Defects Quotes - Page 20

• I've written about a lot of different things, but the whole idea of writing for another character is unusual for pop music... Most of the repertory is love songs, and most of mine isn't. I don't know if that's a mental defect, or shyness, or what.

  Randy Newman

  Song, Writing, Character

  "Set List: Randy Newman". Interview with Sam Adams, music.avclub.com. May 31, 2011.

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• There are no perfect women in the world; only hypocrites exhibit no defects.

  Ninon de L'Enclos

  Hypocrite, Perfect, World

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• The defects of a preacher are soon spied.

  Martin Luther

  Clergymen, Preacher

  Martin Luther, Johann Aurifaber, Anton Lauterbach, Henry Bell (1832). “Luther's Table Talk: Or, Some Choice Fragments from the Familiar Discourse of that Godly, Learned Man, and Famous Champion of God's Truth, Martin Luther”, p.232

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• What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.

  Honore de Balzac

  People, Judging, Crime

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• I always introduce myself as an encyclopedia of defects which I do not deny. Why should I? It took me a whole life to build myself as I am.

  Oriana Fallaci

  Introducing, Deny, Should

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• A fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees ... which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one.

  Mary Parker Follett

  Majority Rule, Democracy, Minorities

  Mary Parker Follett (1918). “The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government”, p.143, Penn State Press

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• Did you ever notice how easy it is to forgive a person any number of faults for one endearing characteristic, for a certain style, or some commitment to life - while someone with many good qualities is insupportable for a single defect if it happens to be a boring one?

  Shirley Hazzard

  Commitment, Numbers, Forgiving

  Shirley Hazzard (2004). “The Evening of the Holiday: A Novel”, p.114, Macmillan

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• [On golf:] One of the most distressing defects of civilization.

  Winifred Holtby

  Golf, Civilization, Distressing

  Winifred Holtby (1933). “Mandoa, Mandoa!: A Comedy of Irrevelevance”

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• But though Usury is in itself immoral, and justly condemned by every ethical code, its chief and worst defect in the particular case we are now examining, the growth of Capitalism and its increasing proletariat, is the centralization of irresponsible control over the lives of men: the putting power over the proletariat into the hands of a few who can direct the loans of currency and credit without which that proletariat could not be fed and clothed and maintained in work.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Men, Hands

  Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.96, TAN Books

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• In the mathematics I can report no deficience, except that it be that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it.

  Roger Bacon

  Math, Men, Intellectual

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• Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force

  W. Edwards Deming

  Zero, Lying, Safety

  W. Edwards Deming, Joyce (edited by) Orsini (2012). “The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality”, McGraw Hill Professional

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• What were once felt to be defects-isolation, institutional simplicity, primitiveness of manners, multiplicity of religions, weaknesses in the authority of the state-could now be seen as virtues, not only by Americans themselves but by enlightened spokesmen of reform, renewal and hope wherever they may be-in London coffeehouses, in Parisian salons, in the courts of German princes.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Simplicity, Weakness, Reform

  Bernard Bailyn (1992). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.160, Harvard University Press

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• The weakest man is the one who is able to correct his moral defects, but doesn't take action.

  Ali ibn Abi Talib

  Men, Able, Action

  "Mustadrak al-Wasāʼil wa-mustanbaṭ al-masāʼil". Book by Ḥusayn Taqī al-Nūrī Ṭabarsī, Volume 11,

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• The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Constitution, Hell, Stills

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• Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues.

  Honore de Balzac

  Women, Virtue

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• Passions are defects or virtues in the highest power.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Passion, Virtue, Highest

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Stuart Blackie (1883). “The Wisdom of Goethe”, Edinburgh, W. Blackwood

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• The failures are not due to any injustice, but to an inner defect. It is always caused by the person himself. Yes, I know, you think you are doing an act of justice. But they will only suck you dry, wear out your energy, nourish themselves on your ideas. After being the most compassionate man in the world, I say to you today: Let the weak ones die, let them commit suicide.

  Anais Nin

  Suicide, Men, Thinking

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• There are more defects in temperament than in the mind.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Mind, Temperament

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• Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners; without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.

  Jonathan Swift

  Pride, Men, Knowing

  Jonathan Swift (1861). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: With Cop'ous Notes and Additions”, p.621

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• Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted; so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.

  Jonathan Swift

  Memories, Two, Needs

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• The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ignorance, Forgetfulness, Habitual

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.214, Courier Corporation

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• Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.

  Jonathan Swift

  Fool

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1859). “The works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: with copious notes and additions and a memoir of the author”, p.187

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• Clothes are like a gloss that sets off everything; dresser were invented more to enhance physical advantages than to veil physical defects.

  Honore de Balzac

  Clothes, Veils, Advantage

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• (Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Agreement, People, Intellectual

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “Counsels and Maxims: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.64, 谷月社

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• Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Life And Death, Giving, Tragedy

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