Cannot Quotes (page 88)
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Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only Diabolic Life, were more frightful: but in our age of Downpulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference,...
Thomas Carlyle
I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.
Nelson Mandela
Some say that because the United States was wrong before, it cannot possibly be right now, or has not the right to be right. (The British Empire sent a fleet to Africa and the Caribbean to maintain the slave trade while the very same empire later sent another fleet to enforce abolition. I would not have opposed the second policy because of my objections to the first; rather it seems to me that the second policy was morally necessitated by its predecessor.)
Christopher Hitchens
It is cocaine," he said, "a seven-per-cent solution. Would youcare to try it?"No, indeed," I answered brusquely. "My constitution has not gotover the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extrastrain upon it."He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Watson," hesaid. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I findit, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to themind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment.
Arthur Conan Doyle
