Mere Quotes - Page 30

• The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Country, Numbers, Eugenics

  John Maynard Keynes (1971). “The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it.

  Tahir Shah

  Fire, Ghouls, Skeletons

  Tahir Shah (2013). “Sorcerer's Apprentice paperback”, p.39, Lulu.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mere praise of peace is easy and ineffective. What is needed is acitve participation in the fight against war and everything which leads to it.

  Albert Einstein

  Peace, War, Fighting

  10 Copy quote

• Mere nails, though pounded deep, were not enough to keep Jesus on the cross. But love was... and love prevailed.

  Louie Giglio

  Jesus, And Love, Nails

  Twitter post from Mar 29, 2013

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Understanding, Mind, Faculty

  Thomas De Quincey, James Thomas Fields (1851). “De Quincey's Writings: Miscellaneous essays. 1851”, p.9

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many a prophecy, by the mere force of its being believed, is transmuted to fact.

  Isaac Asimov

  Positive, Law Of Attraction, Facts

  Isaac Asimov (2012). “Prelude to Foundation”, p.5, Spectra

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• The librarian's mission should be, not like up to now, a mere handling of the book as an object, but rather a know how (mise au point) of the book as a vital function.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Book, Library, Librarian

  4 Copy quote

• The strong are always free by virtue of their superior strength. So long as government is a mere contest as to which of two parties shall rule the other, the weaker must always succumb. And whether the contest be carried on with ballots or bullets, the principle is the same; for under the theory of government now prevailing, the ballot either signifies a bullet, or it signifies nothing. And no one can consistently use a ballot, unless he intends to use a bullet, if the latter should be needed to insure submission to the former.

  Lysander Spooner

  Strong, Party, Two

  Lysander Spooner (1867). “No Treason: No. 1-”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mere summoning of a witness and compelling him to testify against his will, about his beliefs, expressions or associations, is a measure of governmental interference. And when those forced revelations concern maters that are unorthodox, unpopular, or even hateful to the general public, the reactions in the life of the witness may be disastrous.

  Earl Warren

  Government, Expression, May

  Earl Warren (1959). “The Public Papers of Chief Justice Earl Warren”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We were now back at Smith Landing, and fired with a desire to make another Buffalo expedition on which we should have ampler time and cover more than a mere corner of the range.

  Ernest Thompson Seton

  Should Have, Desire, Buffalo

  Ernest Thompson Seton (2010). “The Arctic Prairies: A Canoe Journey”, p.33, BoD – Books on Demand

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mere assemblage of peace loving people to interchange convincing reasons for their common faith, mere exhortation and argument to the public in favor of peace in general fall short of the mark.

  Elihu Root

  Faith, Fall, People

  Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• He who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Mind, Imitation, Resolve

  Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmond Malone (1809). “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.158

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It may be true that people who are merely mathematicians have certain specific shortcomings; however that is not the fault of mathematics, but is true of every exclusive occupation. Likewise a mere linguist, a mere jurist, a mere soldier, a mere merchant, and so forth. One could add such idle chatter that when a certain exclusive occupation is often connected with certain specific shortcomings, it is on the other hand always free of certain other shortcomings.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Science, Hands, People

  29 Copy quote

• Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation, but, we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations into their minds.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Ideas, Effort

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.328, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A garden full of sweet odours is a garden full of charm, a most precious kind of charm not to be implanted by mere skill in horticulture or power of purse, and which is beyond explaining. It is born of sensitive and very personal preferences yet its appeal is almost universal.

  Louise Wilder

  Sweet, Nature, Power

  Louise Beebe Wilder (1990). “The fragrant path”, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom. The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression. It was also, and as importantly, a long overdue opportunity for everyone so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims.

  Arthur Miller

  Opportunity, Class, Long

  Arthur Miller (2015). “The Penguin Arthur Miller: Collected Plays (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.297, Penguin

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• IT is mere coincidence that Cooper was born in the year which produced The Power of Sympathy and that when he died Uncle Tom's Cabin was passing through its serial stage, and yet the limits of his life mark almost exactly the first great period of American fiction.

  Carl Clinton Van Doren

  Uncles, Years, Cabins

  9 Copy quote

• America is not a mere body of traders; it is a body of free men. Our greatness is built upon our freedom - is moral, not material. We have a great ardor for gain; but we have a deep passion for the rights of man.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Passion, Greatness, Men

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link (1977). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Men, Rights, President

  Woodrow Wilson (2012). “President Wilson's Addresses”, p.108, tredition

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• What chiefly distinguishes the daily press is its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion.

  H. L. Mencken

  Fear, Reflection, Issues

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mere pronunciation of the word luxurious feels lush, luxuriant.

  Lady G

  Luxury, Pronunciation, Feels

  13 Copy quote

• A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Inspiring, Art, Envy

  Wassily Kandinsky (2015). “Kandinsky”, p.59, Parkstone International

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• We were never created to settle for mere religion. Jesus did not die so that we could have a religious belief system - but rather a life-giving relationship with our Father.

  Christine Caine

  God, Christian, Religious

  FaceBook post by Christine Caine from Apr 10, 2017

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• IF we desire European civilization to be a raid and a rescue, we shall insist rather that souls are in real peril than that their peril is ultimately unreal. And if we wish to exalt the outcast and the crucified, we shall rather wish to think that a veritable God was crucified, rather than a mere sage or hero. Above all, if we wish to protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas. The rules of a club are occasionally in favour of the poor member. The drift of a club is always in favour of the rich one.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Hero, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• She wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision.

  Edith Wharton

  Soul, Vision, Trying

  Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.2268, Delphi Classics

  14 Copy quote

  Show source