R.S. Thomas Quotes

Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home.

The noblest revenge is to forgive

In business, poor performance leads to bankruptcy or, at a minimum, a restructuring of the company. In American education, failure entitles the bankrupt system to even more taxpayer dollars.

It is the property of fools to be always judging.

Better break your word than do worse in keeping it.

The fool wanders, a wise man travels.

Though I'm a rogue in talking upon Painting & Love I can be serious and honest upon any subject thoroughly pleasing to me.

Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.

Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered.

I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make other people conform to my own whims and fancies. I cannot make even my own body obey me.

By confronting us with irreducible mysteries that stretch our daily vision to include infinity, nature opens an inviting and guiding path toward a spiritual life.

Our emotional symptoms are precious sources of life and individuality.

every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.

Once we see an aspect of what we or someone else does as something that happens, we lose our grip on the idea that it has been done and that we can judge the doer and not just the happening.

Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.

Science is the true theology.

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.

Listening to the eternal involves a silence within us.

Family prayer is the greatest deterrent to sin, and hence the most beneficent provider of joy and happiness. The old saying is yet true: 'The family that prays together stays together.'

You can achieve what you believe you can. Trust and believe and have faith.

The greatest force in the world today is the power of God as it works through man.

If you would not step into the harlot's house, do not go by the harlot's door.

Freedom is unlikely to be lost all at once and openly. It is far more likely to be eroded away, bit by bit, amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideals.

When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, 'there ought to be a law,' you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

The biggest difference between people is between those who are trying to do the right thing - whether or not they succeed - and those for whom the only question is how much they can get away with.

The idealism of the left is a very selfish idealism. In their war against 'the rich' and big business, they don't care how much collateral damage there is to workers who end up end up unemployed.

Don't you get tired of seeing so many "non-conformists" with the same non-conformist look?

Deception is one of the quickest ways to gain little things and lose big things.

There are no dead-end jobs. There are no dead-end jobs. There are only dead-end people. Our current social philosophy, and the welfare state apparatus based on it, are creating more dead-end people.

Over the generations, black leaders have ranged from noble souls to shameless charlatans.

Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is.

I'm interested in photographs that have no personal signature.

If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.

Great design will not sell an inferior product, but it will enable a great product to achieve its maximum potential.

It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards.

The longer the life the more the offense, the more the offense the more the pain, the more the pain the less the defense and the less the defense the less the gain.

To be able to greet the sun with the sounds from all of Nature is a great blessing, and it helps us to remember Who is the real provider of all of our benefits.

Each day, whatever I am doing, I am always praying and thinking of God.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.

There's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

An ounce of cheerfulness is worth a pound of sadness to serve God with.

A fox should not be on the jury at a goose's trial.

Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, and robes the mountain in its azure hue.

Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.

A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.