Dull Quotes - Page 19

• There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.

  Thomas Sowell

  Stupid, Creating, People

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.98, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex instinct which makes women seem beautiful, which they are once in a blue moon, and men seem wise and brave, which they never are at all. Throttle it, denaturalize it, take it away, and human existence would be reduced to the prosaic, laborious, boresome, imbecile level of life in an anthill.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Wise, Sex

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• Be it known that Men of dull faculties and slight wisdom, They who cling proudly to signs, Cannot believe in this Dharma. Now I, joyfully and fearlessly, In the midst of the bodhisattvas Frankly casting aside my expedient devices, Merely preach the Unexcelled Path.

  Gautama Buddha

  Buddhist, Believe, Men

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• Those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick-witted at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would have been.

  Plato

  Plato, Natural Talent, Training

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• "Exciting" is a dull world to describe the wrestling business.

  Alexander Nderitu

  Wrestling, World, Exciting

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• We pledge to fight 'blue-sky thinking wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.

  Gavin Pretor-Pinney

  Fighting, Thinking, Sky

  Gavin Pretor-Pinney (2007). “The Cloudspotter's Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds”, p.11, Penguin

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• Rather than exist each day in some dull, boring habitual manner, move into action on a big idea. Everyone is on the brink of possibility. Your responsibility is to discover what that possibility is for you. Ideas can turn you on, they can wind you up. The right idea can and will add a new dimension to your life.

  Bob Proctor

  Motivational, Moving, Responsibility

  FaceBook post by Bob Proctor from Dec 13, 2011

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• The worst thing a politician can be is dull. At least I'm interesting.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Interesting, Political, Politics

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• The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity. The wits of these happy days have discovered a way to fame, which the dull caution of our laborious ancestors durst never attempt; they cut the knots of sophistry, which it was formerly the business of years to untie, solve difficulties by sudden irradiations of intelligence, and comprehend long processes of argument by immediate intuition.

  Samuel Johnson

  Cutting, Years, Long

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.237

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• Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Believe, Fighting, Long

  "Paris Review interview". Interview with George Plimpton, Paris Review Issue 18, Spring, 1958.

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• If our ballets be feeble, monotonous and dull, if they be devoid of ideas, meaning, expression and character, it is less the fault of the art than that of the artist.

  Jean-Georges Noverre

  Art, Character, Expression

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• The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body. I don't leap and jump anymore. I look at young dancers, and I am envious, more aware of what glories the body contains. But sensitivity is not made dull by age.

  Martha Graham

  Art, Dancer, Ballet

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• Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

  Frederick Douglass

  Country, Zealous, Determined

  Frederick Douglass, Philip Sheldon Foner, Yuval Taylor (1999). “Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.621, Chicago Review Press

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• You have only 30 seconds in a TV commercial. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull. When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.

  David Ogilvy

  Fire, People, Attention

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• The good were worthy of note because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Evil, Battle, Weakness

  Alexander McCall Smith (2005). “Friends, Lovers, Chocolate”, Pantheon

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• Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?

  Sylvia Plath

  Inspirational, Mother, Responsibility

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.35, Anchor

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• There’s this thing called progress. But it doesn’t progress. It doesn’t go anywhere. Because as progress progresses the world can slip away. It’s progress if you can stop the world slipping away. My humble model for progress I the reclamation of land. Which is repeatedly, never-ending retrieving what it lost. A dogged and vigilant business. A dull yet valuable business. A hard, inglorious business. But you shouldn’t go mistaking the reclamation of land for the building of empires.

  Graham Swift

  Humble, Land, Progress

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• This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.

  Sarah Ruhl

  Love, Beautiful, Artist

  Sarah Ruhl (2010). “The Clean House and Other Plays”, p.488, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Apollo without Dionysus may indeed be a well-informed, good citizen but he's a dull fellow. He may even be 'cultured,' in the sense one often gets from traditionalist writings in education. . . . But without Dionysus he will never make and remake a culture.

  Jerome Bruner

  Writing, Apollo, Culture

  Jerome S. Bruner (1996). “The Culture of Education”, p.50, Harvard University Press

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• The media, far from being a conspiracy to dull the political sense of the people, could be viewed as a conspiracy to disguise the extent of political indifference.

  David Riesman

  Media, People, Empathy

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• I find daily life not always joyous, but always interesting. I have some sad days and nights, but none that are dull. As I advance deeper into the vale of years, I live with constantly increasing gusto and excitement. I am sure it all means something; in the last analysis, I am an optimist because I believe in God. Those who have no faith are quite naturally pessimists and I do not blame them.

  William Lyon Phelps

  Life, Believe, Mean

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• Awake, my soul, and with the sun thy daily course of duty run. Cast off dull sloth, and joyful rise to pay thy morning sacrifice. All praise to thee, who safe hast kept and hast refreshed me while I slept! Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake, I may of endless life partake. All praise to thee, my God, this night for all the blessings of the light. Keep me, oh keep me, King of Kings, beneath Thine own almighty wings. Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

  Thomas Ken

  Life, Running, Morning

  "Awake my soul, and with the sun" (hymn) (1695)

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• London, black as crows and noisy as ducks, prudish with all the vices in evidence, everlastingly drunk, in spite of ridiculous laws about drunkenness, immense, though it is really basically only a collection of scandal-mongering boroughs, vying with each other, ugly and dull, without any monuments except interminable docks.

  Paul Verlaine

  Law, Ducks, Drunk

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• I am glad that the life of pandas is so dull by human standards, for our efforts at conservation have little moral value if we preserve creatures only as human ornaments; I shall be impressed when we show solicitude for warty toads and slithering worms.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Effort, Ornaments, Pandas

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The business community wants remarkable advertising, but turns a cold shoulder to the kind of people who can produce it. That is why most advertisements are so infernally dull.... our business needs massive transfusions of talent. And talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.

  David Ogilvy

  Believe, People, Community

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