Becoming Quotes - Page 32

• The only value of ideology is to stop things becoming showbiz.

  Brian Eno

  Ideology, Showbiz, Values

  "A Year With Swollen Appendices". Book by Brian Eno, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• PERSONALITY TITHE: A price paid for becoming a couple; previously amusing human beings become boring: 'Thanks for inviting us, but Noreen and I are going to look at flatware catalogs tonight. Afterward we're going to watch the shopping channel.

  Douglas Coupland

  Couple, Shopping, Personality

  1991 Generation X,'M T V Not Bullets'.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nowadays, to say that we are clever animals is not to say something philosophical and pessimistic but something political and hopeful - namely, if we can work together, we can make ourselves into whatever we are clever and courageous enough to imagine ourselves becoming. This is to set aside Kant's question "What is man?" and to substitute the question "What sort of world can we prepare for our great grandchildren?

  Richard Rorty

  Clever, Philosophical, Animal

  Richard Rorty (1998). “Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers”, p.175, Cambridge University Press

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• I must confess that I and a few others are burdened with heavy responsibilities regarding the future of criticism. I am certainly, if not the inventor, then at least one of the first systematizers of an absurd critical practice that, as soon as it had peeked its beak out of the nest, flapping its new wet wings, took flight in the minds of the young, becoming a wild ox and sowing avant-garde literature with the mighty tomes of what might as well be called the abstract bear.

  Louis Aragon

  Responsibility, Practice, Wings

  4 Copy quote

• One simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.

  J. William Fulbright

  Trying, Barbarians, Damage

  "The arrogance of power". Book by J. William Fulbright, 1966.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It frequently happens that an element of the standard of living which set out with being primarily wasteful, ends with becoming, in the apprehension of the consumer, a necessary of life.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Elements, Ends, Standards

  Thorstein Veblen (1993). “A Veblen Treasury: From Leisure Class to War, Peace, and Capitalism”, p.55, M.E. Sharpe

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The intellectual ... may live for ideas, as I have said, but something must prevent him from living for one idea, from becoming obsessive or grotesque. Although there have been zealots whom we may still regard as intellectuals, zealotry is a defect of the breed and not of the essence.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Essence, Ideas, Intellectual

  Richard Hofstadter (2012). “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”, p.29, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The constructive schizoid person stands against the spiritual emptiness of encroaching technology and does not let himself be emptied by it. He lives and works with the machine without becoming a machine. He finds it necessary to remain detached enough to get meaning from the experience, but in doing so, to protect his own inner life from impoverishment.

  Rollo May

  Spiritual, Technology, Doe

  Rollo May (1969). “Love and will”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• To be energetic and firm where principle demands it, and tolerant in all else, is not easy. It is not easy to abhor wickedness, and oppose it with every energy, and at the same time to have the meekness and gentleness of Christ, becoming all things to all men for the truth's sake. The energy of patience, the most godlike of all, is not easy.

  Mark Hopkins

  Men, Energy, Principles

  Mark Hopkins (1884). “Teachings and Counsels: Twenty Baccalaureate Sermons; with a Discourse on President Garfield”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a philosophical problem, it comes down to a better way to engage with the passage of time; and I think we're getting close to one, because the imaginative loss of the future is becoming acute.The most effective political actors on the planet now are people who want to blow themselves up.These are people who really don't want to get out of the bed in the morning and face another unpredictable day.

  Bruce Sterling

  Morning, Philosophical, Loss

  "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole". Talk at Long Now Foundation, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can get a much better fee - I tell you as auditors quite frankly - it's much easier to get a great deal of money out of somebody who's on a down spiral into becoming MEST than it is to get money out of somebody who is going on an up spiral toward becoming theta.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Auditors, Get Money, Easier

  Philadelphia Doctorate Course, No. 15, 1952.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The internationalization of art becomes a factor contributing to the estrangement of art from the artist. The sum of works of all times and places stands against him as an entity with objectives and values of its own. In turn, since becoming aware of the organized body of artworks as the obstacle to his own aesthetic self-affirmation, the artist is pushed toward anti-intellectualism and willful dismissal of the art of the past.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Past, Self

  Harold Rosenberg (1983). “Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations”, p.137, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most compelling confirmation of Marx's theory of history is late capitalist society. There is a sense in which this case is becoming truer as time passes.

  Terry Eagleton

  Confirmation, Theory, Cases

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Why Marx Was Right”, p.115, Yale University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• On a deeper level, if our sons are learning they are obscene, disgusting, and untrustworthy, is this the best preparation for fatherhood? And is it the best preparation for becoming a mother - to feel this way about her son?

  Warren Farrell

  Mother, Son, Preparation

  "Father and Child Reunion". Book by Warren Farrell, 2001.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The less a man is willing to give up a sex object, the more he'll be trapped into becoming a success object.

  Warren Farrell

  Sex, Giving Up, Men

  "Why Men Are the Way They Are". Book by Warren Farrell, 1986.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a sense, sexual harassment lawsuits are just the latest version of the female selection process allowing her to select for men who care enough for her to put their career at risk; who have enough finesse to initiate without becoming a jerk and enough guts to initiate despite a potential lawsuit. In the past, though, the process of his overcoming her barriers was called 'courtship.' Now it is called either 'courtship' or 'sexual harassment'.

  Warren Farrell

  Past, Men, Careers

  "The Myth of Male Power". Book by Warren Farrell, 1993.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• [The poll tax] was a classic case of a good idea being entrusted to Chris Patten and becoming a terrible failure.

  Norman Tebbit

  Ideas, Classic, Polls

  BBC, November 16, 2000.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• As the eye naturally seeks the light and vision, and our body naturally desires food and drink, so our mind is possessed with a becoming and natural desire to become acquainted with the truth of God and the causes of things.

  Origen

  Eye, Light, Mind

  Origen (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Origen (Annotated Edition)”, p.158, Jazzybee Verlag

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• The realization of New Africa can only be possible by the African cultivating spiritual balance, which leads to the practicalization of social regeneration, to realizing economic determination, becoming mentally emancipated, and ushering in a political resurgence.

  Nnamdi Azikiwe

  Spiritual, Determination, Political

  "A Life of Azikiwe". Book by K. A. B. Jones-Quartey, 1965.

  92 Copy quote

  Show source

• You know what they say about bold spacemen never becoming old spacemen.

  Poul Anderson

  Knows

  "Garden in the Void" by Poul Anderson, 1952.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even those who have desired to work out a completely positive philosophy have been philosophers only to the extent that, at the same time, they have refused the right to install themselves in absolute knowledge. They taught not this knowledge, but its becoming in us, not the absolute but, at most, our absolute relation to it, as Kierkegaard said. What makes a philosopher is the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance, from ignorance to knowledge, and a kind of rest in this movement.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Philosophy, Ignorance, Work Out

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1988). “In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays”, p.5, Northwestern University Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• The hermeneutic consciousness, which must be awakened and kept awake, recognized that in the age of science philosophy's claim of superiority has something chimerical and unreal about it. But though the will of man is more than ever intensifying its criticism of what has gone before to the point of becoming utopian or eschatological consciousness, the hermeneutic consciousness seeks to confront that will with something of the truth of remembrance: with what is still and ever again real.

  Hans-Georg Gadamer

  Philosophy, Real, Men

  Hans-Georg Gadamer (2013). “Truth and Method”, p.35, A&C Black

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• I swear to God, I will see [the Palestinian state], whether as a martyr or alive. Please, God, give me the honor of becoming a martyr in the fight for Jerusalem.

  Yasser Arafat

  Fighting, Swear To God, Giving

  OneJerusalem.org, January 21, 2002.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• No-knock police raids destroy Americans' right to privacy and safety. People's lives are being ruined or ended as a result of unsubstantiated assertions by anonymous government informants. ... Unfortunately, no-knock raids are becoming more common as federal, state, and local politicians and law enforcement agencies decide that the war on drugs justified nullifying the Fourth Amendment. ... No-knock raids in response to alleged narcotics violations presume that the government should have practically unlimited power to endanger some people's lives in order to control what others ingest.

  James Bovard

  War, Order, Should Have

  5 Copy quote

• In those moments where you're not quite sure if the undead are really dead, dead, don't get all stingy with your bullets. I mean, one more clean shot to the head, and this lady could have avoided becoming a human Happy Meal. Woulda... coulda... shoulda.

  Jesse Eisenberg

  Mean, Meals, Bullets

  43 Copy quote