Rhett B. Dawson Quotes

Far from being an empty gesture, appointing a commission is full of risks. Presidents may appoint such bodies but they cannot control them.

The associations inside the group become more important than those outside.

Accidents will happen in the best regulated families.

History goes out of control almost as often as nature does.

Our wills and fates do so contrary run, That our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

I wanted the Peace Corps to be something very vague and unorganized, and to a large extent it was. It did not run smoothly. The consequence was that we were left alone.

I'm afraid that - not necessarily deliberately, but consistently - I've made a kind of laboratory out of my life, where I mix the stuff in the test tubes to create explosions - possibly resulting in interesting by-products. I mean, not deliberately - I'd be crazy to deliberately do that - or maybe not.

I really like writing music. That's kind of like my little hobby. I like that because sometimes you don't really have any control when you're an actor, over what you're doing next, and everything is kind of decided by other people. You're always waiting to hear from people.

Get a good team and do what you think is right.

There has been in many quarters severe criticism of the conduct of the war with Spain. Charges of criminal neglect of the soldiers in camp and field and hospital and in transports have been so persistent that, whether true or false, they have made a deep impression upon the country. It is my earnest desire that you shall thoroughly investigate these charges, and make the fullest examination of the administration of the War Department in all of its branches, with the view to establishing the truth or falsity of these accusations. I put upon you no limit to the scope of your investigation. Of all departments connected with the army I invite the closest scrutiny and examination, and shall afford every facility for the most searching inquiry. The records of the War Department and the assistance of its officers shall be subject to your call.

Wars and revolutions cannot be prescribed and the circle of their influence determined in advance.

Events are always in the saddle.

Horror fiction shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.

Life is full of ironies and absurdities.

The reason my games are chaotic is that the world is chaotic, not me. I don't aim for bad endings - they just naturally come out.

A director is someone who presides over a series of accidents.

Men are intrigued by anything they do not completly control.

What is the point? We assume that every time we do anything we know what the consequences will be, i.e., more or less what we intend them to be. This is not only not always correct. It is wildly, crazily, stupidly, cross-eyed-blithering-insectly wrong!

In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relive the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption.

Chaos, if it does not harden into a pattern of disorder, may be more fruitful than a regularity too easily accepted and a success too easily achieved.

An actor needs to be not remotely anywhere close to in control, and a filmmaker has to be totally in control.

Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas.

I may have had many projects, but I never was free to carry out any of them.

Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it's not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can't be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can't be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.

Long, flat expanses of professionalism bother me. I'd rather have a band that could explode at any time.