John Quotes

Weather patterns over the next 20 or 30 years are going to be determined by the amount of CO2 that is up there now

I learned that strength is a matter of the made-up mind.

Work is no longer challenging.

You can't really live in the past because the present is always present.

I think, at the end of the day, if youre a good actor, then youre a good actor.

I went to high school in the 1970s and was a real daydreamer and not the best student.

There are people who are just very, very sniffy and snobby and have always sort of looked down their noses at me.

If you asked me if I'd rather be Speaker or a very senior minister, I'd say Speaker.

I'm supremely uninterested as to what is written in many of the newspapers.

It is quite wrong for party conferences to be used as an excuse for the Commons not to sit. Conferences could be held at weekends.

I'm not in the business of warning people.

Lying to a committee is a very grave abuse, and there ought to be a clear punishment.

I'm not psychic. I cannot know what is in the mind of particular public figures.

One consistent thing in an otherwise inconsistent career is that I've always been passionate about parliament.

The prime minister's job is to captain his team, his party and his government.

Loneliness is not being alone, It's loving others to no avail.

The megaselling books by celebrities are not so much books as products.

Rule number one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.

Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.

Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.

The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time.

Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous.

The publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.

Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story.

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.

What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.

We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death. Nothing forces us to remain what we were.

The contradiction in perspective was that it structured all images of reality to address a single spectator who, unlike God, could only be in one place at a time.

A drawing is an autobiographical record of one's discovery of an event - either seen, remembered or imagined. A 'finished' work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.

To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant.

[O]ften art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. . . .

Hair is associated with sexual power. With passion. The woman's sexual passion needs to be minimized, so that the spectator may feel that he has the monopoly on such passion

So time doesn't count, and place does?' I said this to tease her. When I was a man, I liked teasing her and she went along with it, consenting, for it reminded us both of a sadness that had passed.

We live in a dominant culture of ceaseless Departure and Progress that has so far lasted two or three centuries.

The autobiographical doesn't interest me. I could think of few things less interesting than rooting about in my life.

'Fahrenheit 9/11' is astounding. Not so much as a film - although it is cunning and moving - but as an event.

To attract joy and create more success, try doing less but doing it with more enthusiasm.

We need to value the importance of simplicity, focus and living according to our values.

To achieve great things requires that we become great people.

I think that what happens in my poetic work in the future will depend on my being knocked in the face, and thrown flat, and given cancer, and all kinds of other things short of senile dementia.

I cry. Evil dissolves, & love, like foam; that love. Prattle of children powers me home, my heart claps like the swan's under a frenzy of who love me & who shine.

The truth taught by Jesus Christ is the right way to live.

Old men who never cheated, never doubted, Communicated monthly, sit and stare At the new suburb stretched beyond the run-way Where a young man lands hatless from the air.

Oh! full Surrey twilight! importunate band! Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!

Lord, reserve for me a crown, And do not let my shares go down.

Oh Wasn't it naughty of Smudges? Oh, Mummy, I'm sick with disgust. She threww me in front of the judges, And my silly old collar-bone's bust.

One mark of good verse is surprise

Approval of what is approved of Is as false as a well-kept vow.

We are like horses that must be broken; basically that one should submit to a pastor even if he is wrong.