John Irving Quotes
I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.

Quotes to Explore
-
Dr. Phil is hiding something. Otherwise, why wouldn't he use his last name?
-
I talk every day about doing the right thing.
-
Sex is the ersatz or substitute religion of the 20th Century.
-
It's really hard for kids nowadays: you can get a decent education, but there are no jobs out there. You worry about how they are ever going to afford to live anywhere.
-
I do believe that the coal industry sees the cultural shift toward cleaner energy and global warming solutions as a threat to their interests.
-
Be skeptical of concepts that divorce war from its political nature, particularly those that promise fast, cheap victory through technology.
-
I became a dancer late and an actor late.
-
It is good to know what a man is, and also what the world takes him for. But you do not understand him until you have learnt how he understands himself.
-
I suppose I am one of those lucky people who eats what they like and doesn't gain too much weight.
-
The only history is a mere question of one's struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.
-
I can see myself always writing songs - but I'm not sure if I'll always want to perform.
-
A smart phone essentially creates a dossier of your travels, and consumers have no control over who will eventually see that information.
-
Leaks are always bad news.
-
I can't say that winning the Pen/Faulkner was a dream come true because I would never have dared to dream it.
-
Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.
-
I haven't seen it this busy since I've been an IndyCar driver. So I think that's a great kind of thing that's happening for the IndyCar Series, in general, right now. But it's an event that I'm very proud to be part of. I love it. I can't wait to come back next year.
-
Conceptual art, I don't even know what that is.
-
Elections, for their part, are typically popularity contests rather than measures of candidates' relative competency or effectiveness. Imagine if scientific truth were determined according to which scientist was most popular. To be successful, scientists would have to be charismatic and attractive - and human knowledge would suffer terribly.
-
As a person in the public eye, I have always felt that if I have the good fortune of being able to shed a spotlight on different causes that I feel passionately about...
-
I think it's poignant and powerful, this idea that if someone knows your name, they have the ability to kind of hail you and make demands upon you.
-
Compared to the way in which final causality has – in actual practice, if not in theory and rhetoric – maintained its grip on biological thinking, the Darwinian “revolution” is a trivial blip on the continued silent and unacknowledged hegemony of Aristotle.
-
Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up.
-
Before the war, my parents were very proud people. They'd always talk about Japan and also about the samurai and things like that. Right after Pearl Harbor, they were just real quiet. They kept to themselves; they were afraid to talk about what could happen. I assume they knew that nothing good would come out of it.
-
I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.