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All I Quotes

“It has been suggested by some people in this country that I and my government will be a "soft touch" in the [European] Community. In case such a rumour may have reached your ears, Mr Chancellor... it is only fair that I should advise you frankly to dismiss it (as my own colleagues did, long ago). We shall judge what British interests are and we shall be resolute in defending them.”

“It has been suggested that each person lives hermetically sealed within his or her self-perpetuated myths. Scholars postulate that we tell ourselves stories to make sense of our lives. We begin exploration of the self with the experience of failed transcendence. Philosophy originates from the experience of disappointment. Our failures lead us to discoveries. At birth, we know very little, almost nothing; all knowledge instigate from the experience and recognition of our limitations. With the uncertainty that surrounds our existence in the universe, perhaps we must create ourselves. Perchance we seek self-exploration when the myths that we once operated under no longer work. Perhaps we undergo self-analysis only when a coalescence of the past, the present, and the future betrays our current myth-making. Perhaps at such times when failure reigns center court, our survival instinct urges us to create a new story-line.”

“It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing. I don’t think the novels of Jane Austen could have been written by a man nor the stories of Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and in the same way I believe the author of the James Tiptree stories is male.”

“It has been the error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences, and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles: he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.”

“It has been the fashion to speak of the conflict between human rights and property rights, and from this it has come to be widely believed that the use of private property is tainted with evil and should not be espoused by rational and civilized men... the only dependable foundation of personal liberty is the personal economic security of private property. The Good Society.”

“It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed and wrangled, and have anathematized each other about the supposable meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing, another that it meant directly the contrary, and a third, that it meant neither one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they have called understanding the Bible. It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former part of 'The Age of Reason' have been written by priests: and these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand the Bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that Thomas Paine understands it not.”

“It has been the resolution of mankind in all ages of the world. No people, no age, ever threw away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of present blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfection. It is the knowledge of the past, the actual infliction of the present, that has produced all changes, all innovations, and all improvements - not (as is pretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but the intolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggravated, and growing abuses.”

“It has been the sad experience of many that much of the best and the most beautiful is lost to those whose mental food consists exclusively of the sensational paper or the cheap novel, or of that frothy mass of waste material which is thrown up like scum upon the molten metal of life--novelettes, serials, and fragments of a type which neither teach the ignorant, nor strengthen the weak, nor develop the immature.”

“It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support.”

“It has been the struggle between privileged men who have managed to get hold of the levers of power and the people in general withtheir vague and changing aspirations for equality, for justice, for some kind of gentler brotherhood and peace, which has kept that balance of forces we call our system of government in equilibrium.”

“It has been the White Race who has been the world builder, the maker of cities and commerce and continents. It is the White Man who is the sole builder of civilizations. It was he who build the Egyptian civilization, the great unsurpassed Roman civilization, the Greek civilization of beauty and culture, and who, after having been dealt a serious blow by a new Semitic religion, wallowed through the Dark Ages, finally extricated himself, and then build the great European civilization.”

“It has been thoughtfully observed that every nation, owing to its peculiar character and composition, has a definite mission in the world...our fundamental principles of government, world-embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is, to make us the perfect natural illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen.”

“It has been very humbling and gratifying to have these men as our role models. Your generation enabled America to close out the twentieth century as the greatest nation in the history of mankind, the only remaining superpower, the world's leading economy and the world's most respected and feared military force in the world - respected by our friends and allies, feared by our adversaries.”

“It has been well established that trees talk to each other through underground chains of fungus called Common Mycorrhizal Networks (CMNs). Affectionately called the Wood Wide Web, these networks allow networks of trees to locally communicate and organize the transfer of water, carbon, nitrogen, local gossip, and political pamphlets. Previous research suggested that these fungal networks only operated at a community level. Nutrient-transfer-back translation has shown this assumption is no longer valid. In the woods of Germany, England, Wyoming, and many more locations, accelerationist, international communist propaganda has been discovered in Douglas Firs, and a growing prevalence has been seen in Birch populations. This paper will discuss the methodology, results, and dangerous consequences of the dictatorship of a central, democratically elected, tree-based anarcho-communist syndicate of Fir collectives in your backyard and how the international communist organization has spread its radical message to the world’s forests.”

“It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is, when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today, that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to Him, and mind the present.”

“It has been well said that the food one consumes determines one's thoughts. By eating the flesh of various animals, the qualities of these animals are imbibed. How sinful is it to feed on animals, which are sustained by the same five elements as human beings! This leads to demonic tendencies, besides committing the sin of inflicting cruelty on animals.”

“It has been widely said in the recent past that economic freedom can exist without the institution of property, because, under a Communist system, men own though they own corporately: they can dispose of their own lives, though such disposition be indirect and through delegates. This false argument is born of the dying Parliamentary theory of politics; it proceeds from the false statement which deceived three generations of Europe, from the French Revolution to our own day, that corporate action may be identified with individual action. So men speak of their so-called “Representatives” as having been “chosen” by themselves. But in experienced reality there is no such thing as this imagined permanent corporate action through delegation. On some very simple and universal point, which all understand, in which all are interested and on which all feel strongly, the desire of the bulk of people may be expressed for a brief moment by delegation. Men voting under strong emotion on one single clear issue, may instruct others to carry out their wishes; but the innumerable acts of choice and expression which make up human life can never work through a system of delegation. Even in the comparatively simple field of mere political action, delegation destroys freedom. Parliaments have everywhere proved irreconcilable with democracy. They are not the people. They are oligarchies, and those oligarchies are corrupt because they pretend to a false character and to be, or to mirror, the nation. They are in reality, and can only be, cliques of professional politicians; unless, indeed, they are drawn from an aristocratic class which the community reveres. For class government, the product of the aristocratic spirit, is the condition of oligarchies working successfully and therefore of a reasonably efficient Parliament. Such an instrument is not to be found save in the hands of a governing class.”