Rome Quotes - page 15
As to religion what is my belief? What is my insanity about that? My insanity, Your Honors, Gentlemen of the Jury, is that I wish to leave Rome aside inasmuch as it is the cause of division between the Catholics and Protestants. I did not wish to force my views because, in Batoche, to the Half-breeds that followed me I used the word Carte blanche.
Louis Riel
Noory: [Referring to the Sago Mine disaster] Of course, this is after the fact, with the 12 or 13 coal miners they found successfully.
Browne: I know.
Noory: Had you been on the program today, and had they not been found, would you have felt as if, because they had heard no sounds, that this was a very gloomy moment, and they might have all died?
Browne: No, I knew they were going to be found. Uh, you know, I hate people who say something after the fact. It's just like I knew when the Pope was dead and I said it on, thank God I was on Montel's show, and I said, according to the time, it was 9-something and whatever Rome time was, and I said he's gone, and he was.
Sylvia Browne
Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America - burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing? This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion, he thought.
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
[In ancient Rome, ] why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew? Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It's the same thing with Germany and Hitler. ... You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody's squabbling, there's corruption.
George Lucas
With the aid of science we had built mighty civilizations thousands of years ago when most people in Europe (except in Greece and Rome) were living in forests. We had made outstanding scientific discoveries e.g. decimal system in mathematics, plastic surgery in medicine, etc. However, we subsequently took to the unscientific path of superstitions and empty rituals, which has led us to disaster. The way out of the present morass is to go back again to the path shown by our scientific ancestors, the path of Aryabhatta and Brahmagupta, Sushrut and Charak, Panini and Patanjali, Ramanujan and Raman.
Markandey Katju
The great stoic Seneca repeatedly urged his fellow Romans to retire in order to "find themselves,” as we might put it. In the Renaissance, as in ancient Rome, it was part of the well-managed life. You had your period of civic business, then you withdrew to discover what life was really about and to being the long process of preparing for death. Montaigne developed reservations about the second part of this, but there is no doubt about his interest in contemplating life. He wrote: "Let us cut loose from all the ties that bind us to others; let us win from ourselves the power to live really alone and to live that way at our ease.”.
Sarah Bakewell
The tide was running fast when the Reformation began at Wittenberg, and it was to be expected that Luther's influence would stem the flood of absolutism. For he was confronted everywhere by the compact alliance of the Church with the State; and great part of his country was governed by hostile potentates who were prelates of the court of Rome. He had, indeed, more to fear from temporal than from spiritual foes.
John W. Campbell
