Alexander McCall Smith Quotes
Old friends, like old shoes, are comfortable. But old shoes, unlike old friends, tend not to be supportive: it is easier to stumble and sprain an ankle while wearing a pair of old shoes than it is in new shoes, with their less yielding leather.

Quotes to Explore
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Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.
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Consciousness is indeed always with us. Everyone knows 'I am!' No one can deny his own being.
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The public debate about evolution itself, as opposed to whether to teach it, is something else. It is boring, demeaning, and insufferably dull.
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The pace of innovation may slow down or speed up depending on the appetite in the public markets, but the constant progress of technology doesn't really ever stop. There's always opportunities for new ideas and creative people to go build great things. I'm always interested in learning about those kinds of opportunities.
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If you want to put out a million CDs and sell them and get them played on the radio, and even videos, or whatever, if that still exists, that kind of muscle can only come from a label like Columbia.
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I feel great physically. I feel really good.
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Neutrality, as a lasting principle, is an evidence of weakness.
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Acting was all I ever really wanted to do.
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I was a kid living in New Jersey, who – I'd wanted to make movies since I was a little kid, so that came before music for me. But I started playing drums just as a hobby, and I wasn't even really into jazz that much.
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As President, I will end once and for all the use of taxpayer funds to promote the National Endowment for the Arts and other programs that subsidize amoral and degrading activities.
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Every child, woman and man has a right to enough nutritious food for an active and healthy life.
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On a very basic level, many people think celebrities have too much already, so we shouldn't be entitled to our political opinions.
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We can succeed only by concert. It is not, 'Can any of us imagine better,' but, 'Can we all do better?'
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If you want to move people, you look for a point of sensitivity, and in Egypt nothing moves people as much as religion.
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I was surprised by how much I liked 'Hacksaw Ridge' and its depth.
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Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.
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Chief executives, who themselves own few shares of their companies, have no more feeling for the average stockholder than they do for baboons in Africa.
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Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life.
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Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. The shift from the one to the other was definitely related to when the takes started to get big.
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It wasn't sexual in its element. I wasn't being exploited. I was doing what happened. It was very challenging because I played Phyllis from 15 years old to 53 when she died of breast cancer.
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Having all that - the fame and adulation and women and all that stuff they talk about - doesn't make you happy. You have to make yourself happy.
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Between friends there is no need for justice, but people who are just still need the quality of friendship; and indeed friendliness is considered to be justice in the fullest sense.
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Old friends, like old shoes, are comfortable. But old shoes, unlike old friends, tend not to be supportive: it is easier to stumble and sprain an ankle while wearing a pair of old shoes than it is in new shoes, with their less yielding leather.