Chris Matthews: You would've voted against that law. You wouldn't have voted for the '64 civil rights bill.
Ron Paul: Yes, but not in — I wouldn’t vote against getting rid of the Jim Crow laws.
Chris Matthews: But you would have voted for the — you know you — oh, come on. Honestly, Congressman, you were not for the '64 civil rights bill.
Ron Paul: Because — because of the property rights element, not because it got rid of the Jim Crow law.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2011

Gerhard Richter photo
Thomas Moore photo

“Go where glory waits thee,
But while fame elates thee,
Oh! still remember me!”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Go Where Glory Waits Thee, st. 1.
Irish Melodies http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/moore.html (1807–1834)

William John Macquorn Rankine photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“If someone tells me that I've hurt their feelings I'm still waiting to hear what your point is.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Authors@Google, August 16, 2007, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0B-X9LJjs&feature=youtu.be&t=1h6m59s
2000s, 2007

Eric Hoffer photo
George W. Bush photo
Robert Stanley Weir photo
David Mamet photo

“Letting I dare not wait upon I would is a mug's game, and those who play it usually get mugged.”

Robert Heller (1932–2012) British magician

Source: The Decision makers (1989), Ch. 3. The Truth About Decisions

George W. Bush photo
George Fitzhugh photo
Jane Austen photo

“When a woman reaches forty, she must wait twenty years for her husband to catch up.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Marriage

Jakaya Kikwete photo
Robert Rauschenberg photo
Natacha Rambova photo
Ravachol photo

“What can he do who lacks the necessary work, if he comes to be unemployed? He has nothing but to let himself die of hunger. Then a few phrases of pity will thrown on his cadaver. That's what I decided to leave to others. I preferred to make myself a black-marketer, forger, thief, murderer and assassin. I could have begged: it's degrading and cowardly and even punished by your laws that make a crime of poverty. If all those in need, instead of waiting, took wherever there was enough to be taken and by any means whatever, the satisfied would perhaps understand quicker that there is danger in trying to consecrate the current social condition, where worry is permanent and life threatened at every instant.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

Que peut-il faire celui qui manque du nécessaire en travaillant, s'il vient à chômer ? Il n'a qu'à se laisser mourir de faim. Alors on jettera quelques paroles de pitié sur son cadavre. C'est ce que j'ai voulu laisser à d'autres. J'ai préféré me faire contrebandier, faux-monnayeur, voleur, meurtrier et assassin. J'aurais pu mendier : c'est dégradant et lâche et même puni par vos lois qui font un délit de la misère. Si tous les nécessiteux, au lieu d'attendre, prenaient où il y a et par n'importe quel moyen, les satisfaits comprendraient peut-être plus vite qu'il y a danger à vouloir consacrer l'état social actuel, où l'inquiétude est permanente et la vie menacée à chaque instant.
Trial statement

“To gain knowledge, we must learn to ask the right questions; and to get answers, we must act, not wait for answers to occur to us.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport, "Modern Systems Theory – An Outlook for Coping with Change", paper given in the 1970 John Umstead Distinguished Lectures at North Carolina Department of Mental Health, Research Division, on 5 February 1970, and appeared in Revue Francaise de Sociologie, October 1969, p. 16
1970s and later

Melanie Phillips photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo

“Thoughts are saturated with energies that can intrude immediately or hover around you until they have an opportunity to take advantage of you. Thought forms that surround you at a particular moment may wait until a later time to affect you.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 28

Sam Harris photo
Nas photo
Harry Turtledove photo

“"Let's dicker, Lord Lyons," Lincoln said; the British minister needed a moment to understand he meant bargain. Lincoln gave him that moment, reaching into a desk drawer and drawing out a folded sheet of paper that he set on top of the desk. "I have here, sir, a proclamation declaring all Negroes held in bondage in those areas now in rebellion against the lawful government of the United States to be freed as of next January first. I had been saving this proclamation against a Union victory, but circumstances being as they are-" Lord Lyons spread his hands with genuine regret. "Had you won such a victory, Mr. President, I should not be visiting you today with the melancholy message I bear from my government. You know, sir, that I personally despise the institution of chattel slavery and everything associated with it." He waited for Lincoln to nod before continuing. "That said, however, I must tell you that an emancipation proclamation issued after the series of defeats Federal forces have suffered would be perceived as a cri de coeur, a call for servile insurrection to aid your flagging cause, and as such would not be favorably received in either London or Paris, to say nothing of its probable effect in Richmond. I am sorry, Mr. President, but this is not the way out of your dilemma." Lincoln unfolded the paper on which he'd written the decree abolishing slavery in the seceding states, put on a pair of spectacles to read it, sighed, folded it again, and returned it to its drawer without offering to show it to Lord Lyons. "If that doesn't help us, sir, I don't know what will," he said. His long, narrow face twisted, as if he were in physical pain. "Of course, what you're telling me is that nothing helps us, nothing at all."”

Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 7

Harry Turtledove photo
Will Eisner photo
Van Morrison photo