Quotes on Ifs

We have to lock up people, without trial, whether they are communists, whether they are language chauvinists, whether they are religious extremists. If you don’t do that, the country would be in ruins.

Even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds

If I had lost a leg, I would tell them, instead of a boy, no one would ever ask me if I was 'over it'. They would ask me how I was doing learning to walk without my leg. I was learning to walk and to breathe and to live without Wade. And what I was learning is that it was never going to be the life I had before.

Every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and all. And once you do, you will feel so much better

Very few people on earth ever get to say: 'I am doing, right now, the most important thing I could possibly be doing.' If you'll join this fight that's what you'll get to say

If a man gets drunk and goes out and breaks his leg so that it must be amputated, God will forgive him if he asks it, but he will have to hop around on one leg all his life.

I'm half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I'd be in a hell of a mess!

People talk about love as if it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers.

If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word miracle. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle.

If the enemy cannot make you BAD, he’ll make you BUSY.

This is something I know: damaged women? We don't think we deserve kindness. IN fact, when kindness happens to us, we go a little berserk. It's threatening. Deeply. Because if I have to admit how profoundly I need kindness? I have to admit that I hid the me who deserves it down in a sadness well.

Somebody said to me the other day, 'You know, it's really senseless, what you're doing. There's always been suffering, there will always be suffering, and you're just prolonging the suffering of these children [by rescuing them].' My answer is, 'Okay, then, let's start with your grandchild. Don't buy antibiotics if it gets pneumonia. Don't take it to the hospital of it has an accident. It's against life-against humanity-to think that way.

Actually, depravity can be terribly boring if you don't smoke or drink.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?

If you pay attention, everyone is a novel. The most boring person, if you sit down and really listen, is someone interesting.

If it is a woman's function to give, she must be replenished, too.

Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next.

God is not a static thing...but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.

I think it's my job to risk looking foolish. One of the things I've learned from the actors I've worked with is you don't get something for nothing. If you don't risk looking foolish, you'll never do anything special.

And if my heart be scarred and burned, The safer, I, for all I learned.