Preference Quotes

• The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.

  Walter Lippmann

  Stars, Lying, Moving

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface To Morals”, p.127, Transaction Publishers

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• The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Prejudice, Vastness

  "Wonder and Skepticism". The Skeptical Inquirer 19 (1), www.csicop.org. January/February 1995.

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• We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, -- it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Book, Thoughtful, Thinking

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

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• When the pressure comes, preferences give way while convictions hold firm.

  Edwin Louis Cole

  Giving, Literature, Way

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  People who love to eat are always the best people.

  Julia Child

  Love, Food, Eating Good

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• PREFERENCE, n. A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Time, Mind, Belief

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.97, Courier Corporation

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• I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.

  Khalil Gibran

  Dream, Reality, Vision

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  I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, War, Gun

  Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson (1988). “Paine and Jefferson on Liberty”, p.89, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Esteem must be founded on preference: to hold everyone in high esteem is to esteem nothing.

  Moliere

  Esteem

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• I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books.

  Jean Rostand

  Lying, Book, Reality

  Jean Rostand (1962). “The substance of man”

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• I don't care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.

  Henry James

  Care, Reason, Knows

  'The Portrait of a Lady' (1881) vol. 2, ch. 5.

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• I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fall, Quality, Sincere

  Henry David Thoreau, Barry Andrews (2005). “True Harvest: Readings from Henry David Thoreau for Every Day of the Year”, p.107, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

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• Race and sexual preferences are two different things. One is a behavior-related and preference-related and one is something inherently - skin color, something obvious, that kind of stuff.

  James Lankford

  Race, Skin Color, Two

  "GOP Rep. Lankford Explains Why It Should Be Legal To Fire Someone For Being Gay: ‘It’s A Choice Issue’". thinkprogress.org. May 14, 2012.

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• A man has a very insecure tenure of a property which another can carry away with his eyes. A few months reduced me to the cruel necessity either of destroying my machine, or of giving it to the public. To destroy it, I could not think of; to give up that for which I had laboured so long, was cruel. I had no patent, nor the means of purchasing one. In preference to destroying, I gave it to the public.

  Samuel Crompton

  Giving Up, Mean, Eye

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• There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.

  William Hazlitt

  Integrity, Men, Ideas

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.700, Delphi Classics

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• A library represents the mind of its collector, his fancies and foibles, his strength and weakness, his prejudices and preferences. Particularly is this the case if, to the character of a collector, he adds - or tries to add - the qualities of a student who wishes to know the books and the lives of the men who wrote them. The friendships of his life, the phases of his growth, the vagaries of his mind, all are represented.

  William Osler

  Book, Character, Men

  Sir William Osler, Osler Library (1969). “Bibliotheca Osleriana: A Catalogue of Books Illustrating the History of Medicine and Science”, p.10, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

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• How then did we come to the "standard model"? And how has it supplanted other theories, like the steady state model? It is a tribute to the essential objectivity of modern astrophysics that this consensus has been brought about, not by shifts in philosophical preference or by the influence of astrophysical mandarins, but by the pressure of empirical data.

  Steven Weinberg

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Science

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• If modernist naturalism were true, there would be no objective truth outside of science. In that case right and wrong would be a matter of cultural preference, or political power, and the power already available to modernists ideologies would be overwhelming.

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Political, Would Be, Objective Truth

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• If you put a baseball and other toys in front of a baby, he'll pick up a baseball in preference to the others.

  Tris Speaker

  Baseball, Baby, Toys

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.

  Petrarch

  Men, Evil, Utterance

  Epistola ad Posteros [Letter to Posterity] in "Petrarch : The First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters" by James Harvey Robinson and Henry Winchester Rolfe, (p. 59), 1898.

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• I don't drink, and I don't smoke. It's a personal preference. My mom has never drunk or smoked. I look up to my mom.

  Ashley Tisdale

  Mom, Drunk, Looks

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• I never say I have a preference for one medium as opposed to another.

  Christine Baranski

  Mediums

  Interview with Randy Shulman, www.metroweekly.com. June 7, 2006.

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• I choose the likely man in preference to the rich man; I want a man without money rather than money without a man.

  Themistocles

  Men, Want, Rich

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• I would certainly never suggest that any lesbian should be ashamed of her sexual preference.

  Ed McBain

  Should, Ashamed

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• What we prefer to read is sort of like sexual preference, you like what you like. Most of the time you have no clue why.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Literature, Clue

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