Crude Quotes

• Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Dance, Stars, Long

  Madame Bovary pt. 1, ch. 12 (1857) (translation by Francis Steegmuller)

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• There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, War, Science

  "Great Thought". "The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler" (1976) by Raymond Chandler, February 19, 1938.

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• The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  War, Vulgarity Is, World

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

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• As crude a weapon as a cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.

  Rachel Carson

  Men, Fabric Of Life, Earth Day

  Silent Spring ch. 17 (1962)

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• This revolution, the information revoultion, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It's very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt bulb to run it and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now?

  Steve Jobs

  Running, Years, Intellectual

  "Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs". Interview With David Sheff, reprints.longform.org. February 1985.

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• We have the most crude accounting tools. It's tragic because our accounts and our national arithmetic doesn't tell us the things that we need to know.

  Susan George

  Needs, Tools, Arithmetic

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• If I think too much about all of those Chinese factories where all the stuff in a Wal-Mart is made, I get that woozy feeling you get when you see ducks covered in crude oil.

  Douglas Coupland

  Thinking, Oil, Ducks

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• In 1973, America imported 30 percent of its crude oil needs. Today, that number has doubled to more than 60 percent. Gas prices are as high as they are now in part because we've had no comprehensive national energy policy for the past few decades

  Gary Miller

  Past, Oil, Numbers

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• Today we have big, crude instruments guided by intelligent surgeons, and we have little, stupid molecules of drugs that get dumped into the body, diffuse around and interfere with things as best they can. At present, medicine is unable to heal anything.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Stupid, Intelligent, Medicine

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• We were asked to believe that the variety and the novelty of even the crude films of the early days would provide a means of entertainment which would cut out the stage.

  Ivor Novello

  Believe, Mean, Cutting

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• The crude oil market, unlike every other commodity in America, is virtually unregulated.

  Peter DeFazio

  Oil, America, Commodity

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• You may think me crude, and probably I am crude, but I am not so crude as I was, for I am clever enough to see that the girl of nineteen who thought herself a genius was only an unusual girl writing her heart out.

  Mary MacLane

  Girl, Clever, Writing

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• In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Humor, Vulgarity Is, Sin

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

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• Violence commands both literature and life, and violence is always crude and distorted.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Literature, Violence, Command

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1958). “Letters of Ellen Glasgow”

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• Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth

  Eric Hoffer

  Truth, Sacrifice, Self

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things.

  Adolf Hitler

  Sympathy, Stupid, Wish

  "Mein Kampf". Book by Adolf Hitler, Volume II, 1926.

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• The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute.

  Giambattista Vico

  Nature, Firsts, Fierce

  Giambattista Vico (2015). “The New Science of Giambattista Vico”, p.153, Cornell University Press

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• But my estimates, for instance, based upon book information, were simply ridiculous, fanciful images of African attractions were soon dissipated, anticipated pleasures vanished, and all crude ideas began to resolve themselves into shape.

  Henry Morton Stanley

  Book, Ideas, Shapes

  Henry Morton Stanley (2002). “How I Found Livingstone in Central Africa”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• Energy companies, such as Chevron and Shell, and oil producing countries, such as Kuwait and Venezuela, pump crude oil from their vast land holdings and sell it on the world market

  Gary Miller

  Country, Land, Kuwait

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• This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in five or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development.

  Itzhak Perlman

  Wine, Years, Oil

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• Genetics is crude, but neuroscience goes directly to work on the brain, and the mind follows.

  Leon Kass

  Brain, Mind, Genetics

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• We're trying to run a 21st century society and economy with 19th century Darwinian, competitive, crude ideas.

  Susan George

  Running, Ideas, Trying

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• There are only Epicureans, either crude or refined; Christ was the most refined.

  Georg Buchner

  Christ, Epicurean, Refined

  "Danton's Death". Play by Georg Buchner, Act I, 1835.

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• Pious XII was too neutral to mention the gas chambers; decent people like my own family were turned into devils by crude Christianity.

  Lionel Blue

  People, Devil, Good Christian

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• Yet another thing Canadians and Europeans have in common is an obsession with the United States, and with distinguishing themselves from it, often by crude stereotyping.

  Timothy Garton Ash

  United States, Common, Obsession

  Timothy Garton Ash (2012). “Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade without a Name”, p.124, Atlantic Books Ltd

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