Joyce Carol Oates
Revenge is living well, without you.
Happiness is not fixed but alterable. (Night-Gaunts’)
Happiness is not fixed, but alterable. (‘Walking Wounded’)
Ritual eliminates originality and errors of Chance. (‘High Crime Area’)
Eventually, whoever is ringing the bell, will go away. (‘Walking Wounded’)
Chance means a leakage of the universe, that might trickle into your brain. (‘Night-Gaunts’)
It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim.
When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity -- but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.
Barack Obama
Out of many, we are one.
Election by themselves don't guarantee democracy.
Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted.
Gravity exists. The earth is round. Climate change is happening.
National sovereignty is never a license to slaughter your people.
A nation cannot prosper long when it favours only the prosperous.
Democracy depends on the assumption of goodwill in other people.
The more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes.
We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.
Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.
We are willing to observe core standards of conduct not just when it's easy, but also when it's hard.
The process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Every billionaire is a policy failure.
William Occam (also Ockham)
Never multiply entities more than is absolutely necessary.
It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.
Cailin O'Connor (with James Owen Weatherall)The most effective misinformation starts with seeds of truth.
The urge to conform is a profound part of the human psyche. (both 'Scientific American Sept. 2019)
Flannery O'Connor
I write to discover what I know.
Ruben Östlund
The thing about reaching utopia is that there is always something wrong with it.
Dennis Patrick O'Hara (Professor, University of Toronto)
Anyone in theology who has to have absolute certitude shouldn't be in theology. We're about faith.
Andrej Ok
The most beautiful dreams are dreamt with open eyes.
Ben Okri
A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.
Keith Olbermann
Comedians are the only ones paid to tell the truth in public discourse.
Lawrence Olivier
I have to act to live.
What is acting but lying, and what is good lying but convincing lying?
Martin O’Malley
Progress is a choice.
Aristotle Onassis
The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.
Eugene O'Neill
There is no present or future – only the past, happening over and over again.
We have to keep diaries to remember what is pleasant; it is the unpleasant things which stick in the mind.
Shaquille O'Neal
Two secrets to keep your marriage brimming
1. Whenever you're wrong, admit it,
2. Whenever you're right, shut up.
Adam Opel
No other invention combines utility with pleasure so perfectly as a bicycle.
J.Robert Oppenheimer
As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.
P.J.O'Rourke
The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it.
Even a band of angels can turn ugly and start looting if enough angels are unemployed and hanging around the Pearly Gates.
José Ortega y Gasset
To define means to exclude and to negate.
Who runs away from his past will always lose the race.
Chris Orr
How Important it is for us to recognise and celebrate our heroes and she-roes.
George Orwell
Poverty is spiritual halitosis. (‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’)
Sport is war minus the shooting.
Traditions are not killed by facts. (‘The Road to Wigan Pier’)
War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.
At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up.
The first effect of poverty is that it kills thought. (‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’)
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
Tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine gun. (‘The Road to Wigan Pier’)
The modern world is only habitable by saints and scoundrels. (‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’)
Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.
Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.
In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.
Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.
Painting is the only art that can be practised without either talent or hard work. ('Burmese Days')
Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss.
Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
All the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
Many of the qualities we admire in human beings can only function in opposition to some kind of disaster, pain and difficulty.
(‘The Road to Wigan Pier’)
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Kelly O'Shanassy
As humans we're hard-wired to focus on the negative, on the threat of danger. It's what helps us survive.
Evan Osnos
Failure at one point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.
Ovid
Take a rest. A field that has rested gives a lavish crop.
Jesse Owen
One chance is all you need.
Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
Paul Oxton
There may be days where I can't help an animal in need, but the day will never come that I don't try.