Dubious Quotes - Page 2

• If your opponent has you by fifty pounds, winning a fight against him is a dubious proposition, at best. If your opponent has you by eight thousand and fifty pounds, you’ve left the realm of combat and enrolled yourself in Road-kill 101. Or possibly in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

  Jim Butcher

  Fighting, Winning, Eight

  Jim Butcher (2009). “Small Favor: A Novel of the Dresden Files”, p.200, Penguin

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• Yes, I am the last man to have walked on the moon, and that's a very dubious and disappointing honor. It's been far too long.

  Gene Cernan

  Moon, Men, Long

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• I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious.

  Sherman Alexie

  War, Might, Reason

  "Sherman Alexie: Don’t Call Me Warrior". Interview with Kiera Butler, www.motherjones.com. November 2009.

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• He is a friend who, in dubious circumstances, aids in deeds when deeds are necessary.

  Plautus

  Friends, Deeds, Aids

  Titus Maccius Plautus (1852). “The comedies of Plautus literally tr., with notes, by H.T. Riley”, p.427

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• My back swing off the first tee had put him in mond of an eldery woman of dubious morals trying to struggle out of a dress too tight around the shoulders.

  Patrick Campbell, 3rd Baron Glenavy

  Struggle, Swings, Trying

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• Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness.

  Nick Hornby

  Emotional, Self, Lines

  Nick Hornby (2003). “Songbook”, p.49, Penguin

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• Computer models of the climate....[are] a very dubious business if you don't have good inputs.

  Freeman Dyson

  Climate, Input, Global Warming

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• I am always shocked that there are still a handful of defenders of the dubious practice of abstinence, surely the worst idea since chocolate-covered ants.

  Dick Cavett

  Practice, Ideas, Chocolate

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• I adore [photography's] uneasy mix of fact and fiction - its dubious claim to truth - its status as history.

  Eleanor Antin

  Photography, Fiction, Facts

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• I’m saying language is a passport. A dubious, dangerous passport too.

  Xiaolu Guo

  Language, Dangerous, Passports

  "Writers attack 'overrated' Anglo-American literature at Jaipur festival" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. January 20, 2014.

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• When you go apartment-hunting in the South, you encounter little old ladies who ask you if you use strong drink. In New York you encounter paranoids who wonder if you will commit suicide--not that they care; what they worry about is blood on their fresh paint, a dubious smell in the hallway, or a hole in the awning as you pass through on your way to the sidewalk. The Southerner who moves to any part of the country has problems, but the culture shock that attacks the Southerner who moves North is almost indescribable.

  Florence King

  Suicide, Country, Strong

  Florence King (1976). “Southern ladies and gentlemen”

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• We say that we often see animals in our dreams, but we forget that almost always we are ourselves animals therein, deprived of that reasoning power which projects upon things the light of certainty; on the contrary we bring to bear on the spectacle of life only a dubious vision, extinguished anew every moment by oblivion, the former reality fading before that which follows it as one projection of a magic lantern fades before the next as we change the slide.

  Marcel Proust

  Dream, Animal, Reality

  Marcel Proust (1981). “Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's way. Within a budding grove”, New York : Random House

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• What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.

  William James

  Lonely, Men, Needs

  William James, Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, Ignas K. Skrupskelis (1982). “Essays in Religion and Morality”, p.72, Harvard University Press

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• Similarly, the press never tested many of the assumptions about WMDs. One of the great myths about the WMD issue is that everybody believed Iraq had them. Well, that's not true. There were a number of people in the intelligence community and the State Department who were skeptical, and many analysts in the Department of Energy were dubious about Iraq's nuclear capability. There were also people like Scott Ritter who were saying quite accurately what was going on.

  Seymour Hersh

  Wmd, Iraq, Numbers

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• Critics who perceive the first level of Mann's irony recognize that the second voice is giving us reasons to be dubious about various aspects of Aschenbach's life and work. But many of them don't appreciate the second level of irony, the one exemplified in setting this narrative voice alongside the more sympathetic one, and inviting us to choose.

  Philip Kitcher

  Narrative Voice, Appreciate, Giving

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• All "if" statements about the past are as dubious as prophecies of the future are. It seems fairly plausible that if Alexander or Ghengis Khan had never been born, some other individual would have filled his place and executed the design of the Hellenic or Mongolic expansion; but the Alexanders of philosophy and religion, of science and art, seem less expendable; their impact seems less determined by economic challenges and social pressures; and they seem to have a much wider range of possibilities to influence the direction, shape and texture of civilizations.

  Arthur Koestler

  Art, Philosophy, Past

  "The Sleepwalkeers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe". Book by Arthur Koestler, 1959.

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• I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy.

  Harry Leslie Smith

  War, Iraq, Veteran

  "This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time" by Harry Leslie Smith, www.theguardian.com. November 8, 2013.

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• The diversity of India cannot thrive on facile attempts to create the homogeneous category of "Indian." Nor can it thrive on dubious attempts to gloss over xenophobic provincialism or a highly culpable state-sponsored marginalization of a minority community.

  Nyla Ali Khan

  Diversity, Community, India

  "The Hidden Tragedy of Kashmir". Interview with Souad Sharabani, www.counterpunch.org. September 15, 2016.

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• Human life is so strangely constituted that even perfected intellectual understanding combined with the richest experience is incapable of conquering innate weaknesses. Even if it thoroughly analyzes itself, psychology (and this is one of the dubious aspects of psychoanalysis) can, to be sure, recognize its flawed native characteristics, but it cannot eliminate them. Understanding (them) is not the same as overcoming (them) and, again and again, we see the wisest of human beings helpless in the fact of their small follies which everyone else observes with a smile.

  Stefan Zweig

  Psychology, Understanding, Intellectual

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• I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit.

  Paul Klee

  Color, Drawing, Use

  Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.141, Univ of California Press

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• Man on the dubious waves of error toss'd.

  William Cowper

  Men, Errors, Toss

  Cowper: Poetical Works Truth l. 1

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• I would have private conversations with [Buckminster Fuller]. I once had an argument, for four hours, about the existence of the Mobius strip. Because he believed in the Klein Bottle, you see. And I said, "How in hell can you claim to believe in the Klein Bottle and think that the Mobius strip is dubious?" He said, "Well, it's a torus." I don't know what he had in his mind as a mathematical background, because I don't think he got topology. Because, in other words, the Mobius strip didn't have angles in it.

  Paul Laffoley

  Believe, Thinking, Mind

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

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• This is why I believe that many of our current eschatologies, intoxicated by dubious interpretations of John’s Apocalypse are not only ignorant and wrong, but dangerous and immoral.

  Brian D. McLaren

  Believe, Ignorant, Apocalypse

  Brian D. McLaren (2009). “Everything Must Change: When the World's Biggest Problems and Jesus' Good News Collide”, p.144, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• You have this giant institution called the United States media that was fully aware of the real reason behind open borders, mass immigration, and they're not fazed by it. They are not fazed by any of the dubious, any of the criminal, any of the catastrophically wrong, any of the catastrophically potentially damaging behavior on the part of the Democrats. It won't even be reported on. It won't even be referenced. And, as such, there's a certain percentage of the country that's never going to know what you and I know.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Country, Real, Media

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• The idea that Hezbollah is acting as an agent of Iran is very dubious. It's not accepted by specialists on Iran or specialists on Hezbollah. But it's the party line. Or sometimes you can put in Syria, i.e. "Syrian-supported Hezbollah," but since Syria is of less interest now you have to emphasize Iranian support.

  Noam Chomsky

  Party, Iran, Ideas

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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