Stephen Spender (Sir Stephen Harold Spender) Quotes
But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.
Quotes to Explore
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Real education enhances the dignity of a human being and increases his or her self-respect. If only the real sense of education could be realized by each individual and carried forward in every field of human activity, the world will be so much a better place to live in.
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The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
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Our teachers are operating just as effective leaders in the business world do. They set a vision that most people think is crazy. They convince the kids why it's important to accomplish the goal. And they are totally relentless.
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There are more books in the world than hours in which to read them. We are thus deeply influenced by books we haven't read, that we haven't had the time to read.
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I've seen a couple white girls coming to my concerts wearing head wraps, and I think they look so cute. It's kind of sad to see that people are really into separation, trying to separate everybody and making a clear division of 'us against you,' even with fashion. That sucks. It's not the way the world is supposed to be.
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If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and lone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.
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To me, the newspaper business was a way to learn about life and how things worked in the real world and how people spoke. You learn all the skills - you learn to listen, you learn to take notes - everything you use later as a novelist was valuable training in the newspaper world. But I always wanted to write novels.
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I think it's the same to be an actress anywhere because the profession is about attitudes towards events - it is a process to try to understand life. I think this is the case for actors across the world.
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I think when I was 12, I started reading Evelyn Waugh, and I loved Evelyn Waugh so much, and I thought: 'This is how the world really is. If I could be Evelyn Waugh, then I would be happy.'
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The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.
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Any real virtual reality enthusiast can look back at VR science fiction. It's not about playing games... 'The Matrix,' 'Snow Crash,' all this fiction was not about sitting in a room playing video games. It's about being in a parallel digital world that exists alongside our own, communicating with other people, playing with other people.
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We live in an increasingly technological world where the issues are quite complex and based on some complicated science.
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After reading Eminem's autobiography, which I did because I'm so interested in him as an artist, I respect him a lot. Even though he seems angry and mad, he's had to fight so many demons in his life.
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For me it's very important to turn Kiev into one of the main centers of contemporary art in the world. There is New York. There's London. And there will be Kiev. Everyone will come and say, 'Wow!'
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I believe it is my duty as a performer to raise issues in the world of things we're afraid to look at.
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Over the past 20 years, I have noticed that the most flexible, dynamic, inquisitive minds among my students have been industrial design majors. Industrial designers are bracingly free of ideology and cant. The industrial designer is trained to be a clear-eyed observer of the commercial world - which, like it or not, is modern reality.
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Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist.
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When I was a kid it was big news when someone flew around the world in a little aeroplane, but nobody cared when I did it. Then, to rub salt into my wounds, the customs people ripped my aeroplane to pieces, looking for stuff.
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You can't get angry just because you can't control the world as you please.
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Counterintuitive actions prove we can trust real knowledge and do the opposite of what we feel makes sense.
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When one nation is at war with another nation, the political machine does everything it can to vilify the people of the other nation, so it makes it easier to kill them. Which is understandable and it's happened this way throughout history.
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One of the earliest memories I have of feeling the power of film music was watching Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. That was a really clear epiphany for me, when I realized that each film has its own music, and that there was someone out there who wrote this very specific music for just this one film.
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Smokey and the Bandit was the first picture Hal Needham directed, and I knew he could handle it. I had just directed Gator, and he saw my style and used that as a pattern.
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But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.
