Miracles are commonplace in religious scripture. Our ancient ancestors are said to have felt Jesus' wounds, verified Muhammad's ascent to heaven, and even interacted with their respective deities directly. Today, believers have no such luxury. They a...
A child whose life is full of the threat and fear of punishment is locked into babyhood. There is no way for him to grow up, to learn to take responsibility for his life and acts. Most important of all, we should not assume that having to yield to th...
Please don't think that I am one of those squishy types who can't handle reality. I have plenty of real-world things to deal with all the time. I have deadlines, meetings, I answer the phone, I get turned down, I wait in lines and am forced to pass f...
Because I spend so much time traveling, I tend to do most of my reading on the same iPad on which I write. For me, it's words, not paper, that matter most in the end. This practice has had the additional benefit of greatly reducing the time I spend s...
I was born in Brazil and grew up in the '70s under a climate of political distress, and I was forced to learn to communicate in a very specific way - in a sort of a semiotic black market. You couldn't really say what you wanted to say; you had to inv...
Trautman: You picked the wrong man to push. Teasle: No, Trautman. HE picked the wrong man! Trautman: That boy's a *heart attack*! He may be the best the Special Forces ever trained. Anything *you're* gonna throw at him, he's been through a hundred ti...
Gandalf: My lord! Dispatch this force to Ravenhill, the Dwarves are about to be overrun! Thorin must be warned! Thranduil: By all means, warn him. I have spent enough Elvish blood in defense of this accursed land. No more! [leaves] Gandalf: [desperat...
Albus Dumbledore: [talking about Tom Riddle in the Great Hall] Every day, every hour, this very minute, perhaps, dark forces attempt to penetrate this castle's walls. [pause] Albus Dumbledore: But in the end, their greatest weapon... is you.
Virginia 'Pepper' Potts: [upon seeing Stark wearing a machine around his arm] I thought you said you were done making weapons? Tony Stark: It isn't. This is a flight stabilizer. It's completely harmless. [Stark is blasted back by the force of the mac...
Elrond: You ride to war, but not to victory. Sauron's armies march on Minas Tirith, this you know. But in secret he sends another force which will attack from the river. A fleet of Corsairs ships sails from the south. They reach the city in two days.
Superintendant: I don't like forcing the pace to extract confessions or get information. I'm very liberal, a great believer in the liberty of the individual... in people's right to live as they choose. Provided that the way of life they choose harms ...
Saruman: If the wall is breached, Helm's Deep will fall. Wormtongue: Even if it is breached, it will take a number beyond reckoning, thousands, to storm the keep. Saruman: Tens of thousands. Wormtongue: But, my lord, there is no such force. [they go ...
Marcy Dawson: [to Max] You don't understand it, do you? I don't give a shit about you! I only care about what's in your fucking head! If you won't help us, help yourself. We are forced to comply to the laws of nature. Survival of the fittest Max, and...
Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl: In 15 minutes, we meet with the Fuhrer. He will want to know how you intend to deal with Patton's forces. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel: I will attack and annihilate him...! [long pause] Field Marshal Erwin Rommel: ...before he do...
[Ray is recording "Georgia on my Mind"] Margie Hendricks: Listen to that crap. I thought you said ABC wasn't gonna force nothing on him. Jeff Brown: They didn't. It was Ray's idea. Something new. Margie Hendricks: What are we then, Jeff? Something ol...
A woman at the Limited once asked me, 'Why do you work?' She said, 'You made a lot of money as a young man, so why are you still working?' I had never thought about it before. Forced to consider it, I told her, 'You know why? Because I think that if ...
Do you always do as you would like to do were it in your power? I find that circumstances force me often to act in a manner quite opposite to what I should prefer; I am, of course, judged by my acts, but do they really afford a true key to my charact...
It is my position that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie ab...
[first lines] The Other: The Tesseract has awakened. It is on a little world. A human world. They would wield its power, but our ally knows its workings as they never will. He is ready to lead. And our force, our Chitauri, will follow. The world will...
Prayer is the force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious as...
It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it w...