Indirect Quotes - Page 4

• We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it halfway, we easily become indirect and apathetic.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Artist, Self, Hands

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• The art of the indirect approach can only be mastered, and its full scope appreciated, by study of and reflection upon the whole history of war. But we can at least crystallize the lessons into two simple maxims- one negative, the other positive. The first is that, in face of the overwhelming evidence of history, no general is justified in launching his troops to a direct attack upon an enemy firmly in position. The second, that instead of seeking to upset the enemy's equilibrium by one's attack, it must be upset before a real attack is, or can be successfully launched

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Art, Real, War

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• Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult...The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.

  T. S. Eliot

  Order, Civilization, Language

  "The Metaphysical Poets" (1921)

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• Throughout the early Christian period, every great calamity - famine, earthquake, and plague - led to mass conversions, another indirect influence by which epidemic diseases contributed to the destruction of classical civilization. Christianity owes a formidable debt to bubonic plague and to smallpox, no less than to earthquake and volcanic eruptions.

  Hans Zinsser

  Christian, Civilization, Earthquakes

  Hans Zinsser (2011). “Rats, Lice and History”, p.139, Transaction Publishers

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• People can believe pretty much whatever they want to believe about moral and political issues, as long as some other people near them believe it, so you have to focus on indirect methods to change what people want to believe.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Believe, Issues, Long

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• It's possible that we'll screw up the climate so badly that most of us will die and a few breeding pairs will remain somewhere in the arctic. What's more likely is that we'll continue remaking the planet, driving many species to extinction, killing millions of people through the indirect effects of climate change, making life even harder for the poor and powerless than it is now, and making it a little more difficult for the global middle class to live the lives to which they have become accustomed - in other words, business as usual, only worse.

  Dale Jamieson

  Class, People, Screw Ups

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• If I even tell anything false, within one minute I have to come clean. And I think most people, even if they're not that direct, it comes out in indirect ways. If somebody cheats on you, they end up telling you they've been spending all this time hanging out with that person. Why? Because nobody can bear a lie. A lie won't stay silent. It makes noise.

  Kimberly Peirce

  Lying, Thinking, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I certainly want people to read what I've written. Yet, and here's that question of economic position, because I have a secure job, I don't need a wide readership to survive. I'm a participant in the indirect economy, what sociological critic Pierre Bourdieu would call the "economic world reversed." I get "paid" by writing whatever I choose. That's a pretty good position to be in, but I don't pretend for a moment that it is not a privileged one.

  Davis Schneiderman

  Writing, People, World

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• Continuous wars - which we have now had since 2001 - starting with Afghanistan, continuing on to Iraq. And even since Iraq, it's been more or less continuous. The appalling war in Libya, which has wrecked that country and wrecked that part of the world, and which isn't over by any means. The indirect Western intervention in Syria, which has created new monsters. These are policies, which if carried out by any individual government, would be considered extremist. Now, they're being carried out collectively by the United States, backed by some of the countries of the European Union.

  Tariq Ali

  Country, War, Mean

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• At the beginning of his administration, Reagan tried set the basis for American military intervention in El Salvador - which is about what Kennedy did when he came into office in regard to Vietnam. Well, when Kennedy tried it in Vietnam, it just worked like a dream. Virtually nobody opposed American bombing of South Vietnam in 1962. It was not an issue. But when Reagan began to talk of involving American forces in El Salvador there was a huge popular uproar. And he had to choose a much more indirect way of supporting the collection of gangsters in power there. He had to back off.

  Noam Chomsky

  Dream, Military, Issues

  Source: chomsky.info

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• We have a culture that is indirect in the extreme, where by the time you're five years old, you've watched tons of television, and have been subjected to what I call "the age of interruption," where everything is interrupted every minute. We have constant input from TV, computers, fax machines, telephones, etc. It's very hard for a modern American to have two hours of uninterrupted time. I know how it is because I insist on several hours of uninterrupted time each day, and I know how ruthless I have to be to get it.

  Michael Ventura

  Years, Two, Fax Machines

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

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• When you are looking for corruption, you should look at the entire stratum of the society, while some forms of corruption are direct, others are indirect.

  Wole Soyinka

  Looks, Corruption, Should

  Source: saharareporters.com

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• Thirty-five states have Canada as their largest export market. Let's say we get into a trade war with the United States - hopefully not, but let's say. Many states in the union are going to have trouble and more costs getting their stuff up to Canada. If we make the border a little thicker in terms of tariffs, and hit back, that will start to impact the states, in particular large business interests that are in Canada. And that starts to put indirect pressure on the White House.

  Michael Kergin

  War, Hopefully Not, White

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• I also learned from reading the left-wing press about the [Franklin] Roosevelt administration's indirect support for Francisco Franco, which was not well known, and still isn't.

  Noam Chomsky

  Reading, Wings, Support

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• As I said, this [repercussions] may take different forms : direct and indirect. Direct when people want to retaliate, or governments. Indirect when you're going to have instability and the spread of terrorism all over the region that will influence the west directly.

  Bashar al-Assad

  Government, People, Different

  Source: legrandsoir.info

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• Sometimes indirect style and varying chronology is great, but quite often I've seen it be just something that gets in the way. It turns out when I talk to the writer that she or he, and more often it's a woman, that she's worried.

  Alice Mattison

  Style, Way, Sometimes

  Source: therumpus.net

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• When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.

  Alice Mattison

  Writing, Editors, Differences

  Source: therumpus.net

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• In many European countries we have populist indirect democratic systems. The people elect, in a proportionate manner, a parliament. The parliament with all its parties is representative of the political opinions among the citizens. It is reasonable to claim that the people rule itself through the political institutions.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Country, Party, Political Opinions

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The novelist can't successfully depict such horrifying reality. But she can, and must, try, to bear witness. There are many ways of doing this; the mode I prefer is indirect.

  Teju Cole

  Reality, Trying, Novelists

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Writing fiction, for me, is a more indirect form of self-exploration than writing verse. When I'm working on a novel I'm moving characters around and I'm thinking about plot and there's a lot of other things going on at the level of structure and story. With a poem, a single idea or line or emotion can sometimes be enough - there's often a sense, in the best poems, of capturing a single instant. Perhaps poems differ from prose in the degree of solace they can offer - by speaking so personally, so directly, about shared experience. A few lines of poetry can provide comfort.

  Nick Laird

  Moving, Writing, Character

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else.

  John Searle

  Mean, Speech, Problem

  "Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts". Book by John Searle, 1979.

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• Economy is the first and great article (economy such as I understand it) in my financial creed. The controversy between direct and indirect taxation holds a minor, though important place.

  William E. Gladstone

  Important, Taxation, Firsts

  Letter to his brother Robertson of the Financial Reform Association at Liverpool in 1859. "Gladstone as Financier and Economist" by F. W. Hirst, p. 241, 1931.

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• Air forces offered the possibility of striking a the enemy's economic and moral centres without having first to achieve 'the destruction of the enemy's main forces on the battlefield'. Air-power might attain a direct end by indirect means - hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Military, Mean, Air

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• Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.

  William Shenstone

  Compliment, Deference, Elegant

  William Shenstone (1764). “The Works, in Verse and Prose”, p.254

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• In the United States, except for slaves, servants and the destitute fed by townships, everyone has the vote and this is an indirect contributor to law-making. Anyone wishing to attack the
  law is thus reduced to adopting one of two obvious courses: they must either change the nation's opinion or trample its wishes under foot.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Law, Two, Feet

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville. Chapter XIV, 1835.

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