Finite Quotes - Page 14

• We are all insane. That is what original sin means. Sin is insanity. It is preferring finite joy to infinite joy, creatures to the Creator, an unhappy, Godless self to a happy, God-filled self Only God can save us from this disease. That is what the name "Jesus" means: 'God saves'.

  Peter Kreeft

  Jesus, Mean, Self

  Peter Kreeft (2000). “Prayer for Beginners”, p.36, Ignatius Press

  72 Copy quote

  Show source

• God is consistent with his nature and declared purposes in Scripture, but he is not limited to our finite understanding of him or the ways we think he should work.

  Craig S. Keener

  Thinking, Understanding, Purpose

  Craig S. Keener (2001). “Gift and Giver: The Holy Spirit for Today”, p.30, Baker Academic

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you're certain it's as good as your finite powers can enable it to be.

  Rose Tremain

  Writing, Stuff, Firsts

  "Ten rules for writing fiction (part two)". www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• On your journey, remember there is no end. That is true knowledge. There is no final knowledge. There is no final enlightenment, that is a very finite, human way of seeing things.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Buddhism, Journey

  4 Copy quote

• The first rule of economics is that there is an infinite number of desires chasing a finite number of goods, services and resources. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics.

  Thomas Sowell

  Finite Number, Numbers, Desire

  13 Copy quote

• Even the standard example of ancient nonsense - the debate about angels on pinheads - makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Angel, Numbers, House

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.149, W. W. Norton & Company

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some people get tired of continual perception of the finite universe. They feel the perception of the universe over and over in variant forms is kind of an unhappy condition, because it doesn't last.

  Frederick Lenz

  Wisdom, Tired, Buddhism

  4 Copy quote

• I don't know what it is, exactly, but there's a negative drag on film sets after the second week or so, a mutinous vibe because the infinite capacities of the directors and everybody else become quite finite and everybody's under the gun and it becomes work.

  Diane Lane

  Gun, Directors, Negative

  4 Copy quote

• I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.

  Edward Abbey

  Men, Numbers, America

  "The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West". Book by Edward Abbey ("The Crooked Wood", p. 208), 1977.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• As soon as we cease to believe in such an engineer and in a discourse which breaks with the received historical discourse, and as soon as we admit that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage and that the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs , then the very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took on its meaning breaks down.

  Jacques Derrida

  Believe, Ideas, Differences

  Jacques Derrida (1978). “Writing and Difference”, p.285, University of Chicago Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• i realize i will never hear from dena again, and i will never call her. it gives me a chill. it is a strange thing to end a friendship, even if you know it's what you want. it's like a death; all of a sudden your experience of a person become finite.

  Melissa Bank

  Giving, Want, Strange

  Melissa Bank (2006). “The Wonder Spot”, p.205, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greatest miracle is the miracle of wakefulness, to awaken from the dream of life and to see infinity everywhere, even in the finite, in the simple doings of life.

  Frederick Lenz

  Dream, Buddhism, Simple

  13 Copy quote

• Ramakrishna didn't suddenly become enlightened. We had years of him meditating, seeking, crying to Mother Kali, going in and out of samadhi; but after many years of this process, he was enlightened. He was no longer a finite individual.

  Frederick Lenz

  Mother, Years, Kali

  18 Copy quote

• The catastrophe story, whoever may tell it, represents a constructive and positive act by the imagination rather than a negative one, an attempt to confront the terrifying void of a patently meaningless universe by challenging it at its own game. [. . .] Each one of these fantasies represents an arraignment of the finite, an attempt to dismantle the formal structure of time and space which the universe wraps around us at the moment we first achieve consciousness.

  J. G. Ballard

  Games, Space, Imagination

  4 Copy quote

• The finite human being shall never know in its fullness Truth and Love which is itself infinite.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Truth, And Love, Infinite

  Mahatma Gandhi, Dennis Dalton (1995). “Gandhi: Selected Political Writings”, p.31, Hackett Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sadly, the things that we have set out as being worth striving for are not ultimately the things that satisfy human longings. And why not? Because we are practically the ultimate paradox: the finite made for the infinite.

  Desmond Tutu

  Why Not, Longing, Infinite

  Source: www.egonzehnder.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you wish to advance into the infinite, explore the finite in all directions.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Wish, Infinite, Exploration

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1964). “Goethe : [selected Verse]”

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our resources may be finite, but our will is infinite, and I am confident that if we come together and summon that great American spirit once again, we will meet the challenges of our time and write the next great chapter in our American story.

  Barack Obama

  Money, Writing, Challenges

  Tenth President-Elect Weekly Transition Address, First Broadcast 10 January 2009, Washington, D.C.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• One [idea] was that the Universe started its life a finite time ago in a single huge explosion, and that the present expansion is a relic of the violence of this explosion. This big bang idea seemed to me to be unsatisfactory even before detailed examination showed that it leads to serious difficulties.

  Fred Hoyle

  Life, Science, Ideas

  Fred Hoyle (1960). “The nature of the universe”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• But how can finite grasp Infinity?

  John Dryden

  Infinity

  John Dryden (1811). “The Poetical Works of John Dryden: Containing Original Poems, Tales, and Translations”, p.20

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All truths are erroneous. This is the very essence of the dialectical process: today's truths become errors tomorrow; there is no final number. This truth (the only one) is for the strong alone. Weak-nerved minds insist on a finite universe, a last number; they need, in Nietzsche's words, "the crutches of certainty". The weak-nerved lack the strength to include themselves in the dialectic syllogism.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Strong

  8 Copy quote

• The transfinite numbers are in a sense the new irrationalities [ ... they] stand or fall with the finite irrational numbers.

  Georg Cantor

  Fall, Irrational Numbers, Mathematics

  9 Copy quote

• Finally you come to a point where you almost know it all. You are very wise. You are very pure... except for the fact that you may well have gotten caught in the last trap... the desire to know it all and still be you, "the knower." This is an impossibility. For all of the finite knowledge does not add up to the infinite. In order to take the final step, the knower must go. That is, you can only BE it all, but you can't know it all. The goal is non-dualistic - as long as there is a "knower" and "known" you are in dualism.

  This is quotes copyright © By Pumpkin Limited

  Ram Dass

  Wise, Spiritual, Order

  19 Copy quote

• Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are "prefabricated" in the sense that we don't coin new ones every time we speak.

  David Lodge

  Communication, Creativity, Degrees

  4 Copy quote

• This morning, prompted by increasing concerns about terrorism, oil prices reached a record high as the cost of a barrel of crude is a whopping $44.34. Wow, it seems shocking that a product of finite supply gets more expensive the more we use it. Now the terror alert means higher oil prices, which oddly enough means higher profits for oil companies giving them more money to give to politicians whose policies may favor the oil companies such as raising the terror alert level. As Simba once told us: "It's the circle of life."

  Jon Stewart

  Morning, Mean, Circles

  7 Copy quote