Joseph Brodsky Quotes

It's not that prison makes you shed your abstract notions. On the contrary, it pares them down to their most succinct articulations. Prison is, indeed, a translation of your metaphysics, ethics, sense of history and whatnot into the compact terms of your daily deportment.

Joseph Brodsky

• History
• Daily
• Ethics

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Quotes to Explore

• Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

  

  Samantha Power
  • Policy
  • Foreign Policy

• As I've traveled around the country, it has surprised me how many times I've heard people in small businesses use that word 'saved.' I believe many small businesses would not have had access to credit and would not have survived without the $50 billion that we were able to put into the market.

  

  Karen Mills
  • People
  • Believe
  • Country

• Sometimes your parents are the ones with the biggest mouths of all time.

  

  Dakota Johnson
  • Time
  • Parents
  • Sometimes

• From when I was 7 until I was 22, I played football. That was always my struggle as a kid. I always wanted to be an artist, but my parents were divorced, and my dad really wanted me to play sports, and that's how I got to see him. He would come pick me up or take me to practice, and he was always at my games.

  

  Gavin O'Connor
  • Up
  • Parents
  • Dad

• These statements about torture, about alleged misuse of power and things like that, insulted the Filipinos more than their leader because it was made to appear as if Filipinos would tolerate a leader who would torture his own people, who would utilize his executive prerogatives for abuses.

  

  Ferdinand Marcos
  • People
  • Power
  • Leader

• The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse.

  

  Ed Koch
  • Today
  • You
  • Fireworks

• If they wish to alleviate the sufferings of the exploited classes, let them live up to their pretensions, let them abandon the academy and go out there and work politically and economically and in a humanitarian spirit.

  

  Harold Bloom
  • Up
  • Work
  • Live

• It was always my dream to write for a living.

  

  Karin Slaughter
  • Dream
  • Always
  • Living

• Some of the best logos are the simplest. One of the oldest is the mark used by the Bass brewery: a red triangle. Target has made a red circle with a red dot in the middle seem the very essence of affordable, hip practicality.

  

  Tahl Raz
  • Best
  • Red
  • Circle

• I can flip my tongue over. Only one in 10,000 people can. I learned that at Ripley's Believe It or Not!

  

  Gabourey Sidibe
  • People
  • Believe
  • Tongue

• My experience is that's rare - that you have a script that is... what they call 'film-ready.'

  

  Laura Linney
  • Experience
  • You
  • Rare

• My function as a writer is to provide an atmosphere in which people can think wisely about what we're doing on this planet.

  

  Barry Lopez
  • People
  • Think
  • Doing

• I was very aware of Jeff Buckley. My brother actually bought me The Mamas And The Papas and Jeff Buckley for my birthday when I was in my early teens.

  

  Imogen Poots
  • Me
  • Brother
  • Birthday

• I have over a hundred clocks. I've got fancy clocks and clocks from all over the world that people made for me.

  

  Flavor Flav
  • People
  • World
  • Me

• It's always good to be around nice-looking people.

  

  Ed Westwick
  • People
  • Good
  • Nice

• I don't know that I could play a complete and total mess. After awhile, I think I would be like, 'No, none of that!'

  

  Natalie Zea
  • Think
  • Know
  • Play

• When we train a horse to do a certain job, we're training the horse to be like a soldier, and yes, he still has a spirit, and he still has his ideas, but he is a disciplined soldier, and in the end, he will follow the rider's instruction to do what needs to be done.

  

  Ian Millar
  • Done
  • Job
  • Training

• Poverty is not the simple result of bad geography, bad culture, bad history. It's the result of us: of the ways that people choose to organize their societies.

  

  Adam Davidson
  • People
  • Bad
  • History

• A little more than 30 years ago, Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Pat Farrah and I got together and founded The Home Depot.

  

  Kenneth Langone
  • Home
  • Together

• I don't even like to go out onto the streets sometimes because I can't get anything done. People want pictures and autographs all the time.

  

  Usain Bolt
  • People
  • Time
  • Done

• It's the old American Double Standard, ya know: Say one thing, do somethin' different. And of course this country is founded on the double standard, that's our history! We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free.

  

  George Carlin
  • Different
  • Country
  • American

• I always wanted to make a 'James Bond' film, and they only seemed to hire British directors, and I'd made 'Swingers' - they were never going to hire me for a 'James Bond' film off 'Swingers.'

  

  Doug Liman

• Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer and then you find there is nothing in it.

  

  James Huneker
  • Life

• It's not that prison makes you shed your abstract notions. On the contrary, it pares them down to their most succinct articulations. Prison is, indeed, a translation of your metaphysics, ethics, sense of history and whatnot into the compact terms of your daily deportment.

  

  Joseph Brodsky
  • History
  • Daily
  • Ethics