Constraints Quotes - Page 3

• Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.

  Michelangelo

  Art, Challenges, Dies

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• The most basic inherent constraint is that neither time nor wisdom are free goods available in unlimited quantity. This means that in social processes, as in economic processes, it is not only impossible to attain perfection but irrational to seek perfection- or even to seek the best possible result in each separate instance.

  Thomas Sowell

  Mean, Perfection, Impossible

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• The underlying reason for convergence seems to be that all organisms are under constant scrutiny of natural selection and are also subject to the constraints of the physical and chemical factors that severely limit the action of all inhabitants of the biosphere. Put simply, convergence shows that in a real world not all things are possible.

  Simon Conway Morris

  Real, World, Limits

  "The Crucible of Creation". Book by Simon Conway Morris, 1998.

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• The great artist is one whom constraint exalts, for whom the obstacle is a springboard.

  Andre Gide

  Artist, Greatness, Obstacles

  Andre Gide (2017). “Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality”, p.54, Routledge

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• The way that I sort of direct the writers is, let's do the best story we can. Let's not worry about production issues. 'How much will that cost? How are we going to shoot that?' Let's not set up those constraints on the writing. I don't think it helps the project to work like that.

  Jose Padilha

  Writing, Thinking, Issues

  "Jose Padilha Talks Robocop Remake". Interview with Scott Collura, Max Nicholson, www.ign.com. November 7, 2011.

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• You spend most of your time as a director trying to move forward with the movie. It happens on a daily basis, if not more than once a day, that you are struggling with budgetary constraints. Whereas when you're writing, the limitation that you have is your imagination. So it's decidedly non-pragmatic.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Struggle, Moving, Writing

  "RT Interview: Charlie Kaufman On Synecdoche, New York". Interview with Tim Ryan, editorial.rottentomatoes.com. October 22, 2008.

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• The church doctrines of obedience to authority, repentance, fear of punishment, self-abnegation, acceptance of outer direction rather than inner assurance, elevation of faith over reason, and intolerance make institutionalized religion an ideal instrument of social constraint.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Acceptance, Punishment, Self

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair (1974). “Freedom Under Siege: The Impact of Organized Religion on Your Liberty and Your Pocketbook”, Tarcher

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• The Obama administration already claims the power to wage endless and boundless war, in virtually total secrecy, and without a single meaningful check or constraint. No institution with any power disputes this. To the contrary, the only ones which exert real influence - Congress, the courts, the establishment media, the plutocratic class - clearly favor its continuation and only think about how further to enable it.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Meaningful, Real, War

  "Washington gets explicit: its 'war on terror' is permanent". www.theguardian.com. May 17, 2013.

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• Schneider's characters, like Kundera's, are sentient and sophisticated figures at a time when the constraints of Communist rule persist but its energy has entirely vanished.

  Richard Eder

  Character, Energy, Sophisticated

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• Let us be done with the notion that religion is confined to petty pieties and small constraints. All too often people who have possessed these pieties have wrought great evil.

  A. Powell Davies

  People, Evil, Religion

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• If you remove the fear of criminal punishment for the nation's political and financial elites - as we have done - what possible constraint on their behavior does anyone think will remain?

  Glenn Greenwald

  Thinking, Punishment, Political

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• There are some serious limitations in Mo Yan's situation as a writer in China today - just as there are for Jia Zhangke, one of the world's greatest film directors. He can only phrase his dissent obliquely, in his art. Writers in "free" societies labor under no such constraints. They can write more or less whatever they want in both their fiction and their commentary. Yet so many of them look oddly inhibited, even timid, and depressingly a couple of prominent figures actually positioned themselves to the right of their governments, intelligence agencies, and corporations.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Art, Couple, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Do you know what causes low voter turnout in America? It's the result of having the fate of our nation at stake. This began with the bitter presidential election of 1828, which pitted the education, cultivation, and puritan constraint of John Quincy Adams against the yahoo populism of Andrew Jackson, thereby deciding permanently whether America would become a shining city upon a hill or an overlighted strip mall along a highway.

  Ozzy Osbourne

  Fate, Cities, America

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• My view is rather than just rage at your impotence you find the best way of achieving as much as you can within whatever constraints there are. It's not the world I would have created but you do what you can within it.

  Ken Livingstone

  Views, World, Way

  "Ken Livingstone Interviewed: Boris, The Other Boris, Music, Politics & London". Interview with Luke Turner, thequietus.com. September 23, 2010.

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• Freedom is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us.

  Timothy Keller

  Fit, Absence, Findings

  Timothy Keller (2008). “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism”, p.64, Penguin

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• For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors.

  Andrew Bacevich

  Pursuit Of Happiness, Essence, Liberty

  "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project)". Book by Andrew Bacevich, 2008.

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• There is nothing of evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil; to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Death, Evil, Know How

  Michel de Montaigne “Annotated Essays of Michel de Montaigne with English Grammar Exercises: by Michel de Montaigne (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, Powell Publications, LLC

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• Innovation is born from the interaction between constraint and vision.

  Marissa Mayer

  Innovation, Vision, Born

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• A complete theory of evolution must acknowledge a balance between "external" forces of environment imposing selection for local adaptation and "internal" forces representing constraints of inheritance and development. Vavilov placed too much emphasis on internal constraints and downgraded the power of selection. But Western Darwinians have erred equally in practically ignoring (while acknowledging in theory) the limits placed on selection by structure and development what Vavilov and the older biologists would have called "laws of form.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Law, Theory Of Evolution, Balance

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.144, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Juggling a career and a family is a challenge for anyone, and even more so (in general) for women. Probably the most important advice to any woman interested in a career is to pick your life partner with care. Having a supportive partner is key to trying to manage the constraints of these two demanding roles.

  Daphne Koller

  Careers, Two, Keys

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• It is not the multitude of hard duties, it is not the constraint and contention that advance us in our Christian course. On the contrary, it is the yielding of our wills without restriction and without choice to tread cheerfully every day in the path in which Providence leads us. It is to seek nothing, to be discouraged by nothing, to see our duty in the present moment, and to trust all else without reserve to the will and power of God.

  Francois Fenelon

  Christian, Choices, Path

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• Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirth-fulness. If you would know aught, be gay before it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wisdom, Gay, Mirth

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.15, Courier Corporation

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• Even a woman who has the soul of a pirate, at least pirate morals, even a woman who prefer loneliness to the bickerings and constraints of heterosexual marriage, even such a woman who is a freak in our society needs a home... The only characteristic freaks share is our knowledge that we don't fit in.

  Kathy Acker

  Home, Pirate, Soul

  "Don Quixote: A Novel". Book by Kathy Acker, 1986.

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• Neither nature, experience, nor probability informs these lists of 'entitlements', which are subject to no constraints except those of the mind and appetite of their authors.

  Jeane Kirkpatrick

  Mind, Lists, Entitlement

  Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (1982). “Human Rights and American Foreign Policy: Essays”

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• As far as the game of marbles is concerned, there is therefore no contradiction between the egocentric practice of games and the mystical respect entertained for rules. This respect is the mark of a mentality fashioned, not by free cooperation between equals, but by adult constraint.

  Jean Piaget

  Practice, Games, Adults

  Jean Piaget (1997). “The Moral Judgement of the Child”, p.62, Simon and Schuster

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