Molasses Act Quotes

John Adams, by then one of the country's founding fathers, wrote to a friend: I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence. Many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes. ~ Tom Standage

I keep meeting directors that are so irresistible. I only do irresistible films, because I don't need to act to feel myself alive. ~ Mathieu Amalric

We can't act cruelly toward others without also being negatively affected by our actions. We really are all connected, deeper than we know. If we can't be kinder to each other simply because it's the compassionate and loving way to be, the less remember that when we hurt others, we hurt ourselves, too. Every single time. Just one more reason to treat each other well. ~ Scott Stabile

It costs personal fear to be authentic but the reward is integrity, and by that I mean a soul fully integrated, no difference between his act and his actual person. ~ Donald Miller

The clever cannot catch the genius; such an attempt is just an act of trying to catch the shadow of a flying bird! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Lovemaking only really works and is satisfying when each person in the sexual and lovemaking act wants it and actively participates. ~ J.F. Kelly

The poet discovers that what men value as substances have a higher value as symbols; that Nature is the immense shadow of man. A man's action is only a picture-book of his creed. He does after what he believes. Your condition, your employment, is the fable of you. The world is thoroughly anthropomorphized, as if it had passed through the body and mind of man, and taken his mould and form. Indeed, good poetry is always personification, and heightens every species of force in nature by giving it a human volition. We are advertised that there is nothing to which man is not related; that everything is convertible into every other. The staff in his hand is the radius vector of the sun. The chemistry of this is the chemistry of that. Whatever one act we do, whatever one thing we learn, we are doing and learning all things, - marching in the direction of universal power. Every healthy mind is a true Alexander or Sesostris, building a universal monarchy. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The creatures who act as though they belong to the world follow the peace-keeping law, and because they follow that law, they give the creatures around them a chance to grow toward whatever it's possible for them to become. That's how man came into being. The creatures around Australopithecus didn't imagine that the world belonged to them, so they let him live and grow. How does being civilized come into it? Does being civilized mean that you have to destroy the world?" "No." "Does being civilized make you incapable of giving the creatures around you a little space in which to live?" "No." "Does it make you incapable of living as harmlessly as sharks and tarantulas and rattlesnakes?" "No." "Does it make you incapable of following a law that even snails and earthworms manage to follow without any difficulty?" "No." "As I pointed out some time ago, human settlement isn't against the law, it's subject to the law - and the same is true of civilization. ~ Daniel Quinn

He sent you a text message that read: FIre Sign - You're compatible with all signs. Your blood group breathes disappointment and happiness. You stick your tongue in the woman's mouth in order to cool down. The fog that burns on the ceiling is the steam of sweat. You buy pins and colored pictures from the shop. You pin them on your flesh when you receive a guest. The firewood comes to you throughout the night, wrapped in nightmares. When you wake up you have a bath on fire. You eat on fire. You read the newspapers on fire. You smoke a cigarette on fire. In the coffee cup you come across prophecies of fire. You laugh on fire. You have your lungs checked at the hospital, and they find a spring of errors that looks like a tumor. You dream of the final act: It goes out. ~ Hassan Blasim

I hear Democrats say, 'The Affordable Care Act is the law,' as though we're supposed to genuflect at that sunburst of insight and move on. Well, the Fugitive Slave Act was the law, separate but equal was the law, lots of things are the law and then we change them. ~ George Will

when they tell me that i've changed, like it's some personal act of betrayal on my part, i tell them, 'i know. i've never been more proud of myself. i went from a single wildflower to a whole fucking meadow. ~ Amanda Lovelace

My 'act' was schoolwork. I was your basic, garden-variety, ambitious, upwardly mobile, hard-working Jewish boy from Brooklyn. I was bound to go beyond my parents. It was simply the way things were. ~ Clive Davis

To be able to make a good living in a challenging medium like soap operas is great. The best is that I get to act and am rewarded for it. And the people I work with are great. Funny, intelligent, hard working. They're all great to be around. ~ David Canary

Nature appears to act directly upon our autonomic systems, calming us, but it also works indirectly, through facilitating social contact and through encouraging exercise and physical movement. (p,166) ~ Florence Williams

Happy the man, of mortals happiest he, Whose quiet mind from vain desires is free; Whom neither hopes deceive, nor fears torment, But lives at peace, within himself content; In thought, or act, accountable to none But to himself, and to the gods alone. ~ George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne

To him who has determined, it only remains to act. ~ James Florio

Congress, it turns out, is filled with Republicans and Democrats eager to act as enablers for the most repressive forces in Iran. ~ Stephen Kinzer

Love is an act of courage. ~ Paulo Freire

To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn't entice people to do his work. ~ Suzy Kassem

I believe if you act with people who are better than you, it's only going to make you better. ~ Drew Fuller

A woman who is striving invites others to strive. The message - sometimes implicit in her actions, sometimes explicit through her words - is, "Get your act together. Life is uncertain. There is no time for your heart here. Shape up. Get busy. That's what is important." She does not say, "All is well. All shall be well." Her fear doesn't allow it. She is withholding the very things her world needs. ~ John Eldredge

Wolves hate werewolves.'
'What? That can't be right! When she's wolf-shaped she's just like a wolf!'
'So? When she's human-shaped she's just like a human. And what's that got to do with anything? Humans don't like werewolves. Wolves don't like werewolves. People don't like wolves that can think like people, an' people don't like people who can act like wolves. Which just goes to show that people are the same everywhere.' said Gaspode. He assessed this sentence and added, 'Even when they're wolves. ~ Terry Pratchett

The multinational corporations now developing budgets often bigger than medium-sized countries - these live in a global space which is largely unregulated, not subject to the rule of law, and in which people may act free of constraint. ~ Paddy Ashdown

I secretly wanted to act. I also wanted be a toy designer and make puppets. ~ Kate Micucci

Men shouldn't fear or hate what they do not know but study it and share it instead. It is both an act of selfishness and cruelty to seek for the destruction of wisdom and the wise, but also to keep silent when witnessing it happening. ~ Daniel Marques

I'm a naturalized Italian, but I'm from Ghana. I was abandoned by my parents and adopted by two angels. I suffer with racism everyday. I'm the first black to wear the jersey of Italy. I'm not angry, but my life experiencies make me act differently from other people. Then, try to learn more before you criticize me. ~ Mario Balotelli

It looked as though you did not act in a certain way because you thought in a certain way, but rather you thought in a certain way because you were made in a certain way. Truth had nothing to do with it. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Called the Academy for Citizens of Tomorrow (ACT) Program, it focuses on giving young people the opportunity to become leaders both in their school and in the broader community. ~ Gregory A. Smith

As I continued to pray raggedly, prayer ceased to be an awkward and self-conscious act. It became a daily need to which I looked forward. If, for any reason, I were deprived of it, I was distressed as if I had been deprived of some life necessity, like water. I cannot say I changed. There tore through me a transformation with the force of a river, which, dammed up and diverted for a lifetime, bursts its way back to its true channel. I became what I was. I ceased to be what I was not. ~ Whittaker Chambers

Simple inattention kills empathy, let alone compassion. So the first step in compassion is to notice the other's need. It all begins with the simple act of attention. ~ Daniel Goleman

It is impossible for a stranger traveling through the United States to tell from the appearance of the people or the country whether he is in Toledo, Ohio, or Portland, Oregon. Ninety million Americans cut their hair in the same way, eat each morning exactly the same breakfast, tie up the small girls curls with precisely the same kind of ribbon fashioned into bows exactly alike; and in every way all try to look and act as much like all the others as they can. ~ Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe

Forgiveness is a tricky thing. We can say the word and never believe the word. Yet, for those of us blessed enough to truly experience the act of forgiveness, it's an overwhelming sense of joy. ~ Celia Belt

A book won't move your eyes for you like TV or a movie does. A book won't move your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put your heart in it. It won't do the work for you. To read a good novel well is to follow it, to act it, to feel it, to become it - everything short of writing it, in fact. Reading is a collaboration, an act of participation. No wonder not everybody is up to it. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The Dallas Times Herald ran a cartoon mocking the [Reagan] administration's position. "We don't oppose the extension of the Voting Rights Act ... but we think the test of discrimination should be intent not effect," a fictional Smith said at a press conference. "Won't that cripple enforcement of the Act?" a reporter asked. "That is not our intent," Smith responded. ~ Ari Berman

I also knew that if people have a position on something and you try to argue them into changing it, you're going to strengthen that position. If you want to change people's ideas, you shouldn't try to convince them intellectually. What you need to do is get them into a situation where they'll have to act on ideas not argue about them. ~ Myles Horton

Every brilliant experiment, like every great work of art, starts with an act of imagination. Unfortunately, our current culture subscribes to a very narrow definition of truth. If something can't be quantified and calculated, then it can't be true. Because this strict scientific approach has explained so much, we assume that it can explain everything. But every method, even the experimental method, has limits. Take the human mind. Scientists describe our brain in terms of its physical details; they say we are nothing but a loom of electrical cells and synaptic spaces. What science forgets is that this isn't how we experience the world. (We feel like the ghost, not like the machine.) It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness. ~ Jonah Lehrer