Douglas Quotes

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece - all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round - more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back. ~ Mark Twain

You really don't get it, do you? Most people are sheep. Stupid and uninformed. And they don't dig. They don't think for themselves. They'll trust a sincere voiceover and whatever the television tells them. ~ Douglas E. Richards

Only the broken heart has the ghost of a chance to grieve, to forgive, to long, to transform.
Christina Baldwin, author of Life's Companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice, 1990. Used with author's permission ~ Judith-Victoria Douglas

Love and Death? What has great music or poetry ever been about, but those twin forces that undo a man? ~ Douglas Wynne

Alone, Empty, Fraud, Shame, Fear,
Close your eyes.There is nothing to see out here. ~ Penelope Douglas

We tend to see math and science as a steady state of facts rather than as the accumulated knowledge of linear traditions. As Korzybski put it, we see further because we "stand on the shoulders"5 of the previous generation. The danger of such a position is that we can forget to put our own feet on the ground. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

The liberation children experience when they discover the Internet is quickly counteracted by the lure of e-commerce web sites, which are customized to each individual user's psychological profile in order to maximize their effectiveness. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

Nobody ever mentions the good side of OxyContin: It makes you feel like Jesus fucking a horse. ~ Douglas Coupland

Chess would teach me strategy, fencing would teach me human nature and self-preservation, and dancing would teach me my body. All necessary for a well-rounded person. ~ Penelope Douglas

Whenever two unbelievers quarrel, the may both say some very insightful things about the unsightly habits of the other.
The postmodernists are very good at pointing out the pretensions of the modernists. And the modernists are very good at pointing out the incoherence of the postmodernists. ~ Douglas Wilson

If you're being bombarded with information, the act of looking for patterns – not necessarily finding them – is what going to give you psychic refuge, a sense of sanctuary. ~ Douglas Copeland

Are you trying to tell me," said Arthur, slowly and with control, "that you originally . . . made the Earth? ~ Douglas Adams

Once young girls used to play with baby dolls, seeing themselves in the role of the nurturing mother; now they can be seen playing with Barbie dolls, seeing themselves in the place of the doll. And of course, the doll is both pretty and stacked. The pressure is on and stays on. ~ Douglas Wilson

I've given up wanting to make a killing or be a bigshot. I just want to find happiness and maybe open up a little roadside cafe in Idaho. ~ Douglas Coupland

Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day. ~ Douglas Adams

Hundreds of people who've never written before send in 'Dr. Who' scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is. ~ Douglas Adams

Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be. Mr. Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D wasn't anywhere in particular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point D, with axes over the door, and spend a pleasant amount of time at point E, which would be the nearest pub to point D. His wife of course wanted climbing roses, but he wanted axes. He didn't know why - he just liked axes. He flushed hotly under the derisive grins of the bulldozer drivers. ~ Douglas Adams

Historians must not confuse the passage of time with the accumulation of intelligence," John Lewis Gaddis has cautioned. ~ Douglas Boin

But the doctors in the past, as the review of the evidence showed, branded Jenner, Semmelweis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Pasteur, Lister, Koch and Keen as charlatans ... Napoleon said that war is too important to be left to the generals. We go on the assumption in the Senate that foreign relations are too important to be left to the diplomats ... this question (on a novel cancer cure) is too important to leave purely to doctors ... ~ Paul Douglas

Never argue with a librarian; they know too much. ~ Carole Nelson Douglas

Besides, animals don't even have time. Only humans have time. It's what makes us different. ~ Douglas Coupland

Only six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle on which the Galaxy was governed, and they knew that once Zaphod Beeblebrox had announced his intention to run as President it was more or less a fait accompli: he was ideal presidency fodder.* ~ Douglas Adams

Because in the end we forget everything, anyway. We're human; we're amnesia machines. ~ Douglas Coupland

The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself. ~ Douglas MacArthur

We don't have to destroy the library of the past. We just need to give it a face-lift. ~ Scott Douglas

Douglas Thornton [an English Christian missionary to Cairo, Egypt with the Church Missionary Society from 1898-1907] was often more amusing than he tried to be. He had a delightful way of mixing up two kindred proverbs or idioms. Once he told his companions that he always had two strings up his sleeve. They then asked him if he had another card to his bow. Such exchanges enliven heavy committee eetings and create wholesome laughter. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

The better we get at getting better, the faster we will get better. ~ Douglas Engelbart

It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to prefer looser and more private arrangements. ~ Mary Douglas

tyrants always set about shaping history after their liking. ~ Douglas Bond

The world isn't always what's right in front of you, you know? It's below, it's above, it's out there somewhere. Every burn of every light inside every house I see when I look down from the rooftop has a story. Sometimes we just need to change our perspective.
And when I look down at everything, I remember that there's more out there than just what's going on in my house - the bullshit with my dad, school, my future. I look at all those full houses, and I remember, I'm just one of many. It's not to say we're not special or important, but it's comforting, I guess. You don't feel so alone. ~ Penelope Douglas

There is a wonderful expression: seeing through a glass darkly. Everything, even life, is inevitably removed from you. You can't reach, or touch, the real. You just see reflections ~ Douglas Sirk

Pendergast thought for a moment. Finally, his silvery eyes turned to her. "Failure is always useful."

"A nice thought. But personally? I think failure sucks." Gladstone slumped down in her chair, trying to get comfortable. After so many hours, it was difficult.

"The question failure asks is: what don't we know that we don't know?"

"Whoa, man," Lam said. "That's deep. ~ Douglas Preston

I wouldn't mind if the consumer culture went poof! overnight because then we'd all be in the same boat and life wouldn't be so bad, mucking about with the chickens and feudalism and the like. But you know what would be absolutely horrible. The worst? ... If, as we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet
with just one person inside even
I'd go berserk. I'd go crazy. Either everyone slides back into the Dark Ages or no one does. ~ Douglas Coupland

We can no longer create the feeling of an era ... of time being particular to one spot in time. ~ Douglas Coupland

the partition was rolled up for ventilation, and she was lying in her hammock reading one of the books Vernon had brought, a thriller called utopia. ~ Douglas Preston

Such music", he said. "I'm not religious, but if I were I would say it was like a glimpse into the mind of God. Perhaps it was and i ought to be religious. I have to keep reminding myself that they didn't create the music, they only created the instrument which could read the score. And the score was life itself. And it's all up there". ~ Douglas Adams

The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel. ~ Douglas Adams

OneBeat is one of the greatest initiatives in advancing the meeting of cultures worldwide. ~ Dave Douglas

The sixties are like a theme park to them. They wear the costume, buy their tickets, and they have the experience. ~ Douglas Coupland

Last, but by no means least, courage of one's convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle_ the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other. ~ Douglas MacArthur

Presidents don't have power. Their job is to draw attention away from it. ~ Douglas Adams

Courage, my friends; 'tis not too late to build a better world. ~ Tommy Douglas

People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that's always thinking. A good book or song kidnaps your interior voice and does all the driving. With the artist in charge you're free for a little while to leave your body and be someone else. ~ Douglas Coupland

Most prayers are not really questions ... and if we listen very closely, a prayer is often its own answer ... We pray because we are here - not to change the world, but to change ourselves. Because it is when we change ourselves ... that the world is changed. ~ Douglas Wood

We test students right after they read something mostly to ensure that they have in fact read it. From this, many have drawn the erroneous conclusion that the only good that can be extracted from their reading is that which can be displayed on or measured by a test. This is wildly inaccurate. Most of the good your reading and education has done for you is not something you can recall at all. ~ Douglas Wilson

I like the present. I'm always interested in new ideas, and what's happening. I'm not nostalgic. ~ Douglas Coupland

Beauty is variable, ugliness is constant. ~ Douglas Horton

My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees. ~ Douglas Adams

She gave me a sad smile and did what good friends do - gave me a second slice of cake. ~ Penelope Douglas

Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They're solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive. ~ Douglas Adams

A vast percentage of the human race is literally not wired neurologically to get irony. Well more than half of humanity takes life at face value, which is to me terrifying. ~ Douglas Coupland

I walked far down a dirt side road and into a farmer's field - some sort of cereal that was chest high and corn green and rustled as its blades inflicted small paper burns on my skin as I walked through them. And in that field, when the appointed hour, minute, and second of the darkness came, I lay myself down on the ground, surrounded by the tall pithy grain stalks and the faint sound of insects, and held my breath, there experiencing a mood that I have never really been able to shake completely - a mood of darkness and inevitability and facination - a mood that surely must have been held by most young people since the dawn of time as they have crooked their necks, stared at the heavens, and watched their sky go out. ~ Douglas Coupland

Family is putting up with each other's shit sometimes I guess. ~ Douglas Clegg

Knievel seemed braver and more brazen - and more unhinged - than any other athlete-cum-thrill-seeker of his era. ~ Douglas Brinkley

There is a kind of magicness about going far away and then coming back all changed. ~ Kate Douglas Wiggin

With an amazingly balletic movement Zaphod was standing and scanning the horizon, because that was how far the gold ground stretched in every direction, perfectly smooth and solid. It gleamed like ... it's impossible to say what it gleamed like because nothing in the Universe gleams in quite the same way that a planet made of solid gold does. ~ Douglas Adams

You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world. ~ Douglas Coupland

The thing about the future is that it never feels the way we thought it would. ~ Douglas Coupland

I never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style. ~ Douglas Sirk

A five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep Thought haughtily. "You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff. ~ Douglas Adams

The nations of the world will have to unite for the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of Earth must some day make a common front against attack by people from other planets. ~ Douglas MacArthur

She shook her head in puzzlement.
'You're very strange,' she said.
'No, I'm very ordinary,' said Arthur,'but some very strange things have happened to me. You could say I'm more differed from than differing. ~ Douglas Adams

What is the point? We assume that every time we do anything we know what the consequences will be, i.e., more or less what we intend them to be. This is not only not always correct. It is wildly, crazily, stupidly, cross-eyed-blithering-insectly wrong! ~ Douglas Adams

The more you get, the better you become' and therefore over the years you become more experienced and you learn how to deal with it. You know what can go wrong, and you also learn how to react if things go wrong. ~ Jill Douglas

The language of women should be luminous, but not voluminous. ~ Douglas William Jerrold

The President of the Universe holds no real power. His sole purpose is to take attention away from where the power truly exists ... ~ Douglas Adams

Today a Scot is leading a British army in France [Field Marshall Douglas Haig], another is commanding the British Grand Fleet at sea [Admiral David Beatty], while a third directs the Imperial General Staff at home [Sir William Roberton]. The Lord Chancellor is a Scot [Viscount Finlay]; so are the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary [Bonar Law and Arthur Balfour]. The Prime Minister is a Welshman [David Lloyd George], and the First Lord of the Admiralty is an Irishman [Lord Carson]. Yet no one has ever brought in a bill to give home rule to England! ~ John Hay Beith

I'm convinced that Bach is the greatest genius who ever walked among us, and the Brandenburgs are what he wrote when he was happy. ~ Douglas Adams

D'Agosta had long ago learned, when working with Pendergast, to never get caught without two things: a gun and a flashlight. ~ Douglas Preston

Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can't do this or that. That's nonsense. Make up your mind, you'll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible. ~ Douglas Bader

In a globalized world, one application can spread like wildfire and there's only one winning company, which means you have to invest more than you've ever had. ~ Douglas Leone

doing with the puzzled ~ Douglas Adams

The entire effort of artificial intelligence is essentially a fight against computers' rigidity. ~ Douglas Hofstadter

He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left. ~ Douglas Adams

Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? ~ William O. Douglas

In today's world, we look at our presidents, our prime ministers, our princes and our potentates,and we describe them as our leaders. But they're not. They're merely our rulers.The leaders are the people who change the minds and stimulate the imaginations of the public,whether children or adults. That means the moviemakers, the people who make TV shows, the entertainment people in the business. ~ Douglas Gresham

New Orleans is just a microcosm of Newark and Detroit and hundreds of other troubled urban locales. ~ Douglas Brinkley

Men are created to exercise dominion over the earth; they are fitted to be husbandman, tilling the earth; they are equipped to be saviors, delivering from evil; they are expected to grow up into wisdom, becoming sages; and they are designed to reflect the image and glory of God. Some of these following terms may seem somewhat cumbersome, but let's call them lords, husbandmen, saviors, sages, and glory-bearers. ~ Douglas Wilson

The horse, it must be said, was quite surprised. ~ Douglas Adams

He doesn't want to face Englishmen,' the Lord of Douglas said, and he knew he was right. Ever since the Scottish knights ~ Bernard Cornwell

I always thought that about the Garden of Eden story," said Ford.
"Eh?"
"Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?"
"Yes of course I do."
"Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting 'Gotcha'. It wouldn't have any difference if they hadn't eaten it."
"Why not?"
"Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end."
"What are you talking about?"
"Never mind, eat the fruit. ~ Douglas Adams

Infinity minus one," chattered the computer. "Improbability sum now complete. ~ Douglas Adams

We decided that the French could never write user-friendly software because they're so rude. ~ Douglas Coupland

What has interested me all along is not the pronouncement of meaning but pointing toward the way meaning is formed. ~ Douglas Huebler

There are times, however, when whatever your metabolism you have to take a deep breath. ~ Douglas Adams

Machine guns are taken through grit and determination. ~ Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

A greater sense of do-it-yourself (DIY) politics is exposed by the fact Cascadians are more likely to disagree that "voting is the only way people like me can have a say about how the government runs things" (54 percent disagree versus 37 percent, RoNA). ~ Douglas Todd

Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is.
(Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.) ~ Douglas Adams

In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference. ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

I love going to conventions, and I love spending time with the fans and going to parts of the world where I wouldn't normally go. ~ Aaron Douglas

Sometimes managers are a little shy to criticize another manager or another operation. ~ Tom Douglas

When I thought about it, there actually weren't a lot of things or people in the world that I loved. Why had I left them here? ~ Penelope Douglas

Holy Zarquon, did I ask for an existentialist elevator? ~ Douglas Adams

Douglas claimed that in his New Salem days Lincoln "could ruin more liquor than all the boys of the town together" - a charge that was not merely inaccurate but singularly inappropriate from a senator known to have a fondness for drink - and Lincoln jeered that Douglas's popular-sovereignty doctrine was "as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death. ~ David Herbert Donald

Everyone contemplates suicide at some point, even if it's just for a minute. And one thing is usually the root cause. Loneliness. ~ Penelope Douglas

Celebrity gets you access to world leaders. ~ Michael Douglas

To say that someone is a conservative does not tell us what he is interested in conserving. ~ Douglas Wilson

My general approach to opposition is where the government is getting something right, we should say so. And where we disagree with them, we should say so, too. ~ Douglas Alexander

We've arrived at another of those doors." There was a sliding door let ~ Douglas Adams

Hate is a hard thing to sustain. Grief isn't. Grief is something that can stay with you for a very long time ~ Douglas Kennedy