In modern times, nationalism is the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm, and that nationalist fervor must be tapped if the drastic changes projected and initiated by revolutionary enthusiasm are to be consummated.
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.
I once saw a politician walking a dog, and I thought, “How absurd—an animal walking an animal.” Then I thought, “If given the choice, I’d rather vote for the dog.
Politics is something similar to the lower physiological functions, with the unpleasant difference that political functions are unavoidably carried out in public.
One can observe that such changes in the breath are the direct result of your reaction to thoughts. If you can simply dismiss the thoughts by giving them no value then the breathing will find its own medium and become subtle.
I'd always thought that the earth on which I stood was a solid object that would last forever. Or rather, I'd never thought about such a thing at all. I'd simply taken it for granted.
The library was quiet. It was busy but it was quiet and I thought it must be like this in a monastery where you had company and sympathy but your thoughts were your own.
Everyone these days is concerned so much with privacy and forgets the value of human touch. We still need each other but are scared of how it might sound or appear to the other.
Syllogism ― Major premise: I can control my thoughts. Minor premise: My feelings come from my thoughts. Conclusion: I can control my feelings.
I thought she was older than she was, and I thought she was younger than she was. She looked older, but she acted younger, so no matter what her age was, I was surprised by it.
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wi...
I know in my own marriage I stayed in it to provide my son with what I thought was a stable background and to give him what I thought was the family life a child should have with two parents. But that isn't always the best way, and it took me taking ...
Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be ...
...the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.
I thought I could never write a proper book; I'd never done it before. But I thought I could write a sequence. Then I had a chapter. The next thing I knew I was turning acting down.
You can write a radical Norwegian or a conservative Norwegian. And when I changed to a conservative Norwegian, I gained this distance or objectivity in the language. The gap released something in me, and in the writing, which made it possible for the...
I thought that when I won the Olympic trials I was going to be the happiest person in the whole world. And I was happy. But it wasn't like I thought it was going to be. I had already imagined it in my head so many times. It was real before it happene...
Well, when I was a kid, if my father was witnessing something that he thought was particularly outrageous or he was looking at some sort of a question that he thought lacked proper definition, he would say, Well, at least Jesse James had the honor to...
When I first made a grid, I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees, and then a grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, 'This is my vision.'
The more I thought to myself, 'Are my thoughts right, am I being obedient enough?' the worse it was... one of the most painful things you can experience in life is not so much physical pain, but being self-occupied. Because to the extent you are self...
My agent asked if I fancied Robin Hood and I thought: 'Yeah, why not?' I hadn't watched it, to be honest, but I'd seen bits and knew it was really popular Saturday family viewing with heaps of action. I thought it would be great fun. I was up for a g...
