Quotes about want
page 78

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Notebooks
Quoted, Notebooks

Ellen DeGeneres photo

“"I knew if I came out, there was a possibility I would lose my career. But I didn't do it for my career, I did it for me to live my truth," she says. "I thought, 'I don't want to live and have any shame whatsoever.' I should be proud of who I am, and I don't care if people approve or not. It is who I am."”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Ellen Degeneres talking about her coming out in 1997 with Oprah Winfrey, on the interview on 'Oprah' show on 9th of November 2009

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends and adversaries throughout the world. Since Christmas your government has labored again, with imagination and endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement. For 20 days now we and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam. Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more than 40 countries. We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all 113 that we have relations with, and some that we don't. We have talked to the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace. In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear. We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination—that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear. The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question of reunification. This is all we want for South Vietnam. It is all the people of South Vietnam want. And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard. We have also made it clear—from Hanoi to New York—that there are no arbitrary limits to our search for peace. We stand by the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962. We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any proposals—four points or 14 or 40—and we will consider the views of any group. We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have begun. We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right to shape its own future. We have said all this, and we have asked—and hoped—and we have waited for a response. So far we have received no response to prove either success or failure.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

George Lucas photo
Peter Gabriel photo
Mikhail Kalashnikov photo
Rick Baker photo
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
George Moore (novelist) photo

“He must put his shoulder to the wheel and get it right; one more push, that was all that was wanted.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Vain Fortune, Chapter 2.

Ela Bhatt photo

“Every human being has something, a spiritual element, that makes them want to do better, to reach higher.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Discussion with Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)

Rembrandt van Rijn photo
Dave Eggers photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even yet imagine?”

Ich frage euch: Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg? Wollt ihr ihn, wenn nötig, totaler und radikaler, als wir ihn uns heute überhaupt erst vorstellen können?
Sportpalast speech, 18 February 1943
1940s

Paul Gauguin photo
Immortal Technique photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“Here is a well-known trajectory: You begin with a heartfelt desire to help other people and the conviction, however well or ill founded, that your guild or club or church is the coalition that can best serve to improve the welfare of others. If times are particularly tough, this conditional stewardship — I'm doing what's good for the guild because that will be good for everybody — may be displaced by the narrowest concern for the integrity of the guild itself, and for good reason: if you believe that the institution in question is the best path to goodness, the goal of preserving it for future projects, still unimagined, can be the most rational higher goal you can define. It is a short step from this to losing track of or even forgetting the larger purpose and devoting yourself singlemindedly to furthering the interests of the institution, at whatever costs. A conditional or instrumental allegiance can thus become indistinguishable in practice from a commitment to something "good in itself." A further short step perverts this parochial summum bonum to the more selfish goal of doing whatever it takes to keep yourself at the helm of the institution ("who better than I to lead us to triumph over our adversaries?")We have all seen this happen many times, and may even have caught ourselves in the act of forgetting just why we wanted to be leaders in the first place.”

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Paul Farmer photo
Megan Mullally photo
Judy Garland photo

“I wanted to believe, and I tried my damnedest to believe, in the rainbow I tried to get over, and I couldn't! … So what? Lots of people can't!”

Judy Garland (1922–1969) actress, singer and vaudevillian from the United States

As quoted in Judy (1974) by Gerold Frank, p. 566

Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo

“The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

Diary entry on the first anniversary of the kidnapping and death of her son Charles Augustus Lindbergh III (1 March 1932); later published in Locked Rooms and Open Doors (1974) ISBN 0156529564

Warren Farrell photo
Hans Fritzsche photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
John Howard photo

“I think history will judge him very harshly for not having seized the opportunity in the year 2000 to embrace the offer that was very courageously made by the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barack, which involved the Israelis agreeing to 90 per cent of what the Palestinians had wanted.”

John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia

On Yasser Arafat
Source: History will judge Arafat harshly: Howard, ABC News Online, 11 November 2004, 9 April 2019 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2004-11-11/history-will-judge-arafat-harshly-howard/583666,

Peter Weiss photo
Jeremy Irons photo
Hans Urs Von Balthasar photo
Richard Feynman photo

“Nature isn't classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it's a wonderful problem, because it doesn't look so easy.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

" Simulating Physics with Computers http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/Feynman.pdf", International Journal of Theoretical Physics, volume 21, 1982, p. 467-488, at p. 486 (final words)

Gustave Courbet photo
John Green photo

“The Venn Diagram of guys who don't like smart girls and guys you don't want to date is a circle.”

John Green (1977) American author and vlogger

Love and Romance Questions Answered http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y49IXavVDE
YouTube

Christopher Titus photo
Bellamy Young photo

“[I]f you want to live like a Norwegian, buy a plane ticket.”

Jim Geraghty (1975) American journalist

Ten Reasons We Can't, and Shouldn't, Be Nordic (2018)

Paulo Freire photo

“The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

Eugène Fromentin photo

“.. Africa: it's a magic word that lends itselfs to suppositions and sets amateur explorers to dreaming. I want to try to be 'at home' on this bit of foreign [Arab] soil.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

as quoted by Sarah Anderson, in Between Sea and Sahara: An Orientalist Adventure, Eugène Fromentin, (1859) - in 'Preface'; transl. Blake Robinson; publisher I.B. Tauris 2004, p. 4

Ayumi Hamasaki photo

“I don't want to become adult!”

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

“Don't look back
all you'll ever get is the dust from the steps before
I don't have to see you every day,
but I just want to know youre there”

Zooey Deschanel (1980) American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter

"Don't Look Back".
Volume Two (2010)

W. S. Gilbert photo

“Oh! my name is John Wellington Wells,
I'm a dealer in magic and spells,
In blessings and curses
And ever-filled purses,
In prophecies, witches, and knells.

If you want a proud foe to "make tracks"—
If you'd melt a rich uncle in wax—
You've but to look in
On our resident Djinn,
Number seventy, Simmery Axe!”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Mr Wells' song, Act I.
"Simmery Axe" is the traditional pronunciation of "St. Mary Axe", a road in the City of London.
In Gilbert's day, the last building was number 68, though number 70 was built later.
The Sorcerer (1877)

Jean Dubuffet photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“Ever since I was a little girl, I felt that I wanted to be of service here on the earth: I felt that was my job somehow. And whatever I was going to do, I was going to find a way to do that. And so, as I got a larger audience -- a broader audience worldwide, and more and more people were listening to me -- it became important for me to share that thought. And the song "Get on Your Feet" -- which I didn't write, it was written actually by my guitar player, bass player and keyboardist... They knew how I felt. [They knew] what my thoughts were... So although it was written before my accident, it was thrown back at me so many times... But that really is my motto. I look always forward. I look ahead. And that's why I chose to record that song, because I really loved the message. Then "Coming Out of the Dark," which came on the heals of that accident and my rehab, and the incredible love that I felt from everyone worldwide that helped me through that difficult moment when I broke my back in 1990, is a big thank you to my fans -- and an expression of how ultimately we are here for each other to help one another. And the strength of prayer... That's why I say I know the love that saved me, you're sharing with me. We do have the power to save one another... And I wanted to thank everyone for being there for me.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

iTunes interview (released June 2, 2007)
2007

Carl Lewis photo
Prem Rawat photo
Tsai Ing-wen photo

“Politics should be as simple as possible; it should respond directly to the needs of the people, it should help to solve the problems for the people and this is what I want to do for Taiwan.”

Tsai Ing-wen (1956) President of the Republic of China

Tsai vows ‘new age’ at opening event, Taipei Times, 1, October 19, 2015, 19 October 2015 http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2015/10/19/2003630398,

Paul Scofield photo

“It isn't difficult to leave King Lear or Macbeth, but once you have gone back to yourself, you want it to be the same self you have always been.”

Paul Scofield (1922–2008) English actor

Quoted in Alan Strachan, "Paul Scofield: Oscar-winning actor whose phenomenal range was unmatched in his generation" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/paul-scofield-oscarwinning-actor-whose-phenomenal-range-was-unmatched-in-his-generation-798984.html, The Independent (2008-03-21)

Joe the Plumber photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Norman Schwarzkopf photo

“Do what is right, not what you think the high headquarters wants or what you think will make you look good.”

Norman Schwarzkopf (1934–2012) United States Army general

Quoted in "The Military Quotation Book" (2002) by James Charlton, p. 60

Mike Tyson photo
Salwa Bugaighis photo

“These are people who want to foil elections… Benghazi has been always defiant, and always will be despite the pain and fear. It will succeed.”

Salwa Bugaighis (1963–2014) Libyan activist

Salwa Bugaighis in phone interview by al-Nabaa network interrupted by gunfire, 25 June 2014: Quoted in: Chris Stephen. "Libya in shock after murder of human rights activist Salwa Bugaighis," The Guardian, Thursday 26 June 2014 16.42 BST.

David Allen photo

“Freedom to give full attention to what you want (vs. It being held hostage by unmanaged stuff) is the GTD promise.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

17 December 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/148127884798730240
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Michael Bloomberg photo

“If you want to get the best people to run for office, we’ve got to make the rules easier, and simpler, and more understandable to get on the ballot.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.nycivic.org/MediaArchive/BloombergSpeech041110.html
Election Reform

Jeremy Hardy photo
Alison Bechdel photo
Richard Brautigan photo

“A friend came over to the house
a few days ago and read one of my poems.
He came back today and asked to read the
same poem over again. After he finished
reading it, he said, "It makes me want to write poetry."”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

"Hey! This Is What It's All About"
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster

Laisenia Qarase photo
Rudolf Pannwitz photo

“Translations [into the German language], even the best ones, proceed from a mistaken premise. They want to turn Hindi, Greek, English into German instead of turning German into Hindi, Greek, English. … The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue.”

Rudolf Pannwitz (1881–1969) German writer and philosopher

Unsere übertragungen, auch die besten, gehen von einem falschen grundsatz aus, sie wollen das indische, griechische, englische verdeutschen, anstatt das deutsche zu verindischen, vergriechischen, verenglischen. ... Der grundsätzliche irrtum des übertragenden ist, daß er den zufälligen stand der eigenen sprache festhält, anstatt sie durch die fremde gewaltig bewegen zu lassen.
Die Krisis der europäischen Kultur (1917), as translated in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913-1926 (1996), pp. 261-262

“I've talked to him on the phone, received notes through the mail, but I've never seen him face to face. I sent him my last LP and I understand that he turned his head away as he took the disc out, saying, "I don't want to see what he looks like. I have this image and I don't want to destroy it." So there's a certain amount of mystery involved. I suppose if he knew I were a gray-haired, older guy with a big paunch, he might say, "Oh, that ruins it."”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

On his working relationship with Prince, as quoted in "He Arranges, Composes, Performs: Fischer: A Renaissance Man Of Music" http://articles.latimes.com/1987-05-14/entertainment/ca-8949_1_clare-fischer by Zan Stewart, in The Los Angeles Times (May 14, 1987)

Bob Dylan photo

“Your debutante knows what you need, but I know what you want.”

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

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

Chaim Soutine photo

“I want to show Paris in the carcass of an ox.”

Chaim Soutine (1893–1943) painter

Source: Soutine, Alfred Werner, Harry Abrams, New York, 1985, p. 94; as quoted in Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse, by Stanley Meisler, Publisher: St. Martin's PressPublication, 2015, p. 218

George Galloway photo
Kent Hovind photo

“If you talk to quite a lot of people around the world, whether it’s in an, you can make a massive difference and they want us to act.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

‘I’ve been in some horrific situations’ - MP http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/i-ve-been-in-some-horrific-situations-mp-1-7642788, ' (26 December 2015)

Linus Pauling photo

“I have always wanted to know as much as possible about the world.”

Linus Pauling (1901–1994) American scientist

Linus Pauling In His Own Words (1995) by Barbara Marinacci ISBN 0684813874.
1990s

Spider Robinson photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
Charlie Brooker photo
Romário photo

“"The reason I like night time is simple. At night you see what you want. During the day, you are forced to see everything"”

Romário (1966) Brazilian association football player

Se você me perguntar por que eu gosto da noite, é simples: é que à noite você vê só o que quer. De dia, é obrigado a ver tudo.
Source: Veja Magazine; 1992 Edition. February 18th, 2005.

Guillermo del Toro photo
Michael Chabon photo
Pearl S.  Buck photo

“What is a neglected child? He is a child not planned for, not wanted. Neglect begins, therefore, before he is born.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Children for Adoption (1964). Ch. 3

Garth Nix photo
Mickey Spillane photo
Aron Ra photo

“There is no question on whether the prophets existed. We are talking about whether the religions they invented were true. Can you show me the truth of that? Of course, they can’t. None of them can. They don’t want to. They don’t need to. I have seen people make that admission too.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

Benjamín Netanyahu photo
George W. Bush photo

“Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled. This confrontation is willed by God who wants this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a new age begins.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Former French president Jacques Chirac claimed in late 2009 that Bush made these statements to him at some point prior the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 while "appealing to him as a Christian" and attempting to convince him to have France join the invasion. The Independent, 2 January 2010 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/richard-ingrams/richard-ingramsrsquos-week-blair-must-be-quizzed-over-bushs-biblical-crusade-1855418.html
Attributed, Private/attributed

H.L. Mencken photo
Jean Tinguely photo
Amir Taheri photo

“So, is “Caliph Ibrahim” of the Islamic State an extremist, a militant, a terrorist or an Islamic fighter? None of the above. All those labels imply behavior that makes some sort of sense in terms of human reality and normal ideologies. Yet the Islamic State and its kindred have broken out of the entire conceivable range of political activity, even its extreme forms. A “militant” spends much of his time promoting an idea or a political program within acceptable rules of behavior. The neo-Islamists, by contrast, recognize no rules apart from those they themselves set; they have no desire to win an argument through hard canvassing. They don’t even seek to impose a point of view; they seek naked and brutal domination. A “terrorist,” meanwhile, tries to instill fear in an adversary from whom he demands specific concessions. Yet the Islamic State et al. use mass murder to such ends. They don’t want to persuade or cajole anyone to do anything in particular; they want everything. “Islamic fighter” is equally inapt. An Islamic fighter is a Muslim who fights a hostile infidel who is trying to prevent Muslims from practicing their faith. That was not the situation in Mosul. No one was preventing the city’s Muslim majority from practicing their faith, let alone forcing them to covert to another religion. Yet the Islamic State came, conquered and began to slaughter. The Islamic State kills people because it can. And in both Syria and Iraq it has killed more Muslims than members of any other religious community. How, then, can we define a phenomenon that has made even al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Khomeinist gangs appear “moderate” in comparison? The international community faced a similar question in the 18th century when pirates acted as a law onto themselves, ignoring the most basic norms of human interaction. The issue was discussed in long negotiations that led to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and the Treaty of Rastadt (1714) and developed a new judicial concept: the crime against humanity. Those who committed that crime would qualify as “enemies of mankind” — in Latin, hostis generis humanis. Individuals and groups convicted of such a crime were no longer covered by penal codes or even the laws of war. They’d set themselves outside humanity by behaving like wild beasts… Neo-Islamist groups represent a cocktail of nihilism and crimes against humanity. Like the pirates of yesteryear, they’ve attracted criminals from many different nationalities… Having embarked on genocide, the neo-Islamists do not represent an Iraqi or Syrian or Nigerian problem, but a problem for humanity as a whole. They are not enemies of any particular religion, sect or government but enemies of mankind. They deserve to be treated as such (as do the various governments and semi-governmental “charities” that help them). To deal with these enemies of mankind, we need much more than frozen bank accounts and visa restrictions.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Beyond terrorism: ISIS and other enemies of humanity" http://nypost.com/2014/08/20/beyond-terrorism-isis-and-other-enemies-of-humanity/, New York Post (August 20, 2014).
New York Post

Gerald Durrell photo
Larry Wall photo

“I want to see people using Perl to glue things together creatively, not just technically but also socially.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199702111730.JAA28598@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Who now reads novels as a guide to life and love? Everyone wants to star in his or her own movie.”

Frederic Raphael (1931) British writer

Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies (2001 ed.): Art. "Frederic Raphael", p. 363

Alex Jones photo

“You're supposed to get on your knees at midnight or in the early morning and tell God you repent on things you've done. You don't tell in a football stadium, “Mainstream media: you're my God, I am bad, tell me what to do.” That is sick. They're kneeling to political correctness and hating white people. They're kneeling to white genocide --- and then I don't want anybody to be genocided (sic). But everywhere it's: “Kill the whites, kill the whites.” The universities: “No whites can come on campus.” It's a bunch of weird white people going, “We need to kill all the white people.” Just everywhere. Hillary: “We lost because of white people.””

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

It's the most racist, weird, anti-Martin Luther King crap I've ever heard. Martin Luther King would say, “You people are crazy.”
Alex Jones: Protesting NFL players are “kneeling to white genocide https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017/09/26/alex-jones-protesting-nfl-players-are-kneeling-white-genocide/218051"Media Matters for America"(26 September 2017)
2017

Sienna Guillory photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“But are there not reasons against all this? Is there not such a law or principle as that of self-preservation? Does not every race owe something to itself? Should it not attend to the dictates of common sense? Should not a superior race protect itself from contact with inferior ones? Are not the white people the owners of this continent? Have they not the right to say what kind of people shall be allowed to come here and settle? Is there not such a thing as being more generous than wise? In the effort to promote civilization may we not corrupt and destroy what we have? Is it best to take on board more passengers than the ship will carry? To all this and more I have one among many answers, altogether satisfactory to me, though I cannot promise it will be entirely so to you. I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal and indestructible. Among these is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue-eyed and light-haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world, they need have no fear, they have no need to doubt that they will get their full share. But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights, to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men. I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races, but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Gerhard Richter photo