Richard F. Thomas famous quotes

One of the powerful functions of a library-any library-lies in its ability to take us away from worlds that are familiar and comfortable and into ones which we can neither predict nor control, to lead us down new roads whose contours and vistas provide us with new perspectives.
-- Richard F. Thomas

#Powerful #Lying #Perspective

Some artists respond to critics' questions about their art. I think Bob Dylan would alwys refuse to respond to questions of that sort, he always has.
-- Richard F. Thomas

#Art #Thinking #Bob

The thing about Bob Dylan's performative essence is that he keeps singing these old songs as well as the new songs, and the old songs become new with new arrangements and new contexts as time goes by.
-- Richard F. Thomas

#Song #Essence #Singing

Bob Dylan tends not to have geographical or chronological markers that tie a song to any specific context, so they stay alive, stay relevant.
-- Richard F. Thomas

#Song #Ties #Alive

There are some singer-songwriters who start out as poets. So someone like Leonard Cohen wrote and published poetry in the early 60s, but then started writing songs. Bob Dylan's a poet in the sense of bard, aoidos or vates.
-- Richard F. Thomas

#Song #Writing #Bob

Bob Dylan truly is a poet whose song is part of the poetry.
-- Richard F. Thomas

#Song #Bob #Poet

Blues songs, like folk songs, are a continuous stream, and catching the continuities and thefts is part of what puts meaning and complexity into it - also part of the fun of it all.
-- Richard F. Thomas

#Song #Fun #Catching

Bob Dylan tells interviewers what he wants to tell them, not what they necessarily want to know. His responses are really part of the art, and often have a relationship to the songs that have just come out or are about to come out.
-- Richard F. Thomas

#Song #Art #Bob

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room - proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

In keeping people straight, principle is not as powerful as a policeman.

We need to move beyond the demonisation of overpaid traders ... In finance and economics, ill-designed policy is a more powerful force for harm than individual greed or error.

I walk up a dune to a beach and look out to sea, but it's 100km away. The ships lie askew in their dry beds, at anchor for ever. Today is my son's birthday. Thousands of miles from here, his healthy lungs are blowing out candles. I should be there but I'm here with another boy, who puts his face close to mine and laughs. I smile back but realise he can't see it, because I'm wearing an antiseptic muzzles to protect me from his breath.

Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's aware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over then there'll be time enough to sleep.

The Tarot embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind which lie all the implicits of the human mind, and it is in this sense that they contain secret doctrine, which is the realization by the few of truths embedded in the consciousness of all.

Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Point of view is worth 80 IQ points

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. We will not solve the problems of the world from the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. More than anything else, this new century demands new thinking: We must change our materially based analyses of the world around us to include broader, more multidimensional perspectives.