R.S. Thomas Quotes

Prejudice will fall in a combat with interest.

It is the object only of war that makes it honorable.

Titles are like a magicians wand which circumscribe human facility and prevent us from living the lives of man.

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.

When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.

The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country.

These are the days that try man's heart.

One of the problems that Hillary Clinton had, and one of the problems that Democrats still have is people don't really know what we stand for.

Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.

Being comfortable isn't the way to learn to expand your abilities.

If you'll think about various series you've read, can you think of any instance in which, say, the tenth volume of the series is notably better than the first nine? I can't.

What I look for in any character, good or bad, is whether I can hear him speak. If I can imagine him that clearly, then I can write about him.

When I write a book, I'm making it the best book I can.

Tod Goldberg has long been one of the most interesting writers around, and Gangsterland is his biggest and best book so far.

I held a variety of jobs - most notably ten years working in universities - and kept on writing.

I don't think the problem is that people don't read enough mystery books, but that people don't read.

All writers are mimics, and I'm not interested in picking up somebody else's style or voice.

I do like to explore evil characters in my books.

I don't consciously do anything to maintain a unique voice.

I do have to earn a living, so I'm conscious of probable reactions from readers, but the most important one is still the awareness that if I'm not enjoying a story, the reader won't either.

There are days when I intentionally don't write. For instance, I never write when I'm traveling, because travel is a situation where I can learn more by looking and listening than by working.

Some traders still think that a computer could not trade as well as they can.

It seems like people don't learn from the past.

My charitable donations go to educational efforts, such as Teach for America, Vanderbilt University, Berkshire School.

It's not Utopian to believe that we can create a global registry of financial assets so we know who owns what in different countries.

We know too little about global wealth dynamics, so we need international transmission of bank information.

Das Kapital, I think, is very difficult to read, and for me, it was not very influential.

Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts—and that is a very good thing.

We live in a world where economic positions - income and wealth - are very unevenly distributed, and this leads to the widespread persistence of poverty.

Large companies are very good at solving extremely complex problems in a globally optimal way.

The Bank and the media continue to propagate the story that the global elite wishes to be told: that the number of poor has declined by 24 percent in those 15 years [1990-2005].

The collective income of all these people - the bottom half - is less than three percent of global household income, and so there is a grotesque maldistribution of income and wealth.

What is really nice about the Health Impact Fund is that it is a win-win, something that without much cost to anyone makes a lot of people better off.

Domestic power structures are shaped in good part by global arrangements.

It is for the poor people's sake, above all, that we urgently need more unity and better organization and need to concentrate our reform efforts in order to really to achieve reforms, one by one.

We have the ability now to arrange global economic institutions so that poverty declines to a fraction of what it is now.

It is perfectly consistent - and also true - to say that the world poverty problem today is smaller (relative to world population) than before and yet also a much graver injustice.

Severe poverty is getting better by some measures, but it's also becoming ever more scandalous because it is now so easily avoidable.

The first rule in keeping secrets is nothing on paper.

But with a sigh he had released her hand, while she was so lost in the fantasy that she hadn't felt it go away, as if he'd known the best moment to let go.

You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.

What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?

Ills are many, blessings few, but dreams tonight will shelter you.

Information. What's wrong with dope and women? Is it any wonder the world's gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange?

What, I should only trust good people? Man, good people get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody evil once in a while, it makes no more or less sense.

Shall I project a world?

Some typewriters in Whitehall, in the Pentagon, killed more civilians than our little A4 could have ever hoped to.

All variables are independent.

I was dreaming ... about my grandfather. A very old man, at least as old as I am now, 91. I thought, when I was a boy, that he had been 91 all his life. Now I feel as if I have been 91 all my life.

Someday she might replace whatever of her had gone away by some prosthetic device, a dress of a certain color, a phrase in a letter, another lover.