Reluctant Quotes - Page 3

• What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Spiritual, Dog, Mean

  "The Case for Reparations". www.theatlantic.com. June 2014.

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• One can't indefinitely do for somebody what he is reluctant to do for himself.

  Christopher Hitchens

  "All the Views Fit To Print" by Christopher Hitchens, www.slate.com. November 1, 2010.

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• When Laura Poitras asked me if she could film our encounters, I was extremely reluctant. I’m grateful that I allowed her to persuade me. The result is a brave and brilliant film that deserves the honor and recognition it has received. My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world.

  Edward Snowden

  Grateful, Awards, People

  "Edward Snowden Congratulates Laura Poitras For Winning Best Documentary Oscar For Citizenfour". www.aclu.org. February 22, 2015.

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• Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers.

  C. S. Lewis

  Temptation, Looks, Facts

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works”, p.39, Harper Collins

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• Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic....So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.

  Edward Abbey

  Running, Sweet, Rivers

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• When you are reluctant to change, think of the beauty of autumn.

  V V Brown

  Change, Autumn, Thinking

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• It often happens that a player is so fond of his advantageous position that he is reluctant to transpose to a winning endgame.

  Samuel Reshevsky

  Winning, Player, Chess

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• The report begins by asserting that it is a 'comprehensive' look at Benghazi resulting from an intensive investigation of nearly two years. Neither claim is true. Instead, the report is a reflection of a dysfunctional committee and the reluctant, ad hoc approach to Benghazi of its leadership and top staff.

  Stephen F. Hayes

  Reflection, Years, Two

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• A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness.

  Eric Hoffer

  Soul, Doe, Misery

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we would fight or die, and yet we're reluctant to linger over its names. Without a supple vocabulary, we can't even talk or think about it directly.

  Diane Ackerman

  Passion, Fighting, Love Is

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.19, Vintage

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• The one thing you're most reluctant to tell. That's where the comedy is.

  Mike Birbiglia

  Comedy, One Thing

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• Sometimes a savage beauty lured me into the sun and I would start to love the danger a little. On these occasions I felt the reluctant love drained painfully from me as blood drains from a deep wound. The tigers lapped my love's blood and remained enemies. The inhabitants of the day laughed at the gift I wanted to bring them, and I shut myself in my inner room to escape the betrayal of their arrogant mouths.

  Anna Kavan

  Love, Betrayal, Blood

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• The turnip is a capricious vegetable, which seems reluctant to show itself at its best.

  Waverley Root

  Food, Vegetables, Cooking

  Waverley Root (1996). “Food”, William S. Konecky Associates

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• This common and unfortunate fact of the lack of adequate presentation of basic ideas and motivations of almost any mathematical theory is probably due to the binary nature of mathematical perception. Either you have no inkling of an idea, or, once you have understood it, the very idea appears so embarrassingly obvious that you feel reluctant to say it aloud.

  Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov

  Motivation, Math, Ideas

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• The Love-god inflames more fiercely those he sees are reluctant to surrender.

  Tibullus

  Love, God Love, Surrender

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• Thus, if there is anyone who is confident that he can advise me as to the best advantage of the state in this campaign which I am about to conduct, let him not refuse his services to the state, but come with me into Macedonia. I will furnish him with his sea-passage, with a horse, a tent, and even travel-funds. If anyone is reluctant to do this and prefers the leisure of the city to the hardships of campaigning, let him not steer the ship from on shore.

  Livy

  Horse, Sea, Cities

  Book 44, chapter 22. Reported in "Livy" by Alfred C. Schlesinger, vol. 13, p. 161, 1951.

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• There could be no more powerful argument against mixing religion and government than the success of independent African American churches in placing racial segregation and discrimination on a reluctant nation's social agenda. Would black churches have been able to take the lead in the struggle had they been dependent on funds doled out for 'faith-based initiatives' . . . ?

  Susan Jacoby

  Powerful, Struggle, Independent

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• Women who had discovered pants, low-heeled shoes, and loose sweaters during World War II were reluctant to give them up in peacetime.

  Susan Faludi

  Fashion, War, Shoes

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• Though we face the facts of sex we are more reluctant than ever to face the fact of death or the crueler facts of life, either biological or social.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Sex, Faces, Facts

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1964). “If You Don't Mind My Saying So ...: Essays on Man and Nature”

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• Most publishers seem very reluctant to publish short story collections at all; they bring them out in paperback, often disguised as novels.

  John Thomas Sladek

  Stories, Novel, Short Story

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• It is more often from pride than from defective understanding that people oppose established opinions: they find the best places taken in the good party and are reluctant to accept inferior ones.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Party, Taken, Pride

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• Seems to me we move the furniture, the French come in later and put the doilies on top of it...It's a simple fact they've always been reluctant to surrender to the wishes of their friends and are almost anticipatory in their urge to surrender to wishes of their enemies. And if they want to get their hands dirty now they're just gonna have to run 'em through their own hair.

  Dennis Miller

  Running, Dirty, Moving

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• A thunder-storm!—the eloquence of heaven, When every cloud is from its slumber riven, Who hath not paused beneath its hollow groan, And felt Omnipotence around him thrown? With what a gloom the ush’ring scene appears! The leaves all shiv’ring with instinctive fears, The waters curling with a fellow dread, A veiling fervour round creation spread, And, last, the heavy rain’s reluctant shower, With big drops patt’ring on the tree and bower, While wizard shapes the bowing sky deform,— All mark the coming of the thunder-storm!

  Robert Montgomery

  Rain, Omnipotence, Sky

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• The things you’re most embarrassed about, most ashamed of, and most reluctant to share are the very tools God can use most powerfully to heal others

  Rick Warren

  Tools, Use, Most Powerful

  Rick Warren (2012). “The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?”, p.251, Zondervan

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• If Americans are reluctant to go on the dole that's because they have a healthy work ethic.

  Mickey Kaus

  Work Ethic, Healthy, Goes On

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