Ben Okri Quotes

Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.

Ben Okri

• Beautiful
• Growing

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Quotes to Explore

• I like being from a city that is not entrenched in show business. When you're in New York City or Los Angeles, even if you're not dealing with show business, there's still this sense that it's the center of the universe.

  

  Ed Helms
  • Business
  • City
  • Universe

• The Trump family's business model is part of a broader shift in corporate structure that has taken place within many brand-based multinationals, one with transformative impacts on culture and the job market, trends that I wrote about in my first book, 'No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies'.

  

  Naomi Klein
  • Family
  • Business
  • Job

• That a majority of the Abolitionists in this place would patronize a free labor store, in preference to others, I do not doubt; but we do not muster money in Cincinnati.

  

  Gamaliel Bailey
  • Money
  • Free
  • Doubt

• The 'army camp' that coordinates the agencies of our brain is vulnerable, both in itself and from within. In effect, he who can know and master its functioning and psychology from outside can become twice its master.

  

  Tariq Ramadan
  • Know
  • Brain
  • Army

• I had this 'War and Peace' thing of wanting to experience war as a kind of incredible human enterprise. I even applied to Officer Candidate School. Then the practical side of me kicked in and I thought, 'I really don't want to get drafted.' So I went down to the physical and checked every psychological disorder and drug on the medical history form.

  

  Harold Ramis
  • School
  • Experience
  • War

• Big Business can make laws as easily as it can break them - and with as little impunity.

  

  Ralph Chaplin
  • Business
  • Break
  • Laws

• Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society.

  

  Walter Gropius
  • Life
  • Society
  • Design

• We pay taxes, and we help the city coffers.

  

  Manuel Moroun
  • Help
  • City
  • Taxes

• I am sure that the party system is right and necessary. There must be some scum.

  

  A. P. Herbert
  • Party
  • Right
  • System

• Lyndon Johnson was a profoundly insecure man who feared dissent and craved reassurance. In 1964 and 1965, Johnson's principal goals were to win the presidency in his own right and to pass his Great Society legislation through Congress.

  

  H. R. McMaster
  • Great
  • Society
  • Man

• The proposition that humans have mental characteristics wholly absent in non-humans is inconsistent with the theory of evolution.

  

  Gary L. Francione
  • Evolution
  • Theory
  • Mental

• I was raised with those principals and values and ethics that came out of the men and women that served. But this generation doesn't quite know; they haven't been tested.

  

  Jack Scalia
  • Men
  • Women
  • Ethics

• Happiness is a mysterious concept. It seems to work best as futurity: at that point I will be happy, et cetera. I feel like I experience small pieces of joy day to day.

  

  Rachel Kushner
  • Work
  • Experience
  • Happy

• I believe in Karma. If the good is sown, the good is collected. When positive things are made, that returns well.

  

  Yannick Noah
  • Good
  • Believe
  • Positive

• I don't necessarily like being defined by my profession.

  

  Karen Allen
  • Like
  • Being
  • Profession

• Dried porcini add a substantial, deep flavour to otherwise more neutral vegetables. I use them in risottos, mashed roots and winter soups.

  

  Yotam Ottolenghi
  • Deep
  • Winter
  • Roots

• Whatever storytelling muscles you've developed as a documentary filmmaker will be extremely helpful as a narrative filmmaker.

  

  R. J. Cutler
  • You
  • Storytelling
  • Muscles

• The thing about Moby Dick is that, at heart, it's a very simple plot - there's only one white whale in the ocean. When you're a boy growing up in a hostile home, you imagine it's unique: it's happening only to you.

  

  Gavin O'Connor
  • Up
  • Heart
  • Home

• Big and oppressive government has long been the enemy of freedom, something black Americans know all too well.

  

  Rand Paul
  • Long
  • Black
  • Freedom

• The GOP should be the GSP: the Grand Solutions Party. It should be about solutions, not talking points.

  

  Jeb Bush
  • Party

• Even though I am the daughter of a poet, and my stepmother is also a poet, growing up, I didn't think I could understand poetry; I didn't think that it had any relevance to my life, the feelings that I endured on a day-to-day basis, until I was introduced to the right poem.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • Life
  • Up
  • Growing

• Can a moment of madness make up for an age of consent?

  

  Basil Bunting
  • Up
  • Age
  • Moment

• People say, 'Why don't you do interviews? What do you think about this? What do you think about that?' My job in the band is to play drums, to get up on stage and hold the band together. That's what I do. At the end of the day that's all that's important. Everything else is irrelevant.

  

  Larry Mullen, Jr. U2
  • People
  • Band
  • Stage

• Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.

  

  Ben Okri
  • Beautiful
  • Growing