Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters.

Alexander McCall Smith

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Quotes to Explore

• There are lots of people who haven't been to drama school who have great talent and can be discovered.

  

  Vicky McClure
  • People
  • Great
  • School

• Each age has deemed the new-born year the fittest time for festal cheer.

  

  Walter Scott
  • Time
  • Age
  • Cheer

• If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.

  

  Karl Kraus
  • Life
  • Truth
  • Imagination

• A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

  

  Samuel Johnson
  • Book
  • Man
  • Library

• To Republicans, I humbly suggest that we make it possible for Democrats to give up their quest for redistribution of income and wealth by our acceptance of an appropriate role for government in financing those public goods and services necessary to secure a social safety net below which no American would be allowed to fall.

  

  Jack Kemp
  • Up
  • American
  • Fall

• We think of the 1950s as an oppressive time in the culture, and indeed it was, but it was also in many ways a more secular moment, and one in which great scientific achievements flourished. I don't want to get too gauzy about this, but there was much more respect for science as a necessary part of society.

  

  Hanya Yanagihara
  • Time
  • Great
  • Society

• A filial son to his father can be a traitorous subject to his ruler.

  

  Han Fei
  • Father
  • Son
  • Ruler

• We must honestly face our relationship with Great Britain.

  

  Wendell Willkie
  • Great
  • Relationship
  • Face

• Attempting to get at truth means rejecting stereotypes and cliches.

  

  Harold Evans
  • Truth
  • Stereotypes
  • Cliches

• Put your consumers in focus, and listen to what they're actually saying, not what they tell you.

  

  Daniel Ek
  • Focus
  • Listen
  • Saying

• Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.

  

  Abraham Lincoln
  • Man
  • Thoughts
  • New

• I love who I am and I love my life, but if I could be someone else, I'd be Beyonce in two seconds.

  

  Dakota Fanning
  • Life
  • Love
  • Beyonce

• When I hear theists and atheists pontificating on how they know God does or does not exist, I can only smile at the irrationality and, yes, vanity of the notion.

  

  Vincent Bugliosi
  • God
  • Smile
  • Vanity

• I buy when other people are selling.

  

  J. Paul Getty
  • People
  • Business
  • Selling

• My mom would always play me a lot of late-'50s, late-'60s rock.

  

  G-Eazy
  • Me
  • Play
  • Mom

• My wife Martha used to call me Ol' Lemon Face because of my facial contortions when I play Lucille. I squeeze my eyes and open my mouth, raise my eyebrows, cock my head and God knows what else. I look like I'm in torture, when in truth, I'm in ecstasy. I don't do it for show. Every fiber of my being is tingling.

  

  B. B. King
  • God
  • Truth
  • Eyes

• Almost all of us growing up have played baseball on some level. It has an inside track with people. It has a unifying effect.

  

  Vin Scully
  • People
  • Up
  • Growing

• Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

  

  Edgar Allan Poe
  • Experience
  • Truth
  • True

• Listen to the stage manager and get on stage when they tell you to. No one has time for the rock star bullshit. None of the techs backstage care if you're David Bowie or the milkman. When you act like a jerk, they are completely unimpressed with the infantile display that you might think comes with your dubious status. They were there hours before you building the stage, and they will be there hours after you leave tearing it down. They should get your salary, and you should get theirs.

  

  Henry Rollins Black Flag
  • Thinking
  • Care
  • Building

• Let's talk about Connie Britton, who I love. I don't know of a person who doesn't love her, I don't know a man or woman who doesn't have a crush on her, she's the most fabulous person in the entire world, and she's such an incredible actress, and so sweet, and I love her.

  

  Maggie Carey
  • World
  • Know
  • Person

• We should involve the whole world in the handling of this refugee crisis.

  

  Viktor Orban
  • World
  • Crisis
  • Refugee

• A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed.

  

  C. S. Lewis
  • World
  • Men
  • Bad

• It is important to have safe borders, but at the same time, we can't forget what brought us here. This is an immigrant nation.

  

  Dara Khosrowshahi
  • Time
  • Important

• We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters.

  

  Alexander McCall Smith
  • World
  • Forever