Imposing Quotes

• Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans, and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa... Whilst we were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty... whilst we swore irreconcilable hostility to her enemies... whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free or die... we were imposing on our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained.

  St. George Tucker

  Son, Men, Land

  "A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it, in the State of Virginia". Book by St. George Tucker, 1796.

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• You cannot lecture another people about what you think is right or wrong based on your value system unless you're willing to accept others imposing their value system on you.

  Adel al-Jubeir

  Thinking, People, Lectures

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice - that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt - are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others.

  Eric Hoffer

  Strong, Practice, Feelings

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.

  Miguel Angel Ruiz

  Dream, Healing, Our World

  "3 Things That Happen to Your Life When You Stop Taking Things Personally" by Tara-Nicholle Nelson, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 8, 2016.

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• The idea of imposing peace from the outside doesn't work.

  Benjamin Netanyahu

  Peace, Ideas

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• Photographers have to impose order, bring structure to what they photograph. It is inevitable. A photograph without structure is like a sentence without grammar-it is incomprehensible, even inconceivable.

  Stephen Shore

  Photography, Order, Photographer

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• When caring for your neighbor becomes a compulsory obligation imposed by government instead of voluntary, charity turns to confiscation and freedom to achieve to involuntary servitude. To liberals, compassion seems to be defined by how many people are dependent on the government; to conservatives, it's defined by how many people no longer need help. One promotes dependence, the other freedom, responsibility and achievement.

  Star Parker

  Freedom, Responsibility, Caring

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• We gain no wisdom by imposing our way on others.

  James Lee Burke

  Way, Gains

  "James Lee Burke: What I've Learned" by Cal Fussman, www.esquire.com. December 31, 2012.

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• One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true - they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, "You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love." They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

  John Fowles

  Love, Time, Couple

  John Fowles (1968). “The Magus”, Pan

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• We do not precisely enjoy liberty at the Figaro. M. de Latouche, our worthy director (ah! you should know the fellow), is always hanging over us, cutting, pruning, right or wrong, imposing upon us his whims, his aberrations, his fancies, and we have to write as he bids.

  George Sand

  Writing, Cutting, Liberty

  George Sand (2009). “Letters of George Sand”, p.111, Cosimo, Inc.

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• No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius--a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould

  Powerful, Clever, Long

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1920). “Modes and Morals”

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• It is only great pain--that slow, sustained pain that takes its time, in which we are, as it were, burned with smoldering green firewood--that forces us philosophers to sink to our ultimate profundity and to do away with all the trust, everything good-natured, veil-imposing, mild and middling, on which we may have previously based our humanity. I doubt that such a pain makes us 'better'--but I know that it makes us deeper.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Pain, Humanity, Doubt

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• Virtue looks good but it only suits imposing figures.

  Frank Wedekind

  Looks, Suits, Virtue

  Frank Wedekind (2014). “Wedekind Plays: 1: Spring Awakening: A Children's Tragedy, Lulu: A Monster Tragedy”, p.55, A&C Black

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• Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it & let it be without imposing a word of mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Flower, Essence, Bird

  FaceBook post by Eckhart Tolle from Feb 18, 2015

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• Our nation is too different, too diverse to say that what works in Massachusetts is somehow going to be grabbed by the federal government, usurping the power of states and imposing a one-size-fits-all plan on the nation. That will not work.

  Mitt Romney

  Government, Different, Massachusetts

  "The Kudlow Report" with Larry Kudlow, www.cnbc.com. April 13, 2011.

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• To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.

  William Zinsser

  Art, Writing, Editors

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• Sport is imposing order on what was chaos.

  Antony Starr

  Sports, Order, Squash

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• A tourist can't help but have a distorted opinion of a place: he meets unrepresentative people, has unrepresentative experiences, and runs around imposing upon the place the fantastic mental pictures he had in his head when he got there.

  Michael Lewis

  Running, Travel, People

  Michael Lewis (2011). “Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour”, p.23, Penguin UK

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• I was a hockey player, growing up. Being a big guy and being imposing, I had to use my size to protect my teammates. As an actor, I've been all over the map, but since I've moved to Hollywood, people tend to cast me in these more imposing characters, which is actually really fun for me.

  Kevin Durand

  Growing Up, Fun, Character

  Source: collider.com

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• Poor reading, like poor writing, is imposing what you already know on texts. You should go into reading to discover, not to reaffirm what you know.

  Azar Nafisi

  Reading, Writing, Poor

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• America's foreign policy supports freedom, democracy, and human dignity for all mankind, and we make no apologies for it. The opportunity society that we want for ourselves we also want for others, not because we're imposing our system on others but because those opportunities belong to all people as God-given birthrights and because by promoting democracy and economic opportunity we make peace more secure.

  Ronald Reagan

  Apology, Opportunity, America

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), Ronald Reagan (1984). “Ronald Reagan”

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• In a democracy, regulation of the press and imposing standards on it must be voluntary.

  Shami Chakrabarti

  Democracy, Regulation, Standards

  "Leveson aide: State control of newspapers is illegal and breaches human rights" by Tom McTague, www.mirror.co.uk. December 3, 2012.

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• I've always been way more attracted to playing imposing characters than the hero. I've always been more intrigued by Iago in Shakespeare than playing Romeo. That was always boring to me.

  Kevin Durand

  Hero, Character, Way

  Source: collider.com

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• There is no need to make spirituality a part of education. If you make education non-imposing and non-suppressive, people are naturally spiritual.

  Jaggi Vasudev

  Spiritual, Yoga, People

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• Resort to military force is a first sure sign that we are giving up the struggle for the democratic way of life, and that the Old World has conquered morally as well as geographically succeeding in imposing upon us its ideals and methods.

  John Dewey

  Giving Up, Military, Struggle

  John Dewey, Larry Hickman, Thomas M. Alexander (1998). “The Essential Dewey: Ethics, logic, psychology”, p.365, Indiana University Press

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