Edifice Quotes - Page 2

• The foundation stones of a great building are destined to groan and be pressed upon; it is not for them to crown the edifice.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Foundation, Crowns, Stones

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• There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice.

  Angela Davis

  Ku Klux Klan, Justice, Racist

  "Angela Davis: 'There is an unbroken line of police violence in the US that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery" by Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. December 14, 2014.

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• The nations of antiquity rolled away in the current of ages, Israel alone remained one indestructible edifice of gray antiquity... preserved by an internal and marvelous power.

  Isaac Mayer Wise

  Israel, Age, Currents

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• Theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure

  Ambrose Bierce

  Dream, Assumption, Theology

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2734, Delphi Classics

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• We've created a multitrillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets - and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near certainty that those tickets will not win. Hope is not a plan, but hope is our plan.

  Atul Gawande

  Winning, Dollars, Tickets

  Atul Gawande (2014). “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End”, p.92, Metropolitan Books

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• Gass once wrote: "Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it." Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatozoa attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos.

  Dan Simmons

  Essence, Civilization, Ideas

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• Whiteness itself is artifice, is fiction, is a construction, is narrative, is myth. And I seek to deconstruct all of that, to challenge the accretion, the intellectual accretion, the philosophical secretion that generates within the edifice of white supremacy that allows people easy escape, and egress. And I'm saying, "No, you can't leave now. You cannot afford to not know what I'm talking about, because you gotta be held accountable."

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Philosophical, Talking, White

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy.

  Walter Benjamin

  Rotten, Mundane Life, Privacy

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland (1996). “Selected Writings: 1913-1926”, p.484, Harvard University Press

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• No human being can destroy the structure of a marriage except the two who made it. It is the one human edifice that is impregnable except from within.

  Gwen Bristow

  Two, Structure, Made

  GWEN BRISTOW (1971). “GWEN BRISTOW, TOMORROW IS FOREVER”

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• Yes, it seems we've got this mutant gene in our human personality that makes us susceptible to this same kind of mistake over and over again. It's really uncanny how we build these beautiful multicultural edifices and then allow this switch to be flipped and everybody goes, 'Oh, the other, get them out of here.

  Geraldine Brooks

  Beautiful, Mistake, Personality

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• I believe I can steal Fairfax's reputation in six months. It is an empty edifice. It has collapsed.

  Margo Kingston

  Believe, Six, Months

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• The common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Believe, Men, Thinking

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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• That family glaze of common references, jokes, events, calamities-that sense of a family being like a kitchen midden: layer upon layer of the things daily life is made of. The edifice that lovers build is by comparison delicate and one-dimensional.

  Laurie Colwin

  Kitchen, Layers, Events

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• There are forces more powerful and pervasive than the apparatus of war. You may chain a man, but you cannot chain his mind. You may enslave him, but you will not conquer his spirit. In every decade since the war Soviet leaders have been reminded that their pitiless ideology only survives because it is maintained by force. But the day will come when the anger and frustration of the people is so great that force cannot contain it. Then the edifice cracks; the mortar crumbles; one day, liberty will dawn on the other side of the wall.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Wall, Powerful, War

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• Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use.

  John Ruskin

  Character, Use, Common

  John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.8

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• We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  One Day, Needs, Helping

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.205, Beacon Press

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• The IMF economists were doubtless shaken by the extreme failures of their prescriptions over many years, and by the collapse of the intellectual edifice of economic theory on which they were relying.

  Noam Chomsky

  Years, Intellectual, Imf

  "Chomsky: "The Business Elites... Are Instinctive Marxists"". Interview with Keane Bhatt, truth-out.org. November 19, 2010.

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• As great edifices collapse of their own weight, so Heaven sets a similar limit to the growth of prosperous states.

  Lucan

  Heaven, Growth, Weight

  Lucan (1957). “Pharsalia: dramatic episodes of the Civil Wars”

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• Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, creaking and incongruous, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually controlled by them and lumbering gloomily down vistas of triteness. With a sort of heavy-fisted dexterity the mutually adapted emotions of each of them became synchronized, until the unavoidable anti-climax was at hand.

  Anthony Powell

  Hands, Dexterity, Emotion

  Anthony Powell (2014). “Afternoon Men: A Novel”, p.83, University of Chicago Press

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• I think I never passed so sad an hour, Dear friend, as that one at the church to-night. The edifice from basement to the tower Was one resplendent blaze of coloured light.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Friendship, Night, Thinking

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.1407, Delphi Classics

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• Pick the topic you like: the Middle East, international terrorism, Central America, whatever it is - the picture of the world that's presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. It's all been a marvelous success from the point of view in deterring the threat of democracy, achieved under conditions of freedom, which is extremely interesting. It's not like a totalitarian state, where it's done by force. These achievements are under conditions of freedom.

  Noam Chomsky

  Lying, Reality, America

  Noam Chomsky (2011). “Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda”, p.37, Seven Stories Press

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• But amid much elegance and precision, the details of life and the Universe also exhibit haphazard, jury-rigged arrangements and much poor planning. What shall we make of this: an edifice abandoned early in construction by the architect?

  Carl Sagan

  Details Of Life, Atheism, Poor Planning

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.76, Ballantine Books

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• Knowledge signifies things known. Where there are no things known, there is no knowledge. Where there are no things to be known, there can be no knowledge. We have observed that every science, that is, every branch of knowledge, is compounded of certain facts, of which our sensations furnish the evidence. Where no such evidence is supplied, we are without data; we are without first premises; and when, without these, we attempt to build up a science, we do as those who raise edifices without foundations. And what do such builders construct? Castles in the air.

  Frances Wright

  Knowledge, Science, Air

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• A country whose buildings are of wood, can never increase in its improvements to any considerable degree.... Whereas when buildings are of durable materials, every new edifice is an actual and permanent acquisition to the state, adding to its value as well as to its ornament.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Degrees, Ornaments

  Thomas Jefferson (1832). “Notes on the State of Virginia”, p.162

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• Writing a book I have found to be like building a house. A man forms a plan, and collects materials. He thinks he has enough to raise a large and stately edifice; but after he has arranged, compacted and polished, his work turns out to be a very small performance. The authour however like the builder, knows how much labour his work has cost him; and therefore estimates it at a higher rate than other people think it deserves

  James Boswell

  Book, Writing, Men

  James Boswell (2002). “The Journal of a Tour to Corsica and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli”

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