Instance Quotes

• The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.

  Emma Goldman

  Men, Blood, Soul

  Emma Goldman, Candace Falk (2008). “Emma Goldman”, p.78, University of Illinois Press

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• In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.

  James Madison

  Atheist, People, Church

  31 Copy quote

• Children are supposed to help hold a marriage together. They do this in a number of ways. For instance, they demand so much attention that a husband and wife, concentrating on their children, fail to notice each other's faults.

  Richard Armour

  Children, Husband, Numbers

  15 Copy quote

• My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.

  William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne

  Doubt, Principles, Doctrine

  8 Copy quote

• There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.

  Saul Bellow

  War, Evil, Goes On

  "Bellow in his own words". www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2005.

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• Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speak by something outside himself like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks.

  Jean Kerr

  Women, Wish, Cleaning

  Jean Kerr (1962). “The Snake Has all the Lines”

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• If you travel to the States... they have a lot of different words than like what we use. For instance: they say 'elevator', we say 'lift'; they say 'drapes', we say 'curtains'; they say 'president', we say 'seriously deranged git.'

  Alexei Sayle

  America, President, Different

  20 Copy quote

• The constitutional questions are in the first instance not questions of right but questions of might.

  Ferdinand Lassalle

  Might, Firsts

  7 Copy quote

• As a nation we began by declaring that all me are created equal. We now practically read it, all men are created equal except Negroes.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Men, Despotism

  Letter to Joshua F. Speed, 24 Aug. 1855

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• Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.

  John Ruskin

  Love, Beauty, Beautiful

  Stones of Venice vol. 1, ch. 2, sec. 17 (1851)

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• For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Beauty, Soul, Triumph

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• You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

  Franklin P. Adams

  Patience, Baby, Funny Inspirational

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• Racism remains in the eyes of history ... merely another instance of the persecution of minorities for the advantage of those in power.

  Ruth Benedict

  Eye, Racism, Minorities

  Ruth Benedict (1945). “Race: science and politics”

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• The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders.

  Susan Sontag

  Government, Borders, World

  "Why Are We in Kosovo?" by Susan Sontag, www.nytimes.com. May 2, 1999.

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• The aging process seems to strike first at the mechanism which warns that we have been talking too much and the listener is growing restless. The signal isn't perfect at any age - drink, for instance, throws it right out of kilter - but it is almost non-existent in old people.

  Barbara Walters

  Talking, People, Perfect

  6 Copy quote

• Homogeneity is much to be admired - in milk, for instance - but not for parties.

  Barbara Walters

  Party, Milk, Homogeneity

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• Roque...lined his men up and had them produce all the clothing, jewels, money, and other objects that they had stolen since the last time they had divided the spoils. Having made a hasty appraisal and reduced to terms of money those items that could not be divided, he split the whole into shares with such equity and exactitude that in not a single instance did he go beyond or fall short of a strict distributive justice. They were all well satisfied with the payment received, indeed they were quite well pleased; and Roque then turned to Don Quixote.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Wisdom, Fall, Men

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• Negativity is the enemy of creativity. For instance if you're filled with depression, you can hardly even get out of bed, let alone feel like creating something. If you are filled with bitter, selfish anger, this occupies the mind and leaves little room for creative ideas.

  David Lynch

  Selfish, Creativity, Ideas

  "His Mission to Change the World Through Meditation". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 9, 2014.

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• It is a question in that case of breaking up one piece of art, and whether that piece of art can be as best as possible put back together. So it's an argument to say, maybe that's one of those instances, like the bust of Nefertiti, I think that should be given back [Egyptian piece currently in Neues Museum in Berlin]. It's one of those pieces you look at and think that would probably be the right thing to do.

  George Clooney

  Art, Thinking, Museums

  "The Monuments Men - George Clooney interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• When you see Hitler burning paintings by Salvador Dali and Picasso he's telling you that this time period and these men and this culture didn't exist, and I've seen that happen in other countries, Sudan for instance, it's not enough to kill them you have to destroy all of their markings that they left that was their history.

  George Clooney

  Country, Men, Culture

  "The Monuments Men - George Clooney interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• How many serious family quarrels, marriages out of spite, and alterations of wills, might have been prevented by a gentle dose of blue pill!-What awful instances of chronic dyspepsia in the characters of Hamlet and Othello! Banish dyspepsia and spirituous liquors from society, and you have no crime, or at least so little that you would not consider it worth mentioning.

  Charles Kingsley

  Character, Blue, Pills

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• That the corruption of the best thing produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, by the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion.

  David Hume

  Enthusiasm, Superstitions, Corruption

  David Hume, Knud Haakonssen (1994). “Hume: Political Essays”, p.46, Cambridge University Press

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• To the Memory of those faithful brown slave-men of the plantations throughout the South, Daddy's contemporaries all, who during the war while their masters were away fighting in a cause opposed to their emancipation, brought their blankets and slept outside their mistresses' doors, thus keeping night-watch over otherwise unprotected women and children -- a faithful guardianship of which the annals of those troublous times record no instance of betrayal.

  Ruth Stout

  Children, Memories, Betrayal

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• Without knowledge there can be no sure progress. Vice and barbarism are the inseparable companions of ignorance. Nor is it too much to say that, except in rare instances, the highest virtue is attained only through intelligence.

  Charles Sumner

  Ignorance, Progress, Vices

  Charles Sumner (1849). “The Law of Human Progress: An Oration Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Union College, Schenectady. July 25th, 1848”, p.26

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• I never talk about what I'm writing about currently, never. It's private work on your own, no need or obligation to talk about it. Writers are made into performers these days, including myself, but there are some instances in which I will not perform.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Writing, Needs, Made

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