James Richardson Quotes

78 Sourced Quotes

The first abuse of power is not realizing that you have it.

James Richardson
Patience is not very different from courage. It just takes longer.

James Richardson
The road reaches every place, the short cut only one.

James Richardson
What did you do today? Nothing say our little children, and so do I. What we most are is what we keep mistaking for nothing.

James Richardson
The great consolation of righteousness is never having to worry whether you're a bore.

James Richardson
The single sin is less of a problem than the good reasons for it.

James Richardson
The best way to get people to do what you want is not to be too particular about what you want.

James Richardson
Think of all the smart people made stupid by flaws of character. The finest watch isn't fine long when used as a hammer.

James Richardson
To condemn your sin in another is hypocrisy. Not to condemn is to reserve your right to sin.

James Richardson
I've spent so long trying to fly that it's too late to set out on foot.

James Richardson
A strange gratitude for those I disagree with. They keep me from having to take too seriously the moments when I disagree with myself.

James Richardson
I'm a kid checking mail, a kid on his cell with his questions:
are we in love, Life, are we exclusive, are we forever?

James Richardson
Reason is the lesser faith that steers us when we have already lost a greater one.

James Richardson
Greater than the temptations of beauty are those of method.

James Richardson
I'm surprised that multiple personalities are so much less common in reality than in fiction: what a little disorder it would take, a distraction, a sleep, for one of our minor characters to imagine he was the star, to speak out for everyone else. And that's what it would be, a change of billing, not of authorship. For you do not write your play—you are just the character in it called The Playwright. The real writer, you never meet.

James Richardson
Suppose you had to remember to beat your heart, contract in exact sequence the muscles you use for every step. … Conservatism comes out of the body, the sense of many things being done for us that any attempt to re-think, or even make conscious, would fatally disrupt.

James Richardson
What's thinking? You live in a grandly appointed house, but spend all your time rummaging around in the attic for any little trinket you hadn't known was there.

James Richardson
Say too soon what you think and you will say what everyone else thinks.

James Richardson