A Quote by Andy Rooney

There's nothing people like better than being asked an easy question. For some reason, we're flattered when a stranger asks us where Maple Street is in our hometown and we can tell him.
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'
Who knows better than a peasant farmer the agricultural conditions in his country or region? It is not always necessary to send an FAO expert to tell him what crops to grow or what seeds to use. Give him the seeds he asks for, and he will do the rest. Don't tell him how to renovate his irrigation system: give him the necessary equipment and he will do the job far better than us.
On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.
He sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.
There's a reason nationalists build walls, denigrate foreigners, and denounce immigrants: Because our people are better than those people. There's a reason nationalism has so often become violent in the past. For if we - our nation - are better, then what right do others have to live beside us? Or to occupy land that we covet?
Lovers O lovers, lovers it is time to set out from the world. I hear a drum in my soul's ear coming from the depths of the stars. Our camel driver is at work; the caravan is being readied. He asks that we forgive him for the disturbance he has caused us, He asks why we travellers are asleep. Everywhere the murmur of departure; the stars, like candles thrust at us from behind blue veils, and as if to make the invisible plain, a wondrous people have come forth.
And when your minister asks you for money for missionary purposes, tell him there are higher, and holier, and nobler missions to be performed at home. When he asks for colleges to educate ministers, tell him you must educate woman, that she may do away with the necessity of ministers, so that they may be able to go to some useful employment.
I'll tell you who I really like - the lawyer Imran Khan. I did my dissertation on stop-and-search powers, and I put in loads of quotes from him. Years later, when I was selling insurance over in Harley Street, he rang up and asked for insurance. He told me his name, and I asked him if he was the lawyer, and he said yes.
Nothing sweeter than to drag oneself along behind events; and nothing more reasonable. But without a strong dose of madness, no initiative, no enterprise, no gesture. Reason: the rust of our vitality. It is the madman in us who forces us to adventure; once he abandons us, we are lost; everything depends on him, even our vegetative life; it is he who invites us, who obliges us to breathe, and it is also he who forces our blood to venture through our veins. Once he withdraws, we are alone indeed! We cannot be normal and alive at the same time.
The best definition of faith that I know is that it is reason grown courageous. Moreover, that is all that Christ ever asked us for, and the reason he asked us for that was because he wants to use us. He needs our help. It is almost impossible to believe it. But God Almighty wants our help, so Christ tells us.
Yet in truth the big question Camus asked was never the Anglo-American liberal one: How can we make the world a little bit better tomorrow? It was the grander French one: Why not kill yourself tonight? That the answers come to much the same thing in the end-easy does it; tomorrow may be a bit better than today; and, after all, you have to have a little faith in people-doesn't diminish the glamour that clings to the man who turned the question over and look at it, elegantly, upside down.
Everybody has asked the question . . . 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!
I think ultimately, people are selfish in that department [blues], in a good way - the reason we're attracted to art is because it somehow reflects us. And I think, ultimately, we're a tribal people by nature. We're not individualistic. We almost like to hear that there's other people in a worse state than us. Sometimes even more than we like hearing there are people in better states than us.
A friend of mine, a Hispanic entrepreneur asked me a question sometime ago, he said, 'When is the last time you saw a Hispanic panhandler?' I think it's a great question. I'll tell you, in my life I've never once have seen a Hispanic panhandler, because in our community, it would be viewed as shameful to be out on the street begging.
A very tall man once asked a question after my talk. Before beginning his question, he explained that the reason he was standing up is not to be intimidating but rather to make eye contact. His question was essentially "are we really interested in moral motives? Isn't it all about action?". I pointed out to him that it was not enough for him to do the right thing - stand up - but he also wanted me to know that he is doing it from the right motive or for the right reason - to make eye contact, rather than to be intimidating. Voila, moral psychology.
The Sikh gave him the money. When Menon asked for his address so that he could repay the man, the Sikh said that Menon owed the debt to any stranger who came to him in need, as long as he lived. The help came from a stranger and was to be repaid to a stranger.
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