Critical Quotes - Page 22

• I still give myself the right to be highly critical of others, though.

  Johnny Vegas

  Giving, Stills

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• Proper school nutrition must be complemented by activities outside of the cafeteria. The decisions parents make to keep their kids healthy are critical in fighting this battle on the home front.

  Tom Vilsack

  School, Kids, Home

  "Securing Our Future Through Our Children’s Health" by Sec. Tom Vilsack, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 25, 2010.

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• I made the decision to take on board the critical feedback. Reviews are something you can easily ignore as a performer or writer but I chose to not ignore them here and I think that I benefited. I think I'm stronger for it - and I have a tougher skin as a result.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Thinking, Decision, Skins

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• Recruitment and retention are critical to sustain our Armed Forces with the best men and women willing to stand in the gap and make huge sacrifices to ensure our freedom.

  Zach Wamp

  Women, Sacrifice, Gaps

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• There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics.

  Paul Wellstone

  Change, America, Political

  Paul Wellstone (2001). “The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda”, p.216, Random House

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• One of the critical issues that we have to confront is illegal immigration, because this is a multi-headed Hydra that affects our economy, our health care, our health care, our education systems, our national security, and also our local criminality.

  Allen West

  Health, Issues, Immigration

  "West on Issues Facing America". "Your World" with Neil Cavuto, www.foxnews.com. October 11, 2010.

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• In 2008, Obama won 56 percent of the women's vote to John McCain's 43 percent. It was the critical difference in the race.

  Juan Williams

  Differences, Race, Vote

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• The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.

  Juan Williams

  Country, War, Political

  "JUAN WILLIAMS: I Was Fired for Telling the Truth" by Juan Williams, www.foxnews.com. October 21, 2010.

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• I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.

  E. O. Wilson

  Land, Mind, Vanishing

  "EO Wilson: Our Greatest Biologist Writes A Novel, ‘Anthill’". Interview with Steve Ross, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 5, 2010.

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• Obstacles, of course, are developmentally necessary: they teach kids strategy, patience, critical thinking, resilience and resourcefulness.

  Naomi Wolf

  Kids, Thinking, Resilience

  "This pampered private school elite can only lead to US decline" by Naomi Wolf, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2012.

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• In any match, there are few critical moments where there's no second best decision. The rest of the moves are intuitive.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Moving, Decision, Critical Moments

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• There are two aspects to being competitive; one is to do with sports, and the other is about technical skills. Being able to recollect the moves and apply them when necessary is a critical aspect.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Sports, Moving, Skills

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• I think public intellectuals have a responsibility - to be self-critical on the one hand, to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Real, Responsibility, Thinking

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• There's a great book about John Kennedy and his relationship to civil rights called 'The Bystander.' The title alone suggests that he did as little as possible, any minimal critical effort, to really facilitate civil rights in the White House.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Book, Rights, White

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• The most dynamic cities have always been immersed in the critical innovations of their time.

  Geoff Mulgan

  Cities, Innovation

  "Our creative minds need to be harnessed" by Geoff Mulgan, www.theguardian.com. September 30, 2008.

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• The really interesting moment will be when you have a critical mass of people engaging through the networks, more than through the press and TV. When that happens, the culture of politics has to change, moving away from controlled one-way messages towards a political culture that is more questioning.

  Geoff Mulgan

  Moving, People, Interesting

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• I understand that not everyone agrees with my perspective on Ray Kelly. But what you gotta look at here is somebody like Bill de Blasio talking out of both sides of his mouth and trying to have it both ways on a really critical issue like stop-and-frisk.

  Christine Quinn

  Issues, Talking, Perspective

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• She had listened to him, partly sympathetic, partly horrified. For it was one thing for her to reject her background, to be critical of her family's heritage, another to hear it from him.

  Jhumpa Lahiri

  Heritage, Sympathetic, Backgrounds

  Jhumpa Lahiri (2004). “The Namesake: A Novel”, p.217, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society.

  Adrienne Rich

  Eye, Self, Survival

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• Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species. --speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962

  John Steinbeck

  Responsibility, Games, Cities

  John Steinbeck (2001). “A Life in Letters”, p.1250, Penguin UK

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• Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore -- and this is the critical point -- how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails. (92)

  Neil Postman

  Knowing, Culture, Television

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• Philosophy is a necessary activity because we, all of us, take a great number of things for granted, and many of these assumptions are of a philosophical character; we act on them in private life, in politics, in our work, and in every other sphere of our lives -- but while some of these assumptions are no doubt true, it is likely, that more are false and some are harmful. So the critical examination of our presuppositions -- which is a philosophical activity -- is morally as well as intellectually important.

  Karl Popper

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Character

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• Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.

  Frank Herbert

  Numbers, Space, Molecules

  Frank Herbert (2011). “Dune Messiah: The Second Dune Novel”, p.141, Hachette UK

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• A critical assumption is sometimes made that [Grisham, Clancey, Crichton & myself] have access to some mystical vulgate that other (and often better) writers cannot find or will not deign to use. I doubt if this is true. Nor do I believe the contention of some popular novelists... that thier success is based on literary merit -- that the public understands true greatness in ways the tight-a**ed, consumed-by-jealousy literary establishment cannot. This idea is ridiculous, a product of vanity and insecurity.

  Stephen King

  Believe, Greatness, Ideas

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• Most men are reasonably useful in a crisis. The difficulty lies in convincing them that the situation has reached a critical point

  Barbara Mertz

  Lying, Men, Crisis

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