Dictation Quotes

• If I have an idea, I write it down, although I usually carry a little dictation machine with me because I'm too lazy to write

  Tommy Shaw

  Writing, Ideas, Lazy

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• When once you consider an action, do not let anything dissuade you. Consult your heart, not others, and then follow its dictates.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Heart, Action

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.4660, Manonmani Publishers

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• I would love to employ a man, but how can I possibly give a man dictation from the bath?

  Barbara Cartland

  Men, Giving, Baths

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• Is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And, if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?

  Charlotte Bronte

  Strong, Real, Struggle

  Charlotte Brontë “Jane Eyre”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Nail polish or false eyelashes isn't politics. If you have good politics, what you wear is irrelevant. I don't take dictation from the pig-o-cratic style setters who say I should dress like a middle-aged lady. My politics don't depend on whether my tits are in or out of a bra.

  Florynce Kennedy

  Pigs, Eyelashes, Style

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• [The married woman is] is a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, and serves her master's passion; [and] who passes through the ordeal of pregnancy and the throes of travail at his dictation.

  Voltairine de Cleyre

  Pregnancy, Passion, Names

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• I also say with backbends, you have to be cautiously bold. Not carelessly bold. You have to descend to the dictation of the spine. You cannot command from the brain to do the poses. As you play with a child, guarding the child from injuries, similarly you have to play in backbends, guarding your spine.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Children, Play, Brain

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• So long as millions of human beings in every country has to sell their labour-power to a small minority of owners, and to sink into the most wretched misery if they could find no buyers, the so called “equality before the law” remains a pious fraud, since the laws are made by those who find themselves in possession of the social wealth. But in the same way there can also be no talk of a “right over one's own person,” for that right ends when one is compelled to submit to the economic dictation of another if he does not want to starve.

  Rudolf Rocker

  Country, Law, Long

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• I pray that I may never meddle, interfere, dictate, give advice that is not wanted, or assist when my services are not needed. If I can help people, I'll do it by giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire, let it be by example, inference and suggestion, rather than by injunction and dictation. That is to say, I desire to be Radiant -- to Radiate Life!

  Elbert Hubbard

  Uplifting, People, Giving

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• "We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim..." Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away."

  Evelyn Waugh

  Running, Art, Morning

  "Black Mischief". Book by Evelyn Waugh, 1932.

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• I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted. When I cease to be carried along, when I no longer feel as though I were taking down dictation, I stop.

  Francois Mauriac

  Writing, Creative, Suits

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• What is Americanism? Every one has a different answer. Some people say it is never to submit to the dictation of a King. Others say Americanism is the pride of liberty and the defence of an insult to the flag with their gore. When some half-developed person tramples on that flag, we should be ready to pour out the blood of the nation, they say. But do we not sit in silence when that flag waves over living conditions which should be an insult to all patriotism?

  Anna Howard Shaw

  Kings, War, Pride

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• The reason that I'm considered to be prolific is just because I'm a good listener. It literally is me taking dictation when I write. I'm listening and typing as fast as I'm hearing the words.

  Doreen Virtue

  Writing, Listening, Hearing

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• I wrote before I could write. I got my hands on a journal, maybe a hand-me-down; I had three older siblings. My first entries are in the handwriting of the sister closets in age (5 years my senior). She must have gotten tired of my dictations because she gave up and then my blocky scrawl shows up. I wrote plays as a kid mostly.

  Julianna Baggott

  Senior, Sibling, Writing

  "The Rumpus Interview With Julianna Baggott". Interview with Roxane Gay, therumpus.net. May 11, 2012.

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• Along with currency manipulation, the New Deal introduced to Americans the spectacle of Fascist dictation to business, labor, and agriculture.

  Herbert Hoover

  Agriculture, Manipulation, Currency

  Herbert Hoover (1952). “Memoirs: The great depression, 1929-1941”

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• You can't sort of write the novel as if you're taking dictation from heaven.

  Martin Amis

  Writing, Heaven, Novel

  "New New Yorker Martin Amis Talks Terrorism, Pornography, Idyllic Brooklyn and American Decline". Interview with David Wallace-Wells, www.vulture.com. July 22, 2012.

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• I think it is natural that every country has to take care of its interests, but there are some interests that are common to all countries. There are some human interests, or we need also international cooperation. We've sometimes confused it with dictation.

  George Soros

  Country, Confused, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I'm a situational writer. You give me a situation, like a writer gets in a car crash, breaks his leg, is kidnapped by his number-one fan, and is kept in a cabin and forced to write a book - everything else springs from there. You really don't have to work once you've had the idea. All you have to do is kind of take dictation from something inside.

  Stephen King

  Spring, Book, Writing

  "A Rare Interview with Master Storyteller Stephen King". Interview with Ken Tucker, parade.com. May 25, 2013.

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• The end of nonviolent 'war' is always an agreement, never dictation, much less humiliation of the opponent.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  War, Agreement, Opponents

  Mahatma Gandhi (1962). “The Thought of Mahatma Gandhi: A Digest”

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• Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So muchfate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiration, Advice, Doubt

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• People have got that ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads that one mustn't write save at I the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing is a business.

  George Gissing

  Writing, People, Prejudice

  George Gissing (2015). “New Grub Street”, p.11, Booklassic

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• One thing I certainly never was made for, and that is to put principles on and off at the dictation of a party, as a lackey changes his livery at his master's command.

  Horace Mann

  Change, Party, Principles

  Horace Mann (1851). “Slavery: Letters and Speeches”, p.387

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• War is an evil thing; but to submit to the dictation of other states is worse.... Freedom, if we hold fast to it, will ultimately restore our losses, but submission will mean permanent loss of all that we value.... To you who call yourselves men of peace, I say: You are not safe unless you have men of action on your side.

  Thucydides

  War, Mean, Loss

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• Artists are modest. They know they're not doing the work; they're just taking dictation.

  Steven Pressfield

  Artist, Modest, Knows

  Steven Pressfield (2002). “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles”, p.127, Black Irish Entertainment LLC

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• I have a feeling that art is something you do for yourself, and that any time you turn your decisions over to someone else you're postponing at best, your own development. The atmosphere of the workshop should be that of trying out one's own work and accepting the signals from others but not accepting the dictation of others because that is a violation of the spirit of art. Art can't be done by somebody else, it has got to be done by the artist.

  William Stafford

  Art, Teaching, Decision

  William Stafford, Paul Merchant, Vincent Wixon (2003). “The answers are inside the mountains: meditations on the writing life”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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