Prepared Quotes - Page 39

• The most important thing for me is that I've used my talents as a writer to enable the Ogoni people to confront their tormentors. I was not able to do it as a politician or a businessman. My writing did it. And it sure makes me feel good! I'm mentally prepared for the worst, but hopeful for the best. I think I have the moral victory.

  Ken Saro-Wiwa

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Ken Saro-Wiwa (1995). “A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary”, Penguin Group USA

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• Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Pain, Thinking, Careers

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• He (William Cort) had some desire to be successful, but it did not burn so strongly in him that he was prepared to overcome his character to achieve it.

  Iain Pears

  Ambition, Character, Successful

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• The brotherhood of man is evoked by particular men according to their circumstances. But it seldom extends to all men. In the name of our freedom and our brotherhood we are prepared to blow up the other half of mankind and to be blown up in our turn.

  R. D. Laing

  Freedom, Blow, Men

  Politics of Experience (1967) ch. 4

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• I am not prepared to deny or assert any proposition which concerns myself; but certainly this solitary struggle with platitudinous atoms, called men and women by courtesy, leads me to wish for my wife again. How did I ever hit on the only woman in the world who fits my cravings and never sounds hollow anywhere? Social chemistry-the mutual attraction of equivalent human molecules-is a science yet to be created, for the fact is my daily study and only satisfaction in life.

  Henry Adams

  Struggle, Men, Satisfaction In Life

  Henry Adams (1982). “The Letters of Henry Adams, Volumes 1-3: 1858-1892”, p.28, Harvard University Press

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• The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor I.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Office, Innovation, Appointments

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.27, Cambridge University Press

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• If the British government is prepared to say that the Unionists will not have a veto over British government policy and that guns, vetoes and injustices will all be left outside the door, then there is no good reason why talks cannot take place in an appropriate atmosphere.

  Martin McGuinness

  Gun, Government, Doors

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• In the United States in 2009, more than 10.2 billion trips were taken on transit trains and buses. So far, the nation has not experienced a major transit attack since Sept. 11, but the March 2010 Moscow subway bombings and earlier train attacks in London and Mumbai show that we must be prepared.

  John Mica

  Taken, Moscow, Mumbai

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• I am not a capitalist soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of the plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight from the ruling class, but I will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.

  Eugene V. Debs

  War, Heart, Fighting

  "In What War Shall I Take Up Arms and Fight?" by Eugene V. Debs, www.marxists.org. September 1915.

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• The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.

  Chinua Achebe

  Different, Peculiar, Use

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• Whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism.

  Max Horkheimer

  Political, Silence, Silent

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• I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to God.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Dust, Hands, Ideas

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• The task that has fallen to us as Americans is to move the conscience of the world, to keep alive the hope and dream of freedom. For if we fail or falter, there'll be no place for the world's oppressed to flee to. This is not a role we sought. We preach no manifest destiny. But like the Americans who brought a new nation into the world 200 years ago, history has asked much of us in our time. Much we've already given; much more we must be prepared to give.

  Ronald Reagan

  Dream, Moving, Destiny

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan)., Ronald Reagan, United States. Office of the Federal Register (1982). “Ronald Reagan”

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• Would food be considered an instrument of national power? ... Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can't/won't control their population growth?

  Henry A. Kissinger

  People, Growth, Population

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• Luck, if there is such a thing, is either going to favor everyone equally or going to exhibit a preference for the prepared.

  David Mamet

  Luck, Favors, Preference

  David Mamet (2011). “True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor”, p.99, Vintage

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• I'm the best fighter in the world. No one can beat me....My objective is to inflict as much pain as possible, to win and win spectacularly...Ever since I was 12 years old, I was groomed to be the heavyweight champion of the world. I've been prepared to handle the pressure, the dealing with the press, everything.

  Mike Tyson

  Pain, Winning, Years

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• I had discovered long ago the first lesson of political courage: to think anew. I had then learned the second: to be prepared to lead and to decide. I was now studying the third: how to take the calculated risk. I was going to alienate some people, like it or not. The moment you decide, you divide.

  Tony Blair

  Thinking, Long Ago, People

  Tony Blair (2010). “A Journey”, p.28, Random House

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• Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made. And we cannot fix the exact point at which our empire shall stop; we have reached a position in which we must not be content with retaining but must scheme to extend it, for, if we cease to rule others, we are in danger of being ruled ourselves. Nor can you look at inaction from the same point of view as others, unless you are prepared to change your habits and make them like theirs.

  Alcibiades

  Blow, Men, Views

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• A samurai should always be prepared for death - whether his own or someone else's.

  Stan Sakai

  Samurai, Should, Be Prepared

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• Oneness is very simple: everything is included and allowed to live according to its true nature. This is the secret that is being revealed, the opportunity that is offered. How we make use of this opportunity depends upon the degree of our participation, how much we are prepared to give ourselves to the work that needs to be done, to the freedom that needs to be lived.

  Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

  Truth, Opportunity, Simple

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• What is so beneficial to the people as liberty, which we see not only to be greedily sought after by men, but also by beasts, and to be prepared in all things.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Freedom, Men, People

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• I have witnessed boards that continued to waste money on doomed projects because no one was prepared to admit they were failures, take the blame and switch course. Smaller outfits are more willing to admit mistakes and dump bad ideas.

  Luke Johnson

  Mistake, Failure, Learning

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• City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind's eye the notion of a better life ahead.

  Edward Hoagland

  Country, Time, Future

  Edward Hoagland, HOAGLAND EDWARD. (1995). “Tugman's Passage”, Lyons Press

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• American parents, on the whole, do not want their sons to be artisans or craftsmen, but business or professional people. As a result, millions of youngsters are being prepared for careers they have little aptitude for - and little interest in except for dubious prestige.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Son, Careers, People

  Sydney J. Harris (1964). “ON THE CONTRARY”

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• Let it never be forgotten that it is not by means of war that states are rendered fit for the enjoyment of constitutional freedom; on the contrary, whilst terror and bloodshed reign in the land, involving men's minds in the extremities of hopes and fears, there can be no process of thought, no education going on, by which alone can a people be prepared for the enjoyment of rational liberty.

  Richard Cobden

  War, Mean, Men

  Richard Cobden (1835). “England, Ireland, and America”, p.44

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