Run The World Quotes

Geeks run the world. Condoleezza Rice is a geek, Bill Gates is clearly a geek, many of the big filmmakers and writers are geeks, lots of military people are geeks. Anyone who has heard Donald Rumsfeld talk about military hardware knows they are in the presence of a geek. ~ China Mieville

People like us run the world not just by chance but because we're the only ones capable of doing it. We know your flaws. We know you better than you know yourselves. Our sense of honor compels us to take command, to guide the weak through times as dark as these. And our sense of humor compels us to enjoy it. ~ Nathan M. Farrugia

If women are choosing not to run the world, it's partly because men are choosing not to run the washer and dryer. ~ Barbara Kellerman

When the world has changed and the rivers run dry ad the forests grow brown will we realize that we don't run the world. We must understand that Nature is what helped us into this beautiful planet, so we must help her in return. ~ Veronica White

In their confusion and delusion, men hate the womb that gives them birth. Not all men, certainly , but enough men to run the world. ~ Frederick Lenz

The world record will come to me when I run the world record race. I'm just trying to perfect my race. I'm looking for perfection. ~ Maurice Greene

Yes, read about jobs and your hours and wages. Yes, you must strike, you must have better lives. But you must read also about the stars - and about the big spaces - silent - not one single little sound for many, many million years. To be free you must grow as big as that - inside of your head, inside of your soul. It is not enough to be free of a czar, a kaiser or a sweatshop boss. What will you do when they are gone? My fine people, how will you run the world? You are deaf and blind, you must be free to open your own ears and eyes, to look into the books and see what is there - great thoughts and feelings, great ideas! And when you have seen, then you must think - you must think it all out every time! That is freedom! ~ Ernest Poole

When you're put in a position to really affect young people who are going to run the world one day, if you're able to be in their life at a young age and make a positive impact, I think that's a beautiful thing. ~ Zendaya

Listen. Whatever the hell is going on, and I include the Bruton bitch in that, we will face it together. You and me. No more pissing about, Stephen, no more trying to do it all yourself, or to run the world single-handed. You will ask for help, you will take it, and you will put us first. That's not negotiable, understand? ~ K.J. Charles

I've been saying it for years, and I shan't alter, woman are bloody marvellous - they should leave us alone to run the world. ~ Betty Burton

Adults, who outnumber kids four or five to one, are in charge. We wield the resources, run the world, and completely thwart kids' creativity. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I turned to the teeming small creatures that can be held between the thumb and forefinger: the little things that compose the foundation of our ecosystems, the little things, as I like to say, who run the world. ~ E. O. Wilson

Tick's eyes twinkled, and he drew a long sip of coffee. Poor Kate ... wanting to run the world and yet no one will let her. ~ Elizabeth Camden

Entrepreneurs are different beasts. Beasts who don't give a damn, who kick ass when required, who stand up to a challenge, and who rise time and again with utter disregard to fear or failure. These are the beasts who run the world. ~ Vishwas Mudagal

I hope you find true meaning, contentment, and passion in your life. I hope you navigate the difficult times and come out with greater strength and resolve. I hope you find whatever balance you seek with your eyes wide open. And I hope that you - yes, you - have the ambition to lean in to your career and run the world. Because the world needs you to change it. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

I have met the people who run the world, and I am not in awe of them. ~ Ken Livingstone

There ought to be a better way than government to run the world. ~ Ashleigh Brilliant

He had spent the last five years, he [JFK] said ruefully, running for office, and he did not know any real public officials, people to run a government, serious men. The only ones he knew, he admitted, were politicians, and if this seemed a denigration of his own kind, it was not altogether displeasing to the older man. Politicians did need men to serve, to run the government. The implication was obvious. Politicians could run Pennsylvania and Ohio, and if they could not run Chicago they could at least deliver it. But politicians run the world? What did they know about the Germans, the French, the Chinese? He needed experts for that ~ David Halberstam

We still run the world as if we are separate from it and not part of it. ~ Danny Scheinmann

One-tenth of the folks run the world. One-tenth watch them run it, and the other eighty percent don't know what the hell's going on. ~ Jake Simmons, Jr.

[...] nothing comes from comfort but the fear of losing it, and that's exactly where my generation made its big mistake. Yet discomfort's no good either. There's just no winning, is there? Do it one way and lose your soul; do it the other way and lose your livelihood. You guys who run the world, you've got all the bases covered. ~ D.R. Haney

Rynn Cormel had run the world during the Turn, his living charisma somehow crossing the boundaries of death to give his undead existence an uncanny mimicry of life. Every move was a careful study of causality. It was highly unusual for so young an undead vampire to be so good at mimicking having a soul. I figured it was because he was a politician and had had practice way before he died. ~ Kim Harrison

It starts with my mother ... .Boys get fucked up by their fathers, right? That's why so many tales are really Daddy Issue stories at their core, because men run the world, and men get to tell their stories first. If women told most of the stories, though, then all the best stories would be about Mommy Problems. ~ Chuck Wendig

In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not keep the world from what it wants. ~ Booker T. Washington

We thought that the proletariat would eventually run the world. But it is the Americans who have assumed that position ... The American people have changed. ~ Mengistu Haile Mariam

Men are much simpler mechanisms than women. Nothing changes them ... even when they have a midlife crisis, they do it in a mindless way ... that's why I think we should let men go off and have affairs and drive fast cars and dream of being virile - and we should run the world. ~ Goldie Hawn

Everyone wants to rule the world . . . Really, absolutely everyone. That's what it's all about, isn't it? That's what it's always about in the end. And every species believes it's number one. Every individual is firmly convinced that he or she alone has the right to ascend to the throne and issue orders to get rid of others. And in reality everyone is fooling themselves, because up there on the throne it's lonely and cold. ~ Akif Pirincci

- so much more opportunity now." Her voice trails off.

"Hurrah for women's lib, eh?"

"The lib?" Impatiently she leans forward and tugs the serape straight. "Oh, that's doomed."

The apocalyptic word jars my attention.

"What do you mean, doomed?"

She glances at me as if I weren't hanging straight either and says vaguely, "Oh …"

"Come on, why doomed? Didn't they get that equal rights bill?"

Long hesitation. When she speaks again her voice is different.

"Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like - like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see."

Now all this is delivered in a gray tone of total conviction. The last time I heard that tone, the speaker was explaining why he had to keep his file drawers full of dead pigeons.

"Oh, come on. You and your friends are the backbone of the system; if you quit, the country would come to a screeching halt before lunch."

No answering smile.

"That's fantasy." Her voice is still quiet. "Women don't work that way. We're a - a toothless world." She looks around as if she wanted to stop talking. "What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chink ~ James Tiptree Jr.

In the U.S. more than any other place, the banking system is insane. Millions of Americans lost their houses. Because of what? Because of the banking system. This American banking system is also coming to Europe. We can say today that the banks and high financiers run the world. ~ Costa-Gavras

It's obsequious little nicety-nice girls like me who allow assholes to run the world: Miss Harlot O'Harlots, billionaire phony tree huggers, hypocrite drug-snorting, weed-puffing peace activists who fund the mass-murdering drug cartels and perpetuate crushing poverty in dirt-poor banana republics. It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I say us - obviously I don't vote as I believe democracy is a pointless spectacle where we choose between two indistinguishable political parties, neither of whom represent the people but the interest of powerful business elites that run the world. ~ Russell Brand

I've always been super aware that we could all die at any moment. This ceiling could fall. I could trip and land on this pen I'm holding. I could choke on my cold pasta lunch. I could be attacked by that pigeon eying me from my window sill. I could be shot ... by a stranger ... who lost something in their heart. Remember death is real. It's not scary. Living is the thing to care about. Don't hold grudges. Smile and make others smile as often as possible. Don't let jerks run the world. ~ Colleen A.F. Venable

We are violating every aspect of life by turning everything into a ripoff because we have adopted the view that insatiable individualistic greed must run the world. We are living in a very dangerous age in which insatiably greedy men are prepared to sacrifice anybody's health and tranquility to satisfy their own insatiable greed for money and power. I am aghast at what selfishness, and the drive for power have done to our society. I worry as I find the world so increasingly horrible that I do not see how anything as wonderful as your life can escape. The best thing you can do is to keep some enclaves of satisfying decent life. I am fed up with everything but God and nature and human beings (whom I love and pity, as I always did). I feel glad I am a Christian, glad that I am without allegiance to any bloc, party, or groups, except to our Judeo-Christian tradition (modified by science and common sense). God keep you all and help you to grow. ~ Carroll Quigley

Maybe the most dangerous thing about the "Illuminati" isn't that such a master cabal has ever existed, but that some people believe it should and wreak havoc under the delusion they run the world. ~ Richard B. Spence

He smiled, and it made his dimples come out. "I think I'm more Batman," he said. "You know, what with all the bats and nighttime activities. And Batman is much cooler." "Geek." His smile widened. "You say the nicest things. Haven't you heard? Geeks run the world now." -BLACK DAWN ~ Rachel Caine

Loosen up. Don't you have some people to hug, rocks to skip, or lips to kiss? . , Someday you are going to retire; why not today? Not retire from your job, just retire from your attitude. Honestly, has complaining ever made the day better? Has grumbling ever paid the bills? Has worrying about tomorrow ever changed it? Let someone else run the world for a while. ~ Max Lucado

The problem is this: when we separate Jesus from his ideas for an alternative social structure, we inevitably succumb to the temptation to harness Jesus to our ideas - thus conferring upon our human political ideas an assumed divine endorsement. With little awareness of what we are doing, we find ourselves in collusion with the principalities and powers to keep the world in lockstep with the ancient choreography of violence, war, and death. We do this mostly unconsciously, but we do it. I've done it. And the result is that we reduce Jesus to being the Savior who guarantees our reservation in heaven while using him to endorse our own ideas about how to run the world. This feeds into a nationalized narrative of the gospel and leads to a state-owned Jesus. Thus, our understanding of Christ has mutated from Roman Jesus to Byzantine Jesus to German Jesus to American Jesus, etc. ~ Brian Zahnd

One of the most terrible losses man endures in his lifetime is not even noticed by most people, much less mourned. Which is astonishing, because what we lose is in many ways one of the essential qualities that sets us apart from other creatures. I'm talking about the loss of the sense of wonder that is such an integral part of our world when we are children. However, as we grow older, that sense of wonder shrinks from cosmic to microscopic by the time we are adults. Kids say "Wow!" all the time. Opening their mouths fully, their eyes light up with genuine awe and glee. The word emanates not so much from a voice box as from an astonished soul that has once again been shown that the world is full of amazing unexpected things.
When was the last time you let fly a loud, truly heartfelt "WOW?"
NOt recently I bet. Because generally speaking wonder belongs to kids, with the rare exception of falling madly in love with another person, which invariably leads to a rebirth of wonder. As adults, we are not supposed to say or feel Wow, or wonder, or even true surprise because those things make us sound goofy, ingenuous, and childlike. How can you run the world if you are in constant awe of it?...
The human heart has a long memory though and remembers what it was like to live through days where it was constantly surprised and delighted by the world around it. ~ Jonathan Carroll

I would say nobody is perfect. I don't know all the answers. I have don't want to run people's lives and run the world and run the economy. So, my qualifications are a little bit different. ~ Ron Paul

The 'C' students run the world. ~ Harry Truman

O LAKE OF LIGHT" Risen from the milky sward I saw the one I love with flower And on her breast an unborn moon O wondrous moon! O lake of light! The grass so green is turning white O moon, O wondrous lake of light! Milk of fire upon her tongue Drew birds of jade and betel gum Run river run! The world of late grown small Now achieves its just dimension The one I love grown big with flower Wheels within the lunar hour Birds of jade in milky fire Mitigate the heart's desire Then run, river, run, as runs the sun For none are born except the one That lies upon the breast undone The moon unborn is chill as night The heart is like a lake of light Flower, moon, milk of fire These together do conspire Take wing, strange birds, take wing! - Henry Miller ~ Arthur Hoyle

Our best analyst thinks it's not a tactical design. Something for mall ninjas ...
Young men who dress to feel they'll be mistaken for having special capability. A species of cosplay, really. Endemic. Lots of boys are playing soldier now. The men who run the world aren't, and neither are the boys most effectively bent on running it next. Or the ones who're actually having to be soldiers, of course. But many of the rest have gone gear-queer, to one extent or another. ~ William Gibson

Arrogant S.O.B.s run the world. A performer can never have too much self-confidence. The best in every field are likely to strike most people as irrationally confident, but that's how they got to the top. ~ John Eliot

Decide to be your best. In the long run the world is going to want and have the best and that might as well be you. ~ Booker T. Washington

Con men and tricksters run the world. Rascals rule. And do you know why?
because they are hungier than we are. because they know what they want. because they believe in life more than we do. ~ Paul Auster

It doesn't matter who you vote for. It's still the same billionaires that run the world. ~ Geezer Butler

To run the world, you had to find it in yourself to grit your teeth and just fake it. Just stare them down, never back off. ~ Bruce Sterling

Present company excluded, this looked to be the most pleasant detention ever experienced by mankind. Further proof that librarians should run the world-or a least be in charge of detention at Bathory High. ~ Heather Brewer

One afternoon I was sitting on a veranda at a party with about six women and the information that was exchanged, commonly called gossip, was enough to run the world for months. Suddenly a hush fell over the women and I looked around and there was a man. The women slid masks over their faces, the subject changed, the man said, "What are all you girls doing out here? Come in and join the party." And the summit conference was over. ~ Eve Babitz

Just as there is no barrier between humans and other beings, neither is there a strict hierarchy. Non-human entities do not exist merely to provide for the needs of man. Nor are they all-powerful gods who run the world as they wish. The world does not revolve around humans or around any other particular group of beings. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

My, my, and you accuse the Dardanos of trying to run the world. As you so succinctly put it, you have no desire to be a part of my life, which means you have no say in where I choose to live, sunshine. I, on the other hand, made no such declaration."
"God, I hate you," Bree seethed.
Alessandro smiled and tapped the end of her nose playfully, resisting the urge to tear her thick coat off of her and take her right against the wall. "You keep telling yourself that, love. We both know better. ~ E. Jamie

It's like these people are programmed by Karl Rove. What he wants is to have liberal critics ridicule Bush because he says 'nucular' and 'misunderestimate' and talks with a probably fake Texas accent and so on, because then can come back with the big propaganda apparatus saying, 'See, those elite liberals who run the world and are sitting around drinking French wine and eating quiche don't understand us ordinary guys'; regular guys like the guy working on the assembly line and George Bush, who is going back to his ranch to cut brush. ~ Noam Chomsky

The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world or do things. ~ Toni Morrison

If I could run the world, I'd find another way to treat most of these criminals - most of them, not all of them - but we find widespread solutions to widespread problems in this country, so we just build big prisons and stick everyone inside them and, for the most part, forget about them once they're gone. Noah ~ James Patterson

What should really be happening is a revolution. The system should be torn apart by the people and banks shouldn't be allowed to do what they do, and giant corporations shouldn't be allowed to run the world to the ground the way they're doing. But that's not happening for whatever reason. ~ Michael Shannon

As I change my thoughts, the world around me changes. ~ Louise Hay

What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get in the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. ~ Haruki Murakami

God did not give us the gospel to convince humanity; the gospel was given to us to master the language of a new world called God's Paradise. John 15:16. ~ Felix Wantang

Eleven o'clock had come and gone. I had to find a way to bring this conversation to a successful conclusion and get out of there. But before I could say anything, she suddenly asked me to hold her.
'Why?' I asked, caught off guard.
'To charge my batteries,' she said.
'Charge your batteries?'
'My body has run out of electricity. I haven't been able to sleep for days now. The minute I get to sleep I wake up, and then I can't get back to sleep. I can't think. When I get like that, somebody has to charge my batteries. Otherwise, I can't go on living. It's true.'
I peered into her eyes, wondering if she was still drunk, but they were once again her usual cool, intelligent eyes. She was far from drunk. ~ Haruki Murakami

The imagination wants to construct the new worlds, no? Creativity is a solution. If I ask you, "What is your goal in life? How many years do you have to live before to die? How many years do you have? And what you will do with these years you have?" You have pressure there. "How you will realize a good life? How? Tell me!" Then, you start to open your mind. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

How else could it have occurred to man to divide the cosmos, on the analogy of day and night, summer and winter, into a bright day-world and a dark night-world peopled with fabulous monsters, unless he had the prototype of such a division in himself, in the polarity between the conscious and the invisible and unknowable unconscious? ~ Carl Jung

In the practical world of computing, it is rather uncommon that a program, once it performs correctly and satisfactorily, remains unchanged forever. ~ Niklaus Wirth

It's a fallen world. We eat and sacrifice in the process. ~ Dan Barber

America must be a light to the world, not just a missile. ~ Nancy Pelosi

Thank you is what each and everyone of us should say when we see either a sunrise or sunset.
And when we do that, maybe, just maybe the world will start to become a better place. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

She wants me to take what magic I have left and blot every memory of this evening from their minds. To make them forget so that they can carry on as before. There will always be Cecilys, Marthas, and Elizabeths of the world - those who cannot bear the burden of truth. They will drink their tea. Weigh their words. Wear hats against the sun. Squeeze their minds into corsets, lest some errant thought should escape and ruin the smooth illusion they hold of themselves and the world as they like it.
It is a luxury, this forgetting. No one will come to take away the things I wish I had not seen, the things I wish I did not know. I shall have to live with them.
I wrench away from her grip. "Why should I?"
I do it anyways. Once I am certain the girls are asleep, I creep into their rooms, one by one, and lay my hands across their furrowed brows, which wear the trouble of all they've witnessed. I watch while those brows ease into smooth, blank canvases beneath my fingers. It is a form of healing, and I am surprised by how much it heals me to do it. When the girls awake, they will remember as strange dream of magic and blood and curious creatures and perhaps a teacher they knew whose name will not spring to their lips. They might strain to remember it for a moment, but then they will tell themselves it was only a dream best forgotten.
I have done what Mrs. Nightwing said I should do. But I do not take all their memories from them. I leave them with one small token of ~ Libba Bray

For Builders, the real definition of success is a life and work that brings personal fulfillment and lasting relationships and makes a difference in the world in which they live. ~ Jerry I. Porras

The fact that you're having disagreements with each other isn't a problem -that just shows that there are some areas of your relationship that need to be worked on. And that's normal. People are different, so of course you're going to run into times where your differences come out and rub each other the wrong way. But what's important is that you both commit to work on those differences until both of you are satisfied. When you do that, you're walking the right road together and over the long-run you'll do just fine. ~ Cindy Wright

But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice ... I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. ~ Charles Darwin

By 7:55 am on December 7, World War II in the Pacific had been in progress for more than eight hours. ~ Jeffrey Cox

We got out of our car in Agra to be faced with 150 people and instantly knew that we were their target. We were white (we still are) and wealthy (in comparison). And these people are masters at the art of distraction. You'll spot the one approaching from the left, but not the imminent threat from the right. And if you say no they have ways of making you say yes. We were greeted with, "Give me money" by street urchins, "Give me 20 rupees," by a man in a 'locker room' looking after our camera equipment, and graceful, exquisite and amused smiles by some of the most magnificently beautiful women in the world. Ladies with coconut oil in their hair, eyes the colour of artisan's gold, and spirituality in their hearts. And everywhere we went we were greeted with the Añjali Mudrā gesture and the word Namaste, indicating 'I bow to the divine in you. ~ Karl Wiggins

See," Gus said. "It's shit like this that makes it impossible for me to believe in happy endings.
You never get the paper umbrellas you were promised in this world. ~ Emily Henry

He who has faith has ... an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well - even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly. ~ B.C. Forbes

Did you ever feel as if the whole world was a tuxedo, and you were a pair of brown shoes? ~ George Gobel

There's an inherent responsibility actors feel when portraying something that actually exists in the world. It's arguably something that not all actors would agree on because this is a craft, but for me, it's the emotion of what a character is going through that makes the performance what it is. We have a responsibility to bring those emotions to light. ~ Monica Potter

Each one of us knows for his own part that the world as it is, is unacceptable. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty

Let's assume it was Christopher Columbus's "destiny" to discover the New World, and let's pretend he was consciously aware of that fact. What possible difference would that have made in his day-to-day life? He still had to build the boats. ~ Chuck Klosterman

The artist is one who makes a concentrated statement about the world in which he lives and that statement tends to become impersonal-it tends to become universal and enduring because it comes out of something very particular. ~ Paul Strand

Having goals is great--but it's not enough! You need action, too! You will need to get off your butt and change the world yourself, because no one else will do it for you. ~ Brandon Turner

Maybe those who rose into the Light simply died, and the universe beyond this world was silent. ~ Anne Rice

If I could have any job in the world I'd be a professional Cinderella. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Some people hate Jews. Fine, alright it's been done. I mean, that's part of my problem with it. Could you hate somebody new? I'm not giving you any suggestions but the Belgians have had a good run. ~ Gary Gulman

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves. ~ C.G. Jung

You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books. ~ Sam Harris

It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and performance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and studied deceit; but the truth is, that there is very little hypocrisy in the world. ~ Samuel Johnson

In our lifetimes, we can only know a small portion of what exists. The world is endless and its treasures are inexhaustible. ~ Barry Webster

There is not enough air in the room but you are breathing.
There is nobody here but you are held.
You have broken and the world is breaking and we will always rebuild.

Do you hear me, love?
We will always rebuild. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

Each of you have experienced numerous transformations during your life. From the moment you took your first step you began a lifelong movement toward the new and unknown. You expanded the limits of your world. You pushed your boundaries larger, and then larger still. And not only physically, but cognitively, emotionally, morally, socially, and spiritually as well. Concerning your spiritual growth, the concepts of God that you had at age five may not be adequate for you at age twenty, and the concepts of God you had at age twenty may not be adequate again when you reach your forties and later, your elder years. Across the span of your life you may travel through a variety of views about who and what ultimate authority is or isn't, what the purpose of life is, what your values and taboos are, and the importance (or not) of ritual, myth, and symbols. ~ River Higginbotham

The Christians seek to blot out all wisdom save their own; and in that strife they are banishing from this world all forms of mystery save that which will fit into their religious faith. They have pronounced it a heresy that men live more than one life - which every peasant knows to be true. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was devoted to, people whose lives I can simply guess at now, that it gives me the impression I am simply a collection of them, that they all existed for themselves, but had inadvertently formed me, then vanished. But, what: Should I have been expected to create my own self, out of nothing, out of thin, thin air and alone? ~ Lorrie Moore

I haven't done anything yet, but I want to be the best in the world. ~ Freddy Adu

The painting did not exist until I made it,' Karabekian went on. 'Now that it does exist, nothing would make me happier than to have it reproduced again and again, and vastly improved upon, by all the five-year-olds in town. I would love for your children to find pleasantly and playfully what it took me many angry years to find.

'I now give you my world of honor,' he went on, 'that the picture your city owns shows everything about life which truly matters, with nothing left out. It is a picture of the awareness of every animal. It is the immaterial core of every animal - the 'I am' to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us - in a mouse, in a deer, in a cocktail waitress. It is unwavering and pure, no matter what preposterous adventure may befall us. A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would show two such bands of light. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.

'I have just heard from this cocktail waitress here, this vertical band of light, a story about her husband and an idiot who was about to be executed at Sheperdstown. Very well - let a five-year-old strip away the idiocy, the bars, the waiting electric chair, the uniform of the guard, the gun of the guard, the bones and meat of the guard. What is that perfect picture which any five-year-old ca ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"
"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world
oh, woe is me!
and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!
... I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me! ~ Charles Dickens

After the French Revolution, the world money power shifted from Paris to London. For three generations, the British maintained an old-fashioned colonial empire, as well as a modern empire based on London's primacy in the money markets. ~ Gore Vidal

There are six billion egos living on this planet. Can you not see why the world is in such a sorry state? Can you not see why we are destroying Heaven on Earth for our own short-term gain? Can you not see why the tiger and the gorilla are facing extinction, along with countless other species? Can you not see why there is so much injustice, abuse, greed, cruelty, and inequality upon this planet? We get along with those who share the same set of illusions. It is called collusion. They are our friends. We declare war on those who dare to believe in another set of illusions. They are our enemies. Religion, and particularly religious fundamentalism, is the most obvious and dangerous example. Nationalism is another. "Me! Me! Me!" "Mine! Mine! Mine!" "I'm right. I'm right. I'm right." "How can I use this or make use of this?" "What's in it for me?" You ~ Mary Bruggeman

Grandmother walked up over the bare granite and thought about birds in general. It seemed to her no other creature had the same dramatic capacity to underline and perfect events
the shifts in the seasons and the weather, the changes that run through people themselves. p.33 ~ Tove Jansson

Puerto Ricans who find they can no longer afford to keep their pets often choose to drop their dogs, sometimes even whole litters of puppies, at a beach - sometimes under cover of night, in secret - rather than surrender the animal to a city or state-run shelter where the animals will face grim conditions and almost certain death by euthanasia. ~ Juliana Hatfield

The difference between those whom the world esteems as good and those whom it condemns as bad, is in many cases little else than that the former have been better sheltered from temptation. ~ Augustus William Hare

To be a Christian means you become a part of the most significant story the world has ever heard. You don't become part of that without an ongoing questioning of what it means to become part of that. ~ Stanley Hauerwas