R.S. Thomas Quotes

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

It is amazing how many people think they are doing blacks a favor by exempting them from standards that others are expected to meet.

Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.

'Global warming' is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.

We might have been better off if the question of Obama's patriotism had been raised before he was first elected. Never should we ignore so many red flag warnings again.

Friend, be not afraid of thy office, thou sendest me to God.

To be really cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in his own country.

Keynesians think that you can take water from the deep end of the swimming, pump it into the shallow end of the swimming pool and somehow the water level of the swimming pool will rise.

Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.

No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's

When God will have any great matters done, he sets his people's hearts to work at prayer by a kind of gracious instinct. He stirs them up and moves their hearts by the influence of his Holy Spirit.

The arrival of a good clown exercises a more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than twenty asses laden with drugs.

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.

The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.

Time makes more converts than reason.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

T'is the last rose of summer, Left blooming alone.

Modern man believes he is fruitful and productive when his ego is aggressively affirmed, when he is visibly active, and when his action produces obvious results.

One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.

I completely scorn the falsifying, the sanctimonious, the cheap and the shoddy.

The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free.

The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.

My life was the best omelette you could make with a chainsaw

The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.

Absorb ideas from every source.

There is always a better way.

I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it

The rich, by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor.

The juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of concentrated sunbeams.

Officially there are no fates worse than death. Unofficially, there is a profusion of such fates. For some people, just living with the thought that they will die is a fate worse than death itself.

I can't tell you how many shows I've done with full-blown migraine headaches.

Regardless of how large, your vision is too small.

Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.

Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

Balance, peace, and joy are the fruit of a successful life.

Arrogance is an utterly appropriate weapon to use against a hostile world, a world in which arrogance is feared and respected, even if, like mine, it's only feigned.

It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.

An eagle uses the negative energy of a storm to fly even higher.

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood This Eastertide call into mind the men, Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should Have gathered them and will do never again.

Opportunities don't knock at all. They don't have to, they're already all around us. It's up to us to see where they are and take advantage of them.

Remember, in China when you are one in a million, there are 1,300 other people just like you.

The sheep are happier of themselves, than under the care of wolves.

For Heaven's sake discard the monstrous wig which makes the English judges look like rats peeping through bunches of oakum.