Sheer Quotes - Page 25

In American terms, the accomplishment of Genghis Khan might be understood if the United States, instead of being created by a group of educated merchants or wealthy planters, had been founded by one of its illiterate slaves, who, by sheer force of personality, charisma, and determination, liberated America from foreign rule, united the people, created an alphabet, wrote the constitution, established universal religious freedom, invented a new system of warfare, marched an army from Canada to Brazil, and opened roads of commerce in a free-trade zone that stretched across the continents.

Jack Weatherford

Religious, Determination, Army

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It is daffodil time, so the robins all cry, For the sun's a big daffodil up in the sky, And when down the midnight the owl call to-whoo! Why, then the round moon is a daffodil too; Now sheer to the bough-tops the sap starts to climb, So, merry my masters, it's daffodil time.

Clinton Scollard

Moon, Sky, Owl

Clinton Scollard (1916). “Ballads, Patriotic & Romantic”

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The fetish of the great university, of expensive colleges for young women, is too often simply a fetish. It is not based on a genuine desire for learning. Education today need not be sought at any great distance. It is largely compounded of two things, of a certain snobbishness on the part of parents, and of escape from home on the part of youth. And to those who must earn quickly it is often sheer waste of time. Very few colleges prepare their students for any special work.

Mary Roberts Rinehart

Distance, Home, College

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... the will always wills to do something and thus implicitly holds in contempt sheer thinking, whose whole activity depends on "doing nothing.

Hannah Arendt

Thoughtful, Thinking, Doing Nothing

Hannah Arendt (1978). “Willing”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another agewhen so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order.

Ellen Glasgow

Thoughtful, Thinking, Order

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Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. We join a mass movement to escape from individual responsibility, or, in the words of an ardent young Nazi, to be free from freedom. It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?

Eric Hoffer

Responsibility, Men, Order

"The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements". Book by Eric Hoffer. Section 26, 1951.

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Success is not an accident. It is sheer hard work. There is no short-cuts. You have to take the stairs and you have to start from the bottom.

Rita Zahara

Success, Hard Work, Cutting

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Shower on him every blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, give him economic prosperity such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes, and busy himself with the continuation of the species, and even then, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Sleep, Men, Blessing

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My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.

George Santayana

Character, Past, Historical Novels

George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.62, Indiana University Press

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There is no human reason to be here, except for the sheer ecstasy of being crowded together.

Jean Baudrillard

Together, Reason, Ecstasy

Jean Baudrillard (1989). “America”, p.15, Verso

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Because I'm moved in writing to be irrepressible. Writing to you seems like some holy cause, cause there's not enough female irrepressibility written down. I've fused my silence and repression with the entire female gender's silence and repression. I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world.

Chris Kraus

Writing, Thinking, Talking

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I never understood exactly why people get engaged--The only time I ever did the most disastrous things happened--but I feel that there's a great deal to be said for immediate matrimony always. If I once got started I'd probably have to become a mormon to cover my confusion. What I mean is that if he and she are crazy about each other it is sheer tempting God to stay apart, come what may. And if people arent crazy about each other being engaged wont help them.

John Dos Passos

Marriage, Crazy, Mean

John Dos Passos (1973). “The Fourteenth Chronicle: Letters and Diaries of John Dos Passos”, Harvard Common Press

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Sheer madness is, of course, the highest possible brow in humor.

Robert Benchley

Madness, Brows, Highest

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I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.

Frederick Franck

Art, Drawing, Miracle

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Of what use are the great number of petrifactions, of different species, shape and form which are dug up by naturalists? Perhaps the collection of such specimens is sheer vanity and inquisitiveness. I do not presume to say; but we find in our mountains the rarest animals, shells, mussels, and corals embalmed in stone, as it were, living specimens of which are now being sought in vain throughout Europe. These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence.

Carl Linnaeus

Science, Animal, Vanity

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Scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and instruments, but in the ened your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work.

Michael Crichton

Hard Work, Science, Preparation

Michael Crichton (2012). “The Andromeda Strain”, p.184, Vintage

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There is no greater enjoyment than that of sharing something. Have you given something to somebody? That`s why people enjoy giving gifts so much. It is a sheer delight. When you give something to somebody - maybe valueless, may not be of much value - but just the way, just the gesture that you give, satisfies tremendously. Just think of a person whose whole life is a gift! whose every moment is a sharing - he lives in heaven. There is no other heaven than that.

Rajneesh

Thinking, People, Giving

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In The Lost Message of Jesus I claim that penal substitution is tantamount to 'child abuse - a vengeful Father punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed.' Though the sheer bluntness of this imagery (not original to me of course) might shock some, in truth, it is only a stark 'unmasking' of the violent, pre-Christian thinking behind such a theology.

Steve Chalke

Christian, Jesus, Children

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Caitlin Cary and I were always talking about X when we talked about whiskeytown, before it became an actual band. We like the concept of there being no real front person in X, yet this kind of switch up of vocals and really their sheer power, and their ability to sort of bastardise punk rock and midwetsren rock and even country into their own sound.

Ryan Adams

Country, Real, Rocks

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It is idle to talk of civil liberties to adults who were systematically taught in adolescence that they had none; and it is sheer hypocrisy to call such people freedom loving.

Edgar Friedenberg

People, Hypocrisy, Liberty

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I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas.

Winston Churchill

Mean, Eye, Men

Winston Churchill's statement as President of the Air Council in War Office Departmental Minute (the original document is in the collection of Churchill Papers 16/16 at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge), May 12, 1919.

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The gravest error a thinking person can make is to believe that one particular version of history is absolute fact. History is recorded by a series of observers, none of whom is impartial. The facts are distorted by sheer passage of time and thousands of years of humanity's dark ages, deliberate misrepresentations by religious sects, and the inevitable corruption that comes from an accumulation of careless mistakes. The wise person, then, views history as a set of lessons to be learned, choices and ramifications to be considered and discussed, and mistakes that should never again be made.

Frank Herbert

Wise, Religious, Mistake

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The most striking feature of the new is the sheer mass. Photography was previously a mass phenomenon, but now, quantity is doubtless the outstanding quality. For a long time photos have been taken frequently and everywhere, but now photos are taken permanently and everywhere,... What is new is that we can watch them practically in real time.

Joachim Schmid

Photography, Real, Taken

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When you look at the sheer volume of paper usage in the U.S. alone, it's truly frightening: paper towels, toilet paper, napkins, writing paper. Our consumption of trees is endless.

Ian Somerhalder

Writing, Tree, Towels

Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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Panic is an incredibly catalyzing creative force. And almost out of sheer necessity, I found I had to talk about myself and my real life as it is effectively lived by me.

John Hodgman

Real, Creative, Panic

Interview with Greg Hunter, therumpus.net. October 21, 2013.

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