Rather Quotes

The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

I would prefer to have a more appealing job. If I could still change careers, I would prefer it. This unfortunate art is made for long beards and ugly faces rather than for a relatively well-endowed woman.

I've been on stage since I was 7. That's where I'd rather be than anywhere else. Just because you can do a bunch of things doesn't mean you are a bunch of things. I can act. I can sing. But I am a dancer.

Bill Clinton strikes me as the kind of guy who goes wherever the polls lead him, rather than leading the polls.

This flattery has been rather slow in coming. I think all of sudden late in life now I'm getting some credit for what I've done. Which is gratifying, but it's kind of a little late.

I'd much rather turn down a starring role in a bad picture and do a small role in a very good picture.

Rather than doing the kind of fact-checking that normally goes with a story, you ran with certain stories for not wanting to get beat. There's a pressure that exists in your profession. I would be surprised in any honest exchange that you say that doesn't exist.

There are people who would rather choke than go see my movies. They write me letters all the time.

We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

The secret of happiness is the determination to be happy always, rather than wait for outer circumstances to make one happy.

There has certainly been criticism of the timing involved in getting help to the victims of the storm, and much of it may indeed be warranted. However, this is not the time for pointing fingers; rather, it is the time for offering a helping hand to our neighbors in need.

If I didn't believe in what I'm doing, I'd rather go to work in a dime store.

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.

To say something nice about yourself, this is the hardest thing in the world for people to do. They'd rather take their clothes off.

I really haven't had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I'd rather tell a story about somebody else.

Men are recognizing that they have been forced to conform to a very narrow and rather two-dimensional picture of maleness and manhood that they have never had the freedom to question.

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.

I had the privilege of practicing medicine in the early '60s, before we had any government. It worked rather well, and there was nobody on the street suffering with no medical care.

Rather than lose the public because television is here, wouldn't it be smart to adopt television as our instrument?

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.

Frequently you have a clash between the more sterile letter of the law and the justice that underlies it, and I think one of the things I've been trying more or less, where it was possible, is to go with the justice rather than the letter of the law.

I would rather be a security guard than a rock star.

Before the commercial ventures, Linux tended to be rather hard to set up, because most of the developers were motivated mainly by their own interests.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

The most significant piece of advice my father gave me early on about acting was, don't get caught acting. Really believe in what you're doing and then commit to it. Even if it feels uncomfortable, even if you feel that you're gonna look like an ass. It's all acting, but find the truth in a moment as opposed to just pretending you have and rather than trying to act your way out of it.

I should like to repeat what I stated recently in the Jeddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia: It won't be the religion, but rather the world-view of some of its followers that shall be made current.

I view my role now as providing more of a macro-level skepticism, rather than saying this poll is good or this poll is evil.

Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.