Facts Quotes - Page 29

• I find it expressed in various passages of Scripture that the fact that God knows things while in a state of possibility, when their existence belongs to the future, does not change the nature of the possible in any way; that nature remains unchanged; and the knowledge of the realisation of one of several possibilities does not yet effect that realisation. This is likewise one of the fundamental principles of the Law of Moses concerning which there is no doubt nor any dispute.

  Maimonides

  Law, Doubt, Principles

  "Guide for the Perplexed". Book Maimonides, Ch.20, 1190.

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• The fact that laws were given to man, both affirmative and negative, supports the principle, that God's knowledge of future events does not change their character. The great doubt that presents itself to our mind is the result of the insufficiency of our intellect.

  Maimonides

  Character, Men, Law

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.1116, Moses Maimonides

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• During a single week of July 1967, 164 Americans were killed and 2100 were wounded in city riots in the United States. We are truly fighting a two-front war and doing badly in both. Each war feeds on the other and, although the President assures us that we have the resources to win both wars, in fact we are not winning either.

  J. William Fulbright

  War, Fighting, Winning

  "Fulbright: The Dissenter". Book by Haynes Bonner Johnson and Bernard M. Gwertzman, 1968.

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• Man is confronted with two obvious facts: The existence of the world in which he lives; and the existence of psychic life in himself.

  P.D. Ouspensky

  Men, Psychics, Two

  P. D. Ouspensky (2004). “Tertium Organum: A Key to the Enigmas of the World”, p.12, Book Tree

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• The modern sensibility attempts to drain the contents of experience; these Greek poets strive to state the fact so poignantly that it becomes an ever-flowing spring as Sappho says, "More real than real, more gold than gold.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Spring, Real, Greek

  Kenneth Rexroth (1968). “Classics Revisited”, p.59, New Directions Publishing

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• The moral issues with which Marcus struggles would be, as he points out, unchanged whether the universe were mechanical and devoid of meaning or value or ruled by deity or Providence; whether the will were in fact free or determined; whether there were or were not a future life, or any even fugitive rewards and punishments at all.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Struggle, Punishment, Issues

  Kenneth Rexroth (1968). “Classics Revisited”, p.82, New Directions Publishing

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• I have never concealed the fact and said it before the court in 1938 that I came from an anti-Semitic past and tradition... I ask only that you look at my life historically and take it as history. I believe that from 1933 I truly represented the Lutheran-Christian outlook on the Jewish question - as I revealed before the court - but that I returned home after eight years' imprisonment as a completely different person.

  Martin Niemoller

  Christian, Believe, Home

  "Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984" by James Bentley, (p. 334), 1984.

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• It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or withhold the equipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretion and business strategy, in fact, has no other means by to work out its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Work Out, Use

  Thorstein Veblen (1964). “The Nature of Peace”, p.168, Transaction Publishers

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• I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, didn't have no official song and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time.

  Tom Lehrer

  Song, Army, Rooms

  "Introduction to 'It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier'". CD Audio "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer", March 20-21, 1959.

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• And we will all go together when we go. What a comforting fact that is to know. Universal bereavement, An inspiring achievement, Yes, we will all go together when we go.

  Tom Lehrer

  Achievement, Bereavement, Comforting

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• But facts always convince, and another man's opinion rarely convinces.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Opinion, Convince

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “Phineas Redux”, p.438, Booklassic

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• But mad people never die. That's a well-known fact. They've nothing to trouble them, and they live for ever.

  Anthony Trollope

  People, Mad, Trouble

  Anthony Trollope (185?). “Phineas Redux”, p.281

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• We wish, in a word, equality - equality in fact as a corollary, or rather, as primordial condition of liberty. From each according to his faculties, to each according to his needs; that is what we wish sincerely and energetically.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Wish, Liberty, Needs

  Declaration signed by forty-seven anarchists on trial after the failure of their uprising at Lyons in 1870, in J. Morrison Davidson 'The Old and the New' (1890).

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• In fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind - not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.

  Maurice Ravel

  Art, Writing, Should Have

  "Ravel: Man and Musician". Book by Arbie Orenstein, p. 126, 1975.

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• Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity.

  Lee Salk

  Attitude, Children, Parent

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• Suzuki's works on Zen Buddhism are among the best contributions to the knowledge of living Buddhism... We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the author, first for the fact of his having brought Zen closer to Western understanding, and secondly for the manner in which he has achieved this task.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Grateful, Buddhism, Understanding

  D.T. Suzuki (2007). “An Introduction to Zen Buddhism”, p.7, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Our vulnerability [to ressentiment] is unavoidable (and probably incurable) in a kind of society in which relative equality of political and other rights and formally acknowledged social equality go hand in hand with enormous differences in genuine power, possessions and education; a society in which everyone "has the right" to consider himself equal to everybody else, while in fact being unequal to them.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Rights, Hands, Differences

  "The Art of Life". Book by Zygmunt Bauman, 2013.

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• That general warrants, whereby an officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted.

  George Mason

  May, Messengers, Granted

  "The Federal and State Constitutions Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America" compiled and edited by Newton Thorpe, Washington, DC : Government Printing Office, 1909.

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• I'm a pretty solid Christian. But even as an altar boy, I was always asking the bigger questions--you know: if God is, in fact, good, what is all this death I see? And if God is gentle, what is all this suffering I see? I've found some of the answers in Eastern religion. It explained my Christianity to me. Good and evil are the same thing. You can't have one without the other. It's the balance, it's the temperance of things.

  Tim Allen

  Christian, Boys, Evil

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• The facts of history have been too well rehearsed.

  John Ashbery

  History, Wells, Has Beens

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

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• I must speak the truth, even at the risk of being ostracized by my fellow scribblers. In fact, anticipating their rage, I have already applied for a place in the Canada Council's witness-protection program. This because, much as it pains me to turn on my kind, I fear the time has come to admit that far too many celebrated writers were outrageous liars, philanderers, drunks, druggies, unsuitable babysitters, plagiarists, psychopaths, parasites, cowards, indifferent dads or moms and bad credit risks.

  Mordecai Richler

  Mom, Pain, Dad

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• The capacity for the accomplishment of religious virtuosos the "intellectual sacrifice" is the decisive characteristic of the positively religious man. That this is so is shown by the fact that in spite of (or rather in consequence) of theology (which unveils it) the tension between the value-spheres of "science" and the sphere of "the holy" is unbridgeable.

  Max Weber

  Religious, Sacrifice, Men

  Max Weber (2009). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.154, Routledge

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• It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people.

  Howard Zinn

  Clever, Law, Jail

  Howard Zinn (2015). “A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present”, p.516, Routledge

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• I came to the conclusion that war was an unacceptable way of solving whatever problems there were in the world--that there would be problems of tyranny, of injustice, of nations crossing frontiers and that injustice and tyranny should not be tolerated and should be fought and resisted, but the one thing that must not be used to solve that problem is war. Because war is inevitably the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. And that fact overwhelms whatever moral cause is somewhere buried in the history of that war.

  Howard Zinn

  War, Numbers, People

  Howard Zinn (2012). “Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches 1963-2009”, p.108, Haymarket Books

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• That has been the great achievement of our age: to so thoroughly flood the planet with megabits that every image and fact has become a digitized disembodied nothingness. With magnificent determination, our species has advanced from Stone Age to Industrial Revolution to Digital Emptiness. We've become weightless, in the bad sense of the word.

  Alan Lightman

  Determination, Achievement, Age

  "Reunion". Book by Alan Lightman, www.nytimes.com. 2003.

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