Conventional Quotes - Page 5

• Sometimes God gives instructions that go against conventional wisdom, such as treating people kindly when they're hateful. Who really wants to do that? Instructions like that may not always make sense, so that's why I need to trust and obey the One who inspired them.

  George Foreman

  People, Giving, Needs

  George Foreman, Ken Abraham (2007). “God In My Corner: A Spiritual Memoir”, p.99, Thomas Nelson

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• The conventional parabola--sentiment, the touch of the hand, the kiss, the passionate kiss, the feel of the body, the climax in the bed, then more bed, then less bed, then the boredom, the tears and the final bitterness--was to him shameful and hypocritical.

  Ian Fleming

  Kissing, Hands, Boredom

  Ian Fleming (1953). “Casino Royale”

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• The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources.

  Carl Sagan

  Ideas, Lovely, Fundamentals

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 91, 1980.

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• You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.

  Henry James

  Wish, Looks, Mills

  Henry James (2015). “The Complete Novels of Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady + The Wings of the Dove + What Maisie Knew + The American + The Bostonian + The Ambassadors + Washington Square and more (Unabridged): Confidence + Roderick Hudson + The Awkward Age + The Europeans + The Golden Bowl + The Other House + The Outcry + The Princess Casamassima + The Reverberator + The Sacred Fount….”, p.2844, e-artnow

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• Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.

  Carl Sagan

  Challenges, Dogma, Sometimes

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.16, Ballantine Books

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• He was blessed with an unconventional mind, which overcame his conventional middle-class upbringing.

  Michael Lewis

  Blessed, Class, Mind

  Michael Lewis (2010). “Liar's Poker”, p.263, W. W. Norton & Company

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• [M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.

  C. S. Lewis

  Strong, Philosophy, Thinking

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• I have some problems with conventional organized religion.

  J. K. Rowling

  Problem, Organized, Organized Religion

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• How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

  Carl Sagan

  God, Science, Religion

  "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space". Book by Carl Sagan, 1994.

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• People only get married when they've no other option, out of panic or desperation or so as not to lose someone they couldn't bear to lose. It's always the most conventional things that contain the largest measure of madness.

  Javier Marías

  People, Panic, Bears

  "A Heart So White" by Javier Marías, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, New Directions, (p. 121), 2002.

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• Some entrepreneurs have a bad habit of taking personal credit for all improvements and innovations at their startups. If you penalize or ignore employee initiatives, you can be certain that they won't be repeated, and motivation for more conventional performance will suffer.

  Martin Zwilling

  Motivation, Entrepreneur, Innovation

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• Let's start with some of the reasons that the press holds its tongue and some of the things that you don't know because of this. We'll begin with squeamishness, prudishness, timidity and an overdeveloped fear of offending someone... So much for squeamishness and prudishness. There are many other reasons that we editors fail you in this pact you and we have. Let me name a few more: Orthodoxy, conventional thinking, a misplaced pleasure at being on the inside, incompetence and laziness.

  Geneva Overholser

  Thinking, Offending, Editors

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• I don't believe any experiment until it is confirmed by theory. I find this is a witty inversion of "conventional" wisdom.

  Arthur Eddington

  Witty, Believe, Theory

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• A well-functioning democracy has a culture of free speech, not simply legal protection of free speech. It encourages independence of mind. It imparts a willingness to challenge prevailing opinion through both words and deeds. Equally important, it encourages a certain set of attitudes in listeners, one that gives a respectful hearing to those who do not embrace the conventional wisdom. In a culture of free speech, the attitude of listeners is no less important than that of speakers.

  Cass Sunstein

  Attitude, Democracies Have, Giving

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• The Keystone XL project has built strong safety measures into its design with the newest technology. Additionally, 80 percent of the new Canadian oil sands are being developed 'in situ,' meaning, it has a similar carbon footprint and emissions as conventional oil wells.

  John Hoeven

  Strong, Technology, Carbon Footprint

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• If one must fight one should confine oneself to conventional weapons.

  Mao Zedong

  Fighting, Weapons, Should

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• For me to want to be an actor was an improbable idea. I wasn't beautiful or pretty in any conventional way. I wasn't an ingenue at 22. But I was always certain of it and certain of its power. I felt the power when I went to the theater at 9, 10, 12 and 14.

  Linda Hunt

  Beautiful, Ideas, Actors

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• I'm kind of horny, conventional methods of making love kind of bore me.

  LL Cool J

  Horny, Making Love, Kind

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• To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Lying, Men, Vices

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.

  Anna Quindlen

  Age, Conformity, Realizing

  Anna Quindlen (2012). “Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake: A Memoir of a Woman's Life”, p.42, Random House

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• A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence. One reason I'm in hot water is because my colleagues and I at NOW didn't play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news.

  Bill Moyers

  Jobs, Opportunity, Play

  "Bill Moyers Responds to CPB’s Tomlinson Charges of Liberal Bias: 'We Were Getting it Right, But Not Right Wing'". www.democracynow.org. May 16, 2005.

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• Suddenly, I saw it in a new way, as a picture that offered me a new view, free of all the conventional criteria I had always associated with art. It had no style, no composition, no judgment. It freed me from personal experience. For the first time, there was nothing to it: it was pure picture. That's why I wanted to have it, to show it - not use it as a means to painting but use painting as a means to photography.

  Gerhard Richter

  Photography, Art, Mean

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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• Because we remember pain and the menace of death more vividly than pleasure, and because our feelings toward the beneficent aspects of the unknown have from the first been captured and formalised by conventional religious rituals, it has fallen to the lot of the darker and more maleficent side of cosmic mystery to figure chiefly in our popular supernatural folklore.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Religious, Pain, Feelings

  H.P. Lovecraft (2012). “The Complete Fiction Collection vol III”, p.502, Lulu.com

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• The customs of the world are so many conventional follies.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  World, Folly, Customs

  Edgar Allan Poe (2004). “The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe”, p.455, Wordsworth Editions

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• Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."

  John Backus

  Law, Understanding, Ordinary

  "Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style?". John Backus' 1977 Turing Award lecture, published in "Communications of the ACM", Volume 21, No. 8 (pp. 639-640), August 1978.

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