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T Quotes

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All T Quotes

“There is a period in one's life - perhaps not longer than six months - when one lives in two worlds at once ... It is the time when one has freshly learned to read. The Word, till then a denominating aspect of the Thing, has suddenly become detached from it and is perceived as a glittering entity, transparent and unseizable as a jellyfish, yet able to create an independent world that is both more recondite and more instantaneously convincing than the world one knew before.”

“There is a period of one to two earth years that humans are to refrain from making big decisions. It’s because you don’t always make the best decisions when you are grieving. Those who make decisions in haste often live to regret them. You must move through the time of suffering, strengthening your faith and being willing to grow through the grief in order to be able to see things differently. As you grow, your blind faith will continue to open your eyes. You will see everything in a whole new light when you come out the other side of grief. Then you will be able to make very good decisions for yourself, better than ever, because of what you learned.”

“There is a persistent theory, held by those who prate most steadily about "the American way of life" that the average American is a rugged individualist to whom the whole conception of "leadership" is something foreign and distasteful—and this theory would certainly seem to be in accord with our national tradition of lawlessness and disrespect for authority. But it is not entirely consistent with the facts. We Americans are inveterate hero worshipers, to a far greater extent than are the British and the French. We like to personalize our loyalties, our causes. In our political or business or labor organizations, we are comforted by the knowledge that at the top is a Big Boss whom we are free to revere or to hate and upon whom we can depend for quick decisions when the going gets tough. The same is true of our Boy Scout troops and our criminal gangs. It is most conspicuously true of our passion for competitive sport. We are trained from childhood to look to the coach for authority in emergencies. The masterminding coach who can send in substitutes with instructions whenever he feels like it—or even send in an entirely new team—is a purely American phenomenon. In British football the team must play through the game with the same eleven men with which it started and with no orders from the sidelines; if a man is injured and forced to leave the field the team goes on playing with only ten men. In British sport, there are no Knute Rocknes or Connie Macks, whereas in American sport the mastermind is considered as an essential in the relentless pursuit of superiority.”

“There is a person that says they invented the podcast and they are suing Adam Carolla, because he is the top of the hill, for patent infringement. If this person wins, Adam Carolla, Marc Maron, Joe Rogan, Jay Mohr, Chris Hardwick, it will all go away. So, it's kind of like when someone takes your name so you can't get it on Twitter, magnified times a billion.”

“There is a pervasive mistrust that grew out of the Cold War and still continues today - even though there are a lot more mutual interests between Europe, Russia and the United States than ever before. But the way we organize things today, it takes years to negotiate. By the time you get a result, the technology has far outrun the policy. So we have to start a dynamic, sustainable type of policy deliberations that can catch up with technology.”

“There is a phase of melancholy—a phase that has sloughed all urgency—that seems to me always a revelation of that ancient, familiar thing, my true self. If there is anything in a person with which one may be in love, surely it can only ever be the self that such melancholy reveals. There are potent and austere traditions that teach us a true self that has no qualities, no atmosphere, and which thus could never be revealed by melancholia; some of these traditions maintain, in a tone that suggests resistance is folly, that there is no self at all. But such traditions are not native to my soul, and within my life they are new, though they are older than me in history. For me, the self revealed by melancholy is older and thus truer.”

“There is a philosophy by which many people live their lives, and it is this: life is a shit sandwich, but the more bread you've got, the less shit you have to eat. These people are often selfish brats as kids, and they don't get better with age: think of the shifty-eyed smarmy asshole from the sixth form who grow up to be a merchant banker, or an estate agent, or one of the Conservative Party funny-handshake mine's a Rolex brigade. (This isn't to say that all estate agents, or merchant bankers, or conservatives are selfish, but that these are ways of life that provide opportunities of a certain disposition to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Bear with me.) There is another philosophy by which people live their lives, and it goes thus: You will do as I say or I will hurt you. . . . Let me draw you a Venn diagram with two circles on it, denoting sets of individuals. They overlap: the greedy ones and the authoritarian ones. Let's shade in the intersecting area in a different color and label it: dangerous. Greed isn't automatically dangerous on its won, and petty authoritarians aren't usually dangerous outside their immediate vicinity -- but when you combine the two, you get gangsters and dictators and hate-spewing preachers.”

“There is a philosophy that says that if something is unobservable -- unobservable in principle -- it is not part of science. If there is no way to falsify or confirm a hypothesis, it belongs to the realm of metaphysical speculation, together with astrology and spiritualism. By that standard, most of the universe has no scientific reality -- it's just a figment of our imaginations.”

“There is a pivot point, however, to become an adult. That transition comes from recognizing and acting in accordance with your own deepest impulses. On the responsibility front, that means acting in harmony with your conscience, not because you’re going to be punished if you don’t, or paid for it if you do (heaven, enlightenment, salvation, or whatever), but because you know it to be right. On the freedom front, that means acquiescing to your deepest inspirations, following what truly compels you, even when it’s difficult to do so. These two principles brought together in the same time and space is what integrity is all about. And it is only through such integrity that you resolve conflict between the two of them: what you “know to do” and what you “want to do.”