Quotes About Affairs

On matters beyond his ken a gentleman speaks with caution. If names are not right, words are misused. When words are misused, affairs go wrong. When affairs go wrong, courtesy and music droop, law and justice fail. And when law and justice fail them, a people can move neither hand nor foot. So a gentleman must be ready to put names in speech, to put words into deeds. A gentleman is nowise careless of words.

I have known not a few men who, after reaching the summits of business success, found themselves miserable on attaining retirement age. They were so exclusively engrossed in their day to day affairs that they had no time for friend making.

I think there are good men and women in all decades. We've grown cynical. And look at what we do to all our heroes: Churchill, FDR, Kennedy, they all had affairs. But heroic things happen every day.

Here is the key to existence. Are you listening? Here is the key to existence; when I tell you this you will know how to run your lives. You will know if you have been living life to the full, and if you realize you haven't been, you will know immediately how to correct that state of affairs. As soon as I tell you the key to existence. Are you ready? Are you ready for me to tell you?... Always breathe. That's the basis of life, breathing. That's basically the basis. If you don't breathe, you die.

...it is difficult to master one's feelings and be exact in everything in the midst of many affairs

Worthless persons appointed to have supreme control of weighty affairs do a lot of damage.

Only a jackass ever talks over his affairs with a woman, whether she be his sweetheart, wife, or sister, or mother.

Whether you have an abortion, what you put in your own body, with whom you have sex - these are not affairs of the state. A government does not exist to control the citizens. When it does, it is a tyranny, and must be fought. The tree of liberty, Jefferson warned us, must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots.

Fortune seldom troubles the wise man. Reason has controlled his greatest and most important affairs, controls them throughout his life, and will continue to control them.

There is a wheel on the affairs of men revolve and its mechanism is such that it prevents any man from being always fortunate.

There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs.

Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.

War is elective. It is not an inevitable state of affairs. War is not the weather.

I think Islam, for me, helped me see how similar we all are. If my views are not traditional it's because of being raised in American society. Things that are taboo in an Islamic society are magnified in this society: drinking, extramarital affairs, all kinds of stuff like that. I have to apply the human aspect of all our culture dictates . . .

Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.

The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.

I found Mr. Carter's actions toward the Republic of China so incredible that they defy description by socially acceptable expletives. If December 7, 1941 was a "day of infamy" then December 15, 1978 ranks right up there in international betrayal...The pathetic thing about this whole mess, however, is that it is typical of this administration's conduct of foreign affairs, which could be kindly described as being riddled by ineptitude and hypocrisy.

I have had affairs that lasted decades and others that lasted for hours. I have loved princesses and peasants. And I suppose they loved me, each in their way.

We will not permit the triumph of violence in the affairs of men; free people will set the course of history.

We were good reformers, but we weren't good enough. We elected a candidate and then, busy with our own affairs, we left him hanging in mid-air. Reformers are such part-time pillars of society!

If I place love above everything, it is because for me it is the most desperate, the most despairing state of affairs imaginable.

There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice.

The only difference between the narrator of contemporary affairs and the ordinary historian is that moral judgments about the present provoke fiercer reactions and have more immediately practical implications than moral judgments about the past.

At last a vision has been vouchsafed to us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good.... With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life, without weakening or sentimentalizing it.

I think if you're going to master policy, especially world affairs, you've got to know history.

Breaking the United States up into a number of pieces could be very good for the integration of those new nations with the rest of the world and the international law whose primary enemy is now the United States government. I think that it would be very good for democracy, for people to be within some hundreds of miles of their nation's capital, as they are in many other countries, so that they didn't have to travel thousands of miles to protest, to exercise their First Amendment rights, but that is the current state of affairs in this overly large, imperial nation.

I believe it is both unwise and even wrong to interfere in the affairs of other nations. Indeed, if we are honest, we will see that this is one of the reasons for 9-11.

The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions. We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now. To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic.

Out of politics comes more uproar than progress. It is indeed surprising how little, comparatively, this noisy department of human affairs contributes to the world's prosperity. Political commotions upon the grandest scale, political events of astounding suddenness, political characters of the greatest ability, abound, but still, permanent results are rare, and we look in vain for a measure of public good corresponding in extent to the hideous rout which ushers it in. Progress but turns upon its pillow, and goes to sleep again.

These two great organisations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some affairs for mutual and general advantage. I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands, and better days.

When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity.

The only way we can keep our freedom is to work at it. Not some of us. All of us. Not some of the time, but all of the time. So if you value your citizenship and you want to keep it for yourself and your children and their children, give it your faith, your belief, and give it your active support in civic affairs.

Americans shouldn't start a military attack, and they shouldn't bombard Iran, and they shouldn't interfere with the internal affairs of the country. And the Americans should pay more attention to the human right issues in Iran.

A writer judging his own work is like deceived husband - he is frequently the last person to appreciate the true state of affairs.

We need a strong and effective State Department. We can't conduct American affairs in the world without it.

Do not confuse notoriety and fame with greatness. . . . For you see, greatness is a measure of one's spirit, not a result of one's rank in human affairs.

No perfect solution is, not merely in practice, but in principle, possible in human affairs, and any determined attempt to produce it is likely to lead to suffering, disillusionment and failure.

Since 9/11, there has been a huge leap in people wanting to get personally involved in public service and international affairs.

Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase ones taxes.

The difficult problems in life always start off being simple. Great affairs always start off being small.

Japan and China are isolated and without intercourse with other countries; hence the President directed me to attend to or watch the state of affairs in China also.

Many people don't give a rip about politics and know as much about public affairs as they know about the topography of Pluto.

Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them.

It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

Now if there is one thing that we do worse than any other nation, it is try and manage somebody else's affairs.

Rare indeed is the nature that does not become a little more intense when its own affairs come under discussion.

The Russian people, at least the ones I know, have pride in being a Russian. And, therefore, they want to be taken seriously in international affairs.