Difficult Quotes - Page 19

• The most difficult step in the study of language is the first step.

  Leonard Bloomfield

  Firsts, Steps, Study

  Leonard Bloomfield (1994). “Language”, p.21, Motilal Banarsidass Publishe

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• Indeed, being a beginner is very difficult right now. Book publishers are in a crisis, sales are dwindling, and publishing houses are losing money, doing their best to survive. It's a sign of the times, the emergence of new kinds of entertainment -- there's nothing we can do about it. I don't think books will perish for good. They could become less widespread, though, falling even further behind movies and computer games. But we shouldn't be afraid of this, because books will always remain the entertainment of choice for intelligent people, of whom there are still many in this world.

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  Book, Fall, Intelligent

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• A writer who wants to be translated and published abroad faces a very difficult challenge: first of all, he must make sure that his book is cosmopolitan in the best sense of the word, that it is interesting to a global audience. Nobody is going to read about problems that they don’t care about.

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  Book, Interesting, Challenges

  "Interview with a Vampire Writer". Interview with Tatyana Shenkova, www.rbth.com. September 5, 2012.

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• Weak leaders of churches blame people and circumstances. Breakout church leaders accept responsibility and see God's possibilities in even difficult situations.

  Thom S. Rainer

  Responsibility, Difficult Situations, People

  Thom S. Rainer (2010). “Breakout Churches: Discover How to Make the Leap”, p.62, Harper Collins

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• In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Yesterday, Eras, Commodity

  Chang-rae Lee (2014). “On Such a Full Sea: A Novel”, p.10, Penguin

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• The goal of the right is not to stop abortion but to demonize it, punish it and make it as difficult and traumatic as possible. All this it has accomplished fairly well, even without overturning Roe v. Wade .

  Ellen Willis

  Goal, Abortion, Wade

  "Escape from Freedom". "Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination", Vol 1, No 2, 2006.

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• Enlightening editorial writers is even more difficult than educating educators.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Enlightening, Educator, Newspapers

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• A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before. To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to speak the truth. The wish alone is not enough. To speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Lying, Men, Order

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• (Because) the notion of absolute truth is difficult to sustain outside the context of religion, ethical conduct is not something we engage in because it is somehow right in itself but because, like ourselves, all others desire to be happy and to avoid suffering. Given that this is a natural disposition, shared by all, it follows that each individual has a right to pursue this goal. Accordingly, I suggest that one of the things which determines whether an act is ethical or not is its effect on others' experience or expectation of happiness.

  Dalai Lama

  Goal, Expectations, Suffering

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• In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.

  Albert Einstein

  Beautiful, Teacher, Giving Up

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words”, p.25, Open Road Media

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• Hollywood is a strange place. The class structure here is more rigid than almost anyplace I've ever experienced. It's made more difficult by the fact that it's constantly changing. You never know what class you belong to unless you're one of the two or three people that have been in the same echelon for a long, long time.

  Alan Arkin

  Strange Places, Class, Two

  "What I've Learned: Alan Arkin" by Mike Sager, www.esquire.com. February 25, 2007.

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• But in order for anyone to become successful, sometimes you have to be that driven and focused, and maybe there isn't a lot left over for personal relationships - although I certainly have had them. It's not as if I cut myself off, but it makes them very difficult. This profession is very hard on relationships.

  Nathan Lane

  Cutting, Successful, Order

  Boston Globe, July 11, 1999.

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• Shevchenko is the best attacker in Europe. He has a great deal of consistency and he just keeps scoring - which in Italian football is very difficult. He is a complete player, someone who can do everything on a football field.

  Andriy Shevchenko

  Football, Italian, Player

  "Electric Sheva" by Amy Lawrence, www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2005.

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• The problem of transmitting scientific knowledge is a very difficult business.

  Jack Steinberger

  Problem, Scientific Knowledge

  "Interview with the 1988 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Jack Steinberger". 58th Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany, www.nobelprize.org. July 2008.

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• The enemies of the Soviet state calculate that the heavy loss we have borne will lead to disorder and confusion in our ranks. But their expectations are in vain: bitter disillusionment awaits them. He who is not blind sees that our party, during its difficult days, is closing its ranks still more closely, that it is united and unshakable.

  Lavrentiy Beria

  Party, Loss, Expectations

  "The Current Digest of the Soviet Press". Issued by the Joint Committee on Slavic Studies, p. 9, 1953.

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• Ownership of thought depends on the thinker not subordinating himself to a 'ruling thought'. This is particularly difficult, argues Stirner, ... for language itself is a network of 'fixed ideas'. Truths emerge only when language is reworked and possessed individually.

  John Carroll

  Ideas, Arguing, Language

  John Carroll (2010). “Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky”, p.87, Taylor & Francis

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• If physics is too difficult for the physicists, the nonphysicist may wonder whether he should try at all to grasp its complexities and ambiguities. It is undeniably an effort, but probably one worth making, for the basic questions are important and the new experimental results are often fascinating. And if the layman runs into serious perplexities, he can be consoled with the thought that the points which baffle him are more than likely the ones for which the professionals have not found satisfactory answers.

  Edward Condon

  Running, Effort, Important

  "Physics, in What is Science?: Twelve Eminent Scientists and Philosophers Explain Their Various Fields to the Layman". Book by James Roy Newman, published by Simon and Schuster, p. 102, 1955.

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• With the new weapons like the atom bomb, Russia would have it, too, and use it first. It is a very difficult world. But that trouble is imminent is obvious.

  Karl Donitz

  Russia, Atoms, Use

  Said to Leon Goldensohn, July 14, 1946. "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, 2004.

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• In short, the elimination of the financial legacy of Reaganomics could force the United States to make some exceptionally difficult choices indeed.

  Robert Gilpin

  Difficult Choices, United States, Legacy

  Robert Gilpin (2016). “The Political Economy of International Relations”, p.349, Princeton University Press

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• B17 is becoming more difficult to get because the FDA is cracking down on people dealing with B17 because, after all, doctors don't get any money off of this - it's a vitamin. And they [doctors] make a lot of money when you're sick, they don't make any money when you are well. The Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil.

  Kent Hovind

  Fda, Doctors, Roots

  Truth Radio, June 27, 2003.

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• The significance of a basic medium to its civilization is difficult to appraise since the means of appraisal are influenced by the media, and indeed the fact of appraisal appears to be peculiar to certain types of media. A change in the type of medium implies a change in the type of appraisal and hence makes it difficult for one civilization to understand another.

  Harold Innis

  Mean, Media, Civilization

  Harold Adams Innis (2007). “Empire and Communications”, p.29, Rowman & Littlefield

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• He was not only the most brilliant strategist of all our generals, but he had a good political sense. A man of that quality was too difficult for Hitler to swallow for long. At conferences Manstein often differed from Hitler, in front of others, and would go so far as to declare that some of the ideas which Hitler put forward were nonsense.

  Erich von Manstein

  Men, Ideas, Long

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• It is my conviction that basic Reality is not all that perplexing. What seems difficult to assimilate are the manifold details of Reality, not its fundamental elements.

  Richard Matheson

  Reality, Details, Fundamentals

  Richard Matheson (1999). “The Path: A New Look At Reality”, p.14, Macmillan

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• It is difficult to thinkof any circumstances where learning may be said to be impossible.

  Michael Joseph Oakeshott

  May, Impossible, Said

  Quoted in R S Peters (ed) TheConcept of Education (1966), ch.10, 'Learning and Teaching'.

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• I do not know how Vladimir Putin will be esteemed by the future history, but I have no doubt that among his successes and advantages for Russia historians shall absolutely note the fact of his not altering the constitution, for he created a precedent. And afterwards, no matter who might become president, it shall be extremely difficult to alter the constitution exactly on that point. Extremely difficult.

  Vladimir Posner

  Russia, Doubt, President

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