Chris Patten Quotes

If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times. Reason is language - Logos; I gnaw on this marrowbone and will gnaw myself to death over it. It is still always dark over these depths for me: I am still always awaiting an apocalyptic angel with a key to this abyss.

Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo. Oh, a sense of sin comes from violating the customs of your tribe. But breaking custom is not sin even when it feels so; sin is wronging another person.

The vows we take in the holy place bind us till we are purged of them at Inanda's Kraal. Till then no blood must be shed and no flesh eaten. It was the fashion of our forefathers.

We have never meddled in the domestic affairs of any state and we never will.

There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.

Like it or not, we're still a primitive tribe ruled by fears, superstition and misinformation.

In the world of words, one of my best-loved tribes is the diatribe.

Wicked Tribe, Rooling Tribe! is the mejor hacker tribe. Too small, too fast, too scientific!

Reason and speech we onely bring.

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors.

As you get older, you have your tribe of women that you grow and age gracefully with and you share wisdom with. That's your clan. That's your family. That's your strength.

Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order.

Experience has always shown, and reason also, that affairs which depend on many seldom succeed.

Unoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk. "I have kola," he announced when he sat down, and passed the disc over to his guest. "Thank you. He who brings kola brings life. But I think you ought to break it," replied Okoye passing back the disc. "No, it is for you, I think," and they argued like this for a few moments before Unoka accepted the honor of breaking the kola. Okoye, meanwhile, took the lump of chalk, drew some lines on the floor, and then painted his big toe.

We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests. And that's where I put myself: as a storyteller. Not necessarily a high priestess, but certainly the storyteller. And I would love to be the storyteller of the tribe.

How many things both just and unjust are sanctioned by custom?

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

I'd have conversations with the camera crew about what was going on in the scene, so that they were prepared to shoot it. I love the fact that when you work, you create this tribe.

Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind nor bond of society.

We oftener say things because we can say them well, than because they are sound and reasonable.

... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]

Every man is born with the faculty of reason and the faculty of speech, but why should he be able to speak before he has anything to say?

Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted.

A reading is a kind of communion. The poet articulates the semi-known for the tribe.