Involuntary Quotes - Page 5

• I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life.

  Mary Oliver

  Prayer, Thinking, Interesting

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• SEINE, n. A kind of net for effecting an involuntary change of environment. For fish it is made strong and coarse, but women are more easily taken with a singularly delicate fabric weighted with small, cut stones.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Change, Strong, Taken

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.213, University of Georgia Press

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• Every serious scientific worker is painfully conscious of this involuntary relegation to an ever-narrowing sphere of knowledge, which threatens to deprive the investigator of his broad horizon and degrades him to the level of a mechanic.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Horizon, Levels

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.69, Broadway Books

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• Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophy, Kind, Confession

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.203, Modern Library

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• And, like poor Phaedra, we fall in love not with who we want to fall in love with, but with one who moves us, and sometimes it is the last person we should fall in love with. Our involuntary choice is not always the right one, and sometimes it is actually the worst one, hence our suffering. And then, of course, there is the completely different situation of the loving people where, over the years, the love they once felt for each other fades and they can't go on. They feel their love dying, but are unable to bring it back to life.

  François Lelord

  Falling In Love, Moving, Loving Life

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• All responsible writers, to some degree, have become involuntary criers of doom, because doom is in the wind

  Philip K. Dick

  Wind, Degrees, Responsible

  Philip K. Dick (1995). “The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings”, Vintage

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• Certainty and similar states of ‘knowing what we know’ arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.

  Robert A. Burton

  Like Love, Knowing, Brain

  Robert A. Burton, M.D., M.D. (2008). “On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not”, p.7, Macmillan

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• Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people, most - than most proposals for involuntarily fertility control.

  John Holdren

  Drinking, People, Water

  "'Glenn Beck': Progressives' Writings Reveal Closeted Racism". "The Glenn Beck Show", www.foxnews.com. August 4, 2010.

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• To translate kinesics or paralinguistic messages into words is likely to introduce gross falsification due not merely to the human propensity for trying to falsify statements about "feelings" and relationship and to the distortions which arise whenever the products of one system of coding are dissected onto the premises of another, but especially to the fact that all such translation must give to the more or less unconscious and involuntary message the appearance of conscious intent.

  Greg Bear

  Giving, Feelings, Trying

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• The luge is the only Olympic event where you could have people competing in it against their will, and it would look exactly the same. Take people off the street, 'Hey, hey, hey, what is this?! I don't wanna be in the luge!' Once you put that helmet on them, 'You're in the luge, buddy!' 'aaaAAAaaaAAAaaaAAA... aaaAAAAA...' World record. Didn't even wanna do it. I'd like to see that next Olympics, the Involuntary Luge.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  People, Olympics, Next

  "I'm Telling You for the Last Time". Stand-up comedy, 1998.

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• Laughter is one of the great beacons in life because we don't refract it by gunning it through our intellectual prism. What makes us laugh is a mystery - an involuntary response.

  Dennis Miller

  Laughter, Laughing, Intellectual

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• At one time, due to the reluctance of cult groups to allow members to dialogue with their families and professionals about their involvement (or even to allow families access to a loved one) -"involuntary deprogramming" became the choice of some families as a last resort.

  Rick Ross

  Choices, Groups, Lasts

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• The greatest evil of American slavery was not involuntary servitude but rather the narrative of racial differences we created to legitimate slavery. Because we never dealt with that evil, I don't think slavery ended in 1865, it just evolved.

  Bryan Stevenson

  Thinking, Differences, Evil

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh.

  Tom Lehrer

  Laughter, Laughing, Ifs

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• In Buddhism, we say reincarnation is the conscious taking of rebirth by a Bodhisattva, or by a high being, whereas rebirth, is what most people do. Rebirth is an involuntary process where they seek traction by finding a new body after their subtle mind loses the old one. There are two things commonly said about this. One- there is no evidence for it and two- if there is evidence, what's the mechanism which carries the consciousness from one life to another.

  Robert Thurman

  Buddhism, Two, People

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• Hillary [Clinton] even said that, whether or not teenagers want treatment, they have to get it. So it's involuntary treatment.

  Peter Breggin

  Teenager, Want, Clinton

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• All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.

  Noam Chomsky

  Slavery, Association, Welfare

  Source: thefifthcolumnnews.com

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• Statutes that curtail her abortion choice are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state's asserted interest.

  Dawn Johnsen

  Pregnancy, Order, Choices

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• [Heraclitus had] the highest form of pride [stemming] from a certainty of belief in the truth as grasped by himself alone. He brings this form, by its excessive development, into a sublime pathos by involuntary identification of himself with his truth.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Pride, Sublime, Development

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Greg Whitlock (2001). “The Pre-Platonic Philosophers”, p.55, University of Illinois Press

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• Jesus expressed intense anger toward those who where immoral, such as the self-righteous Pharisees, but he never suggested that they were demonized. Toward the demonized, however, he never expressed anger; rather he exhibited only compassion. As Langton notes, "Pity rather than anger characterizes the attitude of Jesus toward the possessed...He treats them as if they were the victims of an involuntary possession." Indeed, he treats them as though they are casualties of war. For, in his view, this is precisely what they are.

  Gregory A. Boyd

  Jesus, Attitude, War

  Gregory A. Boyd (2014). “God at War: The Bible & Spiritual Conflict”, p.199, InterVarsity Press

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• How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!

  Michel de Montaigne

  Thoughtful, Thinking, Keeping Secrets

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before ithas had time to reconcile its feelings to the change in circumstances: while laughter may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere sur prise or contrast (in the absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to contradictory appearances.

  William Hazlitt

  Laughter, Feelings, Mind

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Lectures on the English Comic Writers”, p.2

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• Sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul just as much as the [sexual] act, but we do not draw from it the same conclusions against the greatness of man, because it is involuntary; although we bring it about, we do so involuntarily. It is not for the sake of the thing in itself but for another end, and is therefore not a sign of man's weakness, or his subjection to this act.

  Blaise Pascal

  Sex, Greatness, Men

  Blaise Pascal (1966). “Pascal Pensées”, Penguin Classics

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• All laughter is a muscular rigidity spasmodically relieved by involuntary twitching.

  Robert Benchley

  Laughter, Rigidity, Relieved

  Robert Benchley (1947). “Benchley--or else!”

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• Love is an involuntary reaction to virtue.

  Stefan Molyneux

  Love Is, Virtue, Reactions

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