Top 100 Schlesinger Quotes
#1. Stephen Schlesinger's Act of Creation tells a dazzling story of the dramatic events that have shaped the world in which we live. Never has a book been more relevant to present dangers and future hopes.
James Chace
#2. In the 1960 campaign, Arthur Schlesinger wrote of Adlai Stevenson, who already lost twice as the party's presidential nominee, He has been away from power too long; he gives me an odd sense of unreality, a certain frivolity, distractedness, over-interest in words and phrases.
David Pietrusza
#3. I built up a knowledge of 1960s and '70s British films because my dad used to work nights, and I'd sit up with my mum and watch films - 'How I Won the War' and the films of Richard Lester, Karel Reisz and John Schlesinger.
Nick Moran
#4. John Schlesinger had one of his friends designing it and he had never done a film before. Ten days before it started, they didn't have any costumes. I was rung up and joined up.
Julie Harris
#5. I'm an idealist without illusions.
[Ca. 1953, attributed to John F. Kennedy by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in 'A Thousand Days'
John F. Kennedy
#6. I recall asking the late eminent liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, in a public forum in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, if he would say that America was, all things considered, a better, i.e., more moral, society than Soviet society. He said he would not.
Dennis Prager
#7. My rule on honorary degrees has always been to have one more than Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#8. Jim Rowe and George Reedy had made him understand the growing importance in liberal intellectual circles of thirty-nine-year-old Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a noted Harvard historian with a gift for incisive phrasemaking,
Robert A. Caro
#9. Write him down, if he must write him down as something, as a disbeliever; he disbelieved in the Pope, in the Kremlin, in the Vietcong, in the American eagle, in astrology, Arthur Schlesinger, Eldridge Cleaver, Senator Eastland, and Eastman Kodak. Nor did he believe overmuch in his disbelief. He
John Updike
#10. Arthur Schlesinger admits that JFK "succumbed to the fake omniscience of insiders". Prolonged immersion in the self-contained, self-justifying world of clandestinity and deception erodes the reality principle.
Garry Wills
#11. I was at a book convention, in a cab. On one side of me was Arthur Schlesinger; on the other side was William Manchester - real heavyweights. All they were doing was asking me about Charles Manson. The only thing that enables me not to be bored is the people talking about it - they're so interested.
Vincent Bugliosi
#12. Schlesinger was a passionate believer in New Deal liberalism, which he saw as the only way to civilize capitalism. And
David Talbot
#13. Truman makes friends without influencing people,' noted Arthur Schlesinger Jr. 'Dewey influences people without making friends.
David Pietrusza
#15. That attitude toward women as objects may have worked for the late Sixties, but it doesn't do so now.
John Schlesinger
#16. The Ting Tings have been a huge hit in my family. I have two young daughters, and both of them love that record, so I pretty much have to listen to that ten times a day.
Adam Schlesinger
#17. I tend to write songs that are about something pretty specific. A lot of them tell some kind of little made-up story.
Adam Schlesinger
#18. Television has spread the habit of instant reaction and stimulated the hope of instant results.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#19. Most of your day is spent working, and being in a band is no different. We're just business travelers in a way.
Adam Schlesinger
#20. In the '80s, they were using an awful lot of technology but hadn't really figured out how it worked yet ... You had these really great, simple pop songs turned into these gigantic overproductions.
Adam Schlesinger
#21. The broad liberal objective is a balanced and flexible "mixed economy," thus seeking to occupy that middle ground between capitalism and socialism whose viability has so long been denied by both capitalists and socialists.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#24. For Robert the experience was another step in education. He was learning in particular that patriotic declarations did not make due process of law superfluous and that he owed a debt to his own inner standards.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#25. Still, the film nearly didn't happen a number of times. There were great arguments with United Artists about how to reduce the cost because they were nothing if not conscious of the price of the film.
John Schlesinger
#27. Andy Chase and I were keyboard players originally, and we became guitarists later. But it's fun for us to focus more on the keyboard stuff sometimes.
Adam Schlesinger
#28. Santayana's aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#29. The notion of a defense that will protect American cities is one that will not be achieved, but it is that goal that supplies the political magic, as it were, in the president's vision.
James R. Schlesinger
#30. There are certain actors who are very good at improvising, like Dustin Hoffman and Glenda Jackson.
John Schlesinger
#31. The first rule of democracy is to distrust all leaders who begin to believe their own publicity.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#32. If you're sitting in a place like Martha's Vineyard, I don't think you're going to write a song about a ski resort.
Adam Schlesinger
#33. People who claw their way to the top are not likely to find very much wrong with the system that enabled them to rise.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#35. I have a feeling he felt Jon Voight had run away with the film, which he didn't, though he was brilliant in it, in a much less easy part. I just don't know what had got into him, but something had.
John Schlesinger
#36. It's always been my philosophy to keep a lot of balls in the air. With music, most things don't pan out, so you try to increase your odds by being involved with a million things at once.
Adam Schlesinger
#37. Either I need an assignment with a strict deadline - like something for a movie or a TV show or whatever - or else I need to create a made-up deadline for myself for my own records. Otherwise, I don't write anything.
Adam Schlesinger
#39. The historian, like everyone else, is forever trapped in the egocentric predicament, and 'presentism' is his original sin.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#40. I'll never forget the first screening at the Berlin Film Festival. As soon as the film ended there was an outbreak of booing, which made us look at each other with some surprise.
John Schlesinger
#41. Scotland is a picturesque country where the people are friendly yet completely incomprehensible. Also, the national delicacy is a sheep's stomach filled with its liver, lungs, and heart.
Adam Schlesinger
#42. As a writer, I find it very satisfying when a lyric suddenly ties together more neatly than you expected it to. But for the listener, hearing a good lyric is not generally as exciting as hearing a great beat or a great riff or a great melody or even a distinctive singing voice for the first time.
Adam Schlesinger
#44. I thought his performance was absolutely wonderful and had said so, but he seemed, as actors quite often are when they first see something, to be disappointed. I think he expected more from the film and himself.
John Schlesinger
#45. For most Americans the Constitution had become a hazy document, cited like the Bible on ceremonial occasions but forgotten in the daily transactions of life.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#47. Saxon, if you are unfamiliar, is a British heavy-metal band that has been around since the mid-'70s and was in no small part the inspiration for Spinal Tap.
Adam Schlesinger
#48. I don't know if there's a particular project, but one movie that I was really disappointed I didn't get to work on was Judd Apatow's 'Walk Hard.'
Adam Schlesinger
#49. Bands like R.E.M. and even The Replacements, during that initial wave of college rock, would sell 40, 50, 100,000 copies of a record, and that would be seen as extremely successful - and definitely enough to keep doing more.
Adam Schlesinger
#50. One of the more surreal days I've ever had in the recording studio was Martin Fry teaching Hugh Grant his old dance moves. Showing him how to do the hair-flip and the point, and all these sort of trademark moves of his.
Adam Schlesinger
#51. Every year, there's some band that plays guitar-oriented pop music that has a single, but for the most part, it's kind of relegated to the sidelines.
Adam Schlesinger
#52. The basic human rights documents-the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man-were written by political, not by religious, leaders.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#53. With Fountains of Wayne, after 'Stacy's Mom' happened, we started making a little bit more money and getting a little bit more known.
Adam Schlesinger
#54. The nature of the music business is such that it's better to have a few chances for some things to be successful than just one, and that's kind of been my attitude all along.
Adam Schlesinger
#58. We are not good at recognizing distant threats even if their probability is 100%. Society ignoring [peak oil] is like the people of Pompeii ignoring the rumblings below Vesuvius.
James R. Schlesinger
#59. Viewed abstractly, systems analysis implies rigorous thinking, hopefully quantitative, regarding the gains and the resource-expenditures involved in a particular course of action -- to insure that scarce resources are employed productively rather than wastefully.
James R. Schlesinger
#61. It would probably be better if I got involved in fewer things just because I'd have more time to write for my own purposes ... But if somebody calls you up with a really cool project, it's hard to just say 'no' because you don't feel like working.
Adam Schlesinger
#63. The Mall Of America, outside Minneapolis, is just a mall. Yeah, it's big. So, like, instead of your typical 12 Starbucks, there are 30.
Adam Schlesinger
#65. Oh, the relationship with actors and managers and agents and things is a terrible problem sometimes.
John Schlesinger
#66. Most of the jobs I've gotten are from people calling me. I don't actively solicit a lot of work like that, but maybe I should.
Adam Schlesinger
#67. In view of the tide of religiosity engulfing a once secular republic it is refreshing to be reminded by Freethinkers that free thought and skepticism are robustly in the American tradition. After all the Founding Fathers began by omitting God from the American Constitution.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#68. These urban provinces, new to the American scene, possess greater economic, social, and cultural unity than most of the states. Yet, subdivided into separate municipalities...they face grave difficulties in meeting the essential needs of the aggregate population.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.
#70. The only President who clearly died of overwork was Polk, and that was a long time ago. Hoover, who worked intensely and humorlessly as President, lived for more than thirty years after the White House; Truman, who worked intensely and gaily, lived for twenty
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#71. Yes, but I think if you look at it with a sort of gay sensibility and want everything to be positive about gay life, it could be interpreted as antigay.
John Schlesinger
#72. Each species on our planet plays a role in the healthy functioning of natural ecosystems, on which humans depend.
William H. Schlesinger
#76. Symbolism perhaps is a bit in your face, and I've tried my best to control that as best I can as I've grown older and thought that one could approach something with a little more subtlety.
John Schlesinger
#77. Your job as a producer is to make suggestions without putting your ego in front of everything else. Also, I think you want to focus on that artist's best qualities and really highlight them.
Adam Schlesinger
#78. I don't think I have made as much of my life as I should have. I should have written more books.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#79. I've never really had the desire to be a front person or a solo artist. I don't really create that much of a hierarchy in my mind.
Adam Schlesinger
#80. I've never felt that using something with tongue in cheek has been a bad thing.
John Schlesinger
#81. I'm not comfortable as a lead singer. Maybe I could do it in the studio, but I wouldn't have the confidence to play shows.
Adam Schlesinger
#82. If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#83. The truth is that I don't work any harder than anyone else in the world. I don't work 18-hour days. I don't stay up until 4 in the morning trying to finish a line.
Adam Schlesinger
#84. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconsciousness with habits and values.
Arthur M. Schlesinger
#85. I normally write on acoustic guitar, although piano is the instrument that I actually studied. Occasionally, I'll write on the piano or sometimes with no instrument at all.
Adam Schlesinger
#86. Leadership ignites the circuit between the individual and the mass and thereby alters history.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#88. Problems will always torment us because all important problems are insoluble: that is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#90. Really, music is what I'm interested in, and the lyric part of it came from just having to have something to sing.
Adam Schlesinger
#91. What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#92. I just like to stay busy, and I like to work with interesting people.
Adam Schlesinger
#93. London is a vast, complex city designed by the same guy who created the Habitrail.
Adam Schlesinger
#94. The Cleveland Cavaliers are forced to play in something called the 'Quicken Loans Arena.' This is a terrible name for a sports venue.
Adam Schlesinger
#95. Making your own records is really satisfying in the sense that you more or less get to do what you want. It may not sell or whatever, but on an artistic level, the only people that you really have to fight with are the people in your own band.
Adam Schlesinger
#96. Under budgetary pressure (arbitrary or not) it is truly remarkable how many options one discovers one can do without.
James R. Schlesinger
#97. The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man without punishing the office.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#98. I am not very regimented unless I have to be. I wish I was someone that could just write every day, but I tend to work on specific projects for a specific period of time and then stop.
Adam Schlesinger
#99. Oil production should peak out around the world in the early 1990s ... That means in five years' time we may have chewed up most of the possibility of further expansion of oil production.
James R. Schlesinger
#100. Making a film is like going down a mine-once you've started you bid a metaphoricalgoodbye to the daylight and the outside world for the duration.
John Schlesinger
