Unreliable Quotes - Page 2

• I, on the other hand, believe that books, maps, scissors, and Scotch tape dispensers are all unreliable vagrants, likely to take off for parts unknown unless strictly confined to quarters.

  Anne Fadiman

  Believe, Book, Scotch

  Anne Fadiman (2011). “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader”, p.4, Macmillan

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• Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Love, Money, Men

  "The Age of Uncertainty". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Chapter 6, p. 161, 1977.

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• UFOs: The reliable cases are uninteresting and in the interesting cases are unreliable.

  Carl Sagan

  Interesting, Cases, Ufo

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• Computers can bully us. A slow and unreliable system will bring even the toughest soul to their knees as they find themselves completely defenseless against the erratic whims of their rogue machine.

  Lou Ferrigno

  Bully, Soul, Machines

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• In matters editorial, I am a believer in totalitarian despotism. Most writers are lazy, difficult, selfish, thoughtless, and unreliable.

  John Derbyshire

  Selfish, Lazy, Matter

  John Derbyshire (2009). “We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism”, p.175, Crown Forum

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• Our feelings about how we're feeling are notoriously unreliable.

  Ariel Garten

  Feelings

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• I would argue that search has made the world a better place. It has done so for reasons that arbitrarily could completely change that - not arbitrarily at all but to completely change how that plays out based upon the needs of profitability. So it's totally unreliable and it has many layers nested underneath that of many ulterior motives nested underneath it.

  Jonathon Keats

  Play, World, Layers

  Source: therumpus.net

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• So too Plato was, in my view, a very unreliable Platonist. He was too much of a philosopher to think that anything he had said was the last word.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Plato, Thinking, Views

  Gilbert Ryle (2015). “Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures 1953”, p.12, Cambridge University Press

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• Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted advisor.

  Terry Pratchett

  Advisors, Madmen, Interesting Times

  "Interesting Times". Book by Terry Pratchett, 1994.

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• Gun laws are an attempt to nationalize the right of self-defense. Politicians perennially react to the police's abject failure to prevent crime by trying to disarm law-abiding citizens. The worse government fails to control crime, the more the politicians want to restrict individuals' rights to defend themselves. But police protection in most places is typical government work - slow, inefficient, and unreliable.

  James Bovard

  Gun, Rights, Government

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• As those who have seen Jurassic Park will know, this means a tiny disturbance in one place, can cause a major change in another. A butterfly flapping its wings can cause rain in Central Park, New York. The trouble is, it is not repeatable. The next time the butterfly flaps its wings, a host of other things will be different, which will also influence the weather. That is why weather forecasts are so unreliable.

  Stephen Hawking

  New York, Rain, Butterfly

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• We have seen over and over that white male historians in general have tended to dismiss any history they didn't themselves write,on the grounds that it is unserious, unscholarly, a fad, too "political," "merely" oral and thus unreliable.

  Adrienne Rich

  Writing, White, History

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• The worry that unreflective belief acquisition may be unreliable, after all, applies equally to reflective belief acquisition: it too may be unreliable. To my mind, the plausibility of internalist views about justification is dramatically decreased when one becomes vividly aware of what introspection and reflection actually achieve.

  Hilary Kornblith

  Reflection, Views, Worry

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable.

  Henrik Svensmark

  Mean, Climate, Earth

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• [Theory is] an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally - taking it as their best available view of reality, at least unil some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.

  David Quammen

  Mean, Reality, Views

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• Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Memories, Remember, Realizing

  Kazuo Ishiguro (1982). “A Pale View of Hills”, Thorndike Press

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• I hide my true feelings to avoid causing you trouble or pain, I act strong to show you that I'm not unreliable, I hold my tears back to show you that I'm happy but what hurts the most is knowing the fact that I'm not all these things I portray to be.

  Harriet Morgan

  Strong, Hurt, Pain

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• The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Childhood, Independence, Adults

  Sonia Sotomayor (2013). “My Beloved World”, Vintage

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• My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Heart, Hysterical, Organs

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.142, Hamilton Books

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• An impractical man--which he not only seems to be, but really is--will always be unreliable and unpredictable in his dealings with others. He will engage in actions that mean something else to him than to others, but he is at peace with himself about everything as long as he can make it all come together in a fine idea.

  Robert Musil

  Mean, Men, Ideas

  Robert Musil (2017). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.12, Pan Macmillan

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• Vision, even for a dragon, is woefully unreliable. What you can see with great clarity may not be real; what you cannot see may be the ultimate reality.

  T.A. Barron

  Real, Dragons, Vision

  T. A. Barron (2011). “Ultimate Magic”, p.37, Penguin

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• The critic who doesn't make a personal statement, in remeasurements he himself has made, is merely an unreliable critic. He is not a measurer but a repeater of other men's results. KRINO, to pick out for oneself, to choose. That's what the word means.

  Ezra Pound

  Mean, Men, Made

  Ezra Pound (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.22, New Directions Publishing

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• Rehearsals and screening rooms are often unreliable because they can't provide the chemistry between an audience and what appears on the stage or screen.

  Gene Tierney

  Rehearsal, Rooms, Chemistry

  Gene Tierney, Mickey Herskowitz (1979). “Self-portrait”, Peter Wyden

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• Maybe there's nothing impossible tonight. We're down the hole to Wonderland, and no White Rabbit to guide us." If I remember correctly, the White Rabbit was an unreliable guide, anyway.

  Dean Koontz

  White, Rabbits, Wonderland

  Dean Koontz (2007). “The Taking: A Novel”, p.80, Bantam

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• With all my ideas and follies I could one day found a corporate company for the propagation of beautiful but unreliable imaginings.

  Robert Walser

  Beautiful, Ideas, One Day

  Robert Walser (2014). “Jakob von Gunten”, p.140, New York Review of Books

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