If They Could They Would Quotes

#1. When Ford sells a car, a dealer isn't allowed to take out the engine and put a different one in. When a newsstand sells the Washington Post, no one can go to the newsstand and pay them to rip out the classified section and put their own classified section in - if they could, they would do so.

Bill Gates

#2. Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed - chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones.

John Muir

#3. Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.

Dean Wesley Smith

#4. If your mother did not know how to love herself, or your father did not know how to love himself, then it would be impossible for them to teach you to love yourself. They were doing the best they could with what they had been taught as children.

Louise L. Hay

#5. The siblings wished that if Mr. Poe were really jealous of them he would attend Prufrock Preparatory School himself, and they could work at the bank.

Lemony Snicket

#6. They would be shocked if they could see the other women in London: automechanics with grease in their hair, fisherwomen in from te coast with tatooed arms.

Tara Sim

#7. The first few glasses of beer were a revelation; they flushed my veins with happiness; they washed away all cares and shyness and worries. I remember thinking to myself, If I could have two pints of beer every afternoon, life would be a great happiness.

George Mackay Brown

#8. If everyone in the world sat quietly at the same time, closed their eyes and concentrated as hard as they could on peace and goodwill, all the killing and cruelty in the world would continue. And probably increase.

George Carlin

#9. If you're 54 or 55, you might want to listen because this will affect you. The idea, which was originally presented by Congressman Ryan, your running mate, is that we would give a voucher to seniors and they could go out in the private marketplace and buy their own health insurance.

Barack Obama

#10. Before the war it had seemed incredible that such terrors and slaughters, even if they began, could last more than a few months. After the first two years it was difficult to believe that they would ever end.

Winston Churchill

#11. If I could relive my life, what I would do is work with scientists. But not one scientist, because they're locked into their little specializations. I'd go from scientist to scientist to scientist, like a bee goes from flower to flower.

Agnes Denes

#12. And if it played its cards right they could end up flitting through the Overlook's halls like insubstantial shades in a Shirley Jackson novel, whatever walked in Hill House walked alone, but you wouldn't be alone in the Overlook, oh no, there would be plenty of company here.

Stephen King

#13. if I could take a picture of the expression that passes between them, I would, and then I'd shove it in both their faces so they could never deny it again.

Katja Millay

#14. Three quarters of these people know
Instinctively what ought to be
The nature of society
And how they'd live there if they could.
If it were easy to be good,
And cheap, and plain as evil, how,
We all would be its members now...

W. H. Auden

#15. Those who give not till they die show that they would not then if they could keep it any longer.

Joseph Hall

#16. Our people were very restive, saying that they could not sit under that notice, and that if the National Board did not call them out soon they would go out of themselves.

Rose Schneiderman

#17. Ask yourself this question everyday: What is it about me that other people would change if they could?

Andy Andrews

#18. I wanted to smell the guitars. It's hard to explain but they have a smell. And the best way I could ever describe it would be to say they smell like potential. Ambition and desire. If such things had a smell.

Barbara Hall

#19. The best of our fiction is by novelists who allow that it is as good as they can give, and the worst by novelists who maintain that they could do much better if only the public would let
them.

James M. Barrie

#20. As if they were supposed to have made a direct hit, to have a long, full, crazy, wild, passion-filled, child-strewn life together, but somehow they'd come at each other from the wrong angle, and missed what could have/would have/should have been.

Karen Marie Moning

#21. A lover would find life less broken apart after a misguided love affair if they could feel that they had been sinful rather than foolish.

Phyllis McGinley

#22. I would hate to see the state of my house if I had displeased Amelia under my roof. The servents would revolt. No doubt I'd have gruel for dinner, holes in my shirts, and the most foul-smelling tallow candles they could find.

Kristi Ann Hunter

#23. Yes, if the stones that we walked on could talk, they would surely tell our story.

Nico J. Genes

#24. If writers, like comedians or singers, could only hear themselves bombing as they worked, it's likely that certain books would be cut short after the first few leaden sentences.

Walter Kirn

#25. Gabriel could anticipate Uncle Dave and Uncle Junior's traditional wedding reception speech, entitled "If you hurt our girl, we will whip your ass." Only this time, they would be adding, "Vampire or not.

Molly Harper

#26. He could accept people with failings - even forgive them - but if he glossed over the problems, then they would never change.

Brandon Sanderson

#27. If you could drink dreams like the Irish streams
Then the world would be high as the mountain of morn
In the Pool they told us the story
How the English divided the land ...

John Lennon

#28. The angels would become incarnate if they could, so that they might come to earth to imitate the example and virtues of the Son of God!

Vincent De Paul

#29. If only they could stay young & beautifull like most of them desire, then we would probably stay young too

Zundap

#30. They prised open the door in the morning. The beatific expression on his face was exactly what one would find in a temple deity or the just dead - an unsmiling smile. The absurdity and humour was there if one could just see it, the question and answer staring one in the face

Srividya Srinivasan

#31. There's no need to whisper," Elizabeth told her now. "You could sing at the top of your voices and no one would hear you out here on the water." But the women smiled at her suggestion in surprise and unease, as if she had told them that they could fly.

Sara Donati

#32. I armed her against the censure of the world, showed her that books were sweet unreproaching companions to the miserable, and that if they could not bring us to enjoy life, they would at least teach us to endure it.

Oliver Goldsmith

#33. If I could teach my children only one thing, it would be the skill of marketing. For with that skill, they could be successful at anything they chose for the rest of their lives.

Howard Ruff

#34. Being an actor myself I realize that all actors believe they are qualified to play any role. If you showed me a script with a black woman character I would tell you that I could do it. That is what we do. We act as if we are someone else.

Richard Masur

#35. Since Ireland's independence declaration was a century older, I could not be sure if his self-evident truths meant as much as they would in America.

Jennifer Harrison

#36. If they could keep out of jail for this short stretch, most would go on to be the spine of American society - fixing the cars, working the factories, growing the food and fighting the wars.

Bruce Springsteen

#37. I just want to say, that if Jesus were alive, what would he be doing? Well, he would probably be accepting and loving people how they're made. And I always say this and it's really the truth. If being 4'11 was a sin, what would I do? Well, I could wear heels and I could add a wig.

Kristin Chenoweth

#38. It was one lesson that she could not bring herself to learn. If someone was going to tell a lie, they would tell it with a smile.

Joseph R. Lallo

#39. It is said that if dogs could tell us all they have seen, it would magically stitch together all the gaps in our lives.

Steven Rowley

#40. Even if I could, I would not exahnge their virtues for my own. And that is why they are intent on learning from me.

Confucius

#41. Carrie is my child, and I love her with every ounce of strength I possess. If love alone could cure our children, they would always be well.

Debbie Reynolds

#42. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.

Ernest Hemingway,

#43. All I could think as he was speaking was that, if he touched me at all, all the miles I'd walked, the pain I'd felt, the beauty I'd drunken like milk, like good wine making me happy, the four million steps I'd taken, would all add up to nothing. They'd be stolen.

Aspen Matis

#44. Congress would give the people what they wanted if the people knew what they wanted, and if Congress could give it to them.

Evan Esar

#45. There may have been disillusionments in the lives of the medieval saints, but they would scarcely have been better pleased if they could have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays chiefly with racehorses and the cheaper clarets.

Hector Hugh Munro

#46. If there were no night, we would not appreciate the day, nor could we see the stars and the vastness of the heavens. We must partake of the bitter with the sweet. There is a divine purpose in the adversities we encounter every day. They prepare, they purge, they purify, and thus they bless.

James E. Faust

#47. Jaime had decided that he would return Sansa, and the younger girl as well if she could be found. It was not like to win him back his honor, but the notion of keeping faith when they all expected betrayal amused him more than he could say.

George R R Martin

#48. A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma.

Marlene Dietrich

#49. If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can't be in books.
The book needs you.

Gary Paulsen

#50. If it were not for the outside world, we would have no inside world to understand things by. Least of all could we understand God without these millions of sights and sounds and scents and motions, weaving their endless harmonies. They come out of His heart to let us know a little of what is in it.

George MacDonald

#51. Steele found, for example, that if he could convince women who took difficult mathematics examinations that everyone connected with the test assumed they would perform as well as men, that they did.

Ken Bain

#52. Lanthe's nieces were super brilliant, could already trace. If they sensed danger - or bath time - they would simply teleport their diapered butts away.

Kresley Cole

#53. Think about your favorite work and your creative heroes. What did they miss? What didn't they make? What could've been made better? If they were still alive, what would they be making today? If all your favorite makers got together and collaborated, what would they make with you leading the crew?

Austin Kleon

#54. I believe if the white and colored people could get together and be let alone, they would understand each other and consequently love each other.

Josephine Baker

#55. If I could predict the trends, they would already be there.

Tim Gunn

#56. No way they could threaten him, not even with Amelie; he'd already given Amelie the finger on the way out of Morganville and he clearly wasn't worried about her coming after him - or, if so, what would happen when she did.

Rachel Caine

#57. By the end of the war, I could pick out Jewish people almost as if I had a sixth sense about it, even if they had blue eyes and blond hair. I would have been a very valuable Gestapo person.

Diet Eman

#58. But the Good Book said a lot of things. Like 'love thy neighbor' and ' do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. If nothing else, wasn't the message of the Good Book to live and let live? So how could the Crosses call themselves 'God's chosen' and still treat us the way they did?

Malorie Blackman

#59. The plants have taught me they don't like to be potted too long - it's very restrictive to them so I would plant them outside if you could, or in a green house.

Doreen Virtue

#60. But I, you know, if I could choose a period to go back to, I think I would like to live through the Blitz. 'Cause you do read so many accounts of people saying they're living their lives at such an intense pitch that it was a completely different way of living.

Kate Atkinson

#61. If you knew you were
going to lose your memory
but you could choose five things
you'd never forget, what would they be -
a certain face, a taste, a scent,
a touch; how deep
in this, the middle
of your life?

Kristen Henderson

#62. Situations emerge in the process of creative destruction in which many firms may have to perish that nevertheless would be able to live on vigorously and usefully if they could weather a particular storm.

Joseph A. Schumpeter

#63. What I could relate to was the common fear that you are secretly so uniquely screwed-up that there is no way anyone would like you if they really knew you.

Tim Kreider

#64. The Kindly Ones would say it didn't matter. And maybe they were right. We still could have snatched happiness from our tragedy if we had made the right choices, the right wishes. If we had been kinder, braver, purer. If only we had been anything but what we were.

Rosamund Hodge

#65. Old men want to feel that the experience which has come with their years is valuable, that their advice is valuable, that they possess a sagacity that could be obtained only through experience - a sagacity that could be of use to young men if only young men would ask.

Robert A. Caro

#66. I realized that people had an unreal image of me, that somehow I was a god on Mount Olympus. I decided that if I were going to make use of my role as a Supreme Court Justice, it would be to inspire people to realize that, first, I was just like them and second, if I could do it, so could they.

Sonia Sotomayor

#67. If there were events earlier than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present time. Their existence can be ignored because it would have no observational consequences.

Stephen Hawking

#68. My weaknesses, my choices, and my decisions - the ones I made and the ones I didn't - all took me down a rocky road filled with regret, heartbreak, and pain. And eventually, they nearly killed me. Would I change things if I could? Would I turn back time and do things differently? Never.

Madeline Sheehan

#69. Many of us marvel at the icy insensitivity with which women snuff out their armours. But if they did not blot out the past in this manner, life for them would lose all dignity and they could never resist the fatal familiarities to which they once submitted.

Honore De Balzac

#70. The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.

Anthony Trollope

#71. Maybe it's the best answer of all. If more people could admit they really don't know, maybe there never would have been a War.

Neal Shusterman

#72. If it was easy, everyone would do it rather than going around telling you their ideas and saying how they could be a writer if they had the time.

Arthur M. Jolly

#73. The only one that I think I could beat, if my life depended on it, would be the Predator. If it was in my territory, in my domain, with the guns that I've got, I think I could hurt him pretty bad. That's the only one, though. When you get into metaphysical creatures, they don't play fair.

Lance Henriksen

#74. We could skip the mistletoe...."
Lilah was afraid if she let Sam Lawton kiss her, it might end up as a lot more. Her bed was up those stairs. Maybe they would make it to the bed.

Mary J. Williams

#75. Beautiful dreams - if the world were more beautiful they would come true - But the world is relentless & cruel - people are - they must be, I suppose, or they could not live.

Alfred Stieglitz

#76. I think it'd be wonderful if we could train young girls to be active in lots of ways and that they then wouldn't have to age at the same rate that they would if they were not more active. In other words, more physical fitness and not just the sporty kind, but the yoga, which is really important.

Raquel Welch

#77. Her body became liquid, and she thought, if they could bottle him, he would make the best pain medication.

Marissa Meyer

#78. Dogs are loyal friends, and if they could talk, your secrets would still be safe. (If my cat could talk, I'd have to let the dog eat her.)

Richelle E. Goodrich

#79. More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader, and would no more read a book alone, if they could help it, than have a baby alone.

Randall Jarrell

#80. They wanted a list of symptoms: dizziness, blurred vision, palpitations. You could not say, it is a different life trying to nudge this one aside. I am meant to be living that different life. Who would understand that, if she could make no better sense of understanding it herself?

Jean Thompson

#81. You could sometimes guide people's opinions, but if they didn't want to buy what you had to sell you could shout yourself hoarse trying to make them do it and it would never work.

Clive Barker

#82. Part of the satisfaction of tattling surely comes from showing oneself to adults as a good moral agent, a responsible being who is sensitive to right and wrong. But I would bet that children would tattle even if they could do so only anonymously. They would do it just to have justice done.

Paul Bloom

#83. As to the other three, if they had been perfection they would not have been real girls, and you could not have wept over their trials and laughed over their pleasures.

Louisa May Alcott

#84. If only tears could speak, they would tell the agony of the eyes.

Ludiah

#85. I wonder if it hurts to live, And if they have to try, And whether, could they choose between, They would not rather die.

Emily Dickinson

#86. Most people simply didn't realize they could do things that bent their reality. It was kind of like growing up in a land with no deep rivers or lakes. If you never tried, how would you know if you could swim? But

Ilona Andrews

#87. The racism of the Nazis threatened to make whatever we had experienced look like child's play. If they could be so brutal to the Jews, what would they do to the blacks? So large numbers of black young men and women rallied to the defence of the empire.

Peter Abrahams

#88. You could call a people primitive, if you chose to judge them by how big their homes were, or how the managed to defend themselves, without studying their knowledge, or asking how they viewed the world; but what would that say about you?

Adam Centurione

#89. That was her favorite part, the moments of laughter and silliness. In some way, these times made their marriage strong, kept her more in love with Connor Evans every year. If they could play together this way, they would always be okay.

Karen Kingsbury

#90. When Don Anastasio Somoza fled the country, he took with him everything he could carry, including all the cash in the national treasury. He even had the bodies of Tacho I and Luis Somoza dug up and they, too, went into exile. No doubt he would have taken the land as well, if he'd known how.

Salman Rushdie

#91. People would have a health care insurance policy they can call their own. They could choose one that exactly fits their families' needs and their budgets, be able to take that coverage with them from job to job and be able to fire their insurance company if it doesn't treat them well.

Andrew P. Harris

#92. If cats could drive, text and launch missiles, they would rule the world

Quasi

#93. Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? But I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone, anyone, love me?

John Green

#94. If I'd known how many brownie points this daddy stuff could win me, I'd have talked you into kids years ago. Would have saved me a lot of trouble." "It would have." "Problem is, they're going to grow up." He paused. "We may need to have more." "We may.

Kelley Armstrong

#95. It is up to you whether social, intelligent and wonderful creatures are to be freed from their chains and cages where ruthless people keep them. The animals would, if they could, flee as I did, because a life in captivity is a life full of deprivation.

Natascha Kampusch

#96. If people would but provide for eternity with the same solicitude and real care as they do for this life, they could not fail of heaven.

John Tillotson

#97. Imagine what Masaccio or Leonardo would have done if they had an instrument with which they could point, push a button, and get an image.

Thomas Roma

#98. After the welcome home barbecue, Candice had said, People here aren't that different, they just have accents. But if she could hear this, how their plan was being twisted, it would rock her little white-girl world, as Louis had always called it.

T. Geronimo Johnson

#99. Isn't it funny how trusting husbands are? How easily they eat the food put in front of them by their wives, without ever wondering if there might be something wrong with it.

You could mix anything in it, and they would never know.

Sudha Kuruganti

#100. Your parents, Oskar and Mina. They are dead and gone now, Yanek, and we would grieve them if we could. But we have only one purpose now: survive. Survive at all costs, Yanek. We cannot let these monsters tear us from the pages of the world.

Alan Gratz