Alan Bennett Quotes
I don't want to see libraries close; I want to find local solutions that will make them sustainable.
Quotes to Explore
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I was never an assimilationist. I always thought gays had some special mission.
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Obviously Hall & Oates wasn't overlooked by the masses in terms of the record sales.
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I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all.
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I clean up really well. I can get dolled up.
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I would literally climb out of the cradle while my parents slept, go and crawl off. I did this a couple of times apparently. I'd cross the road and into someone's house, wake them up banging pots and pans in the kitchen.
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All architecture has a public nature, I believe, so I would like to make a public space.
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I'm waiting for the time when I fail - because we all fail - and I'm ready, I'll take up carpentry.
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The truth is that we have to, as American citizens, stop thinking that this life that we're living, the things that we're dealing with, is some reality TV show. This is real life, real children, real situations.
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One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.
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Of course, you have politics, the Vietnam war and all that monkey business. There are all kinds of reasons. At every one of those demonstrations in the late Sixties about the Vietnam war, you could guarantee there'd be a series of speeches. The ostensible purpose was to protest the war. But then somebody came up and gave a black power speech, usually Black Muslims, then. And then you'd have a women's rights speech. It was terrible to listen to these things.
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Remember: the force will be with you always...
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I think I connect to people who could be written off as wild or dark, or who are just full of fire and looking for a place to put that fire. It's an important lesson to learn, and it's something I did learn: you live on behalf of others and you're happier and you have purpose. And you have a great excuse to have all that fire.
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Even if Scrabble had been invented then, I wouldn't have wanted to play Scrabble, because the highest triple word score in the world would not have expressed how much I liked the game Natalie and I played every afternoon.
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The problem is that young people are less likely to vote than older people. What results is a situation in which sometimes the elections don't fully reflect the views of the American population.
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Why is geometry often described as cold and dry? One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline or a tree.
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Some of my unhappiest moments have been in organizations. Somehow it seems to be quite respectable to do things in organizations that you would never do in private life. I have had people insult me to my face in front of colleagues. I have had my feelings rammed down my throat on the pretext that it would do me good. I have been required to do things which I didn't agree with because the organization wished it... In my worst moments I have thought organizations were places designed to be run by sadists and staffed by masochists.
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The great unsold truth of libraries is that people need them not because they’re about study and solitude, but because they’re about connection. Connection with other worlds and different views, even if that’s no more than being among other people thinking and breathing.
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The reason I am so passionately committed to the psychedelic thing is because I see it as radical, and if this is not the moment for radical solutions, what is?
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I don't think that I could ever be a strict dad. I never grew up with anybody strict in my life... I'm not saying I'm a role model by any means or anything. I think the fact that I wasn't told what not to do all the time - my spirit kind of told me things that I shouldn't - I got to develop on my own. It's part of your common sense.
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People are motivated by the desires for privilege, for power, for profit. Those are not shocking revelations. Anyone who's had any experience in life knows these things.
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I don't want to see libraries close; I want to find local solutions that will make them sustainable.
