Alan Quotes

I just wanted to be the first one to fly for America, not because I'd end up in the pages of history books.

Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell.

A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.

I've always stood up for country music.

Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.

Change is easy, except for the changed part.

We are homesick for places, we are reminded of places, it is the sounds and smells and sights of places which haunt us and against which we often measure our present.

It's a bubble. It has to have intrinsic value. You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven't been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can.

The process of innovation is, of course, never ending.

Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.

Where lies the line between sorcery and science? It is only a matter of terminology, my friend.

I've been very fortunate as a composer to be involved with projects that have really propelled my scores forward. I'm very proud of it.

I don't write songs for myself anymore. I only write songs on assignment. It's purely a business, but it is still so important to me emotionally.

Why do we argue? Life's so fragile, a successful virus clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.

There's no such thing as quitting. Just sometimes there's a longer pause between relapses.

There's only one thing you can use against pure logic, and that's common sense.

Form follows function straight to hell.

There is no real security in what is no longer meaningful.

The deeper you love yourself, the more the universe will affirm your worth.

We hurt ourselves not by what we ask for, but what we settle for.

The Dark Side of the Moon is a fine album with a textural and conceptual richness that not only invites, but demands involvement. There is a certain grandeur.

Democracy is not about making speeches. It is about making committees work.

There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it.

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply... For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.

That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.

What I'm above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that's it really: I'm taking the pith out of reality.

If you are flattering a woman, it pays to be a little more subtle. You don't have to bother with men, they believe any compliment automatically.

I think there should be laughs in everything. Sometimes, it's a slammed door, a pie in the face or just a recognition of our frailties.

I can only see my limitations. That's just who I am.

It's murder to doubt yourself in life. It took until I was 45 to get to that point. As hard as it is in your work, it's harder in your life. But it can be done.

Be brave enough to live creatively.

The flower of kindness will grow. Maybe not now, but it will some day. And in kind that kindness will flow, for kindness grows in this way.

A very large part of space-time must be investigated, if reliable results are to be obtained.

Freedom is born of self-discipline. No individual, no nation, can achieve or maintain liberty without self-control. The undisciplined man (or woman) is a slave to his own weaknesses.

Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap.

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening.

Don't let anyone try to tell you who you are. Define yourself.

If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.

Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories.

We need innovation in education and dedication to the task before us.

You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.

Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.

You are doing better than you think you are.