Hostile Quotes - Page 17

• On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of an achieved centre of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation. A contrast between country and city, as fundamental ways of life, reaches back into classical times.

  Raymond Williams

  Country, Powerful, Communication

  Raymond Williams (1975). “The Country and the City”, p.1, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Touch a university with hostile hands and the blood you draw is prompt, copious, and real.

  Diana Trilling

  Real, Blood, Hands

  Diana Trilling (1977). “We Must March My Darlings: A Critical Decade”, Harcourt

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• The declaration that our People are hostile to a government made by themselves, for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an insult.

  John Quincy Adams

  Government, People, Insult

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• There is nothing more hostile to a city that a tyrant, under whom in the first and chiefest place, there are not laws in common, but one man, keeping the law himself to himself, has the sway, and this is no longer equal.

  Euripides

  Men, Law, Cities

  Euripides (1863). “The Tragedies of Euripides: Hercules furens. The Troades. Ion. Andromache. Suppliants. Helen. Electra. Cyclops. Rhesus”, p.175

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• The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save in name: they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Christian, Humility, Opposites

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• Our problem is that the climate crisis hatched in our laps at a moment in history when political and social conditions were uniquely hostile to a problem of this nature and magnitude-that moment being the tail end of the go-go '80s, the blastoff point for the crusade to spread deregulated capitalism around the world. Climate change is a collective problem demanding collective action the likes of which humanity has never actually accomplished. Yet it entered mainstream consciousness in the midst of an ideological war being waged on the very idea of the collective sphere.

  Naomi Klein

  Nature, War, Science

  "Climate change is the fight of our lives - yet we can hardly bear to look at it" by Naomi Klein, www.theguardian.com. April 23, 2014.

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• The explanation is that prayer is not primarily God's way of getting things done. It is God's way of giving the church 'on the job training' in overcoming the forces hostile to God.

  Paul Billheimer

  Jobs, Prayer, Giving

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• Raising a daughter is an extremely political act in this culture. Mothers have been placed in a no-win situation with their daught ers: if they teach their daughters simply how to get along in a world that has been shaped by men and male desires, then they betray their daughters' potential But, if they do not, they leave their daughters adrift in a hostile world without survival strategies.

  Elizabeth Debold

  Mother Daughter, Men, Winning

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• To try to save for everyone, for the hostile and independent as well as the committed, some of the health that flows down across the green ridges from the skyline, and some of the beauty and spirit that are still available to any resident of the valley who has a moment and the wit to lift up his eyes unto the hills.

  Wallace Stegner

  Eye, Independent, Trying

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• I have a particular interest in corporations that give themselves a cultural aura and are in other areas suspect. Philip Morris presents itself in New York as the lover of culture while it turns out that if you look behind the scenes, it is also a prime funder of Jesse Helms, someone who is very hostile to the arts.

  Hans Haacke

  Art, New York, Giving

  "A Giant artistic Gibe at Jesse Helms" by Roberta Smith, New York Times, April 20, 1990.

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• I have received hostile voice mail messages and e-mails. They are often anonymous, I'm sad to say, as anonymous messages are delivered only by very low forms of human life, in my opinion.

  Ben Brantley

  Voice, Mail, Messages

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• The stratosphere is a hostile place.

  Felix Baumgartner

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• That every will must consider every other will its equal would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Secret, Principles

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo”, p.76, Vintage

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• Cities with all their advantages have something hostile to liberal learning, the seductions are so subtle and accost the senses so openly on all sides.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Cities, Sides, Seduction

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1877). “Table-talk”

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• A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the wall, saying, “I’m going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me.” No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms, as Reverend Cleage was pointing out beautifully, singing “We Shall Overcome”? Just tell me. You don’t do that in a revolution. You don’t do any singing; you’re too busy swinging.

  Malcolm X

  Wall, Hate, Singing

  "Message to Grassroots" by Malcolm X, teachingamericanhistory.org. November 10, 1963.

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• Those alone are dear to Divinity who are hostile to injustice.

  Pythagoras

  Divinity, Injustice, Dear

  Pythagoras (2013). “The Golden Verses of Pythagoras”, Lulu Press, Inc

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• When external and internal forces hostile to the development of socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of the restoration of the capitalist system, when a threat arises to the cause of socialism in that country ... this is no longer merely a problem for that country's people, but a common problem, the concern of all socialist countries.

  Leonid Brezhnev

  Country, Socialist Countries, People

  Speech at the 5th Congress of the Polish United Workers Party (12 November 1968), quoted in "The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy" by Matthew J. Ouimet, 2003.

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• Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.

  Edmund Burke

  Agents, Ambassadors, Politics

  Edmund Burke (1999). “The Portable Edmund Burke”, p.172, Penguin

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• What troubles me about the "hostile workplace" category of sexual harassment policy is that women are being returned to their old status of delicate flowers who must be protected from assault by male lechers. It is anti-feminist to ask for special treatment for women.

  Camille Paglia

  Flower, Feminist, Special

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays”, p.44, Vintage

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• There is no gay leader anywhere near the stature of Martin Luther King, because black activism drew on the profound spiritual tradition of the church, to which gay political rhetoric is childishly hostile.

  Camille Paglia

  Spiritual, Kings, Gay

  "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality". Camille Paglia, Vamps and Tramps, 1994.

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• Power is required for communication. To stand before an indifferent or hostile group and have one's say, or to speak honestly to a friend truths that go deep and hurt these require self-affirmation, self-assertion, and even at times aggression. ... My experience in psychotherapy convinces me that the act which requires the most courage is the simple communication, unpropelled by rage or anger, of one's deepest thoughts to another.

  Rollo May

  Hurt, Communication, Simple

  Rollo May (1998). “Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence”, p.245, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Watching first nights, though I've seen quite a few by now, is never any better. It's a nerve-racking experience. It's not a question of whether the play goes well or badly. It's not the audience reaction, it's my reaction. I'm rather hostile toward audiences—I don't much care for large bodies of people collected together. Everyone knows that audiences vary enormously; it's a mistake to care too much about them. The thing one should be concerned with is whether the performance has expressed what one set out to express in writing the play. It sometimes does.

  Harold Pinter

  Mistake, Writing, Night

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• By giving women training to sue a company for a 'hostile environment' if someone tells a dirty joke, we are training women to run to the Government as Substitute Husband (or Father). This gets companies to fear women, but not to respect women. The best preparation we can give women to succeed in the workplace is the preparation to overcome barriers rather than to sue: successful people don't sue, they succeed.

  Warren Farrell

  Running, Husband, Father

  Warren Farrell (1993). “The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex”

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• [Corporate programming] is often done to the point where the individual is completely submerged in corporate "culture" with no outlet for unique talents and skills. Corporate practices can be directly hostile to individuals with exceptional skills and initiative in technical matters. I consider such management of technical people cruel and wasteful.

  Bjarne Stroustrup

  Unique, Practice, Skills

  "The Problem with Programming". Interview with Jason Pontin, www.technologyreview.com. November 28, 2006.

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• Arrogance is an utterly appropriate weapon to use against a hostile world, a world in which arrogance is feared and respected, even if, like mine, it's only feigned.

  Thomas Bernhard

  Arrogance, Use, World

  Thomas Bernhard (2013). “Extinction: A Novel”, p.219, Vintage

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