Instance Quotes - Page 31

• No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. ... Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; ... [but] I do not know of a single instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. ... A mathematician may still be competent enough at sixty, but it is useless to expect him to have original ideas.

  G. H. Hardy

  Art, Science, Past

  61 Copy quote

• I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Hard Work, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.417, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening.

  Pat Robertson

  Christian, Atheist, Government

  TV Series "The 700 Club", www.imdb.com. (1966- ).

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have seen numerous instances in which American businesses have brought in foreign skilled workers after having laid off skilled American workers, simply because they can get the foreign workers more cheaply. It has become a major means of circumventing the costs of paying skilled American workers or the costs of training them.

  Ronald Reagan

  Mean, Training, Immigration

  4 Copy quote

• I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance.

  Ron Shelton

  Baseball, Jesus, Believe

  "Fictional character: Annie Savoy". "Bull Durham", 1988.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.

  Sun Tzu

  War, Army, Nations

  9 Copy quote

• In the first instance, therefore, global terrorism created a kind of global community sharing a common fate, something we had previously considered impossible.

  Ulrich Beck

  Fate, Insomnia, Community

  7 Copy quote

• The purpose behind terrorism is to instill fear in people - the fear that electrical power, for instance, will be taken away or the transportation system will be taken down.

  Vinton Cerf

  Taken, Electrical Power, People

  10 Copy quote

• You must have complete determination. The worst opponent you can come across is one whose aim has become an obsession. For instance, if a man has decided that he is going to bite off your nose no matter what happens to him in the process, the chances are he will succeed in doing it. He may be severely beaten up, too, but that will not stop him from carrying out his objective. That is the real fighter.

  Bruce Lee

  Determination, Real, Fighting

  "The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee" by John Little, (p. 161), 1996.

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative.

  Douglas MacArthur

  War, Mean, Demand

  Farewell Address to Congress, delivered 19 April 1951

  109 Copy quote

  Show source

• War is the most striking instance of the failure of intelligence to master the problem of human relationships.

  Harry Elmer Barnes

  Peace, War, Problem

  8 Copy quote

• What we call conscience in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of the law.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Fear, Law, Conscience

  8 Copy quote

• There's more to boxing than hitting. There's not getting hit, for instance.

  George Foreman

  Inspirational, Sports, Boxing

  24 Copy quote

• I've just discovered the secret of golf. You can't play a really hot game unless you're so miserable that you don't worry over your shots. Take the case of a chip shot, for instance. If you're really wretched, you don't care where the ball is going and so you don't raise your head to see. Grief automatically prevents pressing and over-swinging. Look at the top-notchers. Have you ever seen a happy pro?

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Grief, Golf, Games

  4 Copy quote

• Many animals even now spring out of the soil, Coalescing from the rains and the heat of the sun. Small wonder, then, if more and bigger creatures, Full-formed, arose from the new young earth and sky. The breed, for instance, of the dappled birds Shucked off their eggshells in the springtime, as Crickets in summer will slip their slight cocoons All by themselves, and search for food and life. Earth gave you, then, the first of mortal kinds, For all the fields were soaked with warmth and moisture.

  Lucretius

  Life, Summer, Spring

  Titus Lucretius Carus, Anthony M. Esolen (1995). “De rerum natura”, Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is a person's public and private opinion the same? It is thought there have been instances.

  Mark Twain

  Opinion, Persons, Has Beens

  Mark Twain, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (2009). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.338, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which, in all ages, have either been detected by contrary evidence, or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and marvellous, and ought reasonably to begat a suspicion against all relations of this kind.

  David Hume

  Religious, Strong, Miracle

  David Hume (1861). “An Essay on Miracles. No. 10 of the “Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding.””, p.10

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Among many other weighty objections to the Measure, it has been suggested, that it has a tendency to introduce religious disputes into the Army, which above all things should be avoided, and in many instances would compel men to a mode of Worship which they do not profess.

  George Washington

  Religious, Army, Men

  George Washington, John Carey (1795). “Official Letters to the Honorable American Congress,: Written, During the War Between the United Colonies and Great Britain, by His Excellency, George Washington, Commander in Chief of the Continental Forces, Now President of the United States”, p.93

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are days when I intentionally don't write. For instance, I never write when I'm traveling, because travel is a situation where I can learn more by looking and listening than by working.

  Thomas Perry

  Travel, Writing, Listening

  4 Copy quote

• Some jobs are worse than actual wives. Ad agency vs. Matrimony, for instance: Even the most capricious and demanding spouse is not going to divorce you for refusing to spend forty hours a week making up lies about toilet paper.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Jobs, Lying, Humorous

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig”, p.42, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Consciousness... does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. Source of the expression 'stream of consciousness'.

  William James

  Science, Expression, Talking

  The Principles of Psychology vol. 1, ch. 9 (1890).

  64 Copy quote

  Show source

• The significance of a fact is relative to [the general body of scientific] knowledge. To say that a fact is significant in science, is to say that it helps to establish or refute some general law; for science, though it starts from observation of the particular, is not concerned essentially with the particular, but with the general. A fact, in science, is not a mere fact, but an instance. In this the scientist differs from the artist, who, if he deigns to notice facts at all, is likely to notice them in all their particularity.

  Bertrand Russell

  Art, Knowledge, Science

  4 Copy quote

• Tis evident that all reasonings concerning matter of fact are founded on the relation of cause and effect, and that we can never infer the existence of one object from another, unless they be connected together, either mediately or immediately... Here is a billiard ball lying on the table, and another ball moving toward it with rapidity. They strike; and the ball which was formerly at rest now acquires a motion. This is as perfect an instance of the relation of cause and effect as any which we know, either by sensation or reflection.

  David Hume

  Lying, Moving, Reflection

  6 Copy quote

• And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.

  John Stuart Mill

  Police, Humanity, Liberty

  John Stuart Mill (2012). “On Liberty”, p.71, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Medicine in its present state is, it seems to me, by now completely discovered, insofar as it teaches in each instance the particular details and the correct measures. For anyone who has an understanding of medicine in this way depends very little upon good luck, but is able to do good with or without luck. For the whole of medicine has been established, and the excellent principles discovered in it clearly have very little need of good luck.

  Hippocrates

  Good Luck, Medicine, Understanding

  9 Copy quote