Quotes on Ifs

You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for.

I urge you to travel - as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to.

DISCRIMINATE, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.

I got at a very early age, the idea that the safest way to try and get what you want, is to try and deserve what you want._x000D_ It’s such a simple idea, it’s the golden rule so to speak. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.

Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.

We're setting up mechanisms where we can kill human beings with drones and missiles where you're sitting at a console and pressing the button. We never have to hear their whimpering, or hear them begging for their mother, or dying in horrible realities around us. I don't know if that's necessarily such a good thing.

I was heartened that people everywhere want certain basic freedoms, even if they live in a totally different cultural environment.

There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please.

To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God?

Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally.

If you can't laugh at yourself, then how can you laugh at anybody else? I think people see the human side of you when you do that.

When a man is filled with the Word of God you cannot keep him still, If a man has got the Word, he must speak or die.

What do we older folks live for if not for the care of the young, to teach and train them?

If, however, you take a moment to observe how you actually feel immediately after you criticise someone, you'll notice that you will feel a little deflated and ashamed, almost like you're the one who has been attacked. The reason this is true is that when we criticise, it's a statement to the world and to ourselves, "I have a need to be critical." This isn't something we are usually proud to admit.

Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

If someone asked for my recipe for happiness, step one would be finding out what you love most in the world and step two would be finding someone to pay you to do it. I consider myself very lucky indeed to be able to support myself by writing.

For me, playwriting is and has always been like making a chair. Your concerns are balance, form, timing, lights, space, music. If you don't have these essentials, you might as well be writing a theoretical essay, not a play.

... you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!

This I do know beyond any reasonable doubt. Regardless of what you are doing, if you pump long enough, hard enough and enthusiastically enough, sooner or later the effort will bring forth the reward.

If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love.

Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side.