R.S. Thomas Quotes

I enjoy doing martial arts films, but I like the straight stuff, too. I'd like to go back and do some Shakespeare, and maybe knock out a play or two. It's all about keeping balance.

The artist is a vessel for creativity. He has the key to the door of a very special place, which he can open at will. He doesn't paint but is painted through.

When I was a graduate student, estimating and interpreting distributed lags topped the agenda of macroeconomists and other applied economists.

Earlier on in my career I felt that I had to hide behind a lot of different masks, and showboat ways of performing. Now, that's a lie. The less I have to hide, the less I have to act.

Christian creeds and doctrines, the clergy's own fatal inventions, through all the ages has made of Christendom a slaughterhouse, and divided it into sects of inextinguishable hatred for one another.

I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.

He does most in God's great world who does his best in his own little world.

preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people.

The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance

Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.

Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.

Experience has proved to us that a dollar of silver disappears for every dollar of paper emitted.

I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument.

I long to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise.

It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.

Trial by jury is part of that bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

Nothing can be believed but what one sees, or has from an eye witness.

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. In order to flourish, the tree of Liberty needs the blood of patriots and tyrants.

A man's moral sense must be unusually strong if slavery does not make him a thief.

Freedom [is] the first-born daughter of science

One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.

The merchant has no country .

The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us.

From candlelight to early bedtime, I read.

Choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom.

The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error.

[We should be] determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness.

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe.... They are nations of eternal war.

Responsibility is a tremendous engine in a free government.

The law of self-preservation is higher than written law.

ONLY a government that is AFRAID of its citizens tries to control them.

I do verily believe that a single, consolidated government would become the most corrupt government on the earth.

Ambition is a tricky little animal to tame. It is very skillful at concealing itself from its master.

The divine therapy helps us integrate our animal nature with the new possibilities of rational consciousness.

I venture to say that it's not enough to respect and tolerate religions other than our own.

Um, what I found though about the Christian Brothers is this: that they were certainly muscular.

Each of us is a small part of God's plan. I'm a small part. I create paintings that are being used by God.

Every important idea in science sounds strange at first.

A mind is as strong as its weakest think.

Men, in teaching others, learn themselves.

When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him.

Tea, late dinners and the French Revolution. I cannot exactly see the connection of ideas.

The histories of mankind are histories only of the higher classes.

It has appeared that from the inevitable laws of our nature, some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank.

If a country can only be rich by running a successful race for low wages, I should be disposed to say at once, perish such riches!

It has been said, and perhaps with truth, that the conclusions of Political Economy partake more of the certainty of the stricter sciences than those of most of the other branches of human knowledge.

Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.

I discovered that a lot of the songs I like, they're fantasies, a vision of something, but you don't actually live there.

In an ideal world people would know the words just for the show and then forget them right after.

Be a wonderful role model because you will be the window through which many children will see their future.