R.S. Thomas Quotes

Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness.

...It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.

Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.

The light of faith makes us see what we believe.

The perils of overwork are slight compared with the dangers of inactivity.

We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.

Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.

Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.

Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.

Sometimes the whole world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful

We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.

Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men.

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect.

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds - November!

A life without purpose is a languid, drifting thing; Every day we ought to review our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let me make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught!

A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.

Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops.

If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.

No, most of our political elite has not realized that the world is flat.

Presidents are elected not by direct popular vote but by 538 members of the Electoral College.

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living.

Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.

The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights

Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.

Heaven would be hell to me without Christ.

Before we can realize who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.

Faith is the soul going out of itself for all its wants.

In addition to the decline in competition, American politics today is characterized by a growing ideological polarization between the two major political parties.

Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable for, not the rightness, but the uprightness of the decision

The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.

The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.

What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.

We see the world in terms of our theories.

We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out is our own ignorance and folly.

The white men of the South had better make up their minds that the blacks will remain in the South just as long as corn will tassel and cotton will bloom into whiteness.

The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist.'

There are feet to steady, hands to grasp, minds to encourage, hearts to inspire, and souls to save

Whoever loveth me, loveth my hound.

If you want to give light to others you have to glow yourself.

Wonderful, glorious things are in store for you if you will only believe, obey, and endure.

God sweetens outward pain with inward peace.

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.

I think it will be found that experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably confirms its truth.

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.