Notion Quotes - Page 13

• Even the simple act that we call "going to visit a person of our acquaintance" is in part an intellectual act. We fill the physical appearance of the person we see with all the notions we have about him, and in the totality of our impressions about him, these notions play the most important role.

  Marcel Proust

  Simple, Play, Intellectual

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• Both bisexuality and transgender are fluid notions of identity, while lesbian and gay are fixed identities. Some people believe that means there should be two movements: LG and BT. But then what're ya gonna do about SM players? And intersexed folks who want their own I in the alphabet soup of sex and gender related politics?

  Kate Bornstein

  Sex, Believe, Mean

  "Interview with Kate". TV Series "P.O.V." ("Georgie Girl"), www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

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• The [first] argument asserts the non-existence of motion on the ground that that which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.

  Zeno of Elea

  Science, Goal, Half

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• There is a bizarre notion according to which it is claimed that because men are corrupt, it is necessary to give certain of them all the more power... on the contrary, they must be given less power.

  Benjamin Constant

  Philosophy, Men, Giving

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• Since my logic aims to teach and instruct the understanding, not that it may with the slender tendrils of the mind snatch at and lay hold of abstract notions (as the common logic does), but that it may in very truth dissect nature, and discover the virtues and actions of bodies, with their laws as determined in matter; so that this science flows not merely from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things.

  Francis Bacon

  Science, Law, Understanding

  Francis Bacon (1858). “Works of Francis Bacon: 4”, p.246

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• The whole notion of sanity may be an attempt to medicalize morality - to speak of the good in the language of health: to make us more accurate, more scientific in our wanting - but by the same token it becomes a form of moral blackmail. It is as if to say: if these are not valued - if these forms of wanting and feeling and speaking and doing - are not cultivated and encouraged and rewarded in the child, then the child will be mad.

  Adam Phillips

  Children, Mad, Feelings

  Adam Phillips (2005). “Going sane”, Egully.com

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• There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else's life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me.

  Charles Taylor

  Giving, Missing, Way

  Charles Taylor (1994). “Multiculturalism”, p.30, Princeton University Press

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• ...the century's most radical vice... the notion that human beings can be shoveled around like concrete.

  Paul Johnson

  Political, Vices, Century

  Paul Johnson (1991). “Modern times: the world from the twenties to the nineties”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• By salvation I mean not barely according to the vulgar notion deliverance from hell or going to heaven but a present deliverance from sin a restoration of the soul to its primitive health its original purity a recovery of the divine nature the renewal of our souls after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness in justice mercy and truth.

  John Wesley

  Recovery, Mean, Justice

  John Wesley (1827). “The Works of the Rev. John Wesley”, p.219

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• Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. It introduced the notion that there existed certain predictable and identifiable processes by which dreams were formed.

  Henry Reed

  Dream, Process, Interpretation

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• The notion of infinity is our greatest friend; it is also the greatest enemy of our peace of mind.

  James Pierpont

  Education, Mind, Enemy

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• The human race may be compared to a writer. At the outset a writer has often only a vague general notion of the plan of his work, and of the thought he intends to elaborate. As he proceeds, penetrating his material, laboring to express himself fitly, he lays a firmer grasp on his thought; he finds himself. So the human race is writing its story, finding itself, discovering its own underlying purpose, revising, recasting a tale pathetic often, yet none the less sublime.

  Felix Adler

  Writing, Race, Sublime

  Felix Adler (1914). “The Standard”

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• Our true nature is free of any and all notions of gender, of any notions of difference whatsoever.

  Andrew Cohen

  Differences, Literature, Gender

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• When a human being becomes so still that they begin to lose awareness of their gender, and they are simply looking into that abyss where there is no notion of self whatsoever, the world disappears. And that's really the only place to go. It's the only place to remain.

  Andrew Cohen

  Self, Literature, World

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• It seems to me patently obvious that we can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in notions of human well-being than we can respect or tolerate vast differences in the notions about how disease spreads, or in the safety standards of buildings and airplanes.

  Sam Harris

  Motivation, Inspiration, Airplane

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• The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilization has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasize the separation into parts.

  David Bohm

  Civilization, Unbroken, Way

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• Many of our disappointments and much of our unhappiness arise from our forming false notions of things and persons.

  Abigail Adams

  Disappointment, Unhappiness, Arise

  Abigail Adams, John Adams (1840). “Letters of Mrs. Adams: The Wife of John Adams”, p.5

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• It is giving me a great satisfaction, because I had the notion that we could make great wines equal to the greatest wines in the world, and everybody said it was impossible.

  Robert Mondavi

  Wine, Giving, World

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• Revelation in matters where reason cannot judge, or but probably, ought to be hearkened to. First, Whatever proposition is revealed, of whose truth our mind, by its natural faculties and notions, cannot judge, that is purely matter of faith, and above reason.

  John Locke

  Truth, Judging, Mind

  John Locke (1836). “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, p.530

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• What it missing, I think, is this notion of the common good.

  Susan George

  Missing You, Thinking, Common

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• Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

  Francis Bacon

  Men, Facts, Sides

  Francis Bacon (2012). “The Great Instauration”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• If the workers took a notion they could stop all speeding trains; every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains.

  Joe Hill

  Ocean, Ties, Ships

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• For it oft happens that a notion, when it is cloathed with words, seems tedious and operose and hard to be conceived, which yet being striped of that garniture, the ideas shrink into a narrow compass, and are viewed almost by one glance of thought.

  David Berman

  Ideas, Compass, Glances

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• I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as most people - being always excited.

  Lord Byron

  Gambling, People, Excited

  Lord Byron (1990). “The Sayings of Lord Byron”, p.37, Gerald Duckworth & Co

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• If I can get out of the way, if I can be pure enough, if I can be selfless enough, and if I can be generous and loving and caring enough to abandon what I have in my own preconceived silly notions of what I think I am - and become truly who in fact I am, which is really just another child of God - then the music can really use me. And therein lies my fulfillment. That's when the music starts to happen.

  John McLaughlin

  Children, Lying, Silly

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