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K
In
a fight between you and the world, back the world.
Franz Kafka
I’m
not so constituted as to always return honesty for honesty, but I will return
lie for lie without hesitation or guilt.
D. Kami
Dan’shir
The
way I see it, the world is divided into those go after what they want and those
who don't. The passionate ones, the ones who go after what they want, may not
get what they want, but they remain vital, in touch with themselves, and when
they lie on their deathbeds, they have few regrets. The ones who don't go after
what they want ... well, who gives a shit about them anyway?
Charlie
Kaufman (contemp.) film producer,
writer Being John Malkovitch (1999)
I
once complained to my father that I didn't seem to be able to do things the
same way other people did. Dad's advice? 'Margo, don't be a sheep. People hate
sheep. They eat sheep.'
Margo Kaufman (1953-2000) American writer, humorist
The
only thing worse than a man you can't control is a man you can.
Margo Kaufman (1953-2000) American writer, humorist
Dammit boss, I
like you too much not to say it. You’ve got everything, except one thing:
Madness. A Man needs a little madness or else... he never dares cut the rope,
and be free.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Zorba the Greek
Only in their dreams can men
be truly free. Twas always thus, and always thus will be.
John Keating (character, Dead Poet’s Society)
Aldous Huxley said that an intellectual was a person who had discovered something more interesting than sex. A civilised man, it might be said, is someone who has discovered something more satisfying than combat.John Keegan, A History of Warfare
I believe that sometimes you have to look reality in the eye
and deny it.
Garrison
Keillor (b. 1942) American entertainer,
author
This
life we have is short, so let us leave a mark for people to remember.
Kip Keino (b. 1940) Kenyan athlete
explaining why he adopted and educated 69 orphan children
Although
the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
Helen Adams
Keller (1880-1968) American author and
lecturer
No
loss of flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by hostile
forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those
which his intolerance has destroyed.
Helen Adams
Keller (1880-1968) American author and
lecturer
Security
is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. ... Life is either a
daring adventure or nothing.
Helen Adams
Keller (1880-1968) American author and
lecturer
There
is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has
not had a king among his.
Helen Adams
Keller (1880-1968) American author and
lecturer
Natives
who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart
Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
Mary Ellen
Kelley (contemp.) In Hope Dance magazine
We has met the
enemy, and he is us.
Walt Kelly (
) Pogo
A good
speech should be like a woman's skirt - short enough to keep your attention,
but not so short that it wasn't worth bothering with in the first place.
Tommy Kelsall
It
is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.
Sally Kempton (b. 1943) American writer, feminist
Things
equal out pretty well. Our dreams seldom come true, but then neither do our
nightmares.
Charles
Kennedy (1871-1950) Anglo-American dramatist
Forgive
your enemies, but never forget their names.
John
Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963)
To know what is right and not to do it, is the worst
cowardice.
John
Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963)
Those
who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable.
John
Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963)
What
is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are
intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say
about their opponents.
Robert
Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American
politician
It
is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is
shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of
others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope,
and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring
those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of
oppression and injustice.
Robert
Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American
politician
Day of Affirmation Address,
The only people
for me are the mad ones, the ones that are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be
saved, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn
like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
Jack Kerouac
You have to laugh
at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the
world from running you plum crazy.
Ken Kesey
A man who says,
‘we’re on the road to disaster’, is seldom trying to wrench the wheel away from
the driver.
Ken Kesey
It
happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to
inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his
warning. They shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end
amid the general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke.
Søren Aabye
Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish theologian
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of
thought which they avoid.
Søren Aabye
Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish theologian
To dare is to
lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose one’s self.
Søren Aabye
Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish theologian
Wherever I go,
people are waving at me. Maybe if I do a good job, they’ll use all their
fingers.
Frank King, Winter Olympic Games organizing committee
chairman.
In
the end, it's not the words of our enemies we will remember, but the silence of
our friends.
Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American
clergyman and reformer
One
who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.
Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American
clergyman and reformer
Our
lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American
clergyman and reformer
We
will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and
actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.
Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American
clergyman and reformer
If
a man hasn't discovered something that he would die for, he isn't fit to live.
Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American
clergyman and reformer Speech in
I think that we’re all
mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better.
Stephen King, Danse
Macabre
Maybe there
aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just
friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so
lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living
for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that’s what has to be. No good friends, No
bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build houses in
your heart.
Stephen King, It
Fiction is the
truth inside the lie.
Stephen King
We make up horrors to help us
cope with the real ones.
Stephen King
I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.
Stephen King
Show me a man or
a woman alone and I’ll show you a saint. Give me two and they’ll fall in love.
Give me three and they’ll invent that charming thing we call ‘society.’ Give me
four and they’ll build a pyramid. Give me five and they’ll make one an outcast.
Give me six and they’ll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years
they’ll reinvent warfare.
Stephen King, The Stand
GILES:
Grave robbing? That's new, interesting.
BUFFY: I *know* you meant to say 'gross and disturbing.'
GILES: Yes, of course. It's a terrible thing, must put a stop
to it.
Ty King (contemp.) American screenwriter Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Some Assembly Required" (1997)
The person who
doesn’t fit in with our notions of who is worthy of our love - the bag lady at
the corner, the strange man who rides through town on a three wheel bike all
strung up with flags - is just the person who, by not fitting into out
patterns, insists that we expand not only our views but also our capacity to
love. Today see if you can stretch your heart and expand your love so that it
touches not only those whom you can give it easily, but also those who need it
so much.
Daphne Rose Kingma
Words are, of
course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Rudyard
Kipling
She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast,
May not deal in doubt or pity-must not swerve for fact or jest... For the
female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Rudyard Kipling
Words can
destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each
other, and it matters.
Jeane
Kirkpatrick
The
illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Henry
Kissinger (b. 1923) German-American diplomat
There
cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
Henry
Kissinger (b. 1923) German-American diplomat
A man never
stands as tall as when he kneels to help a child.
Knights of Pythagoras
We all deceive. Some of us deceive the whole world, every
single fellow creature we meet. Some of us deceive only selected people, wives
and lovers, mothers and fathers. And some of us deceive only ourselves. But
none of us is totally honest with everyone all the time, in all matters. Hell,
the need to deceive is just one more
curse that our sorry species has to bear.
Dean Koontz
Any idiot can use a gun; it takes a special kind of idiot to
use a sword.
Joseph Kormann
Honor
isn't about making the right choices. It's about dealing with the consequences.
Midori Koto (b. 1971) Japanese violinist [a.k.a. Midori Goto, Midori]
I do get scared
about the physical danger from drug dealers. But it’s not in the same league as
the danger I feel eating an $80 lunch with my privileged friends to discuss
hunger and poverty. That’s when my soul feels imperiled.
Jonathan Kozol,
journalist (on his work
chronicling the lives of the poor in the
We must start to think about
these inner-city children as our future entry-level workers. We are told by
business leaders as they forge their various alliances and partnerships with
poorly funded urban schools. It’s said so frequently that it occasions little
stir. Still, it’s fair to ask why we are being urged to see ‘these’ children in
quite that specific way. Why are we asked to look at Elio and see a future
entry-level worker rather than to see him, as we see our own kids, as perhaps a
future doctor, dancer, artist, poet, priest, psychologist, or teacher, or
whatever else he might someday desire to be? Why not, for that matter, look at
him and see the only thing he really is: a seven-year-old child?
Jonathan
Kozol, journalist
Comrade
Mao Tse-tung, nowadays that sort of thinking is out of date. You can no longer
calculate the alignment of forces on the basis of who has the most men. Back in
the days when a dispute was settled with fists or bayonets, it made a
difference who had the most men and the most bayonets on each side. Then when
the machine gun appeared, the side with more troops no longer necessarily had
the advantage. And now with the atomic bomb, the number of troops on each side makes
practically no difference to the alignment of real power and the outcome of a
war. The more troops on a side, the more bomb fodder.
Nikita Khrushchev
Khrushchev Remembers
She
would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all
occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image
of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting
identical syllables in unison.
In a mad world, only the mad are sane.
Akiro Kurosawa
L
It
is no tragedy to do ungrateful people favors, but it is unbearable to be
indebted to a scoundrel.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
Absence
diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out
candles and fans flames.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
True love is like ghosts;
whcih everybody talks about but few have seen.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be
deceived by them.
François,
Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were
quite devoid of goodness.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
Old
people like to give bad advice, as solace for no longer being able to provide
bad examples.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
Men
are oftener treacherous out of weakness than out of any formed design.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist Maxims, #120
Almost
all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to hide them.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist Maxims, #3 (1665)
I've
never had much enthusiasm for pornography. Watching people have congress is a
bit like watching people eat, in that eating is both necessary and satisfying,
but when watching someone else do it, you just want to tell them to chew with
their mouth closed.
Matt Labash (contemp.) American journalist
The Weekly Standard, "How
to be a Porn Star" (
. . . she had enough experience now to make her plans around
pessimism rather than hope.
Mercedes Lackey
Worrying over fairness can sometimes impede justice, and that
in itself is not fair.
Mercedes
Lackey
Weekend planning is a prime time to apply the Deathbed
Priority Test: On your deathbed, will you wish you'd spent more prime weekend
hours grocery shopping or walking in the woods with your kids?
Louise
Lague
Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.
Lady Caroline Lamb of Lord Byron
I have cut
another $20,000 from the project. Instead of using ISDN PRIs, Cisco routers and
the PM3, we will now use empty soup cans and string to communicate. At a later
time I propose we upgrade to long flexible tubing so that we may shout our
requests to each other. We will hire a temp from a staffing agency to act as a
‘repeater’. When the distance exceeds a usable signal, she/he will write down
our requests and re-yell them to the recipient.
Matt Lammers
There
are good men everywhere. I only wish they had louder voices.
Louis L'Amour (1908-1988) American writer
All married
couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making
love. Good battle is objective and honest - never vicious or cruel. Good battle
is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principles of equal
partnership.
Ann Landers
The
man whose first question, after what he considers to be a right course of
action has presented itself, is "What will people say?" is not the
man to do anything at all.
True love is when
you can look into another person’s soul and not fear what is found there.
Erik Laarson
Accomplishing
the impossible only means the boss will add it to your regular duties.
Doug Larson
Life
expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good
as bacon.
Doug Larson
The aging process
has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.
Doug Larson
Affirmative action is the
attempt to deal with malignant racism by instituting benign racism.
Elliott Larson
I found
out that it’s not good to talk about my troubles. Eighty percent of the people
who hear them don’t care and the other twenty percent are glad you’re having
trouble.
Tommy Lasorda
They can’t censor
the gleam in my eye.
Charles Laughton
The Constitution
does not grant rights, it recognizes them.
Jason Laumark
Say
not you know another entirely, till you have divided an inheritance with him.
Johann Kaspar
Lavater (1741-1801) Swedish poet, mystic,
philosopher
The
Bible contains 6 admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to
heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just
that they need more supervision.
Lynn Lavner (contemp.) American Lesbian comedian, pianist, singer
I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and
made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and
scrub the floor.
D. H.
Lawrence
The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be
its parent.
Mell Lazarus
You
get fifteen Democrats in a room, and you get twenty opinions.
Patrick Leahy (b. 1940)
Life
is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes —
the big ones come too infrequently. If you don't have all of those zillions of
tiny successes, the big ones don't mean anything.
Norman Lear (b. 1922) American television writer-producer
People
don't ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good
soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.
Robert Keith
Leavitt (b. 1895) American writer
All
civil liberties have been created by small intellectual aristocracies, and
never by people in the mass. The power of crowds is only to destroy.
Gustave LeBon (1841-1931) German psychologist
If
your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no longer be
fantasies.
Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950) American journalist
I prefer dead writers because you don't run into them at
parties.
Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950) American journalist
Cheese that is required by law to append the word food to its
title does not go well with red wine or fruit.
Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950) American journalist
Metropolitan Life (1978)
Each
snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.
Stanislaw
Jerszy Lec (1909-1966) Polish aphorist, poet,
satirist
"They're
certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for
their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other
folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority
rule is a person's conscience."
Harper Lee (b. 1926) American writer To Kill a Mockingbird
“I wanted you to
see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man
with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but
you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”
Harper Lee (b. 1926) American
writer To Kill a Mockingbird
They called me mad, and I
called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.
Nathaniel Lee (1653-1692), objecting to being confined in Bedlam
It
is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.
Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) American general
Murder
is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing sex is.
Gershon
Legman (1917-1999) American writer
The story - from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace - is one of
the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining
understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but
there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
Ursula K. LeGuin
His gentleness was uncompromising: because he would not
compete for dominance, he was indomitable.
Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed