High Ground Quotes

• Set your goals high; make friends with different kinds of people; enjoy simple pleasures. Stand on high ground; sit on level ground; walk on expansive ground.

  Li Ka-shing

  Simple, People, Goal

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• Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone.

  Maya Angelou

  Independent, Mud, Republican

  Maya Angelou (2008). “Letter to My Daughter”, p.56, Random House

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• The best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Simple, Reality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.122, Harvard University Press

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• That's how hatred is created: two different groups, each insisting they're on the moral high ground

  Neil Strauss

  Moral High Ground, Two, Hatred

  Neil Strauss (2011). “Emergency: One man's story of a dangerous world, and how to stay alive in it”, p.53, Canongate Books

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• Always trust your fellow man. And always cut the cards. Always trust God. And always build your house on high ground. Always love thy neighbor. And always pick a good neighborhood to live in.

  Robert Fulghum

  Cutting, Men, House

  Robert Fulghum (2004). “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things”, p.210, Ballantine Books

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• An e-mail from a reader says that liberals like to take the moral high ground, even though their own moral relativism means that there is no moral high ground.

  Thomas Sowell

  Mean, Moral High Ground, Mail

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• As a teenager, I put a lot of pressure on myself, and a lot of that, for me, was about finding a moral high ground. As I've grown up, I've decided to abandon that because it made me judgmental and also stressed me out.

  Veronica Roth

  Teenager, Moral High Ground, Stressed

  "Veronica Roth on her book 'Insurgent' and feminism". Interview with Susan Carpenter, latimesblogs.latimes.com. April 30, 2012.

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• Astrophysicists perfected navigation. We perfected all these things that matter to the power of nations manifest on the world stage. So we want to go into space. That's the new high ground, right? We care about multispectral imaging of things. Well, that's what reconnaissance wants to do. So our expertise has been in bed with national security needs forever. So maybe, secretly, that's why they keep us employed.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Space, Forever, Bed

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Looking back on 200 years of feminist agitation in this country, we've got to get it that the moral high ground doesn't get us anything. Pleading with powerful men never gets us what we need. Talking doesn't do it. Being right doesn't do it. Hardball politics does it ... and a political strategy.

  Naomi Wolf

  Country, Powerful, Men

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• I don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground.

  Rachel Kushner

  Real, Moral High Ground, Claims

  Source: therumpus.net

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• We have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than our rage, which gives us, in our opinion, the moral high ground. From there we can shoot down at our enemies and inflict heavy fatalities.

  Salman Rushdie

  Thinking, Moral High Ground, Giving

  "Raging from the moral highground" by Ian Sansom, www.theguardian.com. August 11, 2000.

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• If we condone torture, we yield the moral high ground to our enemies and encourage anyone who hates us to stoop to using that subhuman level against us. We reap whatever we sow.

  Rick Warren

  Hate, Yield, Moral High Ground

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• We have the - the longest, friendliest border, you know, for the - for the longest time in the history - in recorded history, really, with Canada. And they get to sit on their moral perch, you know, take the moral high ground, say, oh, United States, shame on you about Iraq. They make us look bad internationally. And it's really not fair.

  Tucker Carlson

  Moral High Ground, Iraq, United States

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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• America has lost the moral high ground with the rest of the world, and we have fewer allies as a result. President Bush and his administration have undermined the war on terror by using tactics outlawed by international treaty and condemned by even our closest friends.

  John Olver

  War, Moral High Ground, America

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• Hypocrisy is not a way of getting back to the moral high ground. Pretending you're moral, saying your moral is not the same as acting morally.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Moral High Ground, Hypocrisy, Acting

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• Don’t take the high ground and assume you already know what you’ll do. The truth is, when it comes to someone you love, you’ll find there isn’t anything you won’t do.

  Richelle Mead

  Love, Truth, Loving Someone

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• Imagine a pantomime directed by Quentin Tarantino, where villains are booed, heroes are blood-stained, the body-count is high, the entertainment pulsating, the language filthy and the audience screamed behind you'' as tackles hurtled in like boulders crashing down a mountain-side. Such was the epic drama that gripped the Emirates yesterday. A derby crammed with sound, fury and significance ended with everyone grasping for breath, with Arsenal regaining the high ground of the Premier League... This was the Premier League at its raw, mistake-filled, mesmerising best. Utterly compelling.

  Henry Winter

  Soccer, Football, Mistake

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• Few politicians are good at taking the high ground and throwing themselves off it.

  Peter Mandelson

  Politician, Throwing

  1996 Of Tony Blair and the revision of Clause Four. In the New Yorker, 5 Feb.

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• In setting out the walls of a city the choice of a healthy situation is of the first importance: it should be on high ground, neither subject to fogs nor rains; its aspects should be neither violently hot nor intensely cold, but temperate in both respects.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Baby, Wall, Rain

  Marcus VITRUVIUS POLLIO, Joseph GWILT (1826). “The Architecture of M. Vitruvius Pollio in Ten Books, Translated from the Latin by J. Gwilt”, p.16

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• You know that things are not going well when you lose the moral high ground to a TMZ reporter.

  John Oliver

  Moral High Ground, Wells, Loses

  "John Oliver Skewers Roger Goodell, Says NFL Commish Has Lost Moral High Ground To TMZ" By Ryan Grenoble, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 22, 2014.

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• And while I might not always agree with the viewpoint I have to portray, because I play a district attorney, as an actress I can always tell myself that my character is trying to take the moral high ground.

  Lara Flynn Boyle

  Character, Moral High Ground, Play

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• After fifteen years of facing them (pitchers) you don't really get over them. They're devious. They're the only players in the game allowed to cheat. They throw illegal pitches and they sneak foreign substances on the ball. They can inflict pain whenever they wish. And, they're the only ones on the diamond who have high ground. That's symbolic. You know what they tell you in a war - 'take the high ground first.'

  Richie Ashburn

  Pain, War, Player

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• Materialist philosophies that treat human beings as machines or animals possess the high ground in our culture - academia, the most powerful media and many of our courts.

  Marvin Olasky

  Powerful, Philosophy, Animal

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• Under the leadership of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the United States has given up the moral high ground that we used to occupy as an international leader.

  Marty Meehan

  Leadership, Moral High Ground, President

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