John Quotes

God was treated like this powerful, erratic, rather punitive father who has to be pacified and praised. You know, flattered.

England is a fairly envious little country and it's embodied in the press. They don't like anyone being more distinguished than they are.

Bureaucrats shouldn't be in charge of comedy.

I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that's to get rid of all my other desires.

My hovercraft is full of eels.

For me, the great problem growing up in England was that I had a very narrow concept of what God can be, and it was damn close to an old man with a beard.

You can't prove that something doesn't exist. You can only prove that something does exist.

‎"Sarge, mr. Nurd here is threatening to turn me to jelly." "really?" said Sarge. "what flavor?

A day of peace and sharing can lead to greater understanding and cooperation among political parties, faith groups, and people of different races and economic class.

The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee.

The right to religious freedom has its foundation, not in the church or society or the state, but in the very dignity of the human person.

The permanent mental attitude which the sensitive intelligence derives from philosophy is an attitude that combines extreme reverence with limitless skepticism.

Ambition is the grand enemy of all peace.

The love that interferes and knows not how to leave alone is a love alien to Nature's ways.

But we moderns are impatient and destructive.

Instead of last man standing, it'll be last man smiling.

It's a huge thing when people realize across the culture that paper money is paper. And that there's no fixed value - it's all political. That all value is set by a political authority, basically.

Good actors can sort of see into people and immediately you have a chemistry with them or not. It's like an affair with no mess.

If I'm in something that I think is kinda good, it stays with me like a fever dream for a long time afterwards. I don't recall the finished product so much as the feeling of making it.

What cannot be known is more revealing than what can.

[To] me organized religion, the formalities and routines, [is] like being marched in formation to look at a sunset.

If you would be thrilled by watching the galloping advance of a major glacier, you'd be ecstatic watching changes in publishing.

It's no good telling somebody they're trying too hard. It's very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants.

The impression was gaining ground with me that it was a good thing to let the money be my slave and not make myself a slave to money.

The best philanthropy is constantly in search of the finalities-a search for a cause, an attempt to cure evils at their source.

Long ago I lost the joy in living. The only joy I have is in my giving.

Fly-fishing is a magic way to recapture the rapture of solitude without the pangs of loneliness.

I look at trees, hunt mushrooms, and watch animals. Fishing is what gets me out into the woods so I can notice these things.

There is no subsititue for fishing sense, and if a man doesn't have it, verily, he may cast like an angel and still use his creel largely to transport sandwiches and beer

Creativity is our birthright. It is an integral part of being human, as basic as walking, talking and thinking.

Real freedom will come when U.S. soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors.

In a way it costs thousands dollars before you could actually go out to put the show on because you'll need equipments, all the lights you know, and that's more just going out and playing you know.

I didn't actually realise what apartheid meant. I'm probably a bit naive, but I thought it was more of a vague segregation, like on the beaches and buses.

I believe in the mystery, and I don't want to take it any further than that. Maybe what I mean by that is love.

Those who go ahead provide a little light into the unknown.

In your twenties, everything makes you crazy.

For the children and the flowers are my sisters and my brothers, come and stand beside me, we can find a better way.

Heck, I'm no Henry Mancini or Michel Legrand. I just play the guitar and write songs.

In brief, the function of knowledge is to make one experience freely available to other experiences.

The conception of education as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind.

Purposeful action is thus the goal of all that is truly educative.

Where there is giving there must be taking.

Every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling.

Complete adaptation to environment means death. The essential point in all response is the desire to control environment.

Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 He was the Word that spake it; He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it I do believe, and take it.

Life is to be used, not just held in the hand like a box of bonbons that nobody eats.

Silence in times of suffering is the best.

Presence of mind and courage in distress, Are more than arrives to procure success?

Few know the use of life before 'tis past.

The scum that rises upmost, when the nation boils.