The mystic prophets of the absolute cannot save us. Sustained by our history and traditions, we must save ourselves, at whatever risk of heresy or blasphemy. We can find solace in the memorable representation of the human struggle against the absolute in the finest scene in the greatest of American novels. I refer of course to the scene when Huckleberry Finn decides that the '' plain hand of Providence '' requires him to tell Miss Watson where her runaway slave Jim is to be found. Huck writes his letter of betrayal to Miss Watson and feels '' all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. '' He sits there for a while thinking '' how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell .'' Then Huck begins to think about Jim and the rush of the great river and the talking and the singing and the laughing and friendship. '' Then I happened to look around and see that paper. . . . I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right, then, I'll go to hell' - and tore it up .''
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Like the winds of the sea are the winds of fate As we voyage along through life, Tis the set of the soul That decides its goal And not the calm or the strife.
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How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
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'It is necessary and urgent that, following the example of the poor man (St. Francis), one decides to abandon inconsiderate forms of domination, capture and custody with respect to all creatures.'
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Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. If a businessman does not strictly obey the orders of the public as they are conveyed to him by the structure of market prices, he suffers losses, he goes bankrupt, and is thus removed from his eminent position at the helm. Other men who did better in satisfying the demand of the consumers replace him. The consumers patronize those shops in which they can buy what they want at the cheapest price. Their buying and their abstention from buying decides who should own and run the plants and the farms. They make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities. They are merciless bosses, full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. For them nothing counts other than their own satisfaction. They do not care a whit for past merit and vested interests. If something is offered to them that they like better or that is cheaper, they desert their old purveyors. In their capacity as buyers and consumers they are hard-hearted and callous, without consideration for other people.
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He has created duties only to foster the consciousness of all living beings. He has no activity and no obligation. He brings about the result for every activity. Without Him, no activity can yield result! He decides which result should accrue from which act.
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What the hell kind of man decides to dress up as a bat and run around the city? There's got to be something a little bit loose in there.
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Pope John Paul said that 'the future of humanity and planet earth are in danger because of a lack of respect for animals and the environment. It is necessary and urgent that following the example of the poor man [St. Francis] one decides to abandon inconsiderate forms of domination, capture and custody with respect to all creatures.''
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Daffy, of course, wants to go on the journey with him but the studio decides they want Daffy back, so Bugs and a young studio executive heroine have to go out and try to bring him back.
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To say that there is a case for heroes is not to say that there is a case for hero worship. The surrender of decision, the unquestioning submission to leadership, the prostration of the average man before the Great Man -- these are the diseases of heroism, and they are fatal to human dignity. History amply shows that it is possible to have heroes without turning them into gods. And history shows, too, that when a society, in flight from hero worship, decides to do without great men at all, it gets into troubles of its own.
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What truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me through the physical and metaphysical, the delusional and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career; the most important discovery of my life. It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logical reasons can be found.
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The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God.
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The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.
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The fate of the State decides theirs: clauses of treaties determine their affections.
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The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
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Until divinity decides to reveal the future to human kind, the sum of all human wisdom is contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.
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What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.
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An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides correctly, but he always decides.
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An executive is a person who always decides sometimes he decides correctly, but he always decides.
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War doesn't decide who's right, war decides who's left.
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If someone decides to be a musician now, it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it, it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now, there is no hope for money at the end of it.
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The one who votes decides nothing. The one who counts the vote decides everything.
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Sometimes the mind, for reasons we don't necessarily understand, just decides to go to the store for a quart of milk.
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An executive is a man who decides; sometimes he decides right, but always he decides.
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The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.
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Imagination decides everything.
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It is the theory that decides what we can observe.
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