Quotes from Edge of Eternity

“The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“A man hates the person he has wronged, paradoxically. I think it’s because the victim is a perpetual reminder that he behaved shamefully.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“Marriage is a promise. You can’t keep a promise only when it suits you. You have to keep it against your inclination. That’s what it means.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“The heart is a map of the world, did you know that?” “I don’t even know what it means,” he said. “I saw a medieval map once. It showed the earth as a flat disc with Jerusalem in the center. Rome was bigger than Africa, and America was not even shown, of course. The heart is that kind of map. The self is in the middle and everything else is out of proportion. You draw the friends of your youth large, then later it’s impossible to rescale them when other more important people need to be added. Anyone who has done you wrong is shown too big, and so is anyone you loved.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“A white American can orbit the earth, but a black American can’t enter a restroom.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“A person who breaks a promise diminishes herself. It’s like losing a finger. It’s worse than being paralyzed, which is merely physical. Someone whose promises are worthless has a disabled soul.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. ‘I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down to gether at the table of brotherhood – I have a dream. ‘That one day even the state of Mississippi – a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of op pression – will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream.’ He had hit a rhythm, and two hundred thousand people felt it sway their souls. It was more than a speech: it was a poem and a canticle and a prayer as deep as the grave. The heartbreaking phrase ‘I have a dream’ came like an amen at the end of each ringing sentence. ‘. . . That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character – I have a dream today. ‘I have a dream that one day down in Alabama – with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification – one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers – I have a dream today. ‘With this faith we will be able to hew, out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. ‘With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. ‘With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.’ Looking around, Jasper saw that black and white faces alike were running with tears. Even he felt moved, and he had thought himself immune to this kind of thing. ‘And when this happens; when we allow freedom to ring; when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city; we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands . . .’ Here he slowed down, and the crowd was almost silent. King’s voice trembled with the earthquake force of his passion. ‘. . . and sing, in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! ‘Free at last! ‘Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“Protestors can have a big impact, but in the end it's governments that reshape the world.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“He was the kind of man George had been fighting for a decade: an ugly, fat, foul-mouthed, stupid white racist.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“I think there’s probably a controlling intelligence in the universe, a being that decided the rules, such as E = mc2, and the value of pi. But that being isn’t likely to care whether we sing its praise or not, I doubt whether its decisions can be manipulated by praying to a statue of the Virgin Mary, and I don’t believe it will organize special treatment for you on account of what you have around your neck.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“We have never made a gain, in civil rights, without pressure,”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“All men make mistakes,’ said the ancient Greek Sophocles. ‘But a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only sin is pride.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“They’re Americans when they win races, and when they get conscripted into the army,’ Dave said. ‘But they’re Negroes when they want to buy the house next door to yours.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“Our great stumbling block, in our stride toward freedom, is not the White Citizens’ Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner. It’s the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who constantly says, like Bobby Kennedy: ‘I agree with the goal you seek, but I cannot condone your methods.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“There’s nothing wrong with white people. They just ain’t black.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“We will have to repent, in this generation, not merely for the hateful words and actions of bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good,’ King said,”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“Just because someone asks you a question, don't you think you have to answer.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“Since Lenin died, every Soviet leader had been a liar. They had all glossed over what was wrong and declined to acknowledge reality. The most striking characteristic of Soviet leadership for the last sixty-five year was the refusal to face facts.(1075)”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“Our great stumbling block, in our stride toward freedom, is not the White Citizens’ Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner. It’s the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who constantly says, like Bobby Kennedy: ‘I agree with the goal you seek, but I cannot condone your methods.’ He paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made this century, to the proposition that”—he had gone formal, but now he reverted to plain language—“race has no place in American life or law.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“Nowadays he avoided political discussions with outsiders. They usually had easy answers: send all the Mexicans home, put Hells Angels in the army, castrate the queers. The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“It’s increasing the pressure on the Big Mules,”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“I’ve met the people who run Alabama. Believe me, they’re not that smart.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“American DEWAR FAMILY Cameron Dewar Ursula “Beep” Dewar, his sister Woody Dewar, his father Bella Dewar, his mother PESHKOV-JAKES FAMILY George Jakes Jacky Jakes, his mother Greg Peshkov, his father Lev Peshkov, his grandfather Marga, his grandmother MARQUAND FAMILY Verena Marquand Percy Marquand, her father Babe Lee, her mother CIA Florence Geary Tony Savino Tim Tedder, semiretired Keith Dorset OTHERS Maria Summers Joseph Hugo, FBI Larry Mawhinney, Pentagon Nelly Fordham, old flame of Greg Peshkov Dennis Wilson, aide to Bobby Kennedy Skip Dickerson, aide to Lyndon Johnson Leopold “Lee” Montgomery, reporter Herb Gould, television journalist on This Day Suzy Cannon, gossip reporter Frank Lindeman, television network owner REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Jackie, his wife Bobby Kennedy, his brother Dave Powers, assistant to President Kennedy Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press officer Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. president Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth U.S. president Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president George H. W. Bush, forty-first U.S. president British LECKWITH-WILLIAMS FAMILY Dave Williams Evie Williams, his sister Daisy Williams, his mother Lloyd Williams, M.P., his father Eth Leckwith, Dave’s grandmother MURRAY FAMILY Jasper Murray Anna Murray, his sister Eva Murray, his mother MUSICIANS IN THE GUARDSMEN AND PLUM NELLIE Lenny, Dave Williams’s cousin Lew, drummer Buzz, bass player Geoffrey, lead guitarist OTHERS Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz Sam Cakebread, friend of Jasper Murray Byron Chesterfield (real name Brian Chesnowitz), music agent Hank Remington (real name Harry Riley), pop star Eric Chapman, record company executive German FRANCK FAMILY Rebecca Hoffmann Carla Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive mother Werner Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive father Walli Franck, son of Carla Lili Franck, daughter of Werner and Carla Maud von Ulrich, née Fitzherbert, Carla’s mother Hans Hoffmann, Rebecca’s husband OTHERS Bernd Held, schoolteacher Karolin Koontz, folksinger Odo Vossler, clergyman REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (Communist) Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor Egon Krenz, successor to Honecker Polish Stanislaw “Staz” Pawlak, army officer Lidka, girlfriend of Cam Dewar Danuta Gorski, Solidarity activist REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Anna Walentynowicz, crane driver Lech Wałesa, leader of the trade union Solidarity General Jaruzelski, prime minister Russian DVORKIN-PESHKOV FAMILY Tanya Dvorkin, journalist Dimka Dvorkin, Kremlin aide, Tanya’s twin brother Anya Dvorkin, their mother Grigori Peshkov, their grandfather Katerina Peshkov, their grandmother Vladimir, always called Volodya, their uncle Zoya, Volodya’s wife Nina, Dimka’s girlfriend OTHERS Daniil Antonov, features editor at TASS Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief Vasili Yenkov, dissident Natalya Smotrov, official in the Foreign Ministry”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“half the people in London were not English anyway: they were Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Caribbean, Indian and Chinese. All the drug dealers came from islands: Maltese men sold pep pills,”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“person who breaks a promise diminishes herself. It’s like losing a finger. It’s worse than being paralyzed, which is merely physical. Someone whose promises are worthless has a disabled soul.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“They usually had easy answers: send all the Mexicans home, put Hells Angels in the army, castrate the queers. The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions. Georgetown was only a few minutes”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“The heart is that kind of map. The self is in the middle and everything else is out of proportion. You draw the friends of your youth large, then later it’s impossible to rescale them when other more important people need to be added. Anyone who has done you wrong is shown too big, and so is anyone you loved.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

“Kerner Commission, appointed to examine the causes of racial unrest during the long, hot summer of 1967. Their report pulled no punches: the cause of the rioting was white racism,”
― Ken Follett, quote from Edge of Eternity

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Popular quotes

“Akan datang waktu dalam kehidupan setiap gadis saat dia menyadari bahwa ayahnya tidak sempurna.”
― Heather Webber, quote from Truly, Madly

“The changes that happen in the mommy brain are the most profound and permanent of a woman’s life. For as long as her child is living under her roof, her GPS system of brain circuits will be dedicated to tracking that beloved child. Long after the grown baby leaves the nest, the tracking device continues to work. Perhaps this is why so many mothers experience intense grief and panic when they lose day-to-day contact with the person their brain tells them is an extension of their own reality.”
― Louann Brizendine, quote from The Female Brain

“Lindy produced the tiny chest and started prying at it with her fingers. “It’s stuck, but the lid has some wiggle to it. Wait, here we go.” She lifted the small lid, and simultaneously the top of the chest folded open as well. And then the chest kept unfolding in astonishing ways, as if lid after lid were opening in unpredictable directions. With a startled squeal, Lindy dropped the miniature chest as it transformed as well, mimicking the larger version.”
― Brandon Mull, quote from Arcade Catastrophe

“Think about ethanol again. The benefits of that $7 billion tax subsidy are bestowed on a small group of farmers, making it quite lucrative for each one of them. Meanwhile, the costs are spread over the remaining 98 percent of us, putting ethanol somewhere below good oral hygiene on our list of everyday concerns. The opposite would be true with my plan to have left-handed voters pay subsidies to right-handed voters. There are roughly nine right-handed Americans for every lefty, so if every right-handed voter were to get some government benefit worth $100, then every left-handed voter would have to pay $900 to finance it. The lefties would be hopping mad about their $900 tax bills, probably to the point that it became their preeminent political concern, while the righties would be only modestly excited about their $100 subsidy. An adept politician would probably improve her career prospects by voting with the lefties.

Here is a curious finding that makes more sense in light of what we‘ve just discussed. In countries where farmers make up a small fraction of the population, such as America and Europe, the government provides large subsidies for agriculture. But in countries where the farming population is relatively large, such as China and India, the subsidies go the other way. Farmers are forced to sell their crops at below-market prices so that urban dwellers can get basic food items cheaply. In the one case, farmers get political favors; in the other, they must pay for them. What makes these examples logically consistent is that in both cases the large group subsidizes the smaller group.

In politics, the tail can wag the dog. This can have profound effects on the economy.”
― Charles Wheelan, quote from Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science

“Your brain can only process a tiny portion of your environment,
It risks being overwhelmed by the volume
of information that bombards you every waking moment.
Your brain compensates by filtering out the 99.9 percent of
your environment that doesn’t matter to you.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

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