Tendencies Quotes - Page 37

• I may have grown cynical from long service, but this is a tendency I do not like, and I sometimes think I'd rather be a dog and bay at the moon than stay in the Senate another six years and listen to it.

  John Sharp Williams

  Dog, Thinking, Moon

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• There's a tendency on the part of Americans, all of us, to say, 'Hey, the Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is gone, we don't have to worry about these guys again.' We always have to be worried about them, we always have to be concerned about them, and we have to be well-informed.

  Russ Feingold

  War, Worry, Guy

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• Culture's essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with its present understanding and forms of approach to that object.

  Northrop Frye

  Understanding, Intellectual, Atheism

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.127, Princeton University Press

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• Almost all unhappiness in life comes from the tendency to blame someone else.

  Brian Tracy

  Happiness, Self Esteem, Blame Someone

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• Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before. Some day, I doubt not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of the aesthetic faculty; but all the understanding in the world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and that is ugly.

  Thomas Huxley

  Beautiful, Men, Evil

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.80, Cambridge University Press

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• Character is an essential tendency. It can be covered up, it can be messed with, it can be screwed around with, but it can't be ultimately changed. It's the structure of our bones, the blood that runs through our veins.

  Sam Shepard

  Running, Character, Blood

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• Everyone knows that weeds eat out the life of the garden and of the productive fields. It's like that in the building and developing of character. No one knows our own faults and tendencies better than we do ourselves, so that it is up to each one of us to keep the weeds out, and to keep all growth vigorous and fruitful.

  George Matthew Adams

  Life, Weed, Character

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• It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Errors, Perfection

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2004). “Evolution And Ethics”, p.247, 1st World Publishing

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• There is a serious tendency towards capitalism among the well-to-do peasants. This tendency will become rampant if we in the slightest way neglect political work among the peasants during the co-operative movement and for a very long period after.

  Mao Zedong

  Long, Political, Movement

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.23, Lulu.com

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• Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.

  Dalai Lama

  Buddhist, Different, Consciousness

  "Dzogchen: Heart Essence of the Great Perfection" by Dalai Lama, Snow Lion Publications, 2004.

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• So, the tendency of our childish nature is to take small things too seriously and get easily offended, whereas when we are confronted with situations which have long-term consequences, we tend to take things less seriously

  Dalai Lama

  Buddhist, Long, Easily Offended

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• In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. Do not make yourself ill with overwhelm. There is a tendency to fall into being weakened by perseverating on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Attitude, Fall, Positive Thinking

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• The tendency of mans nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downward.

  Mencius

  Water, Flow, Human Nature

  Mencius, James Legge (1875). “The Life and Works of Mencius: With Essays and Notes”, p.58

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• The tendency of taxation is, to create a class of persons, who do not labour: to take from those who do labour the produce of that labour, and to give it to those who do not labour.

  William Cobbett

  Class, Giving, Liberty

  "Paper Against Gold and Glory Against Prosperity. Or, an Account of the Rise, Progress, Extent and Present State of the Funds and of the Papermoney of Great-Britain Etc".

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• The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Creativity, Two, Pace

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1853). “Goethe's Opinions on the World, Mankind, Literature, Science, and Art”, p.109

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• I guess I realize that I don't want to die. I don't want to live either, but-there really isn't anything in-between. Depression is about as close as you get to somewhere between dead and alive, and it's the worst. But since the tendency toward inertia means that it's easier for me to stay alive than die, I guess that's how it's going to be, so I guess I should try to be happy.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Suicidal, Mean, Trying

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.299, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• By suicide I introduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will ... now I choose the direction of my thought and the direction of my faculties, my tendencies, my reality.

  Antonin Artaud

  Suicide, Suicidal, Reality

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• At its best, the US Open demands straight drives, crisp iron shots, brilliant chipping and putting, and strategic position play. Plus the patience of St. Francis and the will of Patton. At its worst, the Open eradicates the difference in ability between a Tom Purtzer and a Tom Watson and throws both in the same jail of high rough and high risk shots. This is the disturbing tendency in the Opens of the seventies and eighties, one which worries everyone in golf.

  Thomas Boswell

  Golf, Jail, Play

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• In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age, and other kinds of conception at a later age.

  William James

  Philosophy, Educational, Order

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.89, Harvard University Press

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• When covering the man with the ball, the defense should be able to touch the ball with his hand. He should assume this touching position as the ball is being received. When the ball is received, the defense should discourage the pass into the post area. The hands should be kept up. Keeping the hands up reduces a tendency to foul and allows a player to move his hands quickly.

  Ralph Miller

  Basketball, Moving, Player

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• Dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.

  Gerard K. O'Neill

  Peace, War, Blame

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• ...History shows that ... (people) can be deflected from their natural tendencies by artful propaganda, bogus crises, or other political trickery.

  Robert Higgs

  Peace, War, People

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• Suicide thwarts the plan of the entity which sends out the personality. Fortunately, the entity is far beyond the reach of man's destructive tendencies.

  Manly Hall

  Suicide, Suicidal, Men

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• The view that women are infantile and emotional creatures, and as such, incapable of responsibility and independence is the work of the masculine tendency to lower women's self-respect.

  Karen Horney

  Responsibility, Emotional, Self

  Karen Horney (1967). “Feminine Psychology”

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• Keep in mind that the tendency to be judgmental - toward yourself or another person - is a good barometer of how anxious or stressed out you are. Judging others is simply the flip side of judging yourself.

  Harriet Lerner

  Judging Yourself, Mind, Stressed

  FaceBook post by Harriet Lerner from Oct 26, 2014

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