Famous Quotes & Sayings

Neil MacGregor

The collapse of the Tower of Babel is perhaps the central urban myth. It is certainly the most disquieting. In Babylon, the great city that fascinated and horrified the Biblical writers, people of different races and languages, drawn together in pursuit of wealth, tried for the first time to live together - and failed.

Peter Quinn

Tower of Babel to an IT United Nations.

Jakob Bohme

The city Babel is the Ham-like man, who builds this city upon the earth; the tower is his self-chosen god, and divine worship. All reason-taught, from the school of this world, are the master-builders of this tower.

Zubin Mehta

I endeavor that all orchestras I conduct sound Central European.

Christo

And the most unusual and surrealistic place in New York City is Central Park.

Bill Cosby

Comedy Central is what these young people are viewing. The network speaks to their audience, which is saying, 'Give me fast jokes. Give me party stories and party language.'

Noah Feldman

Every generation gets the Constitution that it deserves. As the central preoccupations of an era make their way into the legal system, the Supreme Court eventually weighs in, and nine lawyers in robes become oracles of our national identity.

Frances Beinecke

Climate change is the central environmental ill of our time. We have an obligation to protect our children from the dangers of this widening scourge, and we aren't yet doing enough about it.

Erez Lieberman Aiden

One of the central mysteries of biology is why the genome is largely identical from cell to cell, even though cells do different things.

Bob Haffele

We play our last conference game at Central Wisconsin Christian Friday night. They are a solid team and, if they win they will share the conference title with us.

Scott Peterson

We know we aren't like Comedy Central or ESPN that serves to entertain. You may never use any part of C-SPAN, but we as a network with all our resources, like to think we are here if you ever do need to use us.

Trip Adler

The goal is to become the central hub of publishing, where we have all the written material - user-generated and professional. We want to be the place where people can publish instantly to their audiences... and to get there, it's just about doing things step by step.

Warren Farrell

I am always someone who follows the research more than my self-interest. It certainly has not been in my self-interest to defend men. I've gone from being quite wealthy, when I was defending women, to being quite poor defending men.

Walead Beshty

I certainly like it if the work is beautiful, but that's a surplus effect. I can only think about that after I consider how it's made.

Walter Crane

They had certainly exasperated them, and could not disperse them, as after every charge - and some of these drove the people right against the shutters in the shops in the Strand - they returned again.

Warren Stephens

We're certainly interested in maximizing our return and doing it - we're interested in maximizing our return, but we're also interested in doing it over a long period of time and in doing it in a way that never endangers the firm from a survivability standpoint.

William Kirby

The most important thing that certainly the United States and other Asian and Pacific actors have done is to urge that whatever happens, however the dispute is resolved, that it be resolved peacefully.

Vikram Seth

I certainly think it's very important that writers as citizens - not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens - should talk about things that matter to them.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

My earlier exposure to physics certainly helped me in the use of biophysical techniques like crystallography, the use of computing, calculations, etc.

Zubin Mehta

I miss the standard of the New York Philharmonic's playing very much. It has certainly been a high point in my life.

Ellen Key

Certainly it may, under present imperfect conditions, often be a duty not to destroy the outward form of marriage for the sake of the children. But by no means can this duty be preached as universally binding.

William Cullen Bryant

A beautiful city is Richmond, seated on the hills that overlook the James River. The dwellings have a pleasant appearance, often standing by themselves in the midst of gardens. In front of several, I saw large magnolias, their dark, glazed leaves glittering in the March sunshine.

Zubin Mehta

I love the creativity of New York, but I don't enjoy the city - I don't like living here.

Chris Bohjalian

On the one hand, I'm this guy who grew up in the suburbs of New York City to very conservative parents, and the other side of me is fascinated by the peripheries of our culture, maybe because that's where our culture is most in transition and where there's likely to be conflict.

Walter Kirn

The least sexy city is Los Angeles. And it poses as the most sexy. As you grow up, L.A. is being sold to you as home of the bikini-clad party girls. And then you get there, and it's full of very goal-oriented, yoga-obsessed careerists.

Francis G. Slay

I plan to see St. Louis as a global competitor. As an international trade hub, as an incubator of new companies, as a place of culture and the arts, as a magnet for immigrants, for entrepreneurs, for animal lovers, and for gays, as a city of parks and trails, and as the sort of place that figures in young people's dreams.

Charles Platt

The landscape of the Net has changed; that cyberfrontier of the past has become a teeming city of people, transactions, and businesses.

D'Brickashaw Ferguson

I sat in the green room at Radio City Music Hall for the 2006 NFL Draft. At my table, I was encircled by my parents, brother, agent, former coaches and close friends.

Wade Mackey

We played well in Rapid City last Sunday.

Mark Petersen

We played around with our lineup. We had no heavyweight, but fortunately it worked out in our favor. Jerry has a nice young team and it was a great city rivalry match.

Nina Easton

Events like Hurricane Katrina and the Minnesota bridge collapse suggest a national infrastructure that has suffered from lack of tending.

Trent Reznor

I'll be honest, watching the music industry collapse has been demoralizing and disheartening at times.

Kristen Kovesdy

When I get out of the paint, it opens things up for my teammates. If they collapse on me and we hit other people, we get really great shots.

Mike Wallace

You know, you become crazy. I had done a story for '60 Minutes' on depression previously, but I had no idea that I was now experiencing it. Finally, I collapsed and just went to bed.

Bo Burnham

I think it would collapse my heart if I was super famous. I don't have the nerve for it, I'm too anxious. I don't know how you're not obsessed with how people perceive you, because they're real people, you know? You can convince yourself that they don't really know you, and that's true, but how can it not hurt your feelings?

Werner Herzog

I think there are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there's insecurity, collapse of financial systems - that's where film noir always hits fertile ground.

Trey Parker

Out of all the ridiculous religion stories - which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous - the silliest one I've ever heard is, 'Yeah, there's this big, giant universe, and it's expanding, and it's all going to collapse on itself, and we're all just here, just 'cuz. Just 'cuz.' That to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever.

Milos Forman

I remember in 1968 when we were in Cannes, in the festival, and we were supposed to be there 10 days, and the second day the festival collapsed because the French, you know, film-makers raised the red flag in the festival and ended the festival.

Julius Maldutis

Unless we see the liquidation or the mass shrinkage of capacity, we're not going to see the industry return to profitability, barring a collapse in oil prices.

Natalie Imbruglia

I wasn't naturally drawn to fashion when I was younger but with my work I'm so exposed to what's out there that I'm hoping my style has become a little more sophisticated.

Nikola Tesla

Modern science says: 'The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.' From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

Vonda Shepard

I seem to be drawn to the really romantic songs.

Freddy Rodriguez

No, there isn't a particular type of genre that I'm drawn to. I'm more drawn to the possibility of creating different characters, or being able to go from one genre to the other and to show that I could do it, that I could be good at it.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

'No Sweetness Here' is the kind of old-fashioned social realism I have always been drawn to in fiction, and it does what I think all good literature should: It entertains you.

Lauren Myracle

I'm always drawn to the underdogs, to the people whose stories don't get told.

Mike Nichols

You can always tell gifted and highly intelligent people as they always turn to the past. Any young person who knows anything that happened before 1980, or 1990, or 2000 for that matter, is immediately someone who is intelligent, probably creative, maybe a writer. Nobody who is drawn to the past and learning about the past is not gifted.

Nancy Horan

I guess I'm drawn to artists and literary people and want to learn about them.

Lisa Tuttle

I'm quite a rational person, but I'm drawn to the irrational. I love coincidences, and I like to question that in fiction: 'Is this random, or is there something working underneath?'

Colin Angle

People are fascinated by robots because they're machines that can mimic life.

Ben Barnes

Almost every script that I've gotten has been for sort of the generic Hollywood type. I haven't chosen them. All the ones I have chosen are because I've been fascinated with the source material or because of the script.

David Horsey

I've been a fascinated observer of grand public funerals since I was a kid, starting with the life-altering black-and-white images of President John F. Kennedy's funeral.

William Gibson

I'm not a computer guy. I'm like an anthropologist. I'm fascinated with people's obsessions. I've learned to wear them.

Noreena Hertz

I've become increasingly fascinated with social media to improve on traditional ways of preparing for and predicting the future.

Gore Vidal

I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.

Chang-Rae Lee

Like most people, I'm fascinated by characters who are completely flawed personalities, riven by anguish and doubt, and are psychologically suspect.

Francis Alys

I am always fascinated by the way kids create their own world. That is something I am very attentive to anywhere I go.

Dwight Yoakam

When I was in junior high, a foreign-history teacher started a theater class. So I got my feet wet there and through high school, so I was very fascinated with acting as a means of expression.

Yotam Ottolenghi

Swiss chard is undervalued in Britain. It's a great substitute for spinach and keeps its shape well.

Yotam Ottolenghi

A great ratatouille is one in which the vegetables interact with each other but are still discernible from each other. The trick is to cook them just right: not over, not under.

William Shatner

I love technology. Matches, to light a fire, is really high tech. The wheel is really one of the great inventions of all time. Other than that, I am an ignoramus about technology.

William Shatner

In entertainment, whether it's movies or television or whatever, I'm a great audience, but I don't remember the names of the people I've seen or the groups that I've heard.

Wentworth Miller

I know what it takes to go from the point where someone's looking at a newspaper article, and thinking, 'Oh, this would make a great TV series,' to the point where you're actually on a set and there's a camera aimed at someone.

William Manchester

He was a great thundering paradox of a man.

Wes Anderson

Every time you do a take on a movie, you're not sure if it's going to succeed. Even if you have a great cast, like we had, every scene you're kind of waiting for the release. 'Oh, yes; it happened. We got it!' There's always the possibility that it's just not going to work.

Zubin Mehta

The New York Philharmonic is a tremendous opportunity, a great orchestra.

Abraham Lincoln

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

David Medine

The judge was horrified and called in Sears.

Karen Doering

She was aghast, just horrified by what she saw.

Nicole Richie

She looks like a skeleton, ... I was horrified at how skinny she is.

Yuvraj Singh

People who don't know me, how will they know what I am really like? They will only see me on the field, only see me in an advertisement. People who know what kind of a guy I am will tell you I'm a very open person.

Yoko Ono

Most people like to hear sounds they are used to.

Yoko Ono

Many people do remember their births, but they deny it.

Willie Aames

I think there are people that have very addictive personalities.

William Shatner

I like making people laugh. It comes off and shines in everything I do.

Wentworth Miller

They told me at the end of that test that they wanted me to be a part of this project. I walked out and had a moment of clarity where I thought, not many people will ever have this moment.

William Clay Ford, Sr.

I think sports are a wonderful diversion. People can relate to sports very easily. It's a quick study.

William Sleator

Stories develop from things I read and also from my own experiences and experiences of people I know.

Will Poulter

I need to try and get away from that brat role, or people are going to think I'm a natural brat.

Wentworth Miller

When I've had my periods of unemployment, I'll get these e-mails from my father: 'I've read that the LAPD has a reservist program. Perhaps that's something you'd be interested in taking a look at.'

Alexander McCall Smith

You're always told by your publisher that you must only write one book a year and some years you should perhaps write none at all.

Pico Iyer

The one thing perhaps that technology hasn't always given us is a sense of how to make the wisest use of technology.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

Don Ameche

I never 'went Hollywood.' Perhaps some of my behavior was detrimental to my career, but I couldn't go the route of Hollywood parties.

Azim Premji

You have students in America, in Britain, who do not want to be engineers. Perhaps it is the workload, I studied engineering, and I know what a grind it is.

Eric Brown

The inspiration to write? Perhaps it's not so much inspiration, as a NEED to write. I get itchy and guilty and dissatisfied when I haven't written for a while. Ideas come to me and need to be written down.

Todd Hamilton

I'm so excited, I probably won't sleep for two or three or perhaps seven days,

Orhan Pamuk

I think perhaps it is a generational thing,

Edward Everett

Not a moment had been lost by General Hooker in the pursuit of Lee.

David Brin

The three basic material rights -- continuity, mutual obligation, and the pursuit of happiness.

Martin Seligman

The pursuit of happiness is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as a right of all Americans, as well as on the self-improvement shelves of every American bookstore. Yet the scientific evidence makes it seem unlikely that you can change your level of happiness in any sustainable way. It suggests that we each have a fixed range for happiness just as we do for weight. And just as dieters almost always regain the weight they lose, sad people don't become lastingly happy, and happy people don't become lastingly sad.

Malcolm Muggeridge

The "pursuit of happiness" is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.

Peter Drucker

Replace your pursuit of success with the pursuit of contribution.

Aristotle

When...we, as individuals, obey laws that direct us to behave for the welfare of the community as a whole, we are indirectly helping to promote the pursuit of happiness by our fellow human beings.

Bertrand Russell

It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.

Jack White

It is the pursuit of happiness that brings us happiness, and not the happiness achieved.

George W. Bush

America stands for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness and for the unalienable right for life. This right to life cannot be granted or denied by government because it does not come from government, it comes from the creator of life.

Dale Jr

We are going to win six or seven races and be in the top three in the Chase. If we don't win the championship, it won't be by much.

Richard Childress

We were going to keep the 3, he just wanted to see it winning races and winning championships.

Dan Wheldon

To win six races is something I'll look back on and think that was a strong season.

Vedran Pavlek

She's taking a little break. It's just too many races for her right now, at the end of the season.

Dan Wheldon

Winning the Indianapolis 500 was very special to me, ... but winning six races is something I'll look back on and think that was a strong season.

Morgan Dobbs

This will be one of the most competitive races in America.

Keith Williams

I thought the races would be a little closer,

Bobby Hamilton

I don't think you can do it with 10 races to go in trucks because we only run 25 races,

Jeff Bonde

She's at the top of her game. She has trained excellent, and she does well when her races are spaced.

Vivienne Westwood

I am in my own head most of the time.

Zubin Mehta

New York for a long time was a kind of conductor's graveyard.

Zubin Mehta

I think conductors do spend too little time with their orchestras.

Yakov Smirnoff

When you like something, you find time to do it.

Evangeline Lilly

I'm a bit delusional, but every time I do a job, I think I'm retired.

Donatella Versace

At that time of the supermodels, celebrities didn't want to be in fashion; they thought they were more intellectual and interesting than anyone in fashion.

David Bailey

I could develop a picture by the time I was 12.

David Byrne

I've got nothing to say most of the time.

Brittany Howard

The first time I learned how to play, my guitar was out of tune. I didn't know it; I just started writing songs.

Dennis Farina

When they released Sidewalks of New York, there were some shots with the towers they were going to take out, and Ed told them no. I don't think they can deny the towers were a part of New York.

Donald Trump

Forty Wall Street is probably the most beautiful tower in New York.

Earl Warren

Before this distinguished assembly and the world, the bells today proclaim the joyous tidings of the completion of this quietly soaring tower.

Anthony Trollope

Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century.

Al-Waleed bin Talal

My own center, my Kingdom Center, which is the highest priced tower in Saudi Arabia, was vacated twice because of terrorist attacks, terrorist threats.

Chris Hardman

When I was 4 years old, I got to see that tower being put up, and it's been my life. This was a big tragedy today.

J. R. R. Tolkien

And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy?

Randa Abdel-Fattah

I couldn't stop bawling, watching the towers come down. it was a terrible thing to happen. And a terrible thing to realize that I don't sit though the nigh crying when such horrors happen all the time.

Harry Seidler

I've always thought Blues Point Tower is one of my best buildings and I stand by that.

Carine Roitfeld

When I was a little girl, my mother tried to make me dance, but I did not like it then.

Margaret D. Nadauld

I've tried to be active in civic organizations as well as the Church.

Billy Porter

For years I tried to put myself in a box, and it frustrated me, so I had to let go and let the universe take its course.

Peter Scolari

My first wife tried to get back with me a year later, but there was no way. I used to think she was the be-all and end-all, but I got my stinky little pride back.

Margot Robbie

When I first tried the American accent, for a moment I thought I could never be an actor because I just could not do it. But then I thought, 'Okay, it'll just be something that I work at until I get it.'

E. Hicks

We were trying some a little different. We didn't play well in the other ones, so we tried those.

Jennifer Dunn

We've tried to make it very visual and interesting.

Flip Saunders

We wanted to win big right away. We didn't let things happen, we tried to make too many spectacular plays.

Kylan Robinson

She tried to make it, but it was too late.

Camille Paglia

History shows that male homosexuality, which like prostitution flourishes with urbanization and soon becomes predictably ritualized, always tends toward decadence.

David Guterson

I'm not an urban person.

Melanie Fiona

Canada can be tough for urban music.

Helmut Jahn

I've never looked at a suburban building as being a minor building and an urban building as being a major building.

Mahatma Gandhi

Urbanization in India is a slow but sure death for her villages and villagers.

Aubrey O'Day

I have a very pop voice, but there's so much of me I associate mostly with urban music, so I try to blend the two.

Armand Assante

I live a very quiet life, although I'm very urban and a diehard New Yorker

Bruce Sterling

Architects thrive after massive urban disasters. The abject collapse of East Berlin gave us the only city in Europe with a mighty host of Postmodern skyscrapers.

George Osborne

I didn't come from a traditional Tory background; it was urban and metropolitan.