Command Quotes - Page 37

• Hail, high Excess especially in wine,
  To thee in worship do I bend the knee
  Who preach abstemiousness unto me
  My skull thy pulpit, as my paunch thy shrine.
  Precept on precept, aye, and line on line,
  Could ne'er persuade so sweetly to agree
  With reason as thy touch, exact and free,
  Upon my forehead and along my spine.
  At thy command eschewing pleasure's cup,
  With the hot grape I warm no more my wit;
  When on thy stool of penitence I sit
  I'm quite converted, for I can't get up.
  Ungrateful he who afterward would falter
  To make new sacrifices at thine altar!

  Ambrose Bierce

  Wine, Sacrifice, Skulls

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2393, Delphi Classics

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• Form the habit of making decisions when your spirit is fresh...to let dark moods lead is like choosing cowards to command armies.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Dark, Army, Decision

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• Economic policies command bipartisan support only when they're incoherent.

  Steven Landsburg

  Support, Democracy, Economic

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• However, the fact that an economist offers a theoretical analysis does not and should not automatically command respect. What is needed is some assurance that the analysis is actually relevant.

  Paul Krugman

  Doe, Analysis, Facts

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• Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.

  Harold Bloom

  Art, Reading, Sublime

  Harold Bloom (2014). “The Western Canon”, p.31, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But at the end of the day, when the military command looks up, it sees us — the minister of defense and the prime minister. When we look up, we see nothing but the sky above us.

  Ehud Barak

  Military, Sky, The End Of The Day

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• Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.

  Aldo Leopold

  Land, Atoms, Tasks

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.548, Library of America

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• It has not fallen to your lot to command great armies. You had to create them, organize them and inspire them.

  Winston Churchill

  Military, Army, Inspire

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• Of the best rulers, The people only know that they exist; the next best they love and praise the next they fear; and the next they revile. When they do not command the people's faith, some will lose faith in them, and then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, the people all remark, We have done it ourselves.

  Laozi

  People, Tasks, Done

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• That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

  Pittacus of Mytilene

  Wicked, Goodness, States

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• Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.

  Norman Cousins

  Men, Meaning Of Life, May

  Norman Cousins (2016). “Dr. Schweitzer Of Lambaréné”, p.209, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• The applause of list'ning senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes.

  Thomas Gray

  Pain, Eye, Land

  Thomas Gray, John Mitford (1816). “The poems, with critical notes; a life of the author; and an essay on his poetry; by the Rev. John Mitford”, p.116

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• But lest some unlucky event should happen unfavorable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.

  George Washington

  Thinking, Gentleman, Events

  George Washington (1852). “The life of General Washington: first president of the United States”, p.121

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• Money was made, not to command our will, But all our lawful pleasures to fulfill. Shame and woe to us, if we our wealth obey; The horse doth with the horseman away.

  Dorothy Parker

  Horse, Woe, Wealth

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• I am not a capitalist soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of the plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight from the ruling class, but I will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.

  Eugene V. Debs

  War, Heart, Fighting

  "In What War Shall I Take Up Arms and Fight?" by Eugene V. Debs, www.marxists.org. September 1915.

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• Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward.

  Finley Peter Dunne

  Running, Comfort, Doe

  "On Newspaper Publicity" (1902)

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• Although only breath, words which I command are immortal.

  Sappho

  Immortal, Breaths

  Sappho, Mary Barnard (1958). “Sappho”, p.116, Univ of California Press

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• Nations and empires flourish and decay, By turns command, and in their turns obey.

  Ovid

  Decay, Empires, Turns

  Ovid, Banier (M. l'abbé, Antoine), Bernard Picart (1717). “Ovid's Metamorphoses: In Latin and English, Translated by the Most Eminent Hands. With Historical Explications of the Fables, Written in French by the Abbot Banier, ... Translated Into English. Adorned with Sculptures by B. Picart, and Other Able Masters”, p.529

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• Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Passion, Sacrifice, Self

  "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives". Book by Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1997.

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• Law is vulnerable to the winds of intellectual or moral fashion, which it then validates as the commands of our most basic concept

  Robert Bork

  Fashion, Wind, Law

  Robert H. Bork (1984). “Tradition and Morality in Constitutional Law”, Aei Press

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• Many companies operate from more of a command-and-control environment - they decide what's going to happen at headquarters and have the organization execute. That doesn't work here because it's the community of users who really have control.
  
  So we enable, not direct. We think of our customers as people, not wallets. And that has implications for how we run the company. We partner with our customers and let them take the company where they think it's best utilized.

  Meg Whitman

  Running, Thinking, Command And Control

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• Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines - not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.

  Robertson Davies

  Lying, Book, Reality

  "Tempest-Tost". Book by Robertson Davies, Part 6, 1951.

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• And nobler is a limited command, Given by the love of all your native land, Than a successive title, long and dark, Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's Ark.

  John Dryden

  Country, Dark, Land

  John Dryden, Paul Hammond, David Hopkins (2007). “Dryden: Selected Poems”, p.181, Pearson Education

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• The commands of God are all designed to make us more happy than we can possibly be without them.

  Thomas F. Wilson

  Christian, Christian Inspirational

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• I'm honored to be the first woman to have the opportunity to command the shuttle. I don't really think about that on a day-to-day basis because I really don't need to.

  Eileen Collins

  Thinking, Opportunity, Space

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