Dispassionate Quotes - Page 3

• The ‘I’ character in journalism is almost pure invention. Unlike the ‘I’ of autobiography, who is meant to be seen as a representation of the writer, the ‘I’ of journalism is connected to the writer only in a tenuous way—the way, say, that Superman is connected to Clark Kent. The journalistic ‘I’ is an overreliable narrator, a functionary to whom crucial tasks of narration and argument and tone have been entrusted, an ad hoc creation, like the chorus of Greek tragedy. He is an emblematic figure, an embodiment of the idea of the dispassionate observer of life.

  Janet Malcolm

  Character, Ideas, Greek

  "The Journalist and the Murderer". Book by Janet Malcolm, March 20, 1989.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The notion that the UN is some sort of dispassionate body that, “does right” and just pursues everybody’s best interests is a fantasy. Each individual nation will be pursuing their best interests. That’s the normal behavior of nation-states. It shouldn’t surprise us, but neither should we go to them for permission to do what’s in our national interests.

  Mona Charen

  Doe, Body, Politics

  Interview with John Hawkins, rightwingnews.com. February 3, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The dispassionate intellect, the open mind, the unprejudiced observer, exist in an exact sense only in a sort of intellectualist folk-lore; states even approaching them cannot be reached without a moral and emotional effort most of us cannot or will not make.

  Wilfred Trotter

  Science, Emotional, Effort

  8 Copy quote

• America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.

  Warren G. Harding

  Healing, America, Presidential

  Speech, Boston, Mass., 14 May 1920.

  91 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to suppose that he has perpetrated acts of incalculable cruelty. On the other, it is to suppose that he has perversely given his human creatures an instrument - their intellect - which must inevitably lead them, if they are dispassionate and honest, to deny his existence. It is tempting to conclude that if he exists, it is the atheists and agnostics that he loves best, among those with any pretensions to education. For they are the ones who have taken him most seriously.

  Galen Strawson

  Atheist, Believe, Taken

  49 Copy quote

• Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients.

  Siddhartha Mukherjee

  Self, Doubt, Physicians

  48 Copy quote