When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.

Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constituitionalism and legality, the belief in 'the law' as something above the state and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible.It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. Remarks like 'They can't run me in; I haven't done anything wrong', or 'They can't do that; it's against the law', are part of the atmosphere of England. The professed enemies of society have this feeling as strongly as anyone else. One sees it in prison-books like Wilfred Macartney's Walls Have Mouths or Jim Phelan's Jail Journey, in the solemn idiocies that take places at the trials of conscientious objectors, in letters to the papers from eminent Marxist professors, pointing out that this or that is a 'miscarriage of British justice'. Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered. The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root. Even the intelligentsia have only accepted it in theory.An illusion can become a half-truth, a mask can alter the expression of a face. The familiar arguments to the effect that democracy is 'just the same as' or 'just as bad as' totalitarianism never take account of this fact. All such arguments boil down to saying that half a loaf is the same as no bread. In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are powerful illusions. The belief in them influences conduct,national life is different because of them. In proof of which, look about you. Where are the rubber truncheons, where is the caster oil? The sword is still in the scabbard, and while it stays c

George Orwell

I used to think that humor was the only way to appreciate how wonderful and terrible the world is, to celebrate how big life is. But now I think the opposite. Humor is a way of shrinking from that wonderful and terrible world.

Jonathan Safran Foer

On the battlefield, the military pledges to leave no soldier behind. As a nation, let it be our pledge that when they return home, we leave no veteran behind.

Dan Lipinski

The idea of dependence is an explanation, whereas self-sufficiency is an unprecedented, nonanalogous concept in terms of what we know about life within nature. Is not self-sufficiency itself insufficient to explain self-sufficiency?

Abraham Joshua Heschel

I demanded more rights for women because I know what women had to put up with.

Evita Peron

The first law of attraction is use Cosmic Ordering now.

Stephen Richards

Equality of possessions is no doubt right, but, as men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might. 299

Blaise Pascal

I suffer from the delusion that every product of my imagination is not only possible, but always on the cusp of becoming real.

Sean Parker

Men should only believe half of what women say. But which half?

Jean Giraudoux

I can not live with out books.

Thomas Jefferson

I used to be hung up on my figure, but it's a waste of time. I don't believe in diets. Have four pints one night, be healthy the next.

Sophie Ellis Bextor

Christian means coming from Christ. Just as a Californian comes from California and a Bostonian is someone who comes from Boston, A Christian is one who comes from Christ.

Don Walk