Brendan Behan Quotes
When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
Quotes to Explore
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Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool-and that I had been happy in being this or that kind of fool.
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I wrote 'The River' practically trying to rip off every lick that James Taylor had, so it was neat to hear him sing those lyrics because that's who inspired you to write them.
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If you want to fight a war on drugs, sit down at your own kitchen table and talk to your own children.
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It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books that I acquired much of my vocabulary.
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A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
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Look, there ought to be politics in politics.
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If you'd have told me five years ago that I'd have done all this – two books, some television and everything – I'd panic, I'd be scared.
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It is every intelligent man's experience that evildoing recoils on the doer sooner or later.
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I just lost interest in performing.
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Why are we building golf courses? Because we enjoy being outside, bringing man and nature together.
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Without trust, you have nothing: trust is so important to me.
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Good education, housing and jobs are imperatives for the Negroes, and I shall support them in their fight to win these objectives, but I shall tell the Negroes that while these are necessary, they cannot solve the main Negro problem.
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It's when children are 15, 16 or 17 that they decide whether they want to be a doctor, an engineer, a politician or go to the Mars or moon. That is the time they start having a dream, and that's the time you can work on them. You can help them shape their dreams.
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Perfectionists are their own devils.
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You will seek not a near but a distant objective, and you will not be satisfied with what you may have done.
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Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake.
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Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
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Everyone loves each other for the pilot. But once you start to do the show, you see everybody's true colors. If it's successful, people start to change, and then if it's not doing well, people start to change in other ways.
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Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign?
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Religion isn't always pretty. Especially viewed from the outside, by an unbeliever.
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About why he named his daughter True and son Ocean I want those names to be their destiny, for my daughter to be honest and my son to be expansive. I try to be like a forest, revitalizing and constantly growing. … being called Forest helped me find my identity.
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I don't know why I'm alive but I know there's a reason for it.
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If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.
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When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
