Levin Quotes

Low-income Americans' potential for mobility is often impaired by family breakdown, cultural dysfunction, and the polarization of norms ~ Yuval Levin

No amount of manifest absurdity ... could deter those who wanted to believe from believing. ~ Bernard Levin

Maybe truth is just like that. You can see it, but only out of the corner of your eye.
Adele never demands of him any actual conversation. She seems to understand that she is there to keep time and drown out the alarm of more individuated noises. The clink of a pin drop that can fray his nerves, the grinding of gravel beneath the weight of a man on the street, the spike of a dulled conversation as a couple pass beneath his window over Langegasse, the mounting pitch of the conspiratorial exchange as they approach. ~ Janna Levin

Through the years I've found that I prefer live playing to recording. I still do lots of recording - but I treasure the live shows. ~ Tony Levin

Dr. Rice's record on Iraq gives me great concern. In her public statements she clearly overstated and exaggerated the intelligence concerning Iraq before the war in order to support the President's decision to initiate military action against Iraq. ~ Carl Levin

They gave Mrs. Cortez a check for five hundred and eighty-three dollars - a month's rent in advance and a month's rent as security - ~ Ira Levin

You do a lot of concatenating when you're an Oulipian ~ Daniel Levin Becker

countless Americans of all parties and no party are practical, experienced experts in putting family, faith, and community first and helping one another in hard times. A ~ Yuval Levin

We should be hell bent on getting those weapons of mass destruction, hell bent on having a credible approach to them, but we should try to do it in a way which keeps the world together and that achieves our goal which is removing the ... defanging Saddam.. ~ Carl Levin

So virtuous are the programs said to be - pensions for the elderly, compensation for the unemployed, medicine for the sick, and assistance for the disabled - few dare ring the alarm of looming economic catastrophe that threatens to destabilize the civil society. ~ Mark Levin

I finally did work out a very good relationship with my father, but it was rough growing up. We had a lot of conflict, and I think it surfaced in many of my works. ~ Ira Levin

What motivates me is everything that I have been a small part of. ~ Sander Levin

When the peasants and their song had vanished from his sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of anguish at his loneliness, his bodily idleness, his hostility to this world, came over him ... It was all drowned in the sea of cheerful common labor. God had given the day, God had given the strength. Both day and strength had been devoted to labour and in that lay the reward ... Levin had often admired this life, had often experienced a feeling of envy for the people who lived this life, but that day for the first time ... the thought came clearly to Levin that it was up to him to change that so burdensome, idle, artificial and individual life he lived into this laborious, pure and common, lovely life. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Maholtz asked me, "Why do you hate me?"
I said, Everyone hates you.
"I know," he said. "I know that," he said, "but they hate me cause I scared them or had what they wanted. You weren't ever scarend of me. You never wanted what I had. Except for the sap. And then you took it, and now I don't have it, so why do you hate me?"
Maybe it's your accent.
"I'm from Pinttsburgh," he said.
Maybe you shouldn't be.
"I can't help where I'm from."
We turned at Main Hall. Feld was talking to Forrest Kenilworth and Cody. The chair sat dripping in front of the door.
So maybe it's your face. The way you look at girls like you're scheming to corner them.
"I was borng this way, though. I can't help how my face loonks."
So maybe it's all the banced thing that you say.
"They just come out of me. I'm hated, I feel it. I say those things without thinking, from hurnt. I can't help that either. It's not my faulnt."
I guess, then, I hate you for being so helpless. ~ Adam Levin

That's not how national security works ... I don't care what the Supreme Court said 30 years ago or what some judge said 15 minutes ago. This is America, and our government is collecting way too damn much data on we the private citizens! ~ Mark Levin

It is imperative that women have quality affordable day care available to them because without it, families suffer. ~ Sander Levin

Levin felt so resolute and serene that no answer, he fancied, could affect him. ~ Leo Tolstoy

progress of the ethic of diffusion and liberalization has meant growing estrangement from precisely these prerequisites for human flourishing, especially among the least advantaged Americans. ~ Yuval Levin

Utopianism's equality is intolerant of diversity, uniqueness, debate, etc., for utopianism's purpose requires a singular focus. There can be no competing voices or causes slowing or obstructing society's long and righteous march. Utopianism relies on deceit, propaganda, dependence, intimidation, and force. In its more aggressive state, as the malignancy of the enterprise becomes more painful and its impossibility more obvious, it incites violence inasmuch as avenues for free expression and civil dissent are cut off. Violence becomes the individual's primary recourse and the state's primary response. Ultimately, the only way out is the state's termination. ~ Mark R. Levin

The baby kicked like a demon ~ Ira Levin

Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle," Burke writes. ~ Yuval Levin

We are all caught in the stream of a complicated legacy - a proof of the limits of human reason, a proof of our boundlessness. A declaration that were were down here on this crowded, lonely planet, a declaration that we mattered, we living clumps of ash, that each of us was once somebody, that we strove for what we could never have, that we could admit as much. That was us - funny and lousy and great all at once. ~ Janna Levin

The Doctor snorted. 'Wimp!' He squared his shoulders and turned towards the fire, grinning. 'Race you.' And he was off, running. Jack hesitated, sighed, swore, and ran after him. Levin and Krylek, Catherine and the villagers stared after them in astonishment. Two dark figures running though fire ... ~ Justin Richards

...I know there are a number of things you know, probably too many things you know--too many, I say, not because any kind of knowledge has the capacity to be bad in itself, but rather because certain kinds of knowledge, particularly those kinds we often describe as arcane, can, by way of their very arcanity, serve to obscure the knowledge-bearer's understanding of the mundane. ~ Adam Levin

I'm a player and I do it because I love playing whether it's for my album or someone else's. ~ Tony Levin

As far as other important people go, university president Richard Levin believes "there are many ways to contribute to the well-being of society, and there are many forms of public service." He rejects the notion that "people who choose a business career aren't interested in being public-spirited," asserting that "what's outstanding about Yale graduates is that whatever career they choose, they end up being active participants in the civic life of the communities in which they live. ~ Marina Keegan

I'm in that comfortable niche where I'm not that famous and sometimes people do need to put a barrier between them and their followers. When you're real famous you need to do that but I'm not that famous so I don't need that kind of barrier. ~ Tony Levin

What is remarkable in Burke's first performance," wrote his great nineteenth-century biographer John Morley, "is his discernment of the important fact that behind the intellectual disturbances in the sphere of philosophy, and the noisier agitations in the sphere of theology, there silently stalked a force that might shake the whole fabric of civil society itself."4 A caustic and simplistic skepticism of all traditional institutions, supposedly grounded in a scientific rationality that took nothing for granted but in fact willfully ignored the true complexity of social life, seemed to Burke poorly suited for the study of society, and even dangerous when applied to it. Burke would warn of, and contend with, this force for the rest of his life. ~ Yuval Levin

He [Vronsky] himself felt that, except that crazy fellow married to Kitty Shcherbatsky, who, quite irrelevantly had with rabid virulence told him a lot of pointless nonsense, every nobleman whose acquaintance he had made had become his partisan. ~ Leo Tolstoy

And it makes you wonder - how can a people incapable of selecting their own lightbulbs and toilets possess enough competence to vote for their own rulers and fill out complicated tax returns? ~ Mark R. Levin

The latest Congressional Budget Office figures show that the top 1 percent of income earners in the United States paid 39 percent of federal income taxes while earning 18 percent of pretax income and the top 5 percent of income earners paid 61 percent of federal income taxes while earning 31 percent of pretax income. Indeed, the top 40 percent of income earners paid 99.4 percent of federal income taxes. The bottom 40 percent of income earners paid no federal income tax and received 3.8 percent from the tax system. And the middle 20 percent of income earners pay only 4.4 percent of federal income taxes.3 ~ Mark R. Levin

Yes, alas, I've been on some recording sessions where the music wasn't good. Not so many, really, considering how many I've done. It's a very awkward situation because to do a recording well you focus on the positive of what will make the piece better. ~ Tony Levin

Always quick to demonize the opposition, Obama characterized those who disagreed with his position as "out of step and [putting] politics ahead of working Americans."16 He insisted that a minimum wage "means making sure workers have the chance to save for a dignified retirement."17 But forcing employers to pay more for unskilled or less-skilled workers, many of whom are younger, on top of the other statist economic and social policies, discourages employee retention and hiring. ~ Mark R. Levin

Topology and number theory are my faves. ~ Janna Levin

It's funny when you put music up against picture, and all your preconceptions go away, and you start over. You just realize that that doesn't work at all. ~ Victor Levin

They promised me you wouldn't be hurt," he said. "And you haven't been, really. I mean, suppose you'd had a baby and lost it; wouldn't it be the same? And we're getting so much in return, Ro. ~ Ira Levin

Levin felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is called, from the heart - that is to say, had said only just what they were thinking and feeling - they would simply have looked into each other's faces, and Konstantin could only have said, "You're dying, you're dying!" and Nikolay could only have answered, "I know I'm dying, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" And they could have said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Let us never allow ourselves to think that poverty is an excuse for an invitation to totalitarianism, and if we should be tempted to think as much, let us remind ourselves that totalitarianism not only extinguishes liberty but institutionalises poverty as well ~ Bernard Levin

No, thanks, we're not keen on cat pix. ~ Ira Levin

If I'd thought she was uninterested, I never would have worried so much - the prospect of screwing something up is much more daunting than that of screwing nothing up. I definitely thought there was something there, and so there was something to lose, you see. ~ Adam Levin

social Left is a minority, too, and it is a minority aspiring to dominate our institutions at a time when those institutions are particularly weak and diffuse. ~ Yuval Levin

Levin felt that in his soul, in the very bottom of his soul, his brother Nikolai, despite the ugliness of his life, was not more in the wrong than those who despised him. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The cure for mixed metaphors, I have always found, is for the patient to be obliged to draw a picture of the result. ~ Bernard Levin

When Levin thought about what he was and what he lived for, he found no answer and fell into despair; but when he stopped asking himself about it, he seemed to know what he was and what he lived for, because he acted and lived firmly and definitely. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Sure one could argue the naturalist's case that the mind experiences an external reality in which it participates. But how can this account really satisfy us, Olga? One could equally well argue that all experiences is highly subjective, that the only thing we really have is the image, the smell, the taste, and all of our assertions about the universe are constructions of the human mind. ~ Janna Levin

The Founders believed, and the Conservative agrees, in the dignity of the individual; that we, as human beings, have a right to live, live freely, and pursue that which motivates us not because man or some government says so, but because these are God-given natural rights. ~ Mark R. Levin

For me, if the music is good, whether the artist is famous or unknown, I love being part of the music and contributing what I can to the bass end. ~ Tony Levin

Harriet Levin [is] a shining poet in her generation ... The dynamics of her language and her vigorous voice distinguish all her poems. Levin's fearless willingness to tackle any subject combines with her subtle intelligence to produce a rare reading experience, the moving, psychologically sophisticated and intriguing work of a poet with both guts and craft ~ Molly Peacock

You're not always right. You're often wrong. But at least you're looking at it as objectively as you can with as much experience as you can in the moment and saying, "Yeah, I think it's funny" or "No, I don't think it's funny yet." ~ Victor Levin

Moreover, the mastermind's tactics are disarming if not seductive. As I wrote in Ameritopia, "[w]here utopianism is advanced through gradualism . . . it can deceive . . . an unsuspecting population, which is largely content and passive. It is sold as reforming and improving the existing society's imperfections and weaknesses without imperiling its basic nature. Under these conditions, it is mostly ignored, dismissed, or tolerated by much of the citizenry and celebrated by some. ~ Mark R. Levin

It is a function of entrenched, intergenerational poverty that isolates too many lower-income Americans from even middle-class economic, cultural, and social opportunities and norms. ~ Yuval Levin

Don't you feel as though you could love everything starting tomorrow, and everything could love you, if only you took an action to set into motion the coming of our new tomorrow and its tomorrow and that one's tomorrow? Shotgun loaded hand on the pump and no matter who you damage you're still a false prophet, but we drink chocolate milk and then we get muscles and smash down the droves with fists like hammers and then we pump the fists in the air for victory. I be the prophet of the doom that is you. You are the mess in messiah. ~ Adam Levin

In our time, in particular, many people are not only estranged from some of them but are denied the chance to encounter them. ~ Yuval Levin

When we change and grow into new versions of ourselves, we have to tolerate a lot of uncertainty. ~ Nancy Levin

Forever is a very long time, especially the bit towards the end. ~ Janna Levin

But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy of her. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The Conservative sees in the free market the harmony of interests and rules of cooperation that also underlie the civil society. ~ Mark Levin

Philosophers have warned us: if we forget the past, we are doomed to repeat it. ~ Ira Levin

Levin tried to drink a little coffee, and put a piece of roll into his mouth, but his mouth could do nothing with it. He took the piece out of his mouth, put on his overcoat and went out to walk about again. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Many of the Central Asians know Russian, and Ted Levin speaks it fluently. I speak Chinese, but Mongolian is completely different, so we had to have translators. ~ Yo-Yo Ma

We need for America to get back to basics and focus on the middle class's quality of life. Healthcare reform is vital to restoring that standard of living. ~ Sander Levin

Consequently, citizen legislators, rotating back to their communities after a short period of public service - considered an indispensable and routine characteristic and design of representative government at the time of the founding, and for a century thereafter - have been replaced with a professional ruling class led by governing masterminds. For the most part, they are isolated from the communities from which they hail and are consumed with the daily jockeying for position and power within their ranks. Moreover, they both pander to and lord over their constituents. ~ Mark R. Levin

The Constitution is a document that should only be amended with great caution. ~ Carl Levin

Today the combat takes a different shape; instead of wishing to put man in a prison, woman endeavors to escape from one; she no longer seeks to drag him into the realms of immanence but to emerge, herself, into the light of transcendence. Now the attitude of the males creates a new conflict: it is with a bad grace that the man lets her go. ~ Ira Levin

It is dangerous to exist in the world. To exist is to be threatened. We must live with threats. ~ Adam Levin

The Ways and Means Committee for me has this opportunity to work with programs where I can take my parents' sense of community and make it work. ~ Sander Levin

Not a single gun was used at the Oklahoma bombing. ~ Mark Levin

Countries like ours are full of people who have all of the material comforts they desire, yet lead lives of quiet (and at times noisy) desperation, understanding nothing but the fact that there is a hole inside them and that however much food and drink they pour into it, however many motorcars and television sets they stuff it with, however many well-balanced children and loyal friends they parade around the edges of it ... it aches! ~ Bernard Levin

If our intelligence is either manipulated or if it's shaded or if in some way it is exaggerated, it is very, very dangerous for us, particularly as we go down the road and look at other threats,. ~ Carl Levin

Astronomers had already found the fingerprints of chaos in violence on the sun's surface, gaps in the asteroid belt, and the distribution of galaxies. Levin and her colleagues have found them in the exit from the big bang and in black holes. They predict that light trapped by a black hole can enter unstable chaotic orbits and be reemited-making the black hole visible, if only briefly. Yes, chaos can light up black holes. "There are rational numbers to mine, fractal sets, and all kinds of truly beautiful consequences," she says. "So on the one hand, people are horrified, on the other they're mesmerized." She does chaos in curved space-time. Einstein would be proud. ~ James Gleick

We have never observed infinity in nature. Whenever you have infinities in a theory, that's where the theory fails as a description of nature. And if space was born in the Big Bang, yet is infinite now, we are forced to believe that it's instantaneously, infinitely big. It seems absurd. ~ Janna Levin

This is a very sick man, this Obama. ~ Mark Levin

Today, no less than five Supreme Court justices are on record, either through their opinions or speeches (or both), that they will consult foreign law and foreign-court rulings for guidance in certain circumstances. Of course, policymakers are free to consult whatever they want, but not justices. They're limited to the Constitution and the law. ~ Mark R. Levin

Ashamed is just grateful waiting to happen. You only taste your dignity right before you puke it up. ~ Adam Levin

In the free market, a man born into wealth or who has otherwise acquired great riches can lose his fortune depending on how he chooses to behave. Conversely, a man born into poverty or who has lost wealth once obtained can acquire a fortune, depending, again, on how he chooses to behave. ~ Mark Levin

The less the power, the greater the desire to exercise it. ~ Bernard Levin

Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without being themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that they are ridiculous through their shyness, ~ Leo Tolstoy

Kitty got up to fetch a table, and, as she passed, her eyes met Levin's. She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for a suffering of which she was herself the cause. "If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy."
"I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin was on the point of retiring, the old Prince came in, and, after greeting the ladies, addressed Levin. ~ Leo Tolstoy

This book is, in a way, a scrapbook of my writing life. From shopping the cathedral flea market in Barcelona with David Sedaris to having drinks at Cognac with Nora Ephron just months before she died. To the years of sporadic correspondence I had with Thom Jones and Ira Levin. I've stalked my share of mentors, asking for advice.
Therefore, if you came back another day and asked me to teach you, I'd tell you that becoming an author involves more than talent and skill. I've known fantastic writers who never finished a project. And writers who launched incredible ideas, then never fully executed them. And I've seen writers who sold a single book and became so disillusioned by the process that they never wrote another. I'd paraphrase the writer Joy Williams, who says that writers must be smart enough to hatch a brilliant idea - but dull enough to research it, keyboard it, edit and re-edit it, market the manuscript, revise it, revise it, re-revise it, review the copy edit, proofread the typeset galleys, slog through the interviews and write the essays to promote it, and finally to show up in a dozen cities and autograph copies for thousands or tens of thousands of people…
And then I'd tell you, "Now get off my porch."
But if you came back to me a third time, I'd say, "Kid…" I'd say, "Don't say I didn't warn you. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

With your Social Security number in the wind, whoever finds it - or, more likely, whoever buys it on one of the many black-market information exchanges on the deep web - holds the keys to every part of your life. What that means - plain and simple - is that you're going to need an efficient way to keep one eye over your shoulder, all the time. ~ Adam Levin

My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time. ~ Leo Tolstoy

You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty."
Levin nodded thoughtfully.
"The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either. ~ Michael Connelly

we have a palpable sense that Tolstoy as a novelist tests his characters' muscles and trains his reader to track their spasms so that by the time we come to the meeting between Kitty and Levin we are able to share the latter's understanding that what was inexpressible in words was given meaning in 'every movement of her lips, her eyes, and her hands'. So Kitty's nervousness at the outcome of her meeting with Levin is expressed in and heightened by the failure of her fork to spear a slippery pickled mushroom on her plate. A slight muscular reflex, such as Kitty's hand in ~ Leo Tolstoy

there are now only two people on earth who know who he is." He swung a finger back and forth between them. "Us." He squeezed her hands, held her eyes with his. "That's why it's such - joy for me to be with you again. Not just because you're my mother. Because you know who I am, because I don't have to hide the truth from you! And don't you feel something like that toward me? How ~ Ira Levin

It's unclear how air strikes on our part can succeed unless the Iraqi army is willing to fight, and that's uncertain given the fact that several Iraqi army divisions have melted away. ~ Carl Levin

We now have the liberal playbook and we know what they are doing, and we are using it against them. Unlike the Democrats though, we aren't out to destroy our society, we are out to save it. ~ Mark R. Levin

A false-hearted lover is worse than a thief.
For a thief will just rob you and take what you have,
But a false-hearted lover will lead you to the grave.
And the grave will decay you and turn you to dust;
Not one boy in a hundred a poor girl can trust. ~ Ira Levin

But it did not interest her at all. She and Levin had a conversation of there own, yet not a conversation but a sort of mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of joyful terror before the unknown into which they were entering. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The Statist veils his pursuits in moral indignation, intoning in high dudgeon the injustices and inequities of liberty and life itself, for which only he can provide justice and bring a righteous resolution. ~ Mark Levin

Judicial activists are nothing short of radicals in robes
contemptuous of the rule of law, subverting the Constitution at will, and using their public trust to impose their policy preferences on society. In fact, no radical political movement has been more effective in undermining our system of government than the judiciary. And with each Supreme Court term, we hold our collective breath hoping the justices will do no further damage, knowing full well they will disappoint. Such is the nature of judicial tyranny. ~ Mark R. Levin

One of the fundamental ways man adapts is to acquire and possess property. It is how he makes his home, finds or grows food, makes clothing, and generally improves his life. Private property is not an artificial construct. It is endemic to human nature and survival. ~ Mark R. Levin

I'd like to convince you that the universe has a soundtrack and that soundtrack is played on space itself, because space can wobble like a drum. ~ Janna Levin

The Revenge of Adam Defoe ~ Evgeny Levin

I'm hoping that "South Of Wilshire" will help people to realize that these are places that they should patronize, not avoid. ~ Harvey Levin

Before that I wanted to be a magazine illustrator - I probably would have painted Gothic scenes. ~ Ira Levin

In our time, no less than any other, traditionalists should live out their faiths and their ways in the world, confident that their instruction and example will make that world better and that people will be drawn to the spark. ~ Yuval Levin

Sex, yes; sexism, no. ~ Ira Levin

I am fairly average in my expenses as a person in a technical line/CEO of work. ~ Jack Levin

The government does not add value to the economy. It removes value from the economy by imposing taxes on one citizen and providing cash to another. ~ Mark Levin

Your favorite story, whatever it might be, was written for one reader ~ Victor Levin