Claims Quotes - Page 27

• I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might rightly advance in any direction. I have not even any defense to offer for standing on this platform, holding on to this strap, letting myself be carried along by this tram, nor for the people who give way to the tram or walk quietly along or stand gazing into shop windows. Nobody asks me to put up a defense, indeed, but that is irrelevant.

  Franz Kafka

  People, Giving, Defense

  Franz Kafka (2009). “The Metamorphosis: And Other Stories”, p.35, Schocken

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• Once a book falls into our possession, it is ours, the same way children lay their claim: 'That's my book.' As if it were organically part of them. That must be why we have so much trouble returning borrowed books. It's not exactly theft (of course not, we're not thieves, what are you implying?); it's simply a slippage in ownership or, better still, a transfer of substance. That which belonged to someone else becomes mine when I look at it. And if I like what I read, naturally I'll have difficulty giving it back.

  Daniel Pennac

  Children, Book, Fall

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• People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.

  Gregory Maguire

  Fake People, Evil, Way

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• WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.

  Julian Barnes

  Genius, Syphilis, Century

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• For with my intuition I knew that this man was repeating a pattern over and over again: courting a woman with his intelligence and sympathy, claiming her emotionally; then, when she began to claim in return, running away. And the better a woman was, the sooner he would begin to run. I knew this with my intuition, and yet I sat there in my dark room, looking at the hazed wet brilliance of the purple London night sky, longing with my whole being.

  Doris Lessing

  Running, Dark, Night

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• Was everyone else really as alive as she was?...If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was.

  Ian Mcewan

  Life, Unique, Thinking

  Ian McEwan (2010). “Atonement”, p.36, Random House

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• Nobody can claim the name of Pedro, nobody is Rosa or María, all of us are dust or sand, all of us are rain under rain. They have spoken to me of Venezuelas, of Chiles and Paraguays; I have no idea what they are saying. I know only the skin of the earth and I know it has no name.

  Pablo Neruda

  Rain, Dust, Names

  Milton Rogovin, Pablo Neruda, Dennis Maloney, Robert Bly (1985). “Windows that open inward: images of Chile”, White Pine Pr

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• The very nature of the quantum theory ... forces us to regard the space-time coordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealization of observation and description, respectively.

  Niels Bohr

  Space, Unions, Causality

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• I am frankly sick and tired of the political preachers telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?

  Barry Goldwater

  Believe, Tired, Thinking

  "Excerpts From Goldwater Remarks". Remarks in the Congressional Record, www.nytimes.com. September 15, 1981.

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• On any given day, something claims our attention. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days then go back to wherever they came from... to darkness. We've got all these wells dug in our hearts. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth.

  Haruki Murakami

  Children, Heart, Two

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• In a time in which Communist regimes have been rightfully discredited and yet alternatives to neoliberal capitalist societies are unwisely dismissed, I defend the fundamental claim of Marxist theory: there must be countervailing forces that defend people's needs against the brutality of profit driven capitalism.

  Cornel West

  People, Brutality, Needs

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• I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Book, Son, Poetry

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• It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.

  Abraham Lincoln

  God, Patriotic, Divorce

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.373, Wildside Press LLC

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• Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

  Karl Popper

  Names, Tolerance, Should

  "The Open Society and Its Enemies". Book by Karl Popper, Volume 1. Notes to Chapter 7, Note 4, 1945.

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• For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

  Khalil Gibran

  Inspirational, Death, Spiritual

  Khalil Gibran (2014). “The Prophet - Der Prophet”, p.128, Lulu.com

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• If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.

  Dalai Lama

  Inspirational, Buddhism, Religion

  "The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality". Book by 14th Dalai Lama, 2005.

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• The road to the promised land runs past Sinai. The moral law may exist to be transcended: but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims up on them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim, and fairly and squarely faced the fact of their failure.

  C. S. Lewis

  Running, Past, Law

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• I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.

  Neil Gaiman

  Lying, Believe, Littles

  "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, (Ch. 13), 2001.

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• Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us.

  Matthew Scully

  Kindness, Character, Animal

  Matthew Scully (2011). “Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy”, p.14, Souvenir Press

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• I don't care what is written," Meyer Landsman says. "I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag.

  Michael Chabon

  Son, Cutting, Ideas

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• Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Loneliness, Vision, Faces

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.66, Macmillan

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• True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.

  Pope John Paul II

  Peace, Attitude, Names

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• To claim that theft or adultery or lying are "evil" simply reflects our degraded idea of good-—that it has something to do with respect for property, respectability, and sincerity.

  Simone Weil

  Lying, Ideas, Evil

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• If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it.

  Anton Chekhov

  Use, Ifs

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• That thou remember them, some claim as debt; I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

  John Donne

  Thinking, Debt, Remember

  John Donne, John Carey (2000). “John Donne: The Major Works”, p.175, Oxford University Press, USA

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