Inadequate Quotes - Page 9

• Government is, or ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community... when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.

  George Mason

  Government, People, Community

  Virginia Declaration of Rights (Article 3), June 12, 1776.

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• The conception of Godhead formed by some devout philosophers and mystics has quite rightly been so immeasurably vast, though still assuredly utterly inadequate and necessarily beneath reality, that the notion of a God revealed in human formborn, sufferin.

  Oliver Lodge

  Reality, Philosopher, Notion

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• What politician ever thinks beyond 4 or 5 years? But such thinking is hopelessly inadequate for the big questions that involve the fabric of the world we live in

  Simon Barnes

  Future, Thinking, Years

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• The American Constitution is remarkable for its simplicity; but it can only suffice a people habitually correct in their actions, and would be utterly inadequate to the wants of a different nation. Change the domestic habits of the Americans, their religious devotion, and their high respect for morality, and it will not be necessary to change a single letter in the Constitution in order to vary the whole form of their government.

  Francis Grund

  Religious, Order, Government

  Francis Grund (2007). “Americans”, p.307, Applewood Books

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• No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate).

  Frederic Bastiat

  Order, Justice, Liberty

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.19, Cosimo, Inc.

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• There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.

  Carl Sagan

  Self, Dumb, Criticism

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• The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.

  C. S. Lewis

  Hurt, Kindness, Real

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• A man with a machine and inadequate culture is a pestilence.

  Wendell Berry

  Men, Culture, Machines

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.8, Counterpoint Press

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• I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.

  Margaret Atwood

  Depression, Lying, Stupid

  Margaret Atwood (1988). “Cat's eye”, Doubleday, 1989

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• One can never really give a proof of the reality of anything; reality is not something open to proof, it is something established. It is established just because proof is not enough. It is this characteristic of language, at once indispensable and inadequate, which shows the reality of the external world. Most people hardly ever realize this, because it is rare that the very same man thinks and puts his thought into action.

  Simone Weil

  Reality, Men, Thinking

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• I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Atheist

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• it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.

  John Steinbeck

  Laughter, Women, Habit

  John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.58, Hamilton Books

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• I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.

  May Sarton

  Innocent Person, Machines, Faces

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• Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.

  Patricia A. McKillip

  Impossible, Worst, Decided

  Patricia A. McKillip (2015). “Patricia McKillip SF Gateway Omnibus Volume One: In the Forests of Serre, Alphabet of Thorn, The Bell at Sealey Head”, p.56, Hachette UK

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• If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind, generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.

  Bertrand Russell

  Kings, Parent, Disrespect

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Human Society in Ethics and Politics”, p.27, Routledge

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• The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

  C. S. Lewis

  Plato, Book, Greatness

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.217, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love. . . . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world.

  Sylvia Plath

  Mother, Selfless, World

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.98, Anchor

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• The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are.

  Sam Harris

  Christian, Thinking, Worry

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• I drew laughing, high-breasted girls aquaplaning without a care in the world, as a result of being amply protected against such national evils as bleeding gums, facial blemishes, unsightly hairs, and faulty or inadequate life insurance. I drew housewives who, until they reached for the right soap flakes, laid themselves wide open to straggly hair, poor posture, unruly children, disaffected husbands, rough (but slender) hands, untidy (but enormous) kitchens.

  J. D. Salinger

  Girl, Children, Husband

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• I don't feel stupid, just inadequate. After three years of studying the law, I'm very much aware of how little I know.

  John Grisham

  Stupid, Years, Law

  John Grisham (1996). “The Rainmaker”, Dell

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• I don't think much new ever happens. Most of us spend our days the same way people spent their days in the year 1000: walking around smiling, trying to earn enough to eat, while neurotically doing these little self-proofs in our head about how much better we are than these other slobs, while simultaneously, in another part of our brain, secretly feeling woefully inadequate to these smarter, more beautiful people.

  George Saunders

  Beautiful, Thinking, Self

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• It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only? Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities?

  Virginia Woolf

  Sex, Men, Two

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.114

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• Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticize in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself go. Indeed, much that he related belonged more properly to the category of what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of-ten-minutes-afterwards. Those are always the best and raciest adventures; and why should they not be truly ours, as much as the somewhat inadequate things that really come off?

  Kenneth Grahame

  Adventure, Toads, Might

  Kenneth Grahame, Scott McKowen (2005). “The Wind in the Willows”, p.171, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

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• After it's all over, the early childhood, a chain of birthdays woven with candlelight, piles of presents, voices of relatives singing and praising your promise and future, after the years of schooling, fitting yourself into different size desks, memorizing, reciting, reporting, and performing for jury after jury of teachers, counselors, and administrators, you still feel inadequate, alone, vulnerable, and naked in a world that can be unforgiving and terribly demanding.

  Virginia C. Andrews

  Teacher, Years, Voice

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• We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.

  Marianne Williamson

  Confidence, Children, Fear

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