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T Quotes

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All T Quotes

“The impulse to make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free is an old one ... When we are badly frightened, we think we can make ourselves safer by sacrificing some of our liberties. We did it during the McCarthy era out of fear of communism. Less liberty is regularly proposed as a solution to crime, to pornography, to illegal immigration, to abortion, to all kinds of threats.”

“The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.”

“The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance of an effort to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Hence cultural creativeness is more likely to flourish in an atmosphere of restriction, of an imposed pattern of thought and behavior, than in one of total freedom.”

“The impulse which directs to right conduct, and deters from crime, is not only older than the ages of nations and cities, but coeval with that Divine Being who sees and rules both heaven and earth.”

“The impulses of my heart are the voice of Nature, which is never mistaken. The institutions that stand in my way are man-made and are only arbitrary conventions to which I have never given my consent. In trampling these institutions underfoot, I shall have the double pleasure of satisfying my inclinations and of believing myself a hero”

“The inability of refugees to earn a living within the standard UNHCR approach was not only psychologically diminishing for the refugees, but also highlighted the lack of viability of the financing model. Paying for 4 million refugees to live without work for ten years was manifestly unsustainable. Even at a cost of only $1,000 per refugee per year, which would have implied a drastic reduction in lifestyle relative to Syrian pre-refugee conditions, the bill would have amounted to $40bn.”

“The inability of the IWC to enforce its own regulations was perhaps most blatantly exposed by the Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis. He fitted out a whaling fleet trained by Norwegians with a German crew, which operated under several flags, including Panama’s. Although the Central American nation was an IWC member, it was incapable of exerting control over the shipping magnate. According to Ellis, Onassis’s Olympic Challenger ‘took endangered blue whales, female humpbacks and calves, and sperm whales so small that they had not developed teeth’. In a sense, Onassis’s flagrant violations helped the conservationist cause. Here was a fantastically wealthy man bent on the destruction of whales for no apparent reason – he hardly needed the money. Onassis did not bow to international pressure, and he would not abide by treaties. For the IWC , and for whalers who claimed that their industry was strictly controlled and essential to the growing human population, he was a public-relations nightmare. Onassis seemed to relish the role of international renegade: he invited American businessmen and socialites to watch whaling aboard the Challenger. The bar stools on his yacht were covered with the skin of sperm-whale penises, and whale teeth were used as footrests.”

“The inability to control a child's recollections is a frustrating one. I know my own parents did their best to provide sun-dappled days of picnics and paddling pools, but mainly I remember advertising jingles, wet socks on radiators, inane TV theme tunes, arguments about wasted food. With my own sun, there were times when I definitely thought 'remember this' - Albie toppling through the high grass of a summer meadow, the three of us lolling in bed on a winter Sunday (...) - wishing there was some way to press 'record'.”

“The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for the words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion.”

“The inability to envision a certain kind of person doing a certain kind of thing because you've never seen someone who looks like him do it before is not just a vice. It's a luxury. What begins as a failure of the imagination ends as a market inefficiency: when you rule out an entire class of people from doing a job simply by their appearance, you are less likely to find the best person for the job.”

“The inability to love and accept yourself and your humanity is at the heart of many illnesses. To be loved and accepted, you must start by loving yourself. If you have traits that you consider unlovable, you must love them anyway... it's a paradox.”