Inspirational Quotes
Words to motivate, inspire, and guide you.
Christopher Hitchens Quotes
Canadian IdentityCultural StereotypesSocial Norms Say 'Toronto' or 'Ontario,' and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.
Self-AwarenessAcceptancePrioritizationLetting Go I worked out early on to give up things I couldn't do well at all.
PerseveranceWarinessDeterminationDefense I don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.
JudgmentEvaluationCommunication StyleAppearanceSocial Status When Caroline Kennedy managed to say 'you know' more than 200 times in an interview with the New York 'Daily News,' and on 130 occasions while talking to 'The New York Times' during her uninspired attempt to become a hereditary senator, she proved, among other things, that she was (a) middle-aged and (b) middle class.
EmpathyFamilySolidarity Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on.
Health It's not at all good when your cancer is 'palpable' from the outside. Especially when, as at this stage, they didn't even know where the primary source was. Carcinoma works cunningly from the inside out. Detection and treatment often work more slowly and gropingly, from the outside in.
MoralityDualityTruthDismissalCondemnation George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism.
AgingSelf-PerceptionAppearanceAgeing GracefullySelf-Acceptance Well, I'm in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.
ConnectionDialogueExpressionApproachabilityCraft Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I'm talking to people. It doesn't always work, and one shouldn't always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.
LovePerceptionSignificanceEnchantment Lovers often invest their first meetings with retrospective significance, as if to try to conjure the elements of the numinous out of the stubborn witness of the everyday.
Freedom of SpeechReligionEnd TimesLeadershipControversy Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed in the Bible.
LiteratureSpiritualityMindSoul Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul.
TechnologyPeaceMilitary DefensePolitics Ronald Reagan said that he sought a Star Wars defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R.
EnduranceAdversitySufferingIllness Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of tedium and anxiety, punctuated by briefer interludes of stark terror and pain.
SurvivalResiliencePerseverance Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.
WarState CrimesHistorical Memory There are people who cannot forget, as neither do I, the lesson of the years of the Indochina War. Which was, first, that the state is capable of being a murderer. A mass murderer, and a conspirator and a liar.
Gender RolesLeadershipContentment For most of my life I let women do the driving and was happy to let them.
VictimhoodSelf-CenterednessSolipsism Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centred and even solipsistic.
RealismMortalitySuffering I'm not resigned, but I'm realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it's a certainty you'll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it's an awful process.
WarProgressPerception 'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.
DoubtDisbeliefMoralityBehaviorEthics I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indicator of it.
ReflectionAmbitionPrideRegretContribution When I look back on what I did for the Left, I'm in a small way quite proud of some of it - I only wish I'd done more.
ForesightPreparednessRealism I must have been one of the least surprised people on earth on September 11. I felt very braced for that. I knew something like that was going to come.
TotalitarianismMental ControlPowerFreedomOpposition The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.
LegacyWriting I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.
Religious EducationFaithMoral GuidanceParental Responsibility My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.
FriendshipHuman ConnectionTraditionTolerance It's surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends.
Language EvolutionYouth CultureCommunicationEducationVocabulary Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of 'like' has spread through the idiom of the young. And it's true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.
Lazy ArgumentsAnnoyance There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument.
IslamReformationDanger You notice how liberals keep saying, 'If only Islam would have a Reformation' - it can't have one. It says it can't. It's extremely dangerous in that way.
DisciplineSelf-PerceptionHumorLifestyleAchievement I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, 'He is not a lush.' That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, 'Look!'
PoliticsPerceptionImageStereotypesAmerican Left One of the many problems with the American left has been its image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring.
Religion The suicide-bombing community is not absolutely 100 percent religious, but it is pretty nearly 100 percent religious.
DeathLife PerspectiveTimeAgingMortality My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.
StruggleCourageTriumph Over AdversityMental StrengthDark Times I've had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.
Language EvolutionSocial DynamicsIdentity NavigationPersonal ExpressionCultural Norms Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting 'O.K.' has deposed the more affirmative 'Yes,' so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of 'like' are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.
OpportunityDiversityTruthExperiencePotential The fact is: It's true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it.
MemoryHistorical Reflection Nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.
FutureHopeJusticeLegacy I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read - if not indeed write - the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?