Constructs Quotes

• Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Life Changing, Slaughterhouse Five, Trying

  Harold Bloom, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (2009). “Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five”, p.19, Infobase Publishing

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• Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.

  Saint Augustine

  Humility, Thinking, Wish

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• Even by common wisdom, there seem to be both people and objects in my dream that are outside myself, but clearly they were created in myself and are part of me; they are mental constructs in my own brain.

  Ray Kurzweil

  Dream, People, Brain

  "Are We Spiritual Machines?". Live chat moderated by the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, www.kurzweilai.net. July 19, 2002.

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• Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.

  John Polkinghorne

  Character, Age, Doctrine

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• The narrative constructs the identity of the character, what can be called his or her narrative identity, in constructing that of the story told. It is the identity of the story that makes the identity of the character.

  Paul Ricoeur

  Character, Identity, Stories

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• I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a bit of a roller coaster ride...

  Mark Haddon

  People, Plot, Pages

  "The Curiously Irresistible Literary Debut of Mark Haddon". PowellsBooks Interview, www.powells.com. October 10, 2006.

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• The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.

  Andre Gide

  Bores You, Annoyed, Literature

  The journals, 1889-1949. Vol 2. (p. 20), 1956.

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• Depression is the inability to construct a future.

  Rollo May

  Sad, Depression, Depressing

  "Love and Will". Book by Rollo May, ch. 9, 1969.

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• The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.

  Milton Friedman

  Running, Government, Self

  "The Phil Donahue Show", www.youtube.com. 1979.

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• I think that cognitive scientists would support the view that our visual system does not directly represent what is out there in the world and that our brain constructs a lot of the imagery that we believe we are seeing.

  Galen Rowell

  Believe, Thinking, Artist

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• We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that's the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

  Paul Auster

  Reality, People, Personality

  1989 In the Sunday Times,16 Apr.

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• Character and emotionality don't always have to be relegated to quieter, more simple constructs.

  Kathryn Bigelow

  Character, Simple, Directors

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• Therapy, as opposed to analysis, is a whole construct of myth, beautiful and creative.

  Dennis Potter

  Beautiful, Creative, Analysis

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• I recognise that Socialism has ended its purely theoretical course, and that the hour to construct has come.

  John Burns

  Eugenics, Socialism, Hours

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• You can construct the character of a man and his age not only from what he does and says, but from what he fails to say and do.

  Norman Douglas

  Character, Men, Age

  Norman Douglas (1982). “South Wind”, p.337, Courier Corporation

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• A man with a talent does what is expected of him, makes his way, constructs, is an engineer, a composer, a builder of bridges. It's the natural order of things that he construct objects outside himself and his family. The woman who does so is aberrant. We have to expiate for this cursed talent someone handed out to us, by mistake, in the black mystery of genetics.

  May Sarton

  Mistake, Men, Order

  May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.96, Open Road Media

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• The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Mother, Mean, Son

  "Our Blood". Book by Andrea Dworkin, 1976.

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• It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.

  Philip Roth

  Ideas, History, Stories

  Philip Roth (1989). “The facts: a novelist's autobiography”, Vintage

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• Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being little. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation. Modest humility is beauty's crown.

  Saint Augustine

  Humility, Foundation, Fabric

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 330, 1895.

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• It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma... which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Doubt, May, Enigma

  "The Gold-Bug" (1843).

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• The human mind has first to construct forms, independently, before we can find them in things.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Math, Mind

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Essays in Science”, p.24, Open Road Media

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• There is no better way of elevating the novel than by making it into a construct which contains ideas.

  Heinrich Mann

  Ideas, Way, Novel

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• We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Country, Society, Trying

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• Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

  Simone Weil

  Art, Two, Effort

  Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.42, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• I see stardom very clearly as a construct that's been created in order to sell things.

  Julie Christie

  Order, Stardom, Sells

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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