Edge Quotes - page 34
You're being a lot less courteous than befits a man in your situation.” I thought that underneath the cool I could detect a ragged edge in her voice. Despite her much vaunted self-control, Reileen Kawahara wasn't much better at coping with disrespect that Bancroft, General MacIntyre, or any other creature of power I'd had dealings with. "Your life is in danger, and I am in a position to safeguard it.”
"My life's been in danger before,” I told her. "Usually as a result of some piece of shit like you making large-scale decisions about how reality ought to be run.
Richard Morgan
Oh friend! Brahma Jnana means realisation of Self (Atma). There is no difference between Atma and God. If you want to realise Atma in your body, then you have to surrender to God the following five things: five pranas, five senses, mind, intellect and ego. All these are inside a person. It is easy to surrender the external things. But to surrender those which are inside a person is very difficult. It is like walking on the edge of a sharp knife. Those who cannot surrender even the external things are deemed to be fully under delusion. Such persons cannot understand the five inside matters.
Sai Baba of Shirdi
I think The Razor's Edge is a pretty good movie. But at the time, it was just as reviled as any other comedian doing a serious thing now. Like The Majestic [with Jim Carrey], movies where comedians go straight, people don't like them.
It angers people, like you're taking something away from them. That's the response I got. I thought, "Well, aren't we all bigger than that?" I wasn't shocked by it, but I thought that the professional critics would be able to say, "OK, we shouldn't rule this out, because the guy normally does other stuff."
Unless it's really despicable, then you have to just jump with both feet on the neck.
Bill Murray
As the seventh century [BC] drew to a close, the bitterness of the helpless poor against the legally entrenched rich had brought Athens to the edge of revolution. Equality is unnatural; and where ability and subtlety are free, inequality must grow until it destroys itself in the indiscriminate poverty of social war; liberty and equality are not associates but enemies. The concentration of wealth begins by being inevitable, and ends by being fatal.
Will Durant
A great European war under modern conditions would be a catastrophe for which previous wars afforded no precedent. In old days nations could collect only portions of their men and resources at a time and dribble them out by degrees. Under modern conditions whole nations could be mobilized at once and their whole life-blood and resources poured out in a torrent. Instead of a few hundreds of thousands of men meeting each other in war, millions would now meet, and modern weapons would multiply manifold the power of destruction. The financial strain and the expenditure of wealth would be incredible. I thought this must be obvious to everyone else, as it seemed obvious to me; and that, if once it became apparent that we were on the edge, all the Great Powers would call a halt and recoil from the abyss.
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
Out at the horizon, out near the burnished edge of the world, who are these visitors standing... these robed figures - perhaps, at this distance, hundreds of miles tall - their faces, serene, unattached, like the Buddha's, bending over the sea, impassive, indeed, as the Angel that stood over Lübeck during the Palm Sunday raid, come that day neither to destroy nor to protect, but to bear witness to a game of seduction... What have the watchmen of the world's edge come tonight to look for? Deepening on now, monumental beings stoical, on toward slag, toward ash the colour the night will stabilize at, tonight... what is there grandiose enough to witness?
Thomas Pynchon
Shanna put on the last movement of Beethoven's Fifth and turned up the gain.
Ludwig von Cornball, they had called him back at Moonbase One. Hipitude: post-postmodern irony. All because she played ol' Ludwig so much-but who was more appropriate? What spirit better expressed the grandeur of an expedition to the edge of the solar system?
Gregory Benford
Here the Shah halted for two days more. Meantime, as early as the night of 26-27 Feb., he had detached Jahan Khan and Najib with 20,000 men, telling them, "Move into the boundaries of the accursed Jat, and in every town and district held by him slay and plunder. The city of Mathura is a holy place of the Hindus; .... let it be put entirely to the edge of the sword. Up to Agra leave not a single place standing.” The Shah also conveyed a general order to the army to plunder and slay at every place they reached. Any booty they might take was declared a free gift to them. Any person cutting oft and bringing in heads of infidels should throw them down before the tent of the chief minister, wherewith to build a high tower.
Ahmed Shah Durrani
You think I'm insane?" said Finnerty. Apparently he wanted more of a reaction than Paul had given him.
"You're still in touch. I guess that's the test."
"Barely - barely."
"A psychiatrist could help. There's a good man in Albany."
Finnerty shook his head. "He'd pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." He nodded, "Big, undreamed-of things - the people on the edge see them first.
Kurt Vonnegut
There is a world that can be seen only through stained glass. It is like no other. The medium is thought to have been at its zenith in the Middle Ages – though the medievals had the advantage of Gothic architecture to respond to. I want to surpass the Middle Ages, not equal them. Surpass them with the new and irresistible: volumetric, spatial colour, transporting post-industrial godless man to the edge of ecstasy.
Brian Clarke
The picture of Jan Six, painted in 1654 is, then, a virtual encyclopedia of painting, from the loosest handling to the dry brush, sparely loaded with yellow, dragged over the surface at the edge of Six's right cuff; from the finest detail to the most impressionist daring. Yet Rembrandt manages to bring all this diversity of technique into a totally resolved single image. So that Jan Six does indeed stand before us much as we would dearly wish to imagine ourselves, all the contradictions of our character-vanity and modesty, outward show and inward reflectiveness, energy and calm-miraculously fitted together.
Rembrandt
Bush gets appointed to the presidency, and he gives Ashcroft the job of Attorney General? A religiously insane, jack-booted thug? ... The people who knew him best: The people in the state where he had been Attorney General, where he had been Governor, where he had been Senator, they knew him best. They said "No, it's time to get rid of this moron. Because he's REALLY gone over the edge!" So they voted for Mel Carnahan, who happened to be killed in a plane crash before the election - and the voters knew that! Did that make them say "Uh, I guess we can't vote for a dead man..." NO! They voted for the dead man! The voters in Missouri are saying "we'd rather have a dead man as our representative in the United States Senate, than him!" And Kathy, don't you dare play any of his records! I don't want to hear "Soar like an eagle, I'll soar like..." - don't do it! I'll walk off the program today if you play that.
Mike Malloy
Because of the limited keyboard. This is a very strange thing. When I play the piano, I get clear down to the left edge of the piano. Now, unlike Art Tatum, I don't take runs that go up, that always end up on the extreme high "C". But I really do like the low end. Even as an organist, it has bothered me that the keyboards are five octaves and stop at "C". I've always wished that my pedal board went down to "F". My harmonic thinking gets involved clear down to that "F" and to be cut off at the "C". I can't explain it. It's as if somebody were standing right next to you while you were playing and you just kept having the feeling like: "I can't go there; I can't go there." It does something to me. Whereby [sic] having the full keyboard just opens up a world of things to me.
Clare Fischer
Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason; because, though rational argument may take us to the edge of belief, we require a "leap of faith" to jump the chasm.
Sydney J. Harris
The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves - or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.
Sophie Scholl
It has been... hard... to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in ...society. Even after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that collapsed the twin towers of the World Trade Center and sliced through the Pentagon, [...] [we are] still sleepwalking into [an uncertain] [...] future. We have walked out of our burning house, and we are now headed off the edge of a cliff. Beyond that cliff is an abyss of economic and political disorder on a scale that no one has ever seen before. [...] The national government will prove to be so impotent and ineffective in managing the enormous vicissitudes we face that the United States may not survive as a nation in any meaningful sense but... will devolve into a set of autonomous regions.
James Howard Kunstler
The responsibility for the control of U.S. nuclear weapons rests solely with the President, who exercises the control of their use in all foreseeable circumstances. This has been the case since 1945, under four Presidents. It will continue to be the case as long as I am President of the United States. In this atomic age we have always been required to show restraint as well as strength. At moments of decisive tests, our nuclear power has been essential. But we have never rattled our rockets or come carelessly to the edge of war.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Today we are at the edge of a new era of progress toward the American dream. It is an opportunity as large and as exciting as that granted to those who settled this continent. Our basic goal has not been changed, but the growth of our Nation, the progress of science and knowledge, the change in our way of life, makes it necessary to shape new tools to reach old goals. And by moving ahead only can we hope to preserve the values of the past.
Lyndon B. Johnson
For more than 3 years I have spoken about the New Frontier. This is not a partisan term, and it is not the exclusive property of Republicans or Democrats. It refers, instead, to this Nation's place in history, to the fact that we do stand on the edge of a great new era, filled with both crisis and opportunity, an era to be characterized by achievement and by challenge. It is an era which calls for action and for the best efforts of all those who would test the unknown and the uncertain in every phase of human endeavor. It is a time for pathfinders and pioneers.
John F. Kennedy
