Indirect Quotes

• In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory.

  Sun Tzu

  Art Of War, Fighting, Order

  Sun Tzu, Julius Caesar, Einhard, Niccolò Machiavelli, Carl von Clausewitz (2016). “Strategy Six Pack”, p.14, Lulu.com

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• Boys frustrate me. I hate all their indirect messages, I hate game playing. Do you like me or don't you? Just tell me so I can get over you.

  Kirsten Dunst

  Girly, Hate, Boys

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.

  Simone Weil

  Real, History, Imagination

  Simone Weil (1962). “Selected Essays: 1934-1943”, London, Oxford U.P

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• The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Expectations, Lines, Theory

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• A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.

  Jonathan Swift

  Lying, Hype, Desire

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• The rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty in such calculated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered.

  Howard Zinn

  Law, Doe, Distribution Of Wealth

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• I have a position of indirect respect and oblique power.

  Drew Carey

  Position

  "The Drew Carey Show". www.imdb.com. 1995 - 2004.

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• There are direct paths to a successful career. But there are plenty of indirect paths, too.

  Clayton Christensen

  Successful, Careers, Path

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• Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

  Emmet Fox

  Self, Criticism, Form

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• Your strength is soft, indirect, delicate, tender, womanly. But it is strength just the same.

  Anais Nin

  Womanly, Delicate

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• The atom can't be seen, yet its existence can be proved. And it is simple to prove that it can't ever be seen. It has to be studied by indirect evidence - and the technical difficulty has been compared to asking a man who has never seen a piano to describe a piano from the sound it would make falling downstairs in the dark.

  Carl David Anderson

  Fall, Dark, Men

  "Carl Anderson. Some notes about his life and work at Caltech. The first of a series of biographical sketches of Caltech faculty members". Engineering and Science, Volume 15:1, October 1951.

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• The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation--religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.

  Lord Acton

  Fighting, Evil, Giving

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.30, Jazzybee Verlag

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• In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory. Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, Fighting, Moon

  Sun Tzu (2013). “The Art of War”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• I see the President almost every day. I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face with its deep-cut lines, the eyes always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed.

  Walt Whitman

  War, Sadness, Eye

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• Direct experience is inherently too limited to form an adequate foundation either for theory or for application. At the best it produces an atmosphere that is of value in drying and hardening the structure of thought. The greater value of indirect experience lies in its greater variety and extent. History is universal experience, the experience not of another, but of many others under manifold conditions.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Lying, Atmosphere, Foundation

  B.H. Liddell Hart (2015). “Why Don't We Learn from History?”, p.8, Lulu Press, Inc

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• It is in sickness that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent upon one another for our comfort, and even necessities. Thus disease, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing.

  Hosea Ballou

  Eye, Blessing, Reality

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• The most effective indirect approach is one that lures or startles the opponent into a false move - so that, as in ju-jitsu, his own effort is turned into the lever of his overthrow.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Military, Moving, Effort

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• The universe is asymmetric and I am persuaded that life, as it is known to us, is a direct result of the asymmetry of the universe or of its indirect consequences. The universe is asymmetric.

  Louis Pasteur

  Life, Science, Mirrors

  "Works". "Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences", Vol. 1, June 1, 1874.

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• Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's a paradox here! Kierkegaard's own indirect communication proposes that we start with the experience of those who don't believe and meet them on their own ground. His success in doing this is evidenced by the fact that, at least for some periods of the 20th century, aspects of his work became a major focus for radical thinkers of various kinds, including the non-religious and, interestingly, a significant number of Jewish thinkers (Buber, Rosenzweig, Taubes, and others).

  George Pattison

  Religious, Believe, Communication

  "Towards hope". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. July 18, 2014.

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• At the end of the day, flirting is a pretty universal language. Americans are more direct. British people are more indirect about everything

  Rachel Weisz

  Flirting, People, The End Of The Day

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• ...the mathematician uses an indirect definition of congruence, making use of the fact that the axiom of parallels together with an additional condition can replace the definition of congruence.

  Hans Reichenbach

  Together, Use, Definitions

  Hans Reichenbach (1958). “Philosophie Der Raum-Zeit-Lehre”, p.87, Courier Corporation

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• We destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

  Walter Ciszek

  Education, Mean, Home

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• Why is contemporary China short of works that speak directly? Because we writers cannot speak directly, or rather we can only speak in an indirect way.Why does contemporary China lack good works that critique our current situation? Because our current situation may not be critiqued. We have not only lost the right to criticise, but the courage to do so.Why is modern China lacking in great writers? Because all the great writers are castrated while still in the nursery.

  Murong Xuecun

  Nurse, May, Way

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• For if we merely take what obviously appears the line of least resistance, its obviousness will appeal to the opponent also; and this line may no longer be that of least resistance. In studying the physical aspect, we must never lose sight of the psychological, and only when both are combined is the strategy truly an indirect approach, calculated to dislocate the opponent's balance.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Military, Sight, Balance

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