R.S. Thomas Quotes

For total greed, rapacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is nothing to match a nation.

We are built to make mistakes, coded for error.

I have always had a bad memory, as far back as I can remember.

If you want to use a cliche you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon., or on society.

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

We have come a long way on that old molecule DNA.

The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at all mean, as it is sometimes claimed to mean, a search for mastery over nature.

After the age of 80, everything reminds you of something else.

Separately there was only wind, water, sail, and hull, but at my hand the four had been given purpose and direction.

My one aim and concentrated purpose shall be and is to show that women can learn, can reason, can compete with men in the grand fields of literature and science . . .

Love is reality, fear is an illusory concept created in your mind.

Whoa! I better lay off the peyote!

Gloucestershire police must be the envy of the human rights-abusing cop world. From Turkey to Indonesia they will say, 'Kidnapping peace protestors! How did they get away with that one?'

True believers are continually shown by reality that their god doesn't exist, but have developed extensive coping mechanisms to deal with this cognitive dissonance.

We tend to think of politicians as time-servers and slackers. But on those committees they usually have an interest in the subject. And they're quite clever. I've seen them pick people apart.

First you have to have a dream.

It's fascinating for us women to begin looking at our lives in five-year plans. It really does help you keep on track. If that's too hard, start with a two-year plan.

Living with these teenage boys allowed me to see how much their psyches were like their girl counterparts. They were more familiar to me than I would have thought.

I'm tired of people thinking they're doing me favours.

Let me tell something, seeing your name and psychiatric ward on the same piece of paper isn't the best way to start your day.

One of my central maxims is how a major part of what a conductor tries to do is get a large group of people to agree on where "now" actually is.

Thank God for movie music. It preserves the rich vocabulary in classical music through challenging times.

In earlier times, so many people sang much more. You know as a kid you'd go to some kind of religious training and or summer camp or whatever it was and you'd learn to sing a lot of songs.

They are representations of many shared hours of collaboration between us all. That's the real nature of the relationship the orchestra and I are trying to build.

I grew up with a lot of brothers and I don't have any sisters, so for me it's really important to develop my sisterhood. It's something I've always coveted.

You may use different sorts of sentences and illustrations before different sorts of audiences, but you don't -- if you are wise -- talk down to any audience.

He who would save liberty must put his trust in democracy.

I walk where I choose to walk.

Rebellion per se is not a virtue. If it were, we would have some heroes on very low levels.

To make a film, the final big collaborator that you have is the composer.

I write from my stomach.

I don't think it's a director's job to peek behind the curtain too much.

I don't think the competition's so rough, within the majority of movies made in Hollywood.

Crazy is so hard to play, there's nothing you can really tell an actor.

The suspicion and antagonism of academics, clerics and intellectuals towards the market... go hand in hand with their disdain for the preference and habits of ordinary people.

Far from the West having caused the poverty in the Third World, contact with the West has been the principal agent of material progress there.

Art is recuperation from time. I lie back convalescing upon the prospect of a harvest already at hand.

I have nowhere to go. The swift satellites show The clock of my whole being is slow.

Some things you don't need until they leave you, they're the things that you miss.

Music is a big machine that would go on with or without me.

Let your clarity define you, in the end, we will only just remember how it feels.

I swear, you are the only person I know who makes decisions based on what will provide the best material for a diary.

Freddie Mercury taught me 3 thingsdon't take anything too seriously, have fun and always fly first class.

Instead of waiting for opportunities to be handed to us, we need to create them. We need to advocate for ourselves.

When you're doing a play you get to go full speed ahead, all night, in front of an audience. It's a roller-coaster ride, responding to other actors, it feeds you.

Sweet flowers alone can say what passion fears revealing.

We let a river shower its banks with a spirit that invades the people living there, and we protect that river, knowing that without its blessings the people have no source of soul.

It is quite cruel that a poet cannot wander through his regions of enchantment without having a critic, forever, like the old man of the sea, upon his back.

A philosopher being asked what was the first thing necessary to win the love of a woman, answered, Opportunity!

This heart, my own dear mother, bends, With love's true instinct, back to thee!