"It would have been funny if I had been an observer and not a participant, an idea that gave me a disconcerting insight into gossip. As I talked beside the silent Tamara, I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt."

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“Nothing is "always," my dear. Except the greater truths, one of which is that power begets politics, and politics are more dangerous than war because there are fewer rules.”

“'Are they trained to treat everyone as a servant?'”

“War is a convenient fix for government problems if it happens somewhere else. To other people.”

“Finally someone takes me seriously enough to ask for my word of honor, and it’s a villain.”

“I am old, but the word to me means familiar, comfortable. Accustomed after long and venerable use. Not dilapidated and useless.”

“'What if feeling good only comes after you destroy someone you hate?'”

Resonant Thoughts

"There is real wisdom there about respecting the environment that more enlightened people, supposedly, have forgotten all about."

— Jeremy Wade

Literature1956

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"In our truly remarkable an unexampled civil peace, where there are rarely fist fights; where no one is born, is gravely ill, or dies; where meat is eaten but no one sees an animal slaughtered; where s…"

— Paul Goodman

Literature1911–1972

#life

"But to poetry — You have to be willing to waste time. When you start a poem, stay with it and suffer through it and just think about nothing, not even the poem. Just be there. It's more of a prayerful…"

— Robert Penn Warren

Literature1905–1989

#philosophy

"I therefore believe that the politics of the left and centre of this country are frozen in an out-of-date mould which is bad for the political and economic health of Britain and increasingly inhibitin…"

— Roy Jenkins

Politics1920–2003

#politics