Importance Quotes - Page 21

• We must never underestimate the power of the prayer that is lifted up by wonderful saints all around the world.
  Prayer is of paramount importance in developing our relationship with our Savior and in building up and supporting others through the work of the Holy Spirit.

  Will Graham

  Prayer, Building Up, Saint

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• [T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously-after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Athlete, Thinking, Media

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• Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.

  Virginia Woolf

  Animal, Self, Leader

  Virginia Woolf (2009). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1932”, Chatto & Windus

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• I don't encourage any act of murder nor do I glorify in anybody's death, but I do think that when the white public uses its press to magnify the fact that there are the lives of white hostages at stake, they don't say "hostages," every paper says "white hostages." They give me the impression that they attach more importance to a white hostage and a white death, than they do the death of a human being, despite the color of his skin.

  Malcolm X

  Thinking, White, Color

  Malcolm X's speech at the Oxford Union debate (December 3, 1964) as quoted in Saladin Ambar "Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era" (p. 174), 2013.

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• Great drama, drama that may reach the alchemical level, must have dimension and its relevance will take care of itself. Writing about AIDS rather than the cocktail set, or possibly the fairy kingdom, will not guarantee importance. . . . The old comment that all periods of time are at an equal distance from eternity says much, and pondering on it will lead to alchemical theatre while relevance becomes old hat.

  Robertson Davies

  Distance, Drama, Writing

  Robertson Davies (1999). “Happy Alchemy: On the Pleasures of Music and the Theatre”, Penguin Group USA

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• An author frequently chooses solemn or overwhelming subjects to write about; he is so impressed at writing about Life and Death that he does not notice that he is saying nothing of the slightest importance about either.

  Randall Jarrell

  Writing, Life And Death, Doe

  "Ten Books", The Southern Review (p. 9), 1935.

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• The difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance in regard to every intellectual function, and especially for the conduct of life, that it is out of the question to admit that both are normal, and the great majority of mankind are naturally optimistic.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Optimistic, Differences, Intellectual

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1958). “Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)”, p.377, Courier Corporation

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• Those who have tried meekness know the importance of being important.

  George Ade

  Important, Meekness, Knows

  George Ade (1904). “True Bills”

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• Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law. Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Passion, Views, Law

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• So fully am I impressed with the vast importance and necessity of attaining what will be the object of my motion this night, that if, during the almost forty years that I have had the honour of a seat in parliament, I had been so fortunate as to accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough, and could retire from public life with comfort, and the conscious satisfaction, that I had done my duty.

  Charles James Fox

  Night, Thinking, Years

  Charles James Fox (1815). “The speeches of the right honourable Charles James Fox, in the House of Commons”, p.659

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• When I lie on the beach there naked, which I do sometimes, and I feel the wind coming over me and I see the stars up above and I am looking into this very deep, indescribable night, it is something that escapes my vocabulary to describe. Then I think: 'God, I have no importance. Whatever I do or don't do, or what anybody does, is not more important than the grains of sand that I am lying on, or the coconut that I am using for my pillow.' So I really don't think in the long sense.

  Marlon Brando

  Beach, Stars, Lying

  New York Times, July 2, 2004.

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• There seems to be no end to the senseless wickedness done on this little planet in a minor solar system, and we puny mortals appear to be decreasing in importance so far as the universe is concerned.

  Alec Guinness

  Done, Wickedness, Littles

  Alec Guinness (1998). “My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor”, Penguin Mass Market

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• A point of great importance would be first to know: what is the capacity of the earth? And what charge does it contain if electrified? Though we have no positive evidence of a charged body existing in space without other oppositely electrified bodies being near, there is a fair probability that the earth is such a body, for by whatever process it was separated from other bodies - and this is the accepted view of its origin - it must have retained a charge, as occurs in all processes of mechanical separation.

  Nikola Tesla

  Views, Space, Doe

  Nikola Tesla (2013). “The Nikola Tesla Treasury”, p.283, Simon and Schuster

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• I thought it would be lovely to use [pet bulldog] Noelle as an example to teach the importance of being who you are. For me it's important to inspire children in a positive way, and at times they understand more messages through entertainment than when one is talking to them directly.

  Gloria Estefan

  Children, Talking, Inspire

  Comment to The Associated Press regarding publication of her second children's book "Noelle's Treasure Tale", October 9, 2006.

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• The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.

  Eric Hoffer

  Mean, Self, Land

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• The seers of ancient India had, in their experiments and efforts at spiritual training and the conquest of the body, perfected a discovery which in its importance to the future of human knowledge dwarfs the divinations of Newton and Galileo , even the discovery of the inductive and experimental method in Science was not more momentous.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Spiritual, Discovery, Effort

  Sri Aurobindo (2006). “The Upanishads--II : Kena And Other Upanishads”, p.355, SriAurobindoAshram Publication Dept

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• Whenever Alexander heard Philip had taken any town of importance, or won any signal victory, instead of rejoicing at it altogether, he would tell his companions that his father would anticipate everything, and leave him and them no opportunities of performing great and illustrious actions.

  Plutarch

  Father, Taken, Opportunity

  Plutarch (2004). “The Life of Alexander the Great”, p.6, Modern Library

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• If modern painters feel qualms about applying the term "masterpiece" to describe a work of capital importance, this is because it has come to convey a notion of perfection: a notion that leads to much confusion when applied to artists other than those who made perfection their ideal.

  Andre Malraux

  Artist, Qualms About, Confusion

  "The Voices of Silence". Book by Andre Malraux, Doubleday, Part III, Chapter VI, 1953.

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• In certain circumstances where he experiments in new types of conduct by cooperating with his equals, the child is already an adult. There is an adult in every child and a child in every adult. ... There exist in the child certain attitudes and beliefs which intellectual development will more and more tend to eliminate: there are others which will acquire more and more importance. The later are not derived from the former but are partly antagonistic to them.

  Jean Piaget

  Children, Attitude, Intellectual

  Jean Piaget (1997). “The Moral Judgement of the Child”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

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• The discussion of the game of marbles seems to have led us into rather deep waters. But in the eyes of children the history of the game of marbles has quite as much importance as the history of religion or of forms of government. It Is a history, moreover, that is magnificently spontaneous; and it was therefore perhaps not entirely useless to seek to throw light on the child's judgment of moral value by a preliminary study of the social behaviour of children amongst themselves.

  Jean Piaget

  Children, Eye, Deep Water

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• Entrust a secret to one whose importance will not be much increased by divulging it.

  Arthur Helps

  Secret

  Sir Arthur Helps (1883). “Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd”

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• I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planet;As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.

  Theodore Roethke

  Mean, Order, Broken

  Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.73, Anchor

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• In order to build a great socialist society it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women to join in productive activity. Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production. Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.

  Mao Zedong

  Sex, Men, Equal Pay

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.150, Lulu.com

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• The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible.

  Saul Alinsky

  Loyalty, Spring, Rights

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.24, Vintage

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• Berkeley , Hume, Kant , Fichte , Hegel , James , Bergson all are united in one earnest attempt, the attempt to reinstate man with his high spiritual claims in a place of importance in the cosmic scheme.

  David Hume

  Spiritual, Men, Hegel

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