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Y Quotes

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All Y Quotes

“You cannot change the past, but you can make a difference now”

“You cannot change the power of the wind, but you can set your sail in a way that will compel you to your port much more quickly and accurately. Business success is a process. Converting prospects takes time and the continual practice of planting wheat is always a challenge in a world where taking time and exhibiting patience are passing away. It is always a good day to make a change.”

“You cannot change the world with ideas. People with few ideas are less likely to make mistakes; they follow what everyone else does and are no trouble to anyone; they're successful, make money, find good jobs, enter politics, receive honours; they become famous writers, academics, journalists. Can anyone who is so good at looking after their own interests really be stupid? I'm the stupid one, the one who wanted to go tilting at windmills.”

“You cannot change what happened. You cannot unsay the words, unmake the choices, remove the circumstances that arrived without your permission and shaped you in ways you would not have chosen. That territory is closed. But how you carry what happened — what meaning you make of it, what it teaches you, what you build from it, what kind of person you decide to become in the light of having lived through it — that territory remains entirely open. The past does not have the authority to determine your future. It has the authority only to inform it. And informing is not the same as determining. What you do with what you have lived through — the wisdom you extract from it, the compassion it produces in you, the understanding of yourself and of others that it has made possible — that is still yours to shape.”

“You cannot cheat with the law of conservation of violence: all violence is paid for, and for example, the structural violence exerted by the financial markets, in the form of layoffs, loss of security, etc., is matched sooner or later in the form of suicides, crime and delinquency, drug addiction, alcoholism, a whole host of minor and major everyday acts of violence.”

“You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say, you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and, therefore, when gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at the scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which I hope will keep it great.”

“You cannot choose your face but you can choose your dress.”

“You cannot claim to be civilized and be governed by religious rules at the same time; if one exists, the other does not! Religious rules has no place in the definition of civilization, because a civilized country is one where people are free, able to speak freely, dress freely, and criticize freely. No country where religious rules prevail can speak of freedom or civilization! A country that does not prioritize human reason over so-called supernatural powers is a failed country that has not yet established a civilization and has not yet evolved!”