Demand Quotes - Page 29

• Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

  John Updike

  Exercise, Thinking, Museums

  "A Few Words In Defense Of The Amateur Reader" by John Updike, www.nytimes.com. February 19, 1984.

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• The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Music, Art, Book

  Closing remarks at an eClass forum in Barnes & Noble University, December 05, 2004.

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• But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.

  Gustavo Gutiérrez

  Responsibility, Destiny, Order

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• Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Love, Justice, Politics

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.200, Beacon Press

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• Everybody was talking about the religious man who committed suicide. While no one in the monastery approved of the man's action, some say they admired his faith. Faith?" said the Master. He had the courage of his convictions, didn't he?" That was fanaticism, not faith. Faith demands a greater courage still: to reexamine one's convictions and reject them if they do not fit the facts.

  Anthony de Mello

  Suicide, Religious, Men

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• The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Imagination, Everyday, Degrees

  H. P. Lovecraft (2014). “The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft”, p.13, Race Point Publishing

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• So you know how things stand. Now forget what they think of you. Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands. Focus on that, and don't let anything distract you. You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Thinking, Self, Focus

  Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Aristotle (2012). “The Modern Library Collection of Greek and Roman Philosophy 3-Book Bundle: Meditations; Selected Dialogues of Plato; The Basic Works of Aristotle”, p.211, Modern Library

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• We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past -- whether he admits it or not -- can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.

  Hans Urs von Balthasar

  Believe, Past, Order

  Hans Urs von Balthasar (1982). “Glory of the Lord VOL 1: Seeing The Form”, p.18, A&C Black

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• The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.

  Noam Chomsky

  Powerful, Death Penalty, States

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• It is true of course, that I have a will of iron, but it can be switched off if the circumstances seem to demand it.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Iron, Circumstances, Courses

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• This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique... something truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.

  Vaclav Havel

  Unique, Historical, Moments

  Open letter to Dr. Gustáv Husák, Communist President, April 08, 1975.

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• Perhaps it is not such a bad marriage after all? There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands.

  Doris Lessing

  Two, People, Depth

  Doris Lessing (1973). “The Grass is Singing”, p.67, Heinemann

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• It is important to reclaim for humanity the ground that has been taken from it by various arbitrarily narrow formulations of the demands of rationality

  Amartya Sen

  Taken, Humanity, Important

  Amartya Sen (2004). “Rationality and Freedom”, p.51, Harvard University Press

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• If I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a "weakness" or an "absurdity": it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.)

  Roland Barthes

  Strong, Mean, Weakness

  Roland Barthes (1990). “A lover's discourse: fragments”, Penguin Books

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• Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Song, Art, Voice

  Jorge Luis Borges, Eliot Weinberger (2009). “Seven Nights”, p.9, New Directions Publishing

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• And the Law that once contained impossible demands -- Thou Shalt Not... -- actually becomes a promise we fulfill in you.

  William P. Young

  Law, Promise, Impossible

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• Living to an extraordinary age, she mourned them all equally as she buried her husband and, one by one, her children. In this suffering she found the best sort of perfection--the kind that never demands it of others.

  Martine Leavitt

  Children, Husband, Perfection

  Martine Leavitt (2016). “Keturah and Lord Death”, p.92, Highlights Press

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• The names of persons and living creatures demand respect, because when we speak to them we touch their heart and become a part of thier life force.

  Isabel Allende

  Heart, Names, Speak

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• Life demands honesty, the ability to face, admit, and express oneself.

  Starhawk

  Honesty, Faces, Ability

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• Ideas come at any moment -- except when you demand them. Most ideas come while I'm physically active, at the gym, with friends, gardening, so I always carry pen and paper. My first draft is always written in longhand. But once the first dozen chapters, more like short stories, are written, then momentum builds until I can't leave the project until it's done.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Ideas, Gardening, Momentum

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• I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Mean, Jail, Use

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2011). “Why We Can't Wait”, p.69, Beacon Press

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• In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.

  Salman Rushdie

  Book, Writing, Ends

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• Skepticism has become a virtue. Cynicism and demand for proof has become enlightened thought. Is it any wonder that humans now feel more depressed and defeated than they have at any point in human history?

  Dan Brown

  Wonder, Virtue, Cynicism

  Dan Brown (2005). “Angels & Demons”, p.289, Simon and Schuster

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• I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.

  Franz Kafka

  Education, Time, Laughter

  Franz Kafka (1965). “The Diaries of Franz Kafka”

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• To hope for nothing, to expect nothing, to demand nothing. This is analytical despair.

  James Hillman

  Despair, Expect Nothing

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