Notion Quotes - Page 10

• I myself am not comfortable with the notion of secularists congregating in groups, except perhaps for defensive purposes: the last thing a secularist should wish to do is to act like a religion, with its rigid hierarchies, its suppression of divergent opinion, and, above all, its ruthless attempts (now mercifully inhibited by laws) to outlaw "heresy" by brute force. Opinions must be changed, one at a time if necessary, but if there are those who wish to persist in religious belief, they should certainly be allowed to do so.

  S. T. Joshi

  Religious, Law, Wish

  5 Copy quote

• I've never been one of those people, who subscribe to this notion that the book is dead.

  George Brandis

  Book, People

  Source: www.abc.net.au

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a Liberal of course I am very strongly committed to the notion of artistic freedom and very hostile to the idea of there being a single view of cultural policy dictated from on high.

  George Brandis

  Views, Ideas, Artistic

  Source: www.abc.net.au

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am a very, very strong advocate of the notion that we shouldn't equate the arts with other aspects of infrastructure. They have a unique role in any civilised society and that requires appropriate and targeted government support.

  George Brandis

  Art, Strong, Unique

  Source: www.abc.net.au

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My notion of art is very maximalist and souped-up: I love spectacle, overload, magic materials, magic words, incantation and litany, incarnation and possession, spilling and wounds. Art as a sacred event.

  Joyelle McSweeney

  Art, Magic, Events

  "'Art as a sacred event'". The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. April 7, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've begun to recognize myself as a Catholic writer because my whole notion of the image, of symbol, of art and what it can do, has been conditioned by my immersion in Catholic culture, ritual, and art since my earliest days. Catholicism seeped into me through every pore. Catholicism is about seeping and pores!

  Joyelle McSweeney

  Art, Catholic, Culture

  "'Art as a sacred event'". The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. April 7, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sun has a sense of all-pervasive brilliance, which does not discriminate in the slightest. It is the goodness that exists in a situation, in oneself, and in one's world, which is expressed without doubt, hesitation, or regret. The sun principle also includes the notion of blessings descending upon us and creating sacred world. It also represents clarity, without doubt.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Regret, Blessing, Creating

  Chogyam Trungpa (2010). “The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Seven: The Art of Calligraphy (Excerpts); Dharma Art; Visual Dharma (Excerpts); Selecte d Poems; Selected Writings”, p.21, Shambhala Publications

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Multitudes of words are neither an argument of clear ideas in the writer, nor a proper means of conveying clear notions to the reader.

  Adam Clarke

  Mean, Ideas, Argument

  4 Copy quote

• Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Thinking, Government, Self

  Barbara Tuchman (2015). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.13, Crux Publishing Ltd

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Policy is formed by preconceptions, by long implanted biases. When information is relayed to policy-makers, they respond in terms of what is already inside their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Government, Long, Childhood

  29 Copy quote

• The very notion of superiority of one kind over another will have to disappear, although differences among kind will remain.

  Marilyn French

  Differences, Kind, Disappear

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps even more than elsewhere current notions of what is desirable and practicable are here still of a kind which may well produce the opposite of what they promise.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Opposites, Promise, May

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 15 : The Prospects of International Order, 1940 - 1943.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Folklore is a collection of ridiculous notions held by other people, but not by you and me.

  Margaret Halsey

  People, Ridiculous, Myth

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The feelings, myths and prejudices about the Negro American which now seem so valid and real to some of our white contemporaries will take their place on the shelf along with the belief in witches and the notion that the earth is the center of the solar system.  Nobody knows as yet whether the future [of the race situation] is hopeless. All we know is that it can be made hopeless, if enough people choose to consider it so.

  Margaret Halsey

  Real, Race, White

  4 Copy quote

• There are some people who cannot get onto a train without imagining that they are about to voyage into the significant unknown; as though the notion of movement were inseparably connected with the notion of discovery, as though each displacement of the body were a displacement of the soul.

  Margaret Drabble

  Travel, Discovery, People

  6 Copy quote

• If you can't fail then how can you possible develop as a communicator or as a creator of anything? We are locked into a deeply unhealthy notion that somehow you've got to succeed all the time. An appalling notion. Any painter or writer will tell you that that is no way to proceed. One of the things that will kill off a decent actor, especially a young actor early on and they will never recover from it, is too much success. It's disastrous. You stop being criticized, therefore you stop challenging yourself. You then can't afford to fail because there's too far to fall.

  Emma Thompson

  Fall, Artist, Challenges

  5 Copy quote

• for the first time I tasted this tropical fruit, which people here are so fond of. ... I could have fancied I was biting into soap. I have a notion that we shall not become very good friends, the banana and I.

  Fredrika Bremer

  Food, Good Friend, People

  Fredrika Bremer, Adolph Benson, Carrie Catt (2007). “America of the Fifties: Letters of Fredrika Bremer”, p.98, Applewood Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It turns out that our notions of what a 'self' is and how it might feel fulfilled have no more objective status than most of the rest of reality. It seems we make ourselves up as we go along.

  Maureen O'Hara

  Reality, Self, Might

  16 Copy quote

• We have a mistaken notion of antiquity, calling that so which in truth is the world's nonage.

  Joseph Glanvill

  Calling, World, Truth Is

  4 Copy quote

• Personally, I don't endorse the notion of mortality. It's fine for other folk, but I disapprove of the concept for me and my loved ones.

  Sue Grafton

  Loved Ones, Mortality, Fine

  Sue Grafton (2011). “V is for Vengeance”, p.68, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Writers and scholars have emerged in recent times (some familiar, some new) to continue to challenge the notion of a literature that encompasses the world - and reaffirms our existence in it. It is a multicultural vision that embraces and includes our shrinking universe; it is a multicultural vision that the white man fears and a vision that the rest of us can celebrate.

  Jessica Hagedorn

  Men, White Man, Challenges

  8 Copy quote

• Fire had an almost magical quality that suggested anything was possible. Early on, man even believed that fire was a god that had to be fed with animal sacrifices in order to burn brightly. Today we have evolved a long way from this ridiculous notion of a 'fire god' and now rightfully understand God to be a bearded being who lives amongst the clouds and hates Jews and homosexuals.

  Amy Sedaris

  God, Hate, Sacrifice

  4 Copy quote

• as for the possibility of 'having it all,' career and family with no sacrifice to either, that is a myth we would do well to abandon, together with the pernicious notion that a woman who chooses one of the other is somehow deficient.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Sacrifice, Careers, Together

  Sonia Sotomayor (2013). “My Beloved World”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to denumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.

  Ida Tarbell

  Ambition, Mean, Democratic Ideals

  35 Copy quote

• I loved dancing with a delirious 'I wish I could die' passion, especially when the music appealed to me ... but alas! only one in ten partners had any notion of time, and what made it worse, the nine were always behind, never before the beat. ... Sometimes I would firmly seize smaller, lighter partners by the scruff of the neck, so to speak, and whirl them along in the way they should go, but I saw they were not enjoying themselves, and oddly enough I wanted these wretches to like dancing with me.

  Ethel Smyth

  Dance, Passion, Dancing

  4 Copy quote