Enlightened Times Quotes

What religious Americans might have been slow to realize is that the ACLU's long march through the institutions of America has culminated at the door of Obama's White House. Behind that door stands the one we have "been waiting for," as liberals chanted about Obama in 2008. Obama is the fulfillment of the ACLU's messianic secularist hopes. No president has done more to empty the public square of Christians than Barack Obama. To the delight of secularists, Obama has been stacking the federal courts with ACLU-style judges who read the First Amendment through an ahistorical and atheistic prism, or as they like to call it, the "living Constitution," which is nothing more than a euphemism for whatever they think the Constitution should mean in our supposedly enlightened times. ~ Phyllis Schlafly

In less enlightened times, the best way to impress women was to own a hot car. But women wised up and realized it was better to buy their own hot cars so they wouldn't have to ride around with jerks. ~ Scott Adams

You realize that suicide's a criminal offense - In less enlightened times they'd have hung you for it. ~ Peter Cook

This was dangerous talk - in these enlightened times, a wise woman would never be too clever. The accusation of witchcraft had rid many men of an ugly wife and yet more women of an attractive rival. ~ Joss Alexander

He mulled that over. "Sheriff Connally woulda let us shoot 'em."
I reached over and took his coffee away from him. "Yep. Lucian probably would have done the job himself, but we're living in more enlightened times." I drained his cup and handed it back with a smile. "Ain't it grand? ~ Craig Johnson

If I say, 'Oh nice,' about seven times in the same show, things aren't going well. ~ Oprah Winfrey

What i'm saying is, my friends, one ought to be able to let go. If a path does not please us, instead of insisting on going that specific way, of making our selfishness the guide, we ought to forsake. The books we cannot write, the films we cannot shoot, the projects we cannot develop, the jobs we cannot pursue and the people who no longer love us. Being able to let go, at times, is the most beautiful of all! ~ Elif Shafak

Standing here, in this quiet house where I can hear the birds chirping out back, I think I'm kind of getting the concept of closure. It's no big dramatic before-after. It's more like that melancholy feeling you get at the end of a really good vacation. Something special is ending, and you're sad, but you can't be that sad because, hey, it was good while it lasted, and there'll be other vacations, other good times. ~ Gayle Forman

I remember," someone said, "how in ancient times one could turn a wolf into a human and then lecture it to one's heart's content. ~ Charles Simic

It's hard to make a living in music, so a lot of times in the arts it's safer to kind of fit into a box. ~ Michael Gungor

On Hayao Miyazaki
I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.
"We have a word for that in Japanese," he said, "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."
Is that like the "pillow words" that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?
"I don't think it's like the "pillow word." He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, but if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb. ~ Roger Ebert

I loved Jack because of every little thing about him. The way he laughed, the way he made me smile, the way he'd stay up until nine in the morning watching zombie movies he'd seen a hundred times, and the way he could never hold a grudge. I loved him because I loved him, not because it was fate or destiny or in my blood, We had chosen each other, and that felt more powerful and more magical. ~ Amanda Hocking

I'd rather be an adviser. I don't wanna become a trainer because I think with the knowledge and the business sense that I've accomplished through my career and have credibility, why would I reduce myself down to being in a gym with a bunch of training which is not a bad thing to give advice, but I can do that with a suit and tie on and also be there when the cheques are written. I don't wanna be there when the cheques are handed down from 3 or 4 people's hands and then it hits mine as a trainer because 9/10 times, deductions have come out of that. ~ Bernard Hopkins

I am going to continue to work hard, but I do not take it too seriously, I just do what feels right and I really want to have a good time. ~ Paul Walker

Because there are times when getting up to mischief isn't mischievous and other times when it is and you shouldn't do it. ~ Francois Lelord

I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in their times. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The becoming attitude for us to take is that of godly fear, implicit obedience, and unreserved resignation and submission. But not only so: the recognition of the sovereignty of God, and the realization that the Sovereign Himself is my Father, ought to overwhelm the heart and cause me to bow before Him in adoring worship. At all times I must say Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in Thy sight. ~ Arthur W. Pink

There is no "good," just passages and pathways to greater depths of pain brought to bear as markets diversify and specialise. In thinking he is winning - be it through miraculous medical advancements, enlightened self-interest which fosters a degree of social stability, or a planet wide agricultural revolution - man is in fact throwing himself into heightened states of artfully dressed turmoil: mayhem which could only thrill a Creator disposed to being thrilled at such sweet turbulences. ~ John Zande

You never have real changes unless you have a time of crisis. ~ Milton Friedman

By the time I received my doctorate in American studies in 1957, I was in the twisted grip of a disease of our times in which the sufferer experiences an overwhelming urge to join the 'real world.' So I started working for newspapers. ~ Tom Wolfe

When I was a kid, my mother used to film all of our holidays and all of the good times, and I kind of associated the camera with everything being okay and everything being happy. ~ Natalia Kills

I would love to be a guys' girl, but they always end up falling in love with me, so I'm a girls' girl instead. I've tried having friendly relationships with men, but it ends up being impossible, and I've been around the block too many times not to see it coming. ~ Nadine Velazquez

I'm Cherokee, and there were times when social expansion was something that is needed by a cultural group or a national group. ~ Wes Studi

It might be asked, 'How much time shall I allow myself for rest?' The answer is that no rule of universal application can be given, as all persons do not require the same measure of sleep, and also the same persons, at different times, according to the strength or weakness of their body, may require more or less. ~ George Muller

Once you spend time with [the afflicted], you start recognizing them as individuals, as opposed to lumping them in with everybody else who might have those symptoms. ~ Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Water is dripping onto the floor somewhere near the cupboard, like the tick of a clock. It's annoying because sometimes it comes when I'm expecting it and at other times it waits on purpose to irritate me. ~ Lindsey Barraclough

People ask me how many times I've taken LSD--and I don't count. But it's the same thing when they ask me how many times I've made love. The answer is, not enough. ~ Timothy Leary

You mean in the past twenty-four hours, since I've been kidnapped, drugged, shot at, almost killed several times, you didn't see our long, loving gazes pass back and forth? ~ Katie Kacvinsky

I've been very sensitive for a long time to the repeated pattern, during economic hard times or after a war, of the United States' essentially unilaterally disarming. ~ Robert M. Gates

I could do exploration in this particular career field, and it was a goal that, even if I didn't reach it, it was so high it seemed almost impossible, but even if I didn't reach it, I would still have a good time and a very satisfying career. ~ Duane G. Carey

The two-point rhythm of walking's stride clears the mind for thinking. (N.B.: Perhaps, after telling the spinal circuits to "take a walk," the forebrain shifts to automatic pilot, so to speak, freeing the neocortex to ponder important issues of the day.) Many philosophers were lifetime walkers, who found that bipedal rhythms facilitated creative contemplation and thought. In his short life, e.g., Henry David Thoreau walked an estimated 250,000 miles--ten times the circumference of earth. ~ David B. Givens

We are living in times that demand more and more of our brains and muscles, of our nerves and physical energy. Only those who are strong and know how to keep it so, can stand the wear and tear. It pays to stop once in a while to look over our machinery and oil the parts that need it. ~ Adrian Peter Schmidt

I never really thought I went away because I've written all of the movies and I'm produced them all and certainly provided services about and beyond the average producer on two and three. I was on set most of the films and called action and cut a lot of times and did all that good stuff. ~ Paul W. S. Anderson

But the transition from the New York Times to the Ashton Clarion was like jumping off a speeding train into a wall of half-set Jell-O. ~ Frank E. Peretti

I was sick of people making fun of my hair and so I cut it off and I've got much more attention than ever before. It was like when Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1906 - three times more people came to see where it used to be. ~ Emo Philips

Maybe Bill Maher should just practice his monologue a few times before the show, so he wouldn't find it so hilarious. But I kid the asshole. ~ Andy Kindler

That's what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love. ~Page 133. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

I went to Texas a few times for gigs and adopted the cowboy look. Every man, at some point in his life, goes through a cowboy stage - everyone! Well, at least everyone that I look up to! ~ Theophilus London

LOUIS SACHAR is the author of the New York Times #1 bestseller Holes, winner of the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, and the Christopher Award. He is also the author of Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake; Small Steps, winner of the Schneider Family Book Award; and The Cardturner, a Publishers Weekly Best Book, a Parents' Choice Gold Award recipient, and an ALA-YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults book. His books for younger readers include There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom, The Boy Who Lost His Face, Dogs Don't Tell Jokes, and the Marvin Redpost series, among many others. ~ Louis Sachar

Ideas should be freely and dispassionately considered on their own merits, since after all, one generation's heretic is another generation's hero. Mystics like the Ramchal disagreed with rationalists like the Rambam on what exactly is the highest mode of being. The Rambam believed that the ultimate existence is purely spiritual, in Olam HaBah, while the Ramchal believed it to be corporeal resurrection in this world.1 In his time, the Ramchal was labeled a heretic and had his works burned by fellow Jews, but nevertheless lives on today as one of the most respected Jewish philosophers in history. The Rambam before him suffered the same fate, not just for his views on the afterlife, in which corporeal resurrection only played a minor role, but also for his "radical" belief that God does not have a body. It seems possible that his debate may find a sister in modern times: I would not be surprised if future generations view the figurative nature of Olam HaBah with the same certainty as modern Jews now view the Rambam's "heresy" about the nature of God. Because frankly, these Talmudic passages make no sense unless viewed as metaphor, and the Rambam provides a kind of Rabbinic precedent to do so. It is precisely the same dialectic: as our scientific view of reality expands and sharpens, our religious teachings must evolve and conform. If the evidence confirms a literal reading, then so be it. If it refutes it, then so be it. Truth is truth, and we must cherish our integrity just as ~ Shmuel Pernicone

Sometimes life is fantastical, and other times you have to find fantastic inside of the boring parts and yes, even the pain. ~ Marilyn Grey

Many an ancient lord's last words had been, You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh. ~ Terry Pratchett