Mere Quotes - Page 35

• Democracy is not a mere consequence, a certain stage in the development of society. It is the condition on which the survival of productive forces depends.

  Wei Jingsheng

  Survival, Democracy, Development

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• Religion is behavior and not mere belief.

  Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

  Religion, Belief, Behavior

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• What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.

  Abraham Cahan

  Wind, Curls, World

  Abraham Cahan (2013). “The Rise of David Levinsky”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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• Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shootings of hostages, etc.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Fall, Party, Struggle

  Rosa Luxemburg (1961). “The Russian Revolution, and Leninism Or Marxism?”, p.71, University of Michigan Press

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• In an information society, education is no mere amenity; it is the prime tool for growing people and profits.

  John Naisbitt

  People, Tools, Growing

  John Naisbitt (1988). “Re-Inventing the Corporation”, Random House Value Publishing

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• God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given utterance, but he is in himself pure Life.

  Johann Gottlieb Fichte

  Utterance, Given, Conception

  "Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge" by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1810.

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• 'Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord' (Heb. 12:14), Why did he say 'strive'? Because it is not possible for us to become holy and to be saints in an hour! We must therefore progress from modest beginnings toward holiness and purity. Even were we to spend a thousand years in this life we should never perfectly attain it. Rather we must always struggle for it every day, as if mere beginners.

  Symeon the New Theologian

  Christian, Struggle, Men

  Saint Symeon (the New Theologian) (1980). “Symeon New Theologian”, p.91, Paulist Press

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• Have you ever stopped to consider the power of words? Through mere words, wars have started and ended. Tender feelings have been hurt and soothed. Courage has been instilled and fear has been implanted. Lives have been destroyed and others changed for the better. Think back on your own life when words have hurt you deeply or have comforted and given you strength and hope to do better.

  Randall Wright

  Hurt, War, Communication

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• It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value. By value, I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the philosophical sense.

  Aldo Leopold

  Philosophical, Mean, Land

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.223, Oxford University Press, USA

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• What attracted me about my mirrors was the idea of having nothing manipulated in them. A piece of bought mirror. Just hung there, without any addition, to operate immediately and directly. Even at the risk of being boring. Mere demonstration. The mirrors, and even more the Panes of Glass, were also certainly directed against Duchamp, against his Large Glass.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Glasses, Mirrors

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007”

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• The mere possession of a gun is, in itself, an urge to kill, not only by design, but by accident, by madness, by fright, by bravado.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Gun, Power, Design

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• A mere index hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail. Index-hunter is a term used mockingly, meaning one who acquires superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes. The '[holding] the eel of science by the tail' allusion was used in 1728 by Alexander Pope (q.v.).

  Tobias Smollett

  Learning, Science, Superficial Knowledge

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• Don't go empty handed when going to a temple or to see a spiritual master. Offer something as a symbol of surrender, even if it be a mere flower.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Spiritual, Flower, Temples

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• Writing a diary every evening before going to bed is a good habit. We can record in the diary how much time we have devoted to our spiritual practice. The diary should be written in a way that helps us see our mistakes and correct them. It should not be a mere document of other peoples' faults or our daily transactions.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Spiritual, Mistake, Writing

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• New media may at first appear as mere codes of transmission for older achievement and established patterns of thought. But nobody could make the mistake of supposing that phonetic writing merely made it possible for the Greeks to set down in visual order what they had though and known before writing. In the same way printing made literature possible. It did not merely encode literature.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Mistake, Writing, Media

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• Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now - to quote myself at my most pretentious - is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste.

  Tom Lehrer

  Funny, Media, Television

  "Rhino Records" Online Chat, June 17, 1997.

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• The young [Nazi] movement is in its nature and inner organization anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects... a principle of majority rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of mere executant of other people's wills and opinion.

  Adolf Hitler

  Majority Rule, Organization, People

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• The folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only secondary.

  Adolf Hitler

  Education, Determination, Taken

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• The military superiority of Europe to Asia is not an eternal law of nature, as we are tempted to think, and our superiority in civilization is a mere delusion.

  Bertrand Russell

  Military, Thinking, Europe

  Bertrand Russell (2007). “The Problem of China”, p.27, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Never believe that true prayer consists in mere babbling, reciting so many psalms and vigils, saying your beads while you allow your thoughts to roam.

  Johannes Tauler

  Prayer, Believe, Psalms

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• For those at home, as well as for those in battle, war is curiously disabling. The mere realization that one's country is at war poisons the bloodstream, creates an incessant mood of worry that infiltrates even the most casual moments.

  Roger Rosenblatt

  Country, War, Home

  Roger Rosenblatt (1994). “The Man in the Water: Essays and Stories”, Random House

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• If the history of resistance to Darwinian thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long after every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by 'mere machines,' there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend.

  Daniel Dennett

  Thinking, Long, Mind

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• Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman "other" or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.

  Terry Eagleton

  Book, Reading, Space

  "Against The Grain". Book by Terry Eagleton, 1986.

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• There is no such thing in the world as luck. There never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street to-day, and another to-morrow, and so on, day after day: He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it as to find it.

  P. T. Barnum

  Morning, Men, Luck

  P. T. Barnum (1999). “Art of Money Getting”, p.49, Applewood Books

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• I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amidst the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail.

  Charles A. Beard

  Men, Challenges, Humanity

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