Platitudes Quotes - Page 2

• PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. A desiccated epigram.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Truth, Sea, Departed

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.165, 谷月社

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• Authority is permission to spew platitudes to people below you.

  Rob Payne

  People, Authority, Permission

  "Working Class Zero". Book by Rob Payne, 2003.

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• What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong. How easy that seems! Has any one ever done so? Never. Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire.

  Norman Douglas

  Teaching, Men, Fire

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• Nothing is more tedious than the dreaming platitude.

  Karl Marx

  Dream, Fear, Atheism

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• Being unique seems more desirable than ever. People are exhausted by clichés, by platitudes, by mass-produced realities, by what's been done and done and done. The role of a true artist is to present their own unique vision, and so it has always made sense to me that works of art should be radical.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Art, Reality, Unique

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Platitudes are generally the oldest and profoundest of truths.

  Frances Noyes Hart

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• The writer who aims at producing the platitudes which are "not for an age, but for all time" has his reward in being unreadable inall ages.... The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only sort of man who writes about all people and about all time.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Writing, Men, People

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• In face of this modern nihilism, Christians are often lacking in courage. We tend to give the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not there. But the opposite ought to be true of us, so that people can see that we demand the truth of what is there and that we are not dealing merely with platitudes. In other words, it should be understood that we take this question of truth and personality so seriously that if God were not there we would be among the first of those who had the courage to step out of the queue.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Christian, Opposites, People

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• Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed.

  Joan Didion

  Kindness, Real, Winning

  Joan Didion (1968). “Slouching towards Bethlehem”

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• Most corporate mission statements are worthless. They consist largely of pious platitudes such as: "We will hold ourselves to the highest standards of professionalism and ethical behavior." They often formulate necessities as objectives; for example, "to achieve sufficient profit." This is like a person saying his mission is to breathe sufficiently.

  Russell L. Ackoff

  Risk, Example, Management

  Russell L. Ackoff (1986). “Management in Small Doses”, Wiley

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• Platitudes and generalities roll off the human understanding like water from a duck.

  Claude C. Hopkins

  Ducks, Water, Understanding

  "Scientific Advertising".

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• Base words are uttered only by the base
  And can for such at once be understood;
  But noble platitudes - ah, there's a case
  Where the most careful scrutiny is needed
  To tell a voice that's genuinely good
  From one that's base but merely has succeeded.

  W. H. Auden

  Voice, Noble, Cases

  "Base words are uttered". Poem by W. H. Auden, 1940.

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• The tragic reality is that there have been occasions when [Mormon] Church leaders, teachers, and writers have not told the truth they knew about difficulties of the Mormon past, but have offered to the Saints instead a mixture of platitudes, half-truths, omissions, and plausible denials.

  D. Michael Quinn

  Teacher, Reality, Past

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• The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Philosophy, Ideas

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• Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all... As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Hope, Mean, Long

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• It's common platitude that knowledge is neutral but every now and then it would be useful if it were on your side and not theirs.

  John Brunner

  Your Side, Would Be, Sides

  "The Jagged Orbit".

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• I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons with gestures and with three attitudes and with charming phrases; with tears and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart's desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the strength of my own folly.

  James Branch Cabell

  Loyalty, Attitude, Heart

  James Branch Cabell (1948). “The Witch-woman: A Trilogy about Her”, Amereon Limited

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• Those who misrepresent the normal experiences of life, who decry being controversial, who shun risk, are the enemies of the American way of life, whatever the piety of their vocal professions and the patriotic flavor of their platitudes.

  Henry Wriston

  Life, Patriotic, Risk

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• From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional. If they were not, the world would be at a stand-still and death would speedily ensue. It is one of the tamest of platitudes but it is always introduced by a flourish of trumpets.

  Gertrude Stein

  Progress, Age, Would Be

  Written in 1895 as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College. Published as "Form and Intelligibility" in the Radcliffe Manuscripts, 1949.

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• What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? But the man who orders his life according to their teachings cannot go far wrong.

  Norman Douglas

  Teaching, Men, Order

  Norman Douglas (1982). “South Wind”, p.154, Courier Corporation

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• There is a geographical element in all belief-saying what seem profound truths in India have a way of seeming enormous platitudes in England, and vice versa . Perhaps the fundamental difference is that beneath a tropical sun individuality seems less distinct and the loss of it less important.

  George Orwell

  Loss, Differences, Profound

  George Orwell, Peter Hobley Davison, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1999). “A kind of compulsion, 1903-1936”, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd

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• My platitudes don't hold their interest and I can hardly blame them for that. My real stories are all out of date. So what if I can speak firsthand about the Spanish flu, the advent of the automobile, world wars, cold wars, guerrilla wars, and Sputnik — that's all ancient history now. But what else do I have to offer? Nothing happens to me anymore. That's the reality of getting old, and I guess that's really the crux of the matter. I'm not ready to be old yet.

  Sara Gruen

  Real, War, What If

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• Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and a great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety?

  George Eliot

  Men, Average, Careers

  George Eliot (1883). “The Essays of George Eliot”, p.34, Jazzybee Verlag

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• There's nothing to Obama - nothing but platitudes. When it's time to get to the substance, we get contradictions and confusions. We don't think that he knows what he's talking about because it's true: He doesn't.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Thinking, Talking, Confusion

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• Things which sound like platitudes become vital, living and powerful when you have to learn them in the bottom of the barrel, in dark tunnels.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Powerful, Dark, Tunnels

  "There's No Coming to Life without Pain". Tabletalk Magazine Interview, www.ligonier.org.

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