R.S. Thomas Quotes

The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.

Actually lowering the cost of insurance would be accomplished by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies.

I hate to think that someday Americans will be looking at the ruins of their cities and saying that this happened because their leaders were afraid of the word unilateral.

If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.

While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.

The more adaptability exists for a given kind of decision, the less risky it is to make plans for the future, and therefore the more likely it is that more people will make more plans in such areas.

Many bad policies are simply good policies taken too far.

The idea that money is corrupting innocent politicians would be laughable if it did not lead to such dangerous legislation.

The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation.

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don't run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

All false practices and affections of knowledge are more odious to God, and deserve to be so to men, than any want or defect of knowledge can be.

It is always esteemed the greatest mischief a man can do to those whom he loves, to raise men's expectations of them too high by undue and impertinent commendations.

In all works of liberality something more is to be considered besides the occasion of the givers; and that is the occasion of the receivers.

Leaves are the Greek, flowers the Italian, phase of the spirit of beauty that reveals itself through the flora of the globe.

What a privilege it is to be an American!

Nothing in medicine is so insignificant as to merit attention.

Disease is nothing else but an attempt on the part of the body to rid itself of morbific matter.

Read Don Quixote; it is a very good book; I still read it frequently.

The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.

'Statistics' show that 66% of clients are cured with psychotherapy; what statistics don't show is that 72% are cured without it.

The homosexual is a scapegoat who evokes no sympathy. Hence, he can only be a victim, never a martyr.

The basic ingredients of psychotherapy are religion, rhetoric, and repression, which are themselves mutually overlapping categories.

He who forgiveth, and is reconciled unto his enemy, shall receive his reward from God; for he loveth not the unjust doers.

Mental illness, of course, is not literally a "thing" - or physical object - and hence it can "exist" only in the same sort of way in which other theoretical concepts exist.

Like fast-food chains, child psychiatric inpatient units and the wholesale psychiatric drugging of children, in and out of hospitals, are recent...and remarkably popular products and practices.

This visible world is wonderfully to be delighted in, and highly to be esteemed, because it is the theatre of God's righteous Kingdom.

We do not ignore maturity. Maturity consists in not losing the past while fully living in the present with a prudent awareness of the possibilities of the future.

To think well is to serve God in the interior court.

Natural things are glorious, and to know them is glorious.

More company increases happiness, but does not lighten or diminish misery.

We love we know not what, and therefore everything allures us.

Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.

Except wind stands as it never stood It is an ill wind turns none to good.

Look ere thou leap, see ere thou go.

A fool and his money are soon parted. - Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry.

As order is heavenly, where quiet is had, so error is hell, or a mischief as bad.

As ye of clay were cast by kind, So shall ye waste to dust.

If you knew the pain I had in my legs...what suffering! I couldn't wait to get to the hotel.

Given continued high rates of population increase, all environmental victories are temporary.

Flowers are my music.

He may look on death with joy, who can look on forgiveness with faith.

God's decree is the very pillar and basis on which the saint's perseverance depends. That decree ties the knot of adoption so fast, that neither sin, death, nor hell, can break it asunder.

God takes away the world, that the heart may cleave more to Him in sincerity.

If joining IBM was commitment, not employment, and the company engaged in something more than business, it had a right to demand of its men unconditional loyalty, Watson believed.

Joining a company is an act that calls for absolute loyalty in big matters and little ones.

Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.

What instruction the baby brings to the mother!

Fields are won by those who believe in the winning.

After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.