Imperfect Quotes - Page 15

• International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.

  Rebecca West

  Gestures, International, Clumsy

  "The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews".

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• It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put - without delay, and with tenderness - back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

  Alice Walker

  Children, Believe, Dust

  "Alice Walker: Why I'm sailing to Gaza". edition.cnn.com. June 21, 2011.

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• What I've learned in 40 years of consumer reporting is that the market is imperfect, and some people get ripped off.

  John Stossel

  Years, People, I've Learned

  "John Stossel on Unintended Consequences of New Credit Card Rules". "The O'Reilly Factor" with Laura Ingraham, www.foxnews.com. August 24, 2010.

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• To understand matters rightly we should understand their details; and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Knowledge, Details, Matter

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• I have learned that much of my spiritual progress does not come directly from God, but through my ability to humble myself and hear Him speak through imperfect people.

  Francis Frangipane

  Spiritual, Humble, Humility

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• According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world, merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws, is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realizes all things as spiritually one with it, and there

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Inspiration, Views, Law

  Rabindranath Tagore (2004). “Tagore”, p.29, SkyLight Paths Publishing

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• Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer would always be in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at imperfect conclusion; but the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all ages of the world, and depends but little on the number of facts observed.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Science, Law, Numbers

  Henry David Thoreau, Eva Mae Burkett, Joyce S. Steward (1989). “Thoreau on writing”, Univ Pub Assoc

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• Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

  Blaise Pascal

  Sports, Men, Play

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• A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike.

  Conor Oberst

  Bombs, Weapons, Blunt

  "Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst responds to Arizona promoter’s boycott concerns" by Katie Hasty, uproxx.com. July 2, 2010.

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• There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  War, Civilization, Political

  Reinhold Niebuhr (1967). “Love and justice: selections from the shorter writings of Reinhold Niebuhr”

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• A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.

  Lewis Mumford

  Beauty, Truth, Sight

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• I shall not fear to say that the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood seems to me of all the philosophic theories the most appropriate to the needs of men in our time, and that I see in it the most powerful guarantee against themselves that remains to them. The minds of the moralists of our day ought to turn, therefore, principally toward it. Even should they judge it imperfect, they would still have to adopt it as necessary.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Powerful, Men, Self

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• Upon the whole, Chymistry is as yet but an opening science, closely connected with the usefull and ornamental arts, and worthy the attention of the liberal mind. And it must always become more and more so: for though it is only of late, that it has been looked upon in that light, the great progress already made in Chymical knowledge, gives us a pleasant prospect of rich additions to it. The Science is now studied on solid and rational grounds. While our knowledge is imperfect, it is apt to run into error: but Experiment is the thread that will lead us out of the labyrinth.

  Joseph Black

  Running, Art, Science

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• The sciences have sworn among themselves an inviolable partnership; it is almost impossible to separate them, for they would rather suffer than be torn apart; and if anyone persists in doing so, he gets for his trouble only imperfect and confused fragments. Yet they do not arrive all together, but they hold each other by the hand so that they follow one another in a natural order which it is dangerous to change, because they refuse to enter in any other way where they are called.

  Marin Mersenne

  Confused, Science, Hands

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• I keep telling myself that I'm a human being, an imperfect human being who's not made to look like a doll, and that who I am as a person is more important than whether at that moment I have a nice figure.

  Emma Watson

  Inspirational, Beauty, Nice

  "10 Times Emma Watson Ruled At Life" by Ariel Nagi, www.seventeen.com. November 19, 2014.

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• I love this world because it is imperfect. It is imperfect, and that's why it is growing; if it was perfect it would have been dead.

  Rajneesh

  Love, Imperfect World, Growing

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• Gratitude is a burden upon our imperfect nature.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Gratitude, Burden

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• I believe that life is valuable, even when it is unwanted, even when it is physically imperfect. I believe our society has a responsibility to defend the vulnerable and the weak. And I believe our nation should set a goal that unborn children should be welcomed in life and protected in law.

  George W. Bush

  Children, Believe, Responsibility

  "Parental Notification Law". Jun 7, 1999.

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• The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better. Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.

  Vaclav Havel

  Jobs, Law, People

  Vaclav Havel, John Keane (2016). “The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe”, p.89, Routledge

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• We are imperfect. We cannot expect perfect government.

  William Howard Taft

  Government, Perfect, Perfection And Imperfection

  Address at a banquet given by the Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce of Washington, D.C., on May 08, 1909. "Presidential Addresses and State Papers of William Howard Taft". Volume 1, chapter 7, p. 82, 1910.

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• Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Marriage, Memories, Real

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2014). “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• According to their [Newton and his followers] doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making, so imperfect, according to these gentlemen; that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as clockmaker mends his work.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  God, Moving, Wind

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• In completing one discovery we never fail to get an imperfect knowledge of others.

  Joseph Priestley

  Knowledge, Science, Discovery

  Joseph Priestley (1780). “The theological and miscellaneous works of Joseph Priestley”, p.372

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• To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge.

  Isaac Asimov

  Knowledge, Science, Perfect

  Isaac Asimov (1968). “The Intelligent Man's Guide to the Physical Sciences”

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• The science of the modern school ... is in effect ... the acquisition of imperfectly analyzed misstatements about entrails, elements, and electricity.

  George Herbert

  School, Science, Acquisition

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