Characteristics Quotes - Page 20

[on what characteristics Nobel prize winning physicists had in common] I cannot think of a single one, not even intelligence.

Enrico Fermi

Winning, Thinking, Common

Physics Today, October 1994.

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The most important thing in life is style. That is, the style of ones existence-the characteristic mode of ones actions-is basically, ultimately what matters. For if man defines himself by doing, then style is doubly definitive, because style describes the doing.

Tom Robbins

Men, Things In Life, What Matters

Tom Robbins (2003). “Another Roadside Attraction”, p.13, Bantam

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The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.

Kenneth Burke

Attitude, Men, Political

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Their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese.

Henry L. Stimson

Citizens

Henry L. Stimson's diary statement on the WWII Internment of Japanese Americans, February 10, 1942.

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The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust — not only for all the gifts that I receive from God, but gratitude for all the suffering. Because in that purifying experience, suffering has often been the shortest path to intimacy with God.

Brennan Manning

Thanksgiving, Spiritual, Gratitude

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Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.

Amartya Sen

People, Enough, Starvation

Amartya Sen (1981). “Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation”, p.1, Oxford University Press

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In Red Flags, Juris Jurjevics has brilliantly accomplished a feat that is becoming a major characteristic of 21st century literature: the seamless combining of a genre form with the deep resonance of literary art. This book is thrilling to read for both its narrative drive and its insight into the human heart.

Robert Olen Butler

Art, Book, Red Flags

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Of whatever class or nation, however, all successful participants in the repetitive and unrelenting stress of aerial fighting came eventually to display its characteristic physiognomy: skeletal hands, sharpened noses, tight-drawn cheek bones, the bared teeth of a rictus smile and the fixed, narrowed gaze of men in a state of controlled fear.

John Keegan

Stress, Fighting, Successful

John Keegan (1999). “The First World War”, Knopf

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For it is characteristic of true simplicity that there may radiate from its utmost directness a good many glinting things.

Christopher Ricks

Simplicity, Good Man, May

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In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.

Jane Goodall

Kindness, Thinking, Rights

"The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity". Book by Paola Cavalieri, Peter Singer, 1996.

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Certain characteristics of the subject are clear. To begin with, we do not in this subject deal with particular things or particular properties: we deal formally with what can be said about any thing or any property. We are prepared to say that one and one are two, but not that Socrates and Plato are two.

Bertrand Russell

Plato, Two, Preparation

Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.150, Routledge

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Trust is probably the intangible, and cultivated of all characteristic.

Timothy Mason

Trust, Intangible

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Mephistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means, and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine.

Joseph Campbell

Inspirational, Mean, Men

Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.24, Anchor

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The devils of past religions have always, at least in part, had animal characteristics, evidence of man's constant need to deny that he too is an animal, for to do so would serve a mighty blow to his impoverished ego.

Anton Szandor LaVey

Animal, Blow, Past

"The Satanic Bible". Book by Anton Szandor LaVey, 1969.

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Brisk and prompt to war, soft and not in the least able to resist calamity, fickle in catching at schemes, and always striving after novelties - French characteristics remained unaltered twenty centuries after Julius Caesar made a note of them for all time.

Frederick Rolfe

War, Twenties, Fickle

"Hadrian the Seventh" by Frederick Rolfe, Penguin Modern Classics edition, Harmondsworth, (p. 58), 1963.

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No one can do inspired work without genuine interest in his subject and understanding of its characteristics.

Andreas Feininger

Photography, Understanding, Photographer

Andreas Feininger (1952). “Advanced photography: methods and conclusions”

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As a general rule, man strives to avoid labor. Love for work is not at all an inborn characteristic: it is created by economic pressure and social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy animal. It is on this quality, in reality, that is founded to a considerable extent all human progress; because if man did not strive to expend his energy economically, did not seek to receive the largest possible quantity of products in return for a small quantity of energy, there would have been no technical development or social culture.

Leon Trotsky

Animal, Reality, Men

"Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism): a reply to Karl Kantsky".

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Science fiction is the characteristic literary genre of the century. It is the genre that stands in opposition to literary modernism.

David G. Hartwell

Literary Genre, Fiction, Century

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Manchester has everything but good looks..., the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery.

A. J. P. Taylor

Vices, Looks, England

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Man's respect for knowledge is one of his most peculiar characteristics. Knowledge in Latin is scientia, and science came to be the name of the most respectable kind of knowledge.

Imre Lakatos

Latin, Men, Names

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Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human environments...Permaculture uses the inherent qualities of plants and animals combined with the natural characteristics of landscapes and structures to produce a life supporting system for city and country, using the smallest practical area.

Bill Mollison

Country, Animal, Cities

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The hope for the twentieth century rests on recognition that war and depression are man-made, and needless. They can be avoided in the future by turning from the nineteenth-century characteristics just mentioned (materialism, selfishness, false values, hypocrisy, and secret vices) and going back to other characteristics that our Western Society has always regarded as virtues: generosity, compassion, cooperation, rationality, and foresight, and finding a increased role in human life for love, spirituality, charity, and self discipline.

Carroll Quigley

War, Compassion, Men

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If I had to name the single characteristic shared by all truly successful individuals, I’d say it’s the ability to create and nurture a network of contacts.

Harvey Mackay

Successful, Names, Individual

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Animals engage in a struggle for existence; for resources, to avoid being eaten and to breed. Environmental factors influence organisms to develop new characteristics to ensure survival, thus transforming into new species. Animals that survive to breed can pass on their successful characteristics to offspring.

Al-Jahiz

Struggle, Successful, Animal

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It’s one of the characteristics of a leader that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he’s leading to realize whatever he’s dreaming. Imagine if Martin Luther King had said, ‘I have a dream. Of course, I’m not sure they’ll be up to it.

Benjamin Zander

Dream, Kings, People

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