Standards Quotes - Page 39

• what about Christianity? Are we right in the face of so long a record of its poverty in international achievement, to keep invoking it as a standard, almost synonymous with civilization?

  Rose Macaulay

  Civilization, Long, Achievement

  4 Copy quote

• All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover; and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint-Preux standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson.

  James Russell Lowell

  Song, Bird, Crow

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.1661, Delphi Classics

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Justice has nothing to do with expediency. Justice has nothing to do with any temporary standard whatever. It is rooted and grounded in the fundamental instincts of humanity.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Justice, Humanity, Fundamentals

  Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1981). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The soul, considered with its Creator, is like one of those mathematical lines that may draw nearer to another for all eternity without a possibility of touching it; and can there be a thought so transporting as to consider ourselves in these perpetual approaches to Him, who is not only the standard of perfection, but of happiness?

  Joseph Addison

  Perfection, Soul, Touching

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays, Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.52

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Religion does what philosophy could never do; it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Philosophy, Giving, Heaven

  Oliver Goldsmith (1871). “The works of Oliver Goldsmith: Vicar of Wakefield, select poems and comedies, with intr., notes and a life by J.F. Waller”, p.159

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A high standard of living is usually accompanied by a low standard of thinking.

  Marya Mannes

  Thinking, High Standards, Lows

  Marya Mannes (1948). “Message from a Stranger: A Novel”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil.

  Margaret Fuller

  Growth, Might, Soil

  Margaret Fuller, Arthur Buckminster Fuller (1874). “Woman in the 19th century, and kindred papers relating to the sphere, condition, and duties of woman”, p.47

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have this mistaken notion that everybody in the world has to go to college. The colleges are already crowded with people who never in this world will absorb more than a rudimentary education, and we dilute everything to meet this low standard.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  College, People, World

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.103, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard.

  Ayn Rand

  Gold, Morality, Competence

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.76, Hamilton Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Consider the standard two-person married couple. ... They will share a VCR, a microwave, etc. This is not a matter of ideology or even personal inclination. It is practically the definition of marriage. Marriage is socialism among two people.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Couple, Two, Vcr

  4 Copy quote

• it used to be almost the first question (just after 'Can you type?') in the standard female job interview: 'Are you now, or have you ever, contemplated marriage, motherhood, or the violent overthrow of the U.S. government?

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jobs, Motherhood, Government

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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a reason why America produced the most vigorous feminist movement in the world: We were one of the only countries in which the middle class (which is wealthy by world standards) customarily employed its own women as domestic servants.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Country, Class, America

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1989). “FEAR OF FALLING”, Pantheon

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• How can you communicate your thoughts or demonstrate your hypotheses by conventional means when all the values and standards that you want to challenge are built into those means? Science and new technology today like to declare that they encourage 'lateral thinking,' new ways of seeing and putting data together - but all systems have an inbuilt resistance to what has not been programmed into them through the premises on which their rules are based.

  Elizabeth Janeway

  Mean, Technology, Thinking

  Elizabeth Janeway (1987). “Improper behavior”, William Morrow

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.

  Lord Acton

  Errors, Judgment

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.193, Jazzybee Verlag

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• According to bourgeois standards, those who are completely unlucky and unsuccessful are automatically barred from competition, which is the life of society. Good fortune is identified with honor, and bad luck with shame.

  Hannah Arendt

  Competition, Luck, Honor

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Imperialism: Part Two Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Literary commercialism is lowering the intellectual standard to accommodate the purse and to meet a frivolous demand for amusement instead of for improvement.

  Mary Baker Eddy

  Intellectual, Amusement, Demand

  Mary Baker Eddy (2014). “Science And Health”, p.238, Jazzybee Verlag

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a statement often repeated in the Church, and while it is not in one of the Standard Church Works, it is accepted as church doctrine, and this is: 'As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.'

  LeGrand Richards

  Men, Church, Doctrine

  12 Copy quote

• What's the Christian-bashing all about? Simple- a struggle for the soul of America is under way, a struggle to determine whose views, values, beliefs and standards will serve as the basis of law.

  Pat Buchanan

  Christian, Struggle, Simple

  4 Copy quote

• There's not much place for the loyalists - especially the loyalists who left - in standard American history.

  Rachel Martin

  Loyalists, American History, Left

  Source: www.npr.org

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The early symptoms of the disease [California Curse], which break out almost on arrival in Hollywood, are a sense of exaggerated self-importance and self-centeredness which naturally alienates all old friends. Next comes a great desire for and belief in the importance of money above all else, a loss of the normal sense of humor and proportion and finally, in extreme cases, the abandonment of all previous standards of moral value.

  Elinor Glyn

  Loss, Self, California

  10 Copy quote

• The standard dreaming of a society has to be listened to.

  Hortense Calisher

  Dream

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Standard Dreaming: A Novella”, p.43, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hollywood works continually to keep its standard of contempt for the audience.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Hollywood, Contempt, Audience

  4 Copy quote

• As Mazzini said ... it is around the standard of duty rather than around the standard of self-interest that men must rally to win the rights of man. And herein may we see the deep philosophy of Him who bade men love their neighbors as themselves. In that spirit, and in no other, is the power to solve social problems and carry civilization onward.

  Henry George

  Philosophy, Men, Winning

  Henry George (1898). “Social Problems”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Because it is a national landmark, there is only one way to judge the Kennedy Center - against the established standard of progressive and innovative excellence in architectural design that this country is known and admired for internationally. Unfortunately, the Kennedy Center not only does not achieve this standard of innovative excellence; it also did not seek it. The architect opted for something ambiguously called 'timelessness' and produced meaninglessness. It is to the Washington manner born. Too bad, since there is so much of it.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Country, Judging, Design

  Ada Louise Huxtable (2010). “On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change”, p.81, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ask the first man you meet what he means by defending freedom, and he'll tell you privately he means defending the standard of living.

  Martin Niemoller

  Freedom, Mean, Men

  30 Copy quote