John Betjeman Quotes
Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life.
Quotes to Explore
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I had eleven varsity letters. I loved basketball the best, but cross-country is a little more under your control.
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The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern.
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Sometimes a chord on a guitar will somehow spur some thought in your head, and you will write a song about it.
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I am cursed with computers; something always goes wrong.
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I always drive like a madman.
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The biggest rival I had in my career was me. I couldn't control Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson or Lee Trevino. The only person I could control was me.
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There's so much hate that we direct externally that we forget we have our own psychos. But that's the role of the satirist - you have to examine your own country and say, 'look!'
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We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
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Especially in the day and age now with social media and cameraphones and things like that, you always have to act like you're being watched.
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When I first read 'The River,' I had theories on what it was about, but once we got into rehearsal, I realized it's much simpler: It's about how human beings try to connect. The play holds a mirror up to the audience, and they take from it what's relevant to their lives.
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If there is one thing that makes me unique, it's that I riff a lot.
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I was assigned to the heavy cruiser Chicago.
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By now it is evident that the Soviet Union must gain control of Europe to maintain its empire.
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Where the stakes are the highest, in the war on terror, we cannot possibly succeed without extraordinary international cooperation. Effective international police actions require the highest degree of intelligence sharing, planning and collaborative enforcement.
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Well, it's taken a long time to get the Department of Homeland Security established. It's taken a long time for the Congress to decide how much it wanted to fund.
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The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know.
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We all know him: everybody has an Archie Bunker in their family, so you love to laugh at him, and you never take it personally; everybody just has a ball laughing at him.
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Defeating racism, tribalism, intolerance and all forms of discrimination will liberate us all, victim and perpetrator alike.
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Men of Virginia, countrymen of Washington, of Patrick Henry, of Jefferson, and of Madison, will ye be true to your constitutional faith?
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The man was running away with the rest, and selling his papers for a shilling each as he ran—a grotesque mingling of profit and panic.
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The life of Lord Krishna has been misunderstood by many Western commentators. Scriptural allegory is baffling to literal minds. A hilarious blunder by a translator will illustrate this point. The story concerns an inspired medieval saint, the cobbler Ravidas, who sang in the simple terms of his own trade of the spiritual glory hidden in all mankind:
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The Church in the colonies is the white people’s Church, the foreigner’s Church. She does not call the native to God’s ways but to the ways of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor.
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Vote with your life; vote yes!
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Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life.
