Importance Quotes - Page 40

• I learned the importance of being nonjudgmental, taking what happens and trying to make it work.That's something you should apply to life.

  Herbie Hancock

  Trying, Should, Happens

  "Musical Legend Herbie Hancock Fuses Jazz, Global Rhythms". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. September 16, 2010.

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• All I ask of Life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance.

  Ashleigh Brilliant

  Life Is, Constant, My Own

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• No one can know the infinite importance of a tiny drop of water better than a thirsty bird or a little ant or a man of desert!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Men, Water, Bird

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• A small win is a concrete, complete, implemented outcome of moderate importance. By itself, one small win may seem unimportant. A series of wins at small but significant tasks, however, reveals a pattern that may attract allies, deter opponents, and lower resistance to subsequent proposals. Small wins are controllable opportunities that produce visible results.

  Karl E. Weick

  Winning, Opportunity, Opponents

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• Realizing who we are and what we may become assures us that with God nothing really is impossible. From the time we learn that Jesus wants us for a Sunbeam until we learn more fully the basic principles of the gospel, we are taught to strive for perfection. It is not new to us then to talk of the importance of achievement. The difficulty arises when inflated expectations of the world alter our definition of greatness.

  Howard W. Hunter

  Jesus, Greatness, Expectations

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• To watch the progress of such endeavors is the office of a free press. To give us early alarm and put us on our guard against encroachments of power. This then is a right of utmost importance, one for which, instead of yielding it up, we ought rather to spill our blood.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Blood, Office, Giving

  Alexander Hamilton, Julius Goebel, Joseph Henry Smith (1969). “The Law Practice of Alexander Hamilton: Documents and Commentary”, p.831, Columbia University Press

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• (The short story) is a form that has all the power of the novel - some would say more - but none of the self-importance.

  Joseph O'Connor

  Self, Stories, Form

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• There is only one constant element in immunity, whether innate or acquired, and that is phagocytosis. The extension and importance of this factor can no longer be denied.

  Elie Metchnikoff

  Elements, Constant, Factors

  Elie Metchnikoff (1907). “Immunity in infective diseases”

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• It is certainly of great importance for a general to keep his plans secret; and Frederick the Great was right when he said that if his night-cap knew what was in his head he would throw it into the fire. That kind of secrecy was practicable in Frederick's time when his whole army was kept closely about him; but when maneuvers of the vastness of Napoleon's are executed, and war is waged as in our day, what concert of action can be expected from generals who are utterly ignorant of what is going on around them?

  Antoine-Henri Jomini

  War, Army, Night

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• Human memory awakens and extinguishes at will. It dulls and sharpens actions, enlarges and shrinks those who perform them. It humbles and exalts as it desires. When summoned, it slips away, and when it returns, it will do so at the time and place that suits it. It recognizes no chief, no overseer, no classifier, no ruler. Stories mix and mingle, facts sprout new shoots. The situations and words and scents-oh, the scents!-encrusted there are stored in the most disorganized and wonderful manner, not chronologically, not according to size or importance or even the alphabet.

  Meir Shalev

  Memories, Desire, Stories

  Meir Shalev (2011). “My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner: A Family Memoir”, p.140, Schocken

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• The important thing is this: that, under such government recognition as we may give to that which is beneficent and wholesome in large business organizations, we shall be most vigilant never to allow them to crystallize into a condition which shall make private initiative difficult. It is of the utmost importance that in the future we shall keep the broad path of opportunity just as open and easy for our children as it was for our fathers during the period which has been the glory of America's industrial history.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Children, Father, Opportunity

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• Hitler overestimated the importance of [technology]. As a result, he would count on a mere handful of assault-gun detachment or the new Tiger tanks to restore situations where only large bodies of troops could have any prospect of success.

  Erich von Manstein

  Gun, Technology, Tanks

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• It is natural to think that an abstract science cannot be of much importance in affairs of human life, because it has omitted from its consideration everything of real interest.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Real, Thinking, Affair

  Alfred North Whitehead (1958). “An Introduction to Mathematics”, p.3, New York : Oxford University Press, 1958 [c1948]

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• To proportion the eagerness of contest to its importance seems too hard a task for human wisdom. The pride of wit has kept ages busy in the discussion of useless questions, and the pride of power has destroyed armies, to gain or to keep unprofitable possessions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Army, Pride, Age

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “Lives of the poets. Lives of eminent persons. Political tracts. Philological tracts. Miscellaneous tracts. Dedications. Opinions on questions of law. Reviews and criticisms. Journey to the Western islands of Scotland. Prayers and meditations”, p.412

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• The mistakes that people will make are of much less importance than the mistake that management makes if it tells them exactly what to do.

  William L. McKnight

  Mistake, People, Management

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• Art. Its definitions are legion, its meanings multitudinous, its importance often debated. But amid the many contradictory definitions of art, one has always stood the test of time, from the Upanishads in the East, to Michelangelo in the West: art is the perception and depiction of the sublime, the transcendent, the beautiful, the spiritual.

  Ken Wilber

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Art

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• The importance of infinite processes for the practical exigencies of technical life can hardly be overemphasized. Practically all applications of arithmetic to geometry, mechanics, physics and even statistics involve these processes directly and indirectly.

  Tobias Dantzig

  Statistics, Physics, Infinite

  Tobias Dantzig (2005). “Number: The Language of Science”, Dutton Juvenile

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• By emphasizing the importance of a common language, we safeguard a proud legacy and help to ensure that America's future will be as great as her past.

  Ronald Reagan

  Past, America, Legacy

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• I have never doubted the importance of melody. I like melody very much, and I consider it the most important element in music, and I labour many years on the improvement of its quality in my compositions.

  Sergei Prokofiev

  Years, Important, Quality

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• So far I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an attempt to understand the world. Practical science, which is an attempt to change the world, has been important from the first, and has continually increased in importance, until it has almost ousted theoretical science from men's thoughts.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Important, World

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.492, Simon and Schuster

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• The 'free-floating intellectual' may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.

  Noam Chomsky

  Intellectual, Floating, May

  Institute Professor Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky (2010). “American Power and the New Mandarins”, p.3, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The importance and unimportance of the self cannot be exaggerated.

  Reginald Horace Blyth

  Self, Exaggerated

  Reginald Horace Blyth (1948). “Zen in English literature and oriental classics”

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• Surely it is the right wish that draws us to the right place. Nothing of importance happens accidentally in our life.

  Anagarika Govinda

  Wish, Draws, Happens

  Lama Anagarika Govinda (2012). “The Way Of The White Clouds”, p.132, Random House

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• Among other pleasing errors of young minds is the opinion of their own importance. He that has not yet remarked, how little attention his contemporaries can spare from themselves, conceives all eyes turned upon himself, and imagines everyone that approaches him to be an enemy or a follower, an admirer or a spy.

  Samuel Johnson

  Eye, Errors, Mind

  Samuel Johnson (1968). “Essays from the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler”, p.20, Yale University Press

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• There's a lot of anti-intellectualism in Britain. And the writer's views on this or that are really of less importance, as they see it, than that of the man in the street.

  Martin Amis

  Men, Views, He Man

  "New New Yorker Martin Amis Talks Terrorism, Pornography, Idyllic Brooklyn and American Decline". Interview with David Wallace-Wells, www.vulture.com. July 22, 2012.

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