Top 100 Quotes About Thomas More
#1. Sir Thomas More: Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one.
Richard Rich: If I was, who would know it?
Sir Thomas More: You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that.
Robert Bolt
#2. Thomas More's birth was noted by his father upon a blank page at the back of a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth's 'Historia Regum Britanniae'; for a lawyer John More was remarkably inexact in his references to that natal year, and the date has been moved from 1477 to 1478 and back again.
Peter Ackroyd
#3. In the first play, the crisis is Thomas More. In the second it's Anne Boleyn. In the third book, and the third play, it's crisis every day, an overlapping series of only just negotiable horrors. It's climbing and climbing. Then a sudden abrupt fall - within days.
Hilary Mantel
#4. He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.
Hilary Mantel
#5. I have a portrait of Saint Thomas More in my office.
Andrew Cuomo
#6. Thomas More rarely discussed his siblings, and two of them are never mentioned by him. It is likely that they were part of that infant mortality which had provoked such concern for early baptism.
Peter Ackroyd
#7. How old was More when Richard succeeded?
He was five.
When that dramatic council scene had taken place at the Tower, Thomas More had been five years old. He had been only eight when Richard died at Bosworth.
Everything in that history had been hearsay.
Josephine Tey
#8. I've always liked what Thomas More said in Utopia, which is that in Utopia every person is allowed their own lifestyle and religion but no one is allowed to stand on a soapbox and tell others that theirs is right. I thought that was brilliant. Brilliant.
Jude Law
#9. With relish, Thomas More thus sketches Richard's character: He was close and secret, a deep dissembler, lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardly companionable where he inwardly hated, not hesitating to kiss whom he thought to kill.
Richard III Of England
#10. You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.
Hilary Mantel
#11. My master Thomas More would give anything to anyone. Some say that's good and some say that's bad, but I say he can't help it - and that's bad ... because some day someone's going to ask him for something that he wants to keep; and he'll be out of practice
Robert Bolt
#12. Thomas More once told me: lion or king, never show fear or you are a dead man.
Philippa Gregory
#13. His head was boiled, impaled upon a pole and raised above London Bridge. So ended the life of Thomas More, one of the few Londoners upon whom sainthood has been conferred and the first English layman to be beatified as a martyr.
Peter Ackroyd
#14. Thomas More syas that the imperial troops, for their enjoyment, are roasting live babies on spits. Oh, he would! says Thomas Cromwell. Listen, soldiers don't do that. They're too busy carrying away everything they can turn into ready money.
Hilary Mantel
#15. On many questions and specially in view of the marriage bed, the Puritans were the indulgent party, ... they were much more Chestertonian than their adversaries. The idea that a Puritan was a repressed and repressive person would have astonished Sir Thomas More and Luther about equally.
C.S. Lewis
#16. The things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us the grace to labour for', as
Sir Thomas More expressed it. The inner voice of prayer expresses itself naturally in action, just as the inner voice of my brain guides all my bodily actions.
Philip Yancey
#17. No man shall be blamed in the maintenance of his own religion.
Thomas More
#18. As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body.
Lewis Thomas
#19. Is not the pastness of the past the more profound, the more legendary, the more immediately it falls before the present ?
Thomas Mann
#20. I once sacrificed something I love for the God I love even more, and He has never forgotten me for it.
Thomas S. Monson
#21. So frequently we mistakenly believe that our children need more things, when in reality their silent pleadings are simply for more of our time.
Thomas S. Monson
#22. Your friend Plato holds that commonwealths will only be happy when either philosophers rule or rulers philosophize: how remote happiness must appear when philosophers won't even deign to share their thoughts with kings.
Thomas More
#23. Let them speak as lewdly as they list of me ... as long as they do not hit me, what am I the worse?
Thomas More
#24. Poetry is not communication with angels or with the "subconscious." It is communication with the guts, genitals, and five portals of sense. Nothing more.
Thomas Pynchon
#25. The democratic ideal has always been related to a moderate level of inequality. I think one big reason why electoral democracy flourished in 19th century America better than 19th century Europe is because you had more equal distribution of wealth in America.
Thomas Piketty
#26. There is more in Mersenne than in all the universities together.
Thomas Hobbes
#28. Thus old men are honoured with a particular respect, yet all the rest fare as well as they. Both dinner and supper are begun with some lecture of morality that is read to them; but it is so short that it is not tedious nor uneasy to them to hear it.
Thomas More
#29. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will benefit about 28 million workers across the country. And it will help businesses, too - raising the wage will put more money in people's pockets, which they will pump back into the economy by spending it on goods and services in their communities.
Thomas Perez
#30. I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
Thomas Jefferson
#31. The poor love life as passionately as the rich do. Perhaps more, for the effort it takes to cling to it.
Joan Thomas
#32. All things are yours and you are Christ's - and Christ is God's. If we live, we live unto God. If we die, we die unto God - whether we live or die, we are God's possession." What more could anyone ask?
Thomas Merton
#33. I have two bikes: a classic 1978 Yamaha SR500 and a more modern Suzuki SV650. I've been into cars and bikes since I was tiny.
Thomas Sangster
#34. Dr. Robert Hare, one of the foremost researchers on sociopathy, believes that a sociopath is four times more likely to be at the top of the corporate ladder than in the janitor's closet, due to the close match between the personality traits of sociopaths and the unusual demands of high-powered jobs.
M.E. Thomas
#35. I like writing, but I write for self-improvement more than I do for money.
Thomas Steinbeck
#36. In the heraldry of heaven goodness precedes greatness; so on earth it is more powerful. The lowly and the lovely may frequently do more in their own limited sphere than the gifted.
Thomas Hartwell Horne
#37. President Obama keeps telling us that he is "creating jobs." But more and more Americans have no jobs. The unemployment rate has declined slightly, but only because many people have stopped looking for jobs. You are only counted as unemployed if you are still looking for a job.
Thomas Sowell
#38. There's one of my new poems actually - is a good example of where my poetry has ended up. My earlier river poetry was more like a cross between Shelley and Dylan Thomas.
Robert Adamson
#39. Let me ask you, when it comes to Obamacare, do you hate Obamacare more than you love your country?
Thomas Roberts
#40. Being willing to change allows you to move from a point of view to a viewing point - a higher, more expansive place, from which you can see both sides.
Thomas Crum
#41. The Golden Straitjacket is the defining political-economic garment of globalization. [ ... ] The tighter you wear it, the more gold it produces.
Thomas Friedman
#42. Of distinction by birth or badge, [Americans] had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets. They had heard only that there were such, and knew that they must be wrong.
Thomas Jefferson
#43. Whoever finds Jesus, finds a rich treasure, and a good above every good. He who loses Jesus loses much indeed, and more than the whole world. Poorest of all is he who lives without Jesus, and richest of all is he who stands in favor with Jesus.
Thomas A Kempis
#44. A Home Run Derby is fun. It's just like taking batting practice, and you just want to go deep. Guys do it every day. Yes, there's a little more pressure when they pull that cage back, but if you practice properly, it shouldn't affect the second half of your season at all.
Frank Thomas
#45. The holy scriptures contain no proclamation more relevant, no responsibility more binding, no instruction more direct than the injunction given by the resurrected Lord as He appeared in Galilee to the eleven disciples.
Thomas S. Monson
#46. It turns out to be the new Planet, which, a decade and a half later, will be known first as the Georgian, and then as Herschel, after its official Discoverer, and more lately as Uranus.
Thomas Pynchon
#47. You do this, perhaps, with a good intention,' said the Cardinal, 'but, in my opinion, it were wiser in you, and perhaps better for you, not to engage in so ridiculous a contest with a Fool.'
Thomas More
#48. While Republican voters have remained universally supportive of their President, Democrats and Independents are returning to a more naturally critical stance.
Thomas E. Mann
#49. A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own.
Thomas Mann
#50. I will confess that I have no more sense of what goes on in the mind of mankind than I have for the mind of an ant.
Lewis Thomas
#51. A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others.
Thomas Jefferson
#52. Liberals have been driven to the desperate expedient of attributing ... social pathology in today's ghettos to 'a legacy of slavery' even though black children grew up with two parents more often under slavery than today.
Thomas Sowell
#53. I'm as anxious as any viewer would be to see what Temple is going to do next. All I know is that in the second half of the season, he's going to have more sexual tension developing. And it's a great cast - they're all Broadway actors except for me. I aspire to that.
Sean Patrick Thomas
#54. I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.
Thomas Browne
#55. When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.
Thomas Hardy
#56. We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more.
Thomas Hardy
#57. To love God, which was a thing far excelling all the cunning that is possible for us in this life to obtain.
Thomas More
#58. In the festival which concludes the period, before they go to the temple, both wives and children fall on their knees before their husbands or parents and confess everything in which they have either erred or failed in their duty, and beg pardon for it.
Thomas More
#59. Weakness, all the more dangerous for being combined with a sense of entitlement
Erika Johansen
#60. Virtually everything that the government does costs more than when the same thing is done in private industry - whether it is building housing, running prisons, collecting garbage, or innumerable other things. Why in the world would we imagine that health care would be the exception?
Thomas Sowell
#61. No living creature is naturally greedy, except from fear of want - or in the case of human beings, from vanity, the notion that you're better than people if you can display more superfluous property than they can.
Thomas More
#62. He who gives money gives some, he who gives time gives more, and he who gives of himself gives all.
Thomas S. Monson
#63. Nor can they understand why a totally useless substance like gold should now, all over the world, be considered far more important than human beings, who gave it such value as it has, purely for their own convenience.
Thomas More
#64. The negative often meant nothing more than the preface to the affirmative
Thomas Hardy
#65. The social moulds civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns.
Thomas Hardy
#66. Class amusements, be they for Dukes or plow-boys, always become nuisances and curses to a country. The true charm of cricket and hunting is that they are still, more or less sociable and universal; There's a place for every man who will come and take his part.
Thomas Hughes
#67. There is more evil in a drop of sin than in a sea of affliction.
Thomas Watson
#68. Rich is not having more money. Rich is knowing the secret to getting everything you want in life.
Thomas L. Pauley
#69. One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.
Scarlett Thomas
#70. If you gave more frequent thought to your death than to a long life, you would unquestionably be more eager to amend your life.
Thomas A Kempis
#71. Our modern democratic ideal is based on the hope that inequalities will be based on merit more than inheritance or luck.
Thomas Piketty
#72. [T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore ... never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.
Thomas Jefferson
#73. The more adaptability exists for a given kind of decision, the less risky it is to make plans for the future, and therefore the more likely it is that more people will make more plans in such areas.
Thomas Sowell
#74. The less I speak, the more I meditate.
Thomas Kyd
#75. We are all in the same cart, going to execution; how can I hate anyone or wish anyone harm?
Thomas More
#76. One woman is a pest and two women is a team, but three women or more is a coalition. If you can bring a lot of people together as a coalition, you can get a lot changed.
Marlo Thomas
#77. A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson
#78. The more and better thou knowest, the more heavy will be thy judgment unless thy life be also more holy.
Thomas A Kempis
#79. There are several sorts of religions, not only in different parts of the island, but even in every town; some worshipping the sun, others the moon or one of the planets.
Thomas More
#81. Some typewriters in Whitehall, in the Pentagon, killed more civilians than our little A4 could have ever hoped to.
Thomas Pynchon
#82. Some men may be snared by beauty alone, but none can be held except by virtue and compliance.
Thomas More
#84. I've been writing about Vermont independence for nearly ten years ... and, more often than not, it was for an audience of one.
Thomas Naylor
#85. Arrive at knowledge over small streamlets, and do not plunge immediately into the ocean, since progress must go from the easier to the more difficult.
Thomas Aquinas
#86. There is no country in Europe which is so easy to over-run as Spain; there is no country which it is more difficult to conquer.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#87. We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#88. I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson
#89. If joining IBM was commitment, not employment, and the company engaged in something more than business, it had a right to demand of its men unconditional loyalty, Watson believed.
Thomas Watson
#90. [Death is] to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth. - THOMAS WOLFE, YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN
Wiley Cash
#91. I die the kings good servant, but God's first.
Thomas More
#92. I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Thomas Jefferson
#93. It is part of the business of life to be affable and pleasing to those whom either nature, chance or circumstance has made our companions.
Thomas More
#94. Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.
Thomas Sowell
#95. Men be so foolish as to have delight and pleasure in the doubtful glistering of a trifling little stone, which may behold any of the stars or else the sun itself.
Thomas More
#96. Our emotional symptoms are precious sources of life and individuality.
Thomas More
#97. They have had great disputes among themselves, whether one chosen by them to be a priest would not be thereby qualified to do all the things that belong to that character, even though he had no authority derived from the Pope,
Thomas More
#98. Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.
Thomas Sowell
#99. I cannot perfectly agree to everything he has related. However, there are many things in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our governments.
Thomas More
#100. The more Israel sinks into the West Bank, the more it is delegitimized and isolated, the more the world focuses on Israel's colonialism rather than Iran's nuclear enrichment, the more people call for a single democratic state in all of historic Palestine.
Thomas Friedman
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