Mere Quotes - Page 13

• African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance.

  Wole Soyinka

  Film, Makers, Scraping

  "Africa's Own Cannes Festival / Lots of enthusiasm, dearth of funds for black cinema" by Tina Susman, www.sfgate.com. March 4, 1995.

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• Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no 'Nigerians' in the same sense as there are 'English,' 'Welsh,' or 'French.' The word 'Nigerian' is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not.

  Obafemi Awolowo

  Expression, Politician, Boundaries

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• All over the world, as governments retreat from their traditional duty to foster the common good and reconceive of themselves as mere managers of national economies, universities have been coming under pressure to turn themselves into training schools equipping young people with the skills required by a modern economy.

  J. M. Coetzee

  School, Government, Skills

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• The writer cannot be a mere storyteller; he cannot be a mere teacher; he cannot merely X-ray society’s weaknesses, its ills, its perils. He or she must be actively involved shaping its present and its future.

  Ken Saro-Wiwa

  Teacher, Rays, Weakness

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• Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.

  Goswami Kriyananda

  Happiness, Understanding, Inner Peace

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• Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  God, Voice, Political

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• A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy; - nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded: for then it would be mere History.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Philosophy, Ideas, Religion

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Greenough Thayer Shedd (1854). “The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions”, p.378

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• There are no times in life when opportunity, the chance to be and do, gathers so richly about the soul as when it has to suffer. Then everything depends on whether the man turns to the lower or the higher helps. If he resorts to mere expedients and tricks the opportunity is lost. He comes out harder, poorer, smaller for his pain. But, if he turns to God, the hour of suffering is the turning hour of his life.

  Phillips Brooks

  Life, Pain, Opportunity

  Phillips Brooks (1881). “The Candle of the Lord: And Other Sermons”

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• There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence.

  George Eliot

  Pain, Agony, Vibrations

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.6060, Delphi Classics

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• Time, we know, is relative. You can travel light years through the stars and back, and if you do it at the speed of light then, when you return, you may have aged mere seconds while your twin brother or sister will have aged twenty, thirty, forty or however many years it is, depending on how far you traveled. This will come to you as a profound shock, particularly if you didn't know you had a twin brother or sister.

  Douglas Adams

  Sister, Time, Brother

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.706, Pan Macmillan

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• Science transcends mere politics. As recent history demonstrates, scientists are as willing to work for a Tojo, a Hitler, or a Stalin as for the free nations of the West.

  Edward Abbey

  West, Scientist, Willing

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• Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.

  Edmund Burke

  Liberty, Abstract, Found

  Speech 'On Conciliation with America' 22 March 1775

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• Do you sincerely declare that you love mankind in general, of what profession or religion soever? Do you think any person ought to be harmed in his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions, or his external way of worship? Do you love truth for truth's sake; and will you endeavor impartially to find and receive it yourself, and communicate it to others.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Thinking, Names, Body

  Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson (2003). “A Benjamin Franklin Reader”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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• Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next--and on and on.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Islands, People, Heaven

  Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Galapagos: A Novel”, Dial Press

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• The mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively an individual affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.

  John Dewey

  Selfishness, Gains, Facts

  John Dewey (2008). “The School and Society”, p.29, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Those who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write,
  Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.

  John Dryden

  Revenge, Writing, Spite

  John Dryden (1870). “The Poetical Works of John Dryden”, p.409

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• Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics. As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the wings of their imagination brush, once in a way, the secrets of the great pale world. If such writers go wrong, it is not for the mere brains to tell them so

  Gertrude Atherton

  Mistake, Wings, People

  Gertrude Atherton (2012). “The Bell in the Fog: And Other Stories”, p.21, The Floating Press

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• The human animal began as a mere wriggling thing in the ancient seas, struggling out onto land with many regrets. That is what brings us so full of longing to the sea.

  Sebastian Barry

  Regret, Struggle, Animal

  Sebastian Barry (2008). “The Secret Scripture”, p.115, Faber & Faber

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• A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood it becomes a living experience.

  Carl Jung

  Dream, Understood, Remains

  Carl Gustav Jung (1966). “The practice of psychotherapy”, Bollingen

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• We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.

  Abraham Maslow

  Wise, Hero, Saint

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• Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results.

  William James

  Apology, Opportunity, Men

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.134, Booklassic

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• New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. To think of 'living' there was to reduce the miraculous to the mundane; one does not 'live' at Xanadu.

  Joan Didion

  Dream, New York, Thinking

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 25, 2011

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• Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth

  Martin Heidegger

  Mean, Technology, Essence

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• By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another ... has even less worth than if he were a mere thing. ... makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself.

  Immanuel Kant

  Lying, Believe, Men

  "Doctrine of Virtue" by Immanuel Kant, translated by Mary J. Gregor, (p. 93), 1964.

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• The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them. And one can debate long and profitably on the rule of Nobody, which is what the political form known as bureau-cracy truly is….we have become very much accustomed by modern psychology and sociology, not to speak of modern bureaucracy, to explaining away the responsibility of the doer for his deed in terms of this or that kind of determinism.

  Hannah Arendt

  Responsibility, Men, Essence

  "The Origins of Totalitarianism". Book by Hannah Arendt, progressive.org. 1951.

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