Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Scottish Authors - Page 17

I'm actually all for political correctness. If you want to work to change the usage of a word that's discriminatory then fine, I'm behind you. But that's a conversation that needs to be had in the culture. You can't just decide that commonly used parts of a language are evil and that the people who didn't get the memo must be bad people.

'Outlander' is based on a group of books; there's a slight fantasy element to it, but ours is authentic - we try to stick to historical accuracy as possible. Ours is about a small group of people and a core relationship rather than big armies.

If Everton were playing down the bottom of my garden, I'd draw the curtains.

I most certainly believe that it is the gift of God that I am what I am. And so I dwell amongst barbarians, a proselyte and an exile, for the love of God.

I'm very much a creative person, but you've got to do the follow-through. A lot of people start out with an exciting thing and they want to take over the world, but really the people who do take over the world have a good plan of how to get there and the steps along the way.

The proud, the cold untroubled heart of stone, that never mused on sorrow but its own.

I've done movies that I've been advised not to do. 'Dog Soldiers,' the movie I did 11 years ago now, I remember my agent at the time was like, 'You shouldn't do that. It's a weird film about werewolves,' and it became a cult hit.

To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

At the moment, my mother is the only one left in Glasgow, although it's certainly my home.

I find it quite boring when you're listening to radio, and it's the same kind of voice that's on every song on the radio. You can't really tell a lot about that singer as a storyteller and about the singer from what they're singing.

I'm still fighting for parts - it's not like I'm sitting with a big pile of scripts putting them in a 'yes' and 'no' pile.

With music, you often don't have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don't know why.

There are two seasons in Scotland: June and Winter.

All I can do is assess the value from Manchester United perspective. Whatever Chelsea do, they may have a different criteria, and different financial assets.

Where I lived in Glasgow looked like Dresden after the war. It was a bomb site. I don't think I'd ever played football on grass until I moved to Australia.

The Internet was appealing partly because it was something I could do in bed and feel like I was achieving something. I had an operation when I was 13 and ended up with complications, so I was in and out of the hospital. The bottom line is you can get through health challenges. It's part of why I was so driven.

I'm a homebody at heart, and I love to be around my dogs.

The only woman I have played in my career was my wife and I beat her easily! But she wasn't much good.

The person who comes up to you and makes the most noise and is the most intrusive is invariably the person in the room who has no respect for you at all, and it's really all about them.

I'm fascinated by sports, the buzz of winning, and the buzz of losing.

If I'm at home on my own and the writing isn't going well, I clean my house. And there have been times in the past few years when my house has looked really clean.

I went to squat with a bunch of friends - creative, intelligent, political people. We got involved in a community project funded by the Arts Council and we made this video. I sang a poem and somebody, I think it was Richard Coles, who was later my partner in the Communards, said I had a very strange sound and I should use it.

My father, a mining engineer and colliery manager, gave his brood many advantages not least of which, for me, was his love of singing which gave music a central place in our lives.

In my whole career, in fact, I can remember only two first nights when a show was at its peak on the first night. And I just wish we could devise a system where critics came not on a single evening but were given a choice of performances to attend.

A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.

People say, what is she thinking? I'm thinking: fun; cash; travel.

Whether anyone has ever changed their mind as a result of a celebrity endorsement of a candidate is a bit of a mystery.

The Confederate flag was the flag of the American South during the civil war. It was the flag of people who were fighting against their own government in an attempt to retain slavery. It was the flag of people who thought slavery was no problem, who thought slavery was a good thing.

Arty. To me the word's got as much venom associated with it as 'wacky'.

I sort of feel like my job is to be a conduit to opportunities, to maximize the creativity of the day itself - because that's when the cameras are running. That's the important thing to me. Some of these shots you need to think about in advance; you need to have some ideas for them.

The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn, and violets bathe in the wet o' the morn.

You cannot look back and think what if.

My dad insisted I got a trade. He had a plumbing business. So you are looking at a qualified heating engineer.

I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the edge of wondering whether tissues had been invented.

Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.

Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross.

Affectation is certain deformity; by forming themselves on fantastic models, the young begin with being ridiculous, and often end in being vicious.

When disco came around the first time, there was this real core of progressive thinking and a positive lyrical content - about freedom, the possibilities of love, change and expression.

A big budget studio film is slower, they've got so much to create around you. Everything is more complicated.

I wonder that among all the evils deprecated in the Liturgy, no one thought of inserting flitting. Is there any worse thing? Oh no, no!

Fame is a silly business. People who chase it are almost always going to be disappointed.

In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage terror may dictate to the individual.

In England, we'd leave school at 15 and go on to a college, and I went to further education in a town called Welling Garden City. I fully immersed myself in bohemia there, which included poetry and modern art, jazz, philosophy, social radicalism.

We have had more sales for this year's grand prix than any other, and we have been helped in that by the fact that Jenson had 10 podiums last season and looks like a winner. It is good for British motor racing if he is there and doing well.

No tribe unites with another of its own free will.

I have a crush on Steve Tyler. He's funny, he rocks, and has a voice like a god. There is another one who I have discovered can sing. I should try and make an album with him... it's Barack Obama!

A great man is the man who does something for the first time.

But with voice-over on a reality TV show, I think I'm pretty up there, maybe one of the best. It's a confidence boost, which helps my stand-up because I'll try more interesting stuff.

A woman can be physically fit enough to drive a Formula 1 car. I did the race distance in Barcelona so I have proved that it is possible.

Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.

When I was a vocalist, a lead singer in a rock band, I was a law student at the time. It wasn't a professional rock band, it was for fun. I was already way out of that by the time Phantom came along. Having to learn to sing, it was such duress, having to really try and get to such a quality.

There are many actors who'll make their living in other areas, and they'll say they don't like theatre. What they're saying is that they're afraid of theatre because they know it will separate those who can from those who can't.

When it comes to the southern states, I used to actually live in Louisiana for a year.

You create a blueprint of your best performance, and you're happiest the night you surpass that blueprint. That won't happen that often, but it will happen. It's like sculpting: you keep refining. When you have a piece that is yours, that is just you, that becomes obsessive; you think about it all the time.

When I was a young player, I would look at players and think, he does this well, and try and pick up good points from them, or he conducts himself well, I'll pick up on that.

Iron sharpens iron; scholar, the scholar.

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

The books are all very, very different so the publishers really had to be different too.

When you're working on a film, it's not always finished visually, what you're looking at.