Predetermined Quotes - Page 2

• When a man has his heart in the right place and good taste, he can not only do well in politics but is even predetermined for it. If someone is modest and does not yearn for power, he is certainly not ill-equipped to engage in politics; on the contrary, he belongs there. What is needed in politics is not the ability to lie but rather the sensibility to know when, where, how and to whom to say things.

  Vaclav Havel

  Lying, Heart, Men

  International Herald Tribune, October 29, 1991.

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• One of the most terrible things about the English education System in Ireland is its ruthlessness...it is cold and mechanical, like the ruthlessness of an immensely powerful engine. A machine vast, complicated... It grinds night and day; it obeys immutable and predetermined laws; it is as devoid of understanding, of sympathy, of imagination, as is any other piece of machinery that performs an appointed task. Into it is fed all raw human material in Ireland; it seizes upon it inexorably and rends and compresses and remoulds...

  Patrick Pearse

  Powerful, Night, Law

  "The Cause Of Ireland" by Liz Curtis, Beyond the Pale Publications, Belfast, (p. 190), 1994.

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• I don't think he (Joseph Albers, fh) ever realized that it was his discipline that I came for. Besides, my response to what I learned from him was just the opposite of what he intended.. ..I was very hesitant about arbitrarily designing forms and selecting colors that would achieve some predetermined result, because I didn't have any ideas to support that sort of thing - I didn't want color to serve me, in other words.

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Thinking, Color, Opposites

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• A man of genuine literary genius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are of wider area than those of any other, is inevitably of all people the one most variously affected by his surroundings. And it is he, in consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits the impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in his writings where it conceivably might be just predetermined affectation but in his personality.

  James Branch Cabell

  Writing, Men, People

  James Branch Cabell (2013). “The Essential James Branch Cabell Collection”, p.7, eBookIt.com

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• In schools, including universities, most resources are spent to purchase the time and motivation of a limited number of people to take up predetermined problems in a ritually defined setting. The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.

  Ivan Illich

  Motivation, School, Opportunity

  Ivan Illich (1970). “The Dawn of Epimethean Man, and Other Essays”

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• At 12 years old in the dangerous world that I was in, with a very difficult home life, I found the stage was the safest place to be. It was predetermined and predictable - and furthermore you got to be someone else. All the problems only began when you left the building.

  Patrick Stewart

  Home, Dangerous World, Years

  "Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart on Waiting For Godot". Interview with Dominic Cavendish, www.telegraph.co.uk. March 31, 2009.

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• Also, with acting and dancing I portray a predetermined character and story for the most part, with music I have the creative freedom to create a song on a whim with whomever I choose and at whatever time I choose to do it. It's more liberating artistically and that's why I've stuck with it. It's a good balance to be able to portray a character and also be myself in avenues that I'm passionate about.

  Alyson Stoner

  Song, Character, Dancing

  Source: www.nerdprobs.com

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• Strangers with puzzled looks were amazingly cooperative in letting me into their rooms with my photographic gear. They let me take down the curtains, wash the windows, and rearrange the furniture. Often, too, they expressed their desire to share their view with others, as if it were a non-depletable treasure. I liked the idea that my photographic vantage points were not solely determined by myself. They were predetermined by others, sometimes years earlier, and patiently waited for me to discover them.

  John Pfahl

  Views, Years, Ideas

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• Surrendering to change is always a leap of faith. For something new to enter your life, you have to let go of the past and join your immediate experience right now. The key is less in what you do than how connected you are in yourself as you do it. In life there is no predetermined path you should or have to walk; you lay down the path by how you take each step. This is one of life's greatest truths.

  Richard Moss

  Change, Letting Go, Past

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• A contemporary painting is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it and not a predetermined figure.

  Stuart Pearson Wright

  Pay, Painting, Figures

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• But you will hardly ever read about them. Why? Because once again, the media has predetermined what is not worthy of coverage, even when the news item is something as uninteresting as the cosmic origin of every element in your body.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Media, Culture, News

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• The form is mechanic when on any given material we impress a predetermined form. The organic form, on the other hand, is innate, it shapes as it develops itself from within.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Hands, Shapes, Mechanic

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1989). “Coleridge's Criticism of Shakespeare”

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• In the preface to his great History of Europe, H. A. L. Fisher wrote: "Men wiser than and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave ..." It seems to me that the same is true of the much older [geological stratigraphical] history of Europe.

  D. V. Ager

  Wisdom, Science, Men

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• In-depth reporting is expensive. It is much cheaper to have people sit around or on remotes and talk about politics like it's baseball. But there is also a predetermined intent in terms of what is reported and how it is reported, and the degree to which a story is pushed. Both have bad effects.

  Robert Kane Pappas

  Baseball, People, Depth

  "Can the Corporate Media Turn Lies Into Truth?". Interview with Mark Karlin, www.scoop.co.nz. August 12, 2011.

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• If a person is working toward a predetermined goal and knows where to go, then that person is successful. If a person does not know which direction they want to go in life, then that person is a failure.

  Earl Nightingale

  Successful, Goal, Doe

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• The conflict between the principle of liberty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into convulsions at the approach of freedom. That the fall of slavery is predetermined in the counsels of Omnipotence I cannot doubt; it is a part of the great moral improvement in the condition of man, attested by all the records of history. But the conflict will be terrible, and the progress of improvement perhaps retrograde before its final progress to consummation.

  John Quincy Adams

  Fall, Men, Omnipotence

  John Quincy Adams (1876). “Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848”, p.63

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• Optimism is a duty. The future is open. It is not predetermined. No one can predict it, except by chance. We all contribute to determining it by what we do. We are all equally responsible for its success.

  Karl Popper

  Optimism, Chance, Responsible

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• [The artist's aim is] not to instruct the viewer, but to give him information... . The artist would follow his predetermined premise to its conclusion, avoiding subjectivity. Chance, taste, or unconsciously remembered forms would play no part in the outcome. The serial artist does not attempt to produce a beautiful or mysterious object but functions merely as a clerk cataloguing the results of his premise.

  Sol LeWitt

  Beautiful, Artist, Play

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• It was scary. But it was so liberating. I thought, This is not predetermined - I get to choose. There are some days where I have to choose five times in a day. I had to make a choice when you called and the phone rang, whether I'm going to show up and be me, or whether I'm going to say what I think I'm supposed to say and get off the phone.

  Brené Brown

  Thinking, Phones, Choices

  "Brené Brown On Why Courage, Vulnerability And Authenticity Have To Be Practiced". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 25, 2013.

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• I know that nothing comes to pass but what God appoints; our fate is decreed, and things do not happen by chance, but every man's portion of joy and sorrow is predetermined.

  Seneca the Younger

  Fate, Men, Destiny

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• For me, the child is a veritable image of becoming, of possibility, poised to reach towards what is not yet, towards a growing that cannot be predetermined or prescribed. I see her and I fill the space with others like her, risking, straining, wanting to find out, to ask their own questions, to experience a world that is shared.

  Maxine Greene

  Children, Space, World

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• The child's personality is a product of slow gradual growth. His nervous system matures by stages and natural sequences. He sits before he stands; he babbles before he talks; he fabricates before he tells the truth; he draws a circle before he draws a square; he is selfish before he is altruistic; he is dependent on others before he achieves dependence on self. All of his abilities, including his morals, are subject to laws of growth. The task of child care is not to force him into a predetermined pattern but to guide his growth.

  Arnold Gesell

  Baby, Children, Selfish

  Arnold Gesell, Frances Lillian Ilg (1951). “Infant and Child in the Culture of Today: The Guidance of Development in Home and Nursery School (From the Former Clinic of Child Development, School of Medicine at Yale University)”

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• Contrary to what some parents might believe or hope for, children are not born a blank slate. Rather, they come into the world with predetermined abilities, proclivities and temperaments that nurturing parents may be able to foster or modify, but can rarely reverse.

  Jane Brody

  Children, Believe, Adoption

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• Whenever I enter a position, I have a predetermined stop. That is the only way I can sleep. I know where I'm getting out before I get in. The position size on a trade is determined by the stop, and the stop is determined on a technical basis... I never think about [stop vulnerability], because the point about a technical barrier - and I've studied the technical aspects of the market for a long time - is that the market shouldn't go there if you are right.

  Bruce Kovner

  Sleep, Thinking, People

  "Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders". Book by Jack D. Schwager, 1989.

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• I do not believe, given her past decisions and comments on the reasons to go to war in Iraq, that Dr. Rice will be able to represent the United States without a predetermined bias from the war.

  Daniel Kahikina Akaka

  War, Believe, Past

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