34 Barriers Quotes

The ever-present impulse is to push against restriction and, in so doing, to feel intolerably hemmed in. Thus in practice, every liberation increases the sense of oppression. Nor is the paradox merely in the mind: the laws enacted to secure the rights of every person and group, by creating protective boundaries, create new barriers.

Joe Louis and I were the first modern national sports figures who were black... But neither of us could do national advertising because the South wouldn't buy it. That was the social stigma we lived under.

I see the new Latin artist as a pioneer, opening up doors for others to follow. And when they don't open, we crowbar our way in.

Therefore the love which us doth bind, But Fate so enviously debars, Is the conjunction of the mind, And opposition of the stars.

All Spaniards, we discovered, knew two English expressions. One was 'O.K., baby', the other was a word used by the Barcelona whores in their dealings with English sailors, and I am afraid the compositors would not print it.

'Scientists tend to resist interdisciplinary inquiries into their own territory. In many instances, such parochialism is founded on the fear that intrusion from other disciplines would compete unfairly for limited financial resources and thus diminish their own opportunity for research.'

I could never convince the financiers that Disneyland was feasible, because dreams offer too little collateral.

Philosophy is based on speculation, on logic, on thought, on the synthesis of what we know and on the analysis of what we do not know. Philosophy must include within its confines the whole content of science, religion and art. But where can such a philosophy be found? All that we know in our times by the name of philosophy is not philosophy, but merely 'critical literature' or the expression of personal opinions, mainly with the aim of overthrowing and destroying other personal opinions. Or, which is still worse, philosophy is nothing but self-satisfied dialetic surrounding itself with an impenetrable barrier of terminology unintelligible to the uninitiated and solving for itself all the problems of the universe without any possibliity of proving these explanations or making them intelligible to ordinary mortals.

There was an excellent foreman in an iron foundry near Oranienburg. I spoke with him and told him I would get him out of the concentration camp. He is still around, and you can check with him about this story. I personally wrote to Kaltenbrunner to get approval for his release. Kaltenbrunner answered that it was impossible to release this man because he was a former Communist. That illustrates how hard it was to do anything.

I found myself projected against an obstacle which I could not penetrate. It was like the others, yet incalculably denser; a sticky clammy mass, if such terms can be applied to analogous qualities in a non-material sphere. I had, I felt, been halted by a barrier which my friend and leader had successfully passed. Struggling anew, I came to the end of the drug-dream...

For men have dulled their eyes with sin, And dimmed the light of heaven with doubt, And built their temple-walls to shut thee in, And framed their iron creeds to shut thee out.

I want to smack but I hold back. I only want to touch. But I must stay and find a way To stop before it gets too much! All my barriers are going. It's starting to show.

Out in the garden There's half of a heaven, And we're only bluffing. We're not ones for busting through walls, But they've told us Unless we can prove That we're doing it, We can't have it all.

At the low wages then paid to women, it took Lucy nine years to save up money enough to enter college. There was no difficulty as to the choice of an alma mater. There was only one college that admitted women.

Behind all appearances, I divine a struggling essence. I want to merge with it. I feel that behind appearances this struggling essence is also striving to merge with my heart. But the body stands between us and separates us. The mind stands between us and separates us.

You have accounted yourselves happy on being environed with a great ditch from all the world beside.

I knew she wasn't English For she spoke it far too well The grammar was goodly and the verbs as they should be Her slang was bang on the bell But as the language barrier clanged and banged I could not here: hear nor see London, England and Bow Crumble into the sea.

Dicko: Can I say that you look absolutely fabulous tonight? I thought that was going to be a great song for you, but I can still hear you thinking. You're worth a lot more than you realise, you have to learn to feel more. I think that your greatest barrier is yourself...

What's Bagism? It's like... a tag for what we all do, we're all in a bag ya know, and we realised that we came from two bags, I was in this pop bag going round and round in my little clique, and she was in her little avant-garde clique going round and round, and you're in your little tele clique and they're in their...ya know? and we all sort of come out and look at each other every now and then, but we don't communicate. And we all intellectualize about how there is no barrier between art, music, poetry... but we're still all 'I'm a rock and roller, he's a poet' ... so we just came up with the word so you would ask us what bagism is, and we'd say 'WE'RE ALL IN A BAG BABY!'

The barrier was only in my mind - which is true of this barrier as well. The more firmly I try to cross the barrier, the more firmly I'm rejected. Well, maybe it's the intention to cross the boundary that pushes me away

For 2 people to love each other, they have to meet, don't they? And 2 people who live in utterly different worlds have no chance of meeting

That was what she knew of love. No wonder [he] never recognized her love when she gave it to him. Even now, if he knew that she had loved him, it would break his heart

Race does not need to be the natural dividing line on important national issues because many indigenous people and organisations have opposed the Bill. We can learn from this debate that race is an artificial barrier in our community, and that sometimes, it is little more than a safe harbour for politicians who should know better.

Between me and life is a faint glass. No matter how sharply I see and understand life, I cannot touch it.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push it. (p. 42e)

I believe in human beings, but my faith is without sentimentality. I know that in environments of uncertainty, fear, and hunger, the human being is dwarfed and shaped without his being aware of it, just as the plant struggling under a stone does not know its own condition. Only when the stone is removed can it spring up freely into the light. But the power to spring up is inherent, and only death puts an end to it. I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.

Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me.

Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

Outwardly, what is simpler than to write books? Outwardly, what obstacles are there for a woman rather than for a man? Inwardly, I think, the case is very different; she has still many ghosts to fight, many prejudices to overcome. Indeed it will be a long time still, I think, before a woman can sit down to write a book without finding a phantom to be slain, a rock to be dashed against. And if this is so in literature, the freest of all professions for women, how is it in the new professions which you are now for the first time entering?

Here's a story: There was a documentary filmmaker who was making a documentary film about education in America. And he's shooting across this classroom with lots of people, kids, who are completely distracted at the television in the back of the classroom. When they get back to the editing room, they realize that on the television, you can barely make out the show for two seconds; it's 'The Simpsons,' Homer Simpson on the screen. So they call up Matt Groening, who was a friend of the documentary filmmaker, and say, you know, Is this going to be a problem? It's only a couple seconds. Matt says, No, no, no, it's not going to be a problem, call so and so. So they called so and so, and so and so said call so and so. Eventually, the so and so turns out to be the lawyers, so when they got to the lawyers, they said, Is this going to be a problem? It's a documentary film. It's about education. It's a couple seconds. The so and so said 25,000 bucks. 25,000 bucks?! It's a couple seconds! What do you mean 25,000 bucks? The so and so said, I don't give a goddamn what it is for. $25,000 bucks or change your movie. Now you look at this and you say this is insane. It's insane. And if it is only Hollywood that has to deal with this, OK, that's fine. Let them be insane. The problem is their insane rules are now being applied to the whole world. This insanity of control is expanding as everything you do touches copyrights.