Desirable Quotes - Page 3

• The Mathematics are Friends to Religion, inasmuch as they charm the Passions, restrain the Impetuosity of the Imagination, and purge the Mind from Error and Prejudice. Vice is Error, Confusion, and false Reasoning; and all Truth is more or less opposite to it. Besides, Mathematical Studies may serve for a pleasant Entertainment for those Hours which young Men are apt to throw away upon their Vices; the Delightfulness of them being such as to make Solitude not only easy, but desirable.

  John Arbuthnot

  Passion, Science, Men

  Martin Strong, John Arbuthnot (1745). “An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning: In a Letter from a Gentleman in the City, to His Friend at Oxford”, p.8

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• A smattering of everything is worth little. It is a fallacy to suppose that an encyclopaedic knowledge is desirable. The mind is made strong, not through much learning, but by the thorough possession of something.

  Louis Agassiz

  Strong, Learning, Knowledge

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• The specific goals we set for ourselves are almost always subsidiary to our long range intentions. A good parent, a good neighbour, a good citizen, is not good because his specific goals are acceptable, but because his successive goals are ordered to a dependable and socially desirable set of values. (1947)

  Gordon Allport

  Science, Long, Goal

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• The crime which bankrupts men and states is job-work-declining from your main design, to serve a turn here and there. Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life, nothing is great or desirable if it is off from that. I think we are entitled here to draw a straight line and say that society can never prosper but must always be bankrupts, until every man does that which he was created to do.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jobs, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.375

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• Leadership is the activity of influencing people to cooperate towards some goal which they come to find desirable and which motivates them over the long haul.

  Ordway Tead

  Leadership, Business, Long

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• Many problems that challenge us today can be traced back to a profound tension between what is good and desirable for society as a whole and what is good and desirable for an individual. That conflict can be found in global problems such as climate change, pollution, resource depletion, poverty, hunger, and overpopulation.

  Martin Nowak

  Profound, Challenges, Humanity

  Martin Nowak, Roger Highfield (2012). “SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• Generally speaking, geologists seem to have been much more intent on making little worlds of their own, than in examining the crust of that which they inhabit. It would be much more desirable that facts should be placed in the foreground and theories in the distance, than that theories should be brought forward at the expense of facts. So that, in after times, when the speculations of the present day shall have passed away, from a greater accumulation of information, the facts may be readily seized and converted to account.

  Henry De la Beche

  Distance, Science, Information

  "Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations" edited by Carl C. Gaither, Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither, Springer Science & Business Media, (p. 863), January 5, 2012.

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• They tell us sometimes that if we had only kept quiet, all these desirable things would have come about of themselves. I am reminded of the Greek clown who, having seen an archer bring down a flying bird, remarked, sagely: 'You might have saved your arrow, for the bird would anyway have been killed by the fall.'

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Fall, Archer, Arrows

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• Immortality is really desirable, I guess. In terms of images, anyway.

  Damien Hirst

  Immortality, Immortal, Term

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• I'm almost reluctant to say it because it sounds superficial, but when you lose your hair, it just affects the way that you look at yourself in the mirror. You feel less feminine, pretty or desirable, and it's not an easy thing to go through.

  Joan Lunden

  Mirrors, Hair, Sound

  "Joan Lunden reveals battle with breast cancer". www.foxnews.com. September 24, 2014.

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• I'm against ObamaCare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.... I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering... I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.

  Newt Gingrich

  Thinking, Engineering, Wings

  "One-on-one with Newt Gingrich". "Meet the Press" with David Gregory, www.nbcnews.com. May 15, 2011.

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• Manhattanism is the one urbanistic ideology that has fed, from its conception, on the splendors and miseries of the metropolitan condition—hyper-density—without once losing faith in it as the basis for a desirable modern culture. Manhattan's architecture is a paradigm for the exploitation of congestion.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Density, Culture, Manhattan

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• I'm happy to be considered desirable. I love it!

  Susan Sarandon

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• I don't know if I was a desirable person, not just physically but emotionally and mentally and intellectually. I still have a long way go and a lot to learn, but I'm on my way, I don't think I'm terribly attractive, but I'm comfortable with my looks

  Shelley Duvall

  Thinking, Long, Looks

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• There's a terrible truth for many women in the picture business: Aging typically takes its toll and means fewer and less desirable roles.

  Maureen O'Hara

  Mean, Tolls, Roles

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• If it were considered desirable to destroy a human being, the only thing necessary would be to give his work a character of uselessness

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Inspiration, Character, Giving

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• The average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul - desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would change. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic.

  Truman Capote

  Character, Average, Years

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• A gift of flowers to a woman implies that she is as deliciously desirable as the blossoms themselves; but there may be another and hidden message, contained in the old-fashioned phrases like 'shy as a violet, 'clinging vine,' not originally conceived as pejoratives, that tells more of the truth - which is that flowers are also emblems of feminine submission.

  Eleanor Perenyi

  Truth, Flower, Shy

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• How desirable is this simplicity! Who will give it to me? I will quit all else; it is the pearl of great price.

  Francois Fenelon

  Giving, Simplicity, Pearls

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• A desirable advertisement will be reasonable, but never dull ... original, but never self-conscious ... imaginative, but never misleading.

  Fairfax M. Cone

  Self, Dull, Advertising

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• No measure can be more desirable, whether viewed with an eye to its intrinsic importance, or to the general sentiment and wish of the Nation than to establish a systematic and effectual arrangement for the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt.

  George Washington

  Eye, Wish, Redemption

  Jay A. Parry, Andrew M. Allison, George Washington (1991). “The real George Washington”, Natl Center for Constitutional

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• A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it. Whoever therefore claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge, must become a lover of books.

  Plato

  Book, Wealth And Happiness, Wealth Of Knowledge

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• Extra features were once considered desirable. We now recognize that 'free' features are rarely free. Any increase in generality that does not contribute to reliability, modularity, maintainability, and robustness should be suspected.

  Boris Beizer

  Doe, Reliability, Increase

  Boris Beizer (1990). “Software Testing Techniques”, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company

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• Leaders are active instead of reactive, shaping ideas instead of responding to them. Leaders adopt a personal and active attitude toward goals. The influence a leader exerts in altering moods, evoking images and expectations, and in establishing specific desires and objectives determines the direction an organization takes. The net result of this influence is to change the way people think about what is desirable, possible, and necessary. In other words, leaders are visionaries and managers operate within those established visions.

  Abraham Zaleznik

  Attitude, Thinking, Ideas

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• When a man sees something desirable, he must reflect on the fact that with time it could come to involve what is detestable. When he sees something that is beneficial, he should reflect that sooner or later it, too, could come to involve harm.

  Xunzi

  Time, Men, Facts

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