Reluctant Quotes - Page 9

• I believe there are only one or two people in the world with whom one can have a true connection. When you've been fortunate enough to marry one of those people, you are reluctant to settle for less. One can have lovers, those are easily found, but true love rarely strikes twice.

  Nicole Richie

  Believe, Two, People

  Nicole Richie (2010). “Priceless: A Novel”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• Tell me about yourself, Miss Russel." I started to give him the obligatory response, first the demurral and then the reluctant flat autobiography, but some slight air of polite inattention in his manner stopped me. Instead, I found myself grinning at him. "Why don't you tell me about myself, Mr. Holmes?

  Laurie R. King

  Air, Giving, Missing

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• When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself, I realized that it was because I was afraid of failure - but in order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Order, Sometimes, Accepting

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• He who is reluctant to recognize me opposes me.

  Frantz Fanon

  Frantz Fanon (1967). “Black Skin, White Masks”, p.218, Pluto Press

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• If employees feel you don't trust them to do their jobs correctly and well, they'll be reluctant to do much without your approval. On the other hand, when they feel trusted, that you believe they'll do the right things well, they'll naturally want to do things well and be deserving of your trust.

  Mac Anderson

  Jobs, Believe, Hands

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• Major international interventions are doomed unless the US is directly or indirectly involved. But if American politicians, officials and servicemen are to be put at risk of arrest and prosecution, the United States will be most reluctant to act in order to curb aggression or prevent genocide. So the effect of the court may well be to diminish, not increase, the numbers of (in the words of the UN Secretary General) 'innocents of distant wars and conflicts'.

  Margaret Thatcher

  War, Order, Numbers

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• We can be reluctant to recognize how much of our culture was literary, particularly now that so many of the institutional purveyors of literature happily have joined in proclaiming its death. A substantial number of Americans who believe they worship God actually worship three major literary characters: the Yahweh of the J Writer (earliest author of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers), the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark, and Allah of the Koran.

  Harold Bloom

  Jesus, Believe, Character

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• Lawyers hold that there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses--a reluctant witness, and a too-willing witness.

  Charles Dickens

  Two, Lawyer, Kind

  Charles Dickens (1842). “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club: In 2 Vol”, p.82

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• If you're reluctant to weep, you won't live a full and complete life.

  Ray Bradbury

  Complete Life, Ifs

  "Personal Lessons From Futurist Ray Bradbury on Crying, Escaping, Laughing" by Mick Mortlock, www.oregonlive.com. June 06, 2012.

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• The surer of himself an admiral is, the finer the tactical development of his fleet, the better his captains, the more reluctant must he necessarily be to enter into a melee with equal forces, in which all these advantages will be thrown away, chance reign supreme, and his fleet be place on terms of equality with an assemblage of ships which have never before acted together.

  Alfred Thayer Mahan

  Together, Development, Sea Power

  Alfred Thayer Mahan (2010). “Sea Power and World History: 1660-1783”, p.7, Fireship Press

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• One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project, most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it.

  Ronald Reagan

  Medicine, People, Care

  Radio Address on Socialized Medicine, recorded circa 1961

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• When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.

  Sol LeWitt

  Art, Acceptance, Would Be

  Sol LeWitt (1995). “Sol Lewitt: critical texts”, Power House Books

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• Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. That was the whole idea, right? That‘s why we went. I am reluctant to let that fact disappear down the memory hole, because if — as the war ends, or at least starts to end — if, at this time, the history of the war is written as us going there to topple the regime of a bad man when that frankly isn‘t why were told that we were going there — Aren‘t we still at risk of making this horrific mistake again? And, aren‘t we letting the people who foisted the WMD idea on us, not many years ago, aren‘t we sort of letting them get away with it?

  Rachel Maddow

  Memories, War, Mistake

  "The Rachel Maddow Show", February 27, 2009.

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• Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect all who seek it ... We should grant power over our affairs only to those who are reluctant to hold it and then only under conditions that increase that reluctance.

  Frank Herbert

  Affair, Increase, Should

  Frank Herbert (1986). “Chapterhouse: Dune”, Berkley Trade

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• The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than it - The Territory is worth. Empires which branch out widely are often more flourishing for a little timely pruning.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Time, Cost, Pruning

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• Praise is like sunlight to the warm human spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm sunshine of praise.

  Dale Carnegie

  Flower, Sunshine, Wind

  Dale Carnegie (1982). “How To Win Friends And Influence People”, p.227, Simon and Schuster

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• I don't know why people are so reluctant to say they're feminists. Could it be any more obvious that we still live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word?

  Ellen Page

  Powerful, People, Feminist

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• You can't be reluctant to give up your lie and still tell the truth.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Giving Up, Lying, Telling The Truth

  "Culture and Value" by Ludwig Wittgenstein, translated by Peter Winch, (p. 44e), 1980.

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• One reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control--to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic. The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient's control over every interaction.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Powerful, Thinking, Might

  Irvin D. Yalom (1983). “Inpatient Group Psychotherapy”, Basic Books

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• I was always a bit reluctant with anything like fame and the limelight and it didn't sit very well with me, although I love singing and writing.

  Alex Parks

  Writing, Singing, Fame

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• Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet!

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Rivers, Feet, Childhood

  'Michael Angelo' (1883) pt. 1, sect. 5

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• Lawyers have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakably innocent.

  Oscar Wilde

  Humor, Law, Clients

  Oscar Wilde (1999). “De Profundis: The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings”, p.143, Wordsworth Editions

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• We Call Them the Brave who likely were reluctant to be brave.

  Marianne Moore

  Brave, Be Brave

  Marianne Moore (2017). “New Collected Poems of Marianne Moore”, p.199, Faber & Faber

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• Although [in 1937] we might still hope to prevent the divisions of Europe into Fascist and anti-Fascist camps, our real affinities and interests, strategic as well as political, lay with France, a fact which some of my colleagues were most reluctant to realise.

  Anthony Eden

  Real, Europe, Political

  Anthony Eden (Earl of Avon) (1962). “Facing the Dictators: The Eden Memoirs”, London : Cassell

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• I am reluctant to judge things without being informed.

  Giorgio Moroder

  Judging

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