Tendencies Quotes - Page 10

• Man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educabilityand in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce.

  William James

  Strong, Animal, Men

  1890 The Principles of Psychology, ch.24.

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• I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy.

  Woody Allen

  Laughter, Fall, Thinking

  "'Nothing Pleases Me More than Being Thought of as a European Filmmaker'". Interview with Helene Zuber, www.spiegel.de. June 20, 2005.

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• He who loses sight of the word of God, falls into despair; the voice of heaven no longer sustains him; he follows only the disorderly tendency of his heart.

  Martin Luther

  Fall, Heart, Sight

  Martin Luther (1848). “The table talk or familiar discourse of Martin Luther, tr. by W. Hazlitt”, p.9

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• Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure ... There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Race, Judging, Employment

  Jeremy Bentham (1839). “The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Now First Collected: Under the Superintendence of His Executor, John Bowring ...”, p.254

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• My natural tendency is to complicate everything--and then to spray words and ideas onto everything afterwards. I've had to develop the habit of keeping things simple.

  Anne Lamott

  Simple, Ideas, Habit

  "Interview with Anne Lamott, Author of Help, Thanks, Wow". Interview with Jana Llewellyn, www.friendsjournal.org. January 30, 2013.

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• Freud ... showed us that poetry is indigenous to the very constitution of the mind ; he saw the mind as being, in the greater part of its tendency, exactly a poetry-making faculty.

  Lionel Trilling

  Mind, Saws, Constitution

  Lionel Trilling (1955). “Freud and the Crisis of Our Culture. (2. Print.)”

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• A man of genuine literary genius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are of wider area than those of any other, is inevitably of all people the one most variously affected by his surroundings. And it is he, in consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits the impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in his writings where it conceivably might be just predetermined affectation but in his personality.

  James Branch Cabell

  Writing, Men, People

  James Branch Cabell (2013). “The Essential James Branch Cabell Collection”, p.7, eBookIt.com

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• Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. It robs the revolutionary ranks of compact organization and strict discipline, prevents policies from being carried through and alienates the Party organizations from the masses which the Party leads. It is an extremely bad tendency.

  Mao Zedong

  Party, Organization, Discipline

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.126, Lulu.com

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• It is incumbent upon philosophy ... to provide a refuge for freedom. Not that there is any hope that it could break the political tendencies that are throttling freedom throughout the world both from within and without and whose violence permeates the very fabric of philosophical argumentation.

  Theodor Adorno

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Political

  Theodor W. Adorno (2012). “Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords”, p.10, Columbia University Press

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• Complaints about the social irresponsibility of the intellectual typically concern the intellectual's tendency to marginalize herself, to move out from one community by interior identification of herself with some other community - for example, another country or historical period... It is not clear that those who thus marginalize themselves can be criticized for social irresponsibility. One cannot be irresponsible toward a community of which one does not think of oneself as a member. Otherwise runaway slaves and tunnelers under the Berlin Wall would be irresponsible.

  Richard Rorty

  Country, Wall, Moving

  "Objectivity, Relativism and Truth (Postmodernist bourgeois liberalism)". Book by Richard Rorty (p. 197), 1991.

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• There is a division within the neo-conservative movement, which is, by the way, one of the tests of its authenticity as a tendency. I would say I was a supporter of Paul Wolfowitz.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Division, Movement, Tests

  "Tariq Ali v. Christopher Hitchens: A Debate on the U.S. War on Iraq, the Bush-Kerry Race and the Neo-Conservative Movement". "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. October 12, 2004.

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• A tendency toward the abstract is inherent in linear expression: graphic imagery being confined to outlines has a fairy-like quality and at the same time can achieve great precision.

  Paul Klee

  Expression, Quality, Fairy

  Paul Klee (1969). “Paul Klee: Watercolors, Drawings, Writings”

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• [Slave] trade ... is the most shocking violation of the law of nature, has a direct tendency to diminish ... liberty, and makes every dealer in it a tyrant, from the director of an African company to the petty chapman [peddler].... It is a clear truth, that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.

  James Otis

  Men, Law, Tyrants

  "Argument Against the Writs of Assistance". "Argument Against the Writs of Assistance" by James Otis Jr., 1761.

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• Realizing that life is precious the natural tendency is to trample on it, like laughing at a funeral.

  Lester Bangs

  Laughing, Funeral, Life Is Precious

  "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung" by Lester Bangs, edited by Greil Marcus, Random House/Vintage Books, (p. 222), 1988.

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• Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Believe, Intellectual, Elements

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich August von Hayek, 1944.

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• The first attempts to consider the behavior of so-called "random neural nets" in a systematic way have led to a series of problems concerned with relations between the "structure" and the "function" of such nets. The "structure" of a random net is not a clearly defined topological manifold such as could be used to describe a circuit with explicitly given connections. In a random neural net, one does not speak of "this" neuron synapsing on "that" one, but rather in terms of tendencies and probabilities associated with points or regions in the net.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Doe, Neurons, Systematic

  "The bulletin of mathematical biophysics" by Anatol Rapoport, (pp. 145-157), 1948.

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• The Americans... are almost ignorant of the art of music, one of the most elevating, innocent and refining of human tastes, whose influence on the habits and morals of a people is of the most beneficial tendency.

  James F. Cooper

  Art, People, Ignorant

  "The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.

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• I think it is a very natural tendency for the nations to increase their influence in the international space, as they pursue their international relations with different countries.

  Narendra Modi

  Country, Thinking, Space

  "Exclusive Interview With Narendra Modi: 'We Are Natural Allies'". Interview with Nancy Gibbs, Zoher Abdoolcarim and Nikhil Kumar, time.com. May 7, 2015.

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• The general tendency towards an eight-hour working day has undoubtedly been healthful, and it is wise for the State to set a good example as an employer of labor, both as to the number of hours of labor exacted and as to paying a just and reasonable wage.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Wise, Eight, Numbers

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• No doubt, God alone has become all these objects, animate and inanimate, but in the relative world all beings act and suffer according to their past Karma and innate tendencies.

  Sarada Devi

  Karma, Past, Doubt

  "Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations" by Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, (p. 361), 2004.

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• See, there is a tendency to look at India as a country.

  Rahul Gandhi

  Country, India, Looks

  YouTube Chanel "CongressToday"/ "Rahul Gandhi Speech at CII Summit: 04 April, 2013", www.youtube.com. April 4, 2013.

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• There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on a fundamental truth. When there is a similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival of the external forms which served to express those inner feelings in an earlier age.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Spiritual, Art, Sight

  Wassily Kandinsky (2015). “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, p.15, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The employment of the poor in roads and public works, and a tendency among landlords and persons of property to build, to improve and beautify their grounds, and to employ workmen and menial servants, are the means most within our power and most directly calculated to remedy the evils arising from that disturbance in the balance of produce and consumption.

  Thomas Malthus

  Mean, Evil, Balance

  "Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application". Book by Thomas Robert Malthus, Book II, Chapter I, "On The Progress of Wealth", Section X, p. 430, 1836.

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• I have a tendency to really stuff things — like, I don't really express certain feelings.

  Jack Osbourne

  Feelings, Stuff, Certain

  "Rehab Helps Jack Osbourne Get To Root Of Addiction Problems". www.mtv.com. July 03, 2003.

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• I have tried to set forth a theory that enables us to understand and to assess these feelings about the primacy of justice. Justice as fairness is the outcome: it articulates these opinions and supports their general tendency.

  John Rawls

  Justice, Support, Feelings

  John Rawls (2009). “A Theory of Justice”, p.513, Harvard University Press

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