A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.
Joan Didion

A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.
Richard Dawkins

Aching all over, we reached level ground again, and Mr. Christy withdrew his claims, and agreed that no road anywhere else could possibly be so bad as a Mexican road; a decision which later experiences only served to confirm.
Edward Burnett Tylor

All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves.
Emma Goldman

An organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community - as SNCC does - must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice heard. This is the significance of black power beyond the slogan.
Stokely Carmichael

Anybody who claims to read the entire paper every day is either the world's fastest reader or the world's biggest liar.
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger

Anyone who claims to be good at lying is obviously bad at lying. Thus - as a writer myself - I cannot comment on whether or not writers are exceptionally good liars, because whatever I said would actually mean its complete opposite.
Chuck Klosterman

Anyone who claims to have an entirely clear conscience is almost certainly a bore.
Bernard Cornwell

As soon as one nation claims the right to take preventive action, other countries will naturally do the same. If we go down that road, where are we going?
Jacques Chirac

Before anything else, we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and reason.
Friedrich Durrenmatt

Claims of right and insistence upon obligations may depend upon treaty stipulations, or upon the rules of international law, or upon the sense of natural justice applied to the circumstances of a particular case, or upon disputed facts.
Elihu Root

Cruel persecutions and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims.
Morris Raphael Cohen

Despite claims by some to the contrary, we have heard numerous times in hearings and briefings by experts that existing technologies do not fully or effectively detect nuclear material.
John Linder

Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.
William Wells Brown

Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.
Thomas Szasz

Dull would be the man who should merely tolerate this plan of social industry. Weak would be the position of him who should take an apologetic tone in defending it, or present its claims in a merely negative way, by exposing the evils and perils of the socialistic plan.
John Bates Clark

Duty is for Kant the One and All. Out of the duty of gratitude, he claims, one has to defend and esteem the ancients; and only out of duty has he become a great man.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Elizabeth, Lady C, claims to be writing at the limits of language. Would it not be insulting to her if I were diligently to follow after her, explaining what she means but is not smart enough to say?
J. M. Coetzee

First our pleasures die - and then our hopes, and then our fears - and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust - and we die too.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.
Albert Camus