Obvious Quotes - Page 29

• the inferred is always more effective than the obvious.

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

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• Evil is obvious only in retrospect.

  Gloria Steinem

  Government, Evil, Retrospect

  Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.480, Open Road Media

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• Insight is 'mental vision,' one of the ways in which the mind escapes the limits of the obvious or the familiar.

  Jennifer James

  Intuition, Mind, Vision

  Jennifer James (2012). “Thinking In The Future Tense”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

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• One question that people always ask at home is never asked here: "What happened to Communism in Russia?" Everybody yawns when a visitor brings it up, because the answer is so obvious to every Russian. The answer is that there never was Communism in Russia; there were only communists.

  Arthur Koestler

  Home, Russia, People

  Arthur Koestler (1970). “The trail of the dinosaur: and Reflections on hanging”, Random House (UK)

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• Scots are born exiles, and Scotland the perfect country to be exiled from. Do not imagine that I am running down Scotland. Far from it. ... No, what I mean is that Scotland's beauties, though undeniable, are obvious ones, easy to carry in the heart, easy even to describe to the benighted members of less fortunate races. Lakes, islands and mountains, heather and rowan, broad straths and narrow glens - these are jewels easily worn in the memory.

  Jan Struther

  Running, Country, Memories

  Jan Struther (1956). “A pocketful of pebbles”

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• people, in forming their opinions of others, are usually lazy enough to go by whatever is most obvious or whatever chance remark they happen to hear. So the best policy is to dictate to others the opinion you want them to have of you.

  Judith Martin

  People, Lazy, Want

  Judith Martin (1986). “Style and substance: a comedy of manners”, Scribner

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• Screening telephone calls with a receptionist or the humbler answering machine is not a dishonorable thing to do. The warmest people in the world still need uninterrupted time to attend to their lives and should not be outwitted if they have made it obvious that they are not always available upon summons.

  Judith Martin

  People, Needs, Machines

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• The one thing prostitution is not is a 'victimless crime.' It attracts a wide species of preying criminals and generates a long line of victims, beginning with the most obvious and least understood - the prostitute herself.

  Gail Sheehy

  Long, Criminals, Lines

  Gail Sheehy (1973). “Hustling: Prostitution in Our Wide Open Society”, New York : Delacorte Press

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• It isn't necessarily the great and famous beauty spots we fall in love with. As with people, so with places. Love is unforeseen, and we can all find ourselves affectionately attached to the minor and the less obvious.

  Muriel Spark

  Beauty, Travel, Falling In Love

  Muriel Spark (2014). “The Informed Air: Essays”, p.63, New Directions Publishing

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• There is nothing to guarantee the superior judgment, knowledge, and integrity of an inspector or a bureaucrat-and the deadly consequences of entrusting him with arbitrary power are obvious.

  Alan Greenspan

  Integrity, Arbitrary, Guarantees

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.112, Penguin

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• in architecture, mediocrity is more glaringly obvious than in other lines - because there's a huge, physical object such as a building to demonstrate it.

  Ayn Rand

  Mediocrity, Lines, Architecture

  Ayn Rand (1997). “Letters of Ayn Rand”, p.156, Penguin

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• I realize that after decades of positive thinking the notion of realism, of things as they are, may seem a little quaint. ... When the stakes are high enough and the risks obvious, we still turn to people who can be counted on to understand those risks and prepare for worst-case scenarios. A chief of state does not want to hear a general in the field say that he 'hopes' to win tomorrow's battle or that he's 'visualizing victory'.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Positive Thinking, Winning, Reality

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.198, Metropolitan Books

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• The obscure we always see sooner or later; the obvious always seems to take a little longer.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Littles, Obscure, Sooner Or Later

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• No distinction seems to be more obvious than that between spiritual and temporal matters. Yet whenever they have been made objects of Legislation, they have clashed and contended with each other, till one or the other has gained the supremacy.

  James Madison

  Spiritual, Religion, Matter

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• I think of many of my photographs as being obviously symbolic but not symbolically obvious. There isn't any specific correlation between the symbols in this image and any content that I have in mind.

  Jerry Uelsmann

  Thinking, Mind, Photographer

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• If I were a supervillain, I would end capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia... but I guess that's a little too obvious and not villain-y enough. Because that's actually being a superhero. I would break down poverty with my machete; I would end world hunger.

  Kathleen Hanna

  Racism, Superhero, World

  "Kathleen Hanna on buffalo chicken, Destiny's Child, and the sketchy things she did to McDonald's apple pies". Interview with Marah Eakin, www.avclub.com. February 10, 2015.

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• Everybody's got something to tell you. And most people have told me to do the obvious thing as far as my career goes. Which would have sent me tottering into the abyss.

  Robert Plant

  Careers, Obvious Things, People

  "The Survivors: Robert Plant". Interview with Chris Heath, www.gq.com. November 7, 2011.

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• Even the best critical writing on Emily Dickinson underestimates her. She is frightening. To come to her directly from Dante, Spenser, Blake, and Baudelaire is to find her sadomasochism obvious and flagrant. Birds, bees, and amputated hands are the dizzy stuff of this poetry. Dickinson is like the homosexual cultist draping himself in black leather and chains to bring the idea of masculinity into aggressive visibility.

  Camille Paglia

  Writing, Ideas, Hands

  "Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson". Book by Camille Paglia, 1990.

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• the habit of generalizing from one particular, that mainstay of the cheap and obvious essayist, has rooted many fictions in the public eye. Nothing, for example can blot from my memory the profound, searching, and exhaustive analysis of a great nation which I learned in my small geography when I was a child, namely, 'The French are a gay and polite people fond of dancing and light wines.

  Kate Douglas Wiggin

  Children, Memories, Wine

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• Fine writing, according to Mr. Addison, consists of sentiments which are natural without being obvious.

  David Hume

  Writing, Natural, Fine

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.695, Delphi Classics

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• As the twentieth century draws to a close it has become obvious that material yardsticks alone cannot serve as an adequate measure of human well-being. Even as basic an issue as poverty has to be re-examined to take into account the psychological sense of deprivation that makes people feel poor.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Issues, People, Adequate

  Aung San Suu Kyi, University of Oxford. Refugee Studies Programme (1993). “Towards a true refuge”

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• Men, as a general rule, shy away from therapy because there is no obvious way to keep score.

  Merrill Markoe

  Men, Shy, Way

  Merrill Markoe (1994). “How to be Hap-hap-happy Like Me”, Viking Press

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• Guys think that if a girl is pretty, she's automatically going to say no. Most of the guy's I've gone out with, I've had to make it completely obvious that I'd like them to ask me out. Or, I've had to ask them.

  Brooke Shields

  Girl, Thinking, Guy

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• Monster is a compassionate picture without any obvious agenda. And it's effective precisely because it's not a polemic.

  Stephanie Zacharek

  Monsters, Agendas, Polemics

  "'Monster'". www.salon.com. December 26, 2003.

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• Prostitution means sexual intercourse between a man and a woman aimed at satisfying the man's sexual and the woman's economic needs. It is obvious that sexual needs, even in a male dominated system, are not as urgent and important as economic needs which, if not satisfied, lead to disease and death. Yet society considers the woman's economic need as less vital than the man's sexual one.

  Nawal El Saadawi

  Mean, Men, Disease And Death

  Nawal El Saadawi (2007). “The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, Second Edition”, p.84, Zed Books

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