Critical Moments Quotes

• In critical moments, men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.

  Leonard Nimoy

  Inspiration, Men, Wish

  "Fictional character: Mr. Spock". "Star Trek" (TV Series), www.imdb.com. 1968.

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• In critical moments even the very powerful have need of the weakest.

  Aesop

  Life, Powerful, Needs

  "The Lion and the Mouse". Fable by Aesop published in "Aesop's Fables For Children", 1919.

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• There is no distress so complete but that even in the most critical moments the inexplicable sunrise of hope is seen in its depths.

  Victor Hugo

  Sunrise, Depth, Inexplicable

  Victor Hugo (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Victor Hugo (Illustrated)”, p.5886, Delphi Classics

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• By altering his arrangements and changing his plans, the skillful general keeps the enemy without definite knowledge. By shifting his camp and taking circuitous routes, he prevents the enemy from anticipating his purpose. At the critical moment, the leader of an army acts like one who has climbed up a height and then kicks away the ladder behind him.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, War, Army

  James Clavell, Sun Tzu (2013). “The Art of War”, p.52, Hachette UK

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• We are all what we are, in large degree, because of others who have helped, coached, taught, counseled, who set a standard by example, who've taken an interest in our interests, opened doors, opened our minds, helped us see, who gave encouragement when we needed it, who reprimanded or prodded when we needed it, and at critical moments, inspired.

  David McCullough

  Encouragement, Taken, Doors

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• What is clear is that the earth is mandating that the human community assume a responsibility never assigned to any previous generation...Our task at this critical moment is to awaken the energies needed to create the new world and to evoke a universal communion of all parts of life.

  Thomas Berry

  Responsibility, Community, Energy

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• Maturity consists in the discovery that there comes a critical moment where everything is reversed, after which the point becomes to understand more and more that there is something which cannot be understood.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Maturity, Discovery, Understood

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• War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Men, Saving Private Ryan

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2970, Delphi Classics

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• I don't know about transformation. But scientifically you can say: Well, it doesn't seem to hurt anybody. Personally I've been cheered by books at really critical moments. That much I believe.

  George Saunders

  Hurt, Believe, Book

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The DS represents a critical moment for Nintendo's success over the next two years. If it succeeds, we rise to the heavens, if it fails, we sink into hell.

  Hiroshi Yamauchi

  Years, Two, Heaven

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• My forte was the middlegame. I had a good feeling for the critical moments of the play. This undoubtedly compensated for my lack of opening preparation and, possibly, not altogether perfect play in the endgame. In my games things often did not reach the endgame!

  Boris Spassky

  Play, Games, Perfect

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• I have fancied myself a rebel, but at every critical moment of my life, I have been exactly the child my parents raised.

  Robert Breault

  Children, Integrity, Parent

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• The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Government, Reform, Firsts

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2012). “The Old Regime and the French Revolution”, p.214, Courier Corporation

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• At certain junctures in the course of existence, unique moments occur when everyone and everything, even the most distant stars, combine to bring about something that could not have happened before and will never happen again. Few people know how to take advantage of these critical moments, unfortunately, and they often pass unnoticed. When someone does recognize them, however, great things happen in the world.

  Michael Ende

  Stars, Unique, People

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• I am fully aware of the critical moments we face as a country.

  Antonis Samaras

  Country, Faces, Moments

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• Plants can help you they have a very strong vibrational force. If you've made friends with several of them, they will come and aid you when you've reached that critical moment and you're at a crossroads of knowledge.

  Frederick Lenz

  Strong, Nature, Buddhism

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• You can hit a home run. If you are honest, you'll know when it's perfect because at that critical moment of connection, there was no sense of being there. That is perfect play. There is no self involved.

  Frederick Lenz

  Running, Home, Health

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• Whether there are innately female leadership styles... is not really the right question. It is more important to ask why there has been so little attention paid to women leaders over the years as well as why the styles of leading more often exhibited by women are particularly useful at this critical moment in history.

  Charlotte Bunch

  Years, Leader, Style

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• Every time a colony wants independence, the questions on the agenda are: a) how do you get the imperialists out, and b) what kind of society do you build? There are usually the bourgeois nationalists who say, 'Let's just change the flag and keep everything as it was.' Then there are the revolutionaries who say, 'Let's change the property laws.' It's always a critical moment.

  Ken Loach

  Law, Independence, Flags

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• After the signing of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman on the street, "What have you given us, sir?" Franklin Responded, "A Republic, if you can keep it." A critical moment in history has come; our Republic is in jeopardy. Can we keep it? If the answer to that question, as I fear, is "no," then we have no one to blame but ourselves.

  Glenn Beck

  Answers, Republic, Constitution

  Glenn Beck (2009). “Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Ouf-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine”, p.10, Simon and Schuster

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• It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on.

  Virginia Woolf

  Feelings, Machines, Painting

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1120, Delphi Classics

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• Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation.

  Jane Austen

  Agitation, May, Heroines

  Jane Austen (1833). “Northanger abbey [followed by] Persuasion”, p.56

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• The wound you refuse to dress is one that will never heal. You gush lifeblood and never even know why. It will make you weak at a critical moment when you need to be strong.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Strong, Dresses, Needs

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.1508, Dell

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• What is both surprising and delightful is that the spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game...There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Baseball, Mother, Games

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• Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.

  Carl Sagan

  Fate, Rivers, Air

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