Attempting Quotes - Page 17

• Attempting to understand consciousness with your mind, is like trying to illuminate the sun with a candle.

  Mooji

  Mind, Trying, Sun

  Mooji (2017). “White Fire: Spiritual Insights and Teachings of Advaita Zen Master Mooji”, p.37, New Harbinger Publications

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most people use their energy attempting to rearrange circumstances that trigger painful emotions. Changing external circumstances will not change your rigid patterns of emotional response. That requires looking at the patterns themselves.

  Gary Zukav

  Emotional, People, Use

  FaceBook post by Gary Zukav from Feb 11, 2015

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• To endeavor to work upon the vulgar with fine sense is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor.

  Alexander Pope

  Block, Vulgarity Is, Razors

  'Miscellanies' (1727) vol. 2 'Thoughts on Various Subjects'

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unfortunately, several companies are attempting to deceive consumers through the unauthorized use of my image or my name, and my attorneys are pursuing those making these false claims.

  Mehmet Oz

  Names, Use, Deceiving

  4 Copy quote

• I am not attempting to preserve culture, or record actual events or stories. Instead I bow my head in gratitude to those storytellers who have gone before and paved a way for me play in their stomping grounds. Doubtless those who want to be offended, will - allowing me to make them happy, too, which pleases me as much as it pleases them.

  Patricia Briggs

  Gratitude, Please Me, Play

  4 Copy quote

• Is the world ruled by strict laws or not? This question I regard as metaphysical. The laws we find are always hypotheses; which means that they may always be superseded, and that they may possibly be deduced from probability estimates. Yet denying causality would be the same as attempting to persuade the theorist to give up his search; and that such an attempt cannot be backed by anything like a proof.

  Karl Popper

  Giving Up, Mean, Science

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.244, Routledge

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.

  Edward Abbey

  Fear, Common Sense, Atheism

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.12, RosettaBooks

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• The U.S. Government hasn't maintained secrecy regarding UFOs. It's been leaking out all over the place. But the way it's been handled is by denial, by denying the truth of the documents that have leaked. By attempting to show them as fraudulent, as bogus of some sort. There has been a very large disinformation and misinformation effort around this whole area. And one must wonder, how better to hide something out in the open than just to say, 'It isn't there. You're deceiving yourself if you think this is true.' And yet, there it is right in front of you.

  Edgar Mitchell

  Thinking, Government, Effort

  35 Copy quote

• The more relaxed the muscles are, the more energy can flow through the body. Using muscular tensions to try to 'do' the punch or attempting to use brute force to knock someone over will only work to opposite effect.

  Bruce Lee

  Opposites, Trying, Energy

  42 Copy quote

• Congress is attempting to eviscerate women's health care. Like many women across America, I am outraged.

  Felicity Huffman

  America, Women's Health, Care

  "Don't threaten women's health care" By Felicity Huffman, www.cnn.com. February 29, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bertrand Russell said, 'Electricity is not a thing like St. Paul's Cathedral; it is a way in which things behave.' And it's not 'they' who say, but Walter Benjamin who said, 'Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness, with the base and the banal.' In September, 1940, Benjamin died under ambiguous circumstances in the French-Spanish border town of Portbou, while attempting to flee the Nazis.

  Mary Jo Bang

  Historical, Events, Borders

  4 Copy quote

• [Young] was afterwards accustomed to say, that at no period of his life was he particularly fond of repeating experiments, or even of very frequently attempting to originate new ones; considering that, however necessary to the advancement of science, they demanded a great sacrifice of time, and that when the fact was once established, that time was better employed in considering the purposes to which it might be applied, or the principles which it might tend to elucidate.

  Hudson Gurney

  Life, Sacrifice, Science

  7 Copy quote

• When the white man came to Africa, the white man had the Bible and the African had the land, but now it is the white man who is being, reluctantly and bloodily, separated from the land, and the African who is still attempting to digest or to vomit up the Bible.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, White Man, Land

  "Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James A. Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The men flyers have given out the impression that aeroplaning is very perilous work, something that an ordinary mortal should not dream of attempting. But when I saw how easily the man flyers manipulated their machines I said I could fly.

  Harriet Quimby

  Dream, Women, Saws

  26 Copy quote

• The peasants have seen the future - Greece and France - and concluded that it does not work. Hence their opposition to Obama's proudly transformational New Foundation agenda. Their logic is impeccable: Only the most blinkered intellectual could be attempting to introduce social democracy to America precisely when the world's foremost exemplar of that model - Europe - is in chaotic meltdown.

  Charles Krauthammer

  America, Europe, Political

  4 Copy quote

• Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner vision, beginning with one corner of the canvas, painting what she thinks should be there, not quite pulling it off, covering it over with white paint, and trying again, each time finding out what her painting isn't, until she finally finds out what it is. And when you finally do find out what one corner of your vision is; you're off and running.

  Anne Lamott

  Running, Thinking, White

  4 Copy quote

• The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed, is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood.

  Thomas Paine

  Principles, Revolution, Danger

  Thomas Paine (2012). “Rights of Man. Part the Second. Combining Principle and Practice”, p.5, Cambridge University Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is a precious possession which we cannot afford to tarnish, but society always is attempting to make the physician into a killer to kill the defective child at birth, to leave the sleeping pills beside the bed of the cancer patient ... It is the duty of society to protect the physicians from such requests.

  Margaret Mead

  Children, Cancer, Sleep

  10 Copy quote

• Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace of an armed Mohammedan world, which will shake off the domination of Europeans - still nominally Christian - and reappear as the prime enemy of our civilization? The future always comes as a surprise, but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment of what that surprise may be. And for my part I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Christian, Believe, Civilization

  Hilaire Belloc (2017). “The Great Heresies”, p.95, Ignatius Press

  77 Copy quote

  Show source

• Reason is not one tool of thought among many, it is the entire toolbox. To advocate that reason be discarded in some circumstances is to advocate that thinking be discarded - which leaves one in the position of attempting to do a job after throwing away the required instrument.

  George H. Smith

  Jobs, Thinking, Religion

  George H. Smith (2010). “Atheism: The Case Against God”, p.110, Prometheus Books

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him . . . He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

  Harry Frankfurt

  Honesty, Liars, Believe

  14 Copy quote

• The Community Relations Service would be another pro-civil rights Federal agency attempting to make people do what the policy of the Federal Government demanded that they do. Moreover, in title II of the bill, this Service is made an agent of the court without due thought as to the effect on legal and judicial procedures.

  John Sparkman

  Agency, Rights, Government

  4 Copy quote

• As I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Art, Mean, Giving

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.16, Convergent Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like the poem on the page and not at the podium. I like to address the poem in peace and quiet, not on the edge of a folding chair with a full bladder. I can't stand hearing a poem that I can't see. I did a reading at Wayne State, and it ended with the comedy such occasions deserve. I'd seated myself on a piano bench, and discovered upon attempting to arise at the end that the varnish had softened and I was stuck fast. The hinge was to the front, under my knees, so that as I tried to get up, I merely opened the lid.

  Ted Kooser

  Reading, Piano, Benches

  5 Copy quote

• This treaty [Kyoto] is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful...agreement would have very negative effects upon the technology of nations throughout the world, especially those that are currently attempting to lift from poverty and provide opportunities to the over 4 billion people in technologically underdeveloped countries.

  Frederick Seitz

  Country, Opportunity, Technology

  9 Copy quote