What If Quotes - Page 16

• I hadn't originally intended to do any reading, what if I did read one book more or one book less, whether I read or not wouldn't make a difference, I would still be waiting to get cremated.

  Gao Xingjian

  Book, Reading, Differences

  Gao Xingjian (2000). “Soul Mountain”

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• There's no use in asking what if. No one could ever give you the answers. I try, I really do, but it's hard for me to accept this way of thinking. I'm always wondering about the what-ifs, about the road not taken.

  Jenny Han

  Taken, Thinking, Giving

  Jenny Han (2014). “To All the Boys I've Loved Before”, p.18, Scholastic UK

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• What if culture itself is nothing but a halt, a break, a respite, in the pursuit of barbarity?

  Slavoj Žižek

  Culture, Break, Halt

  Slavoj Žižek, Slavoj Zizek (2011). “Living in the End Times”, p.6, Verso

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• The first time I punched in my name and saw how many sites there were, I thought, that's scary. I got too involved where I got worried and panicked and tried to stop it. But you know what, if I just let it go and not worry about it, then it will be fine. Because it's all about how it makes me feel and I was letting it get to me.

  Jenny McCarthy

  Names, Worry, Scary

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• What if two negatives make an affirmative ...does it follow that two nobodies shall be some body?

  Samuel Laman Blanchard

  Negatives Make, Two, Doe

  "Sketches from Life, Vol. 1-2". Book by Laman Blanchard, Wiley & Putnam, "That Two Heads are Better than One", 1846.

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• The trauma of 9/11 stimulated infinite possibilities for worry - some quite plausible, but most inspired by remote what-if fantasies. A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks. The "terrorism war", like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda - the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization.

  William Greider

  War, Echoes, Engineering

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• What if thou be saint or sinner,
  Crooked gray-beard, straight beginner,--
  Empty paunch, or jolly dinner,
  When Death thee shall call.
  All like are rich or richer,
  King with crown, and cross-legged stitcher,
  When the grave hides all.

  Richard Watson Gilder

  Death, Kings, Saint

  RICHARD WATSON GILDER (1885). “LYRICS AND OTHER POEMS,”

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• What if - what if Life itself were the sweetheart?

  Willa Cather

  Sweetheart, Ifs

  Willa Cather (2011). “Lucy Gayheart”, p.155, Vintage

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• Paranormal fiction offers authors - and readers - the chance to answer the question, what if? All the different ways that question can be answered make for extremely entertaining reading.

  Jeaniene Frost

  Reading, Different, Fiction

  "Interview: Jeaniene Frost, author of 'The Beautiful Ashes'". Interview with Lea Franczak, happyeverafter.usatoday.com. August 26, 2014.

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• 92 people are killed every single day in car fatalities. What if we filmed every one of them? No one would drive cars.

  Greg Gutfeld

  People, Car, Fatality

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• The greatest sci-fis, in my mind, are two things: They're what-ifs - what if this happened, and you get to see it - but they're also these philosophical cautionary tales. They deal with the underlying themes beneath the what-if.

  Bryce Dallas Howard

  Philosophical, Two, Mind

  "Chris Pratt And Bryce Dallas Howard Are Living Our Dinosaur Fantasies In ‘Jurassic World’". Interview With Matthew Jacobs, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 10, 2015.

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• It is wrong for a secular government to promote prayer. We think the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. What if the president declared a National Day of Cursing God because He failed us on September 11? Americans would say, "You've overstepped your authority." That's how we feel when he promotes prayer.

  Dan Barker

  Prayer, Thinking, Government

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• Atheists are suffering from bad PR. What if Sesame Street had an atheist character?

  Dan Barker

  Atheist, Character, Suffering

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• So guess what, if I ever have my own team I am picking everyone first even the worst kid and the kid with the stutter like a skipping record 'cause I know all of us are scratched, even if you can't hear it when we speak.

  Andrea Gibson

  Inspirational, Team, Kids

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• I went to an all-girls Catholic school. And all the nuns just breathed down our necks "abstinence." And that's not the right thing to do. It does not work. Kids will not listen to that. They're going to experiment no matter what, so you have to be honest. You have to say, "You know what, if you're gonna do it, at least think about the consequences and get protection.

  Jenny McCarthy

  Girl, School, Kids

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• When I was in my 20s I wasn't sure of myself. Now I can really stretch. I don't have to stay in the box. At this point I can say to myself, So what if I fall, so what? I'm going to get back up.

  Jennifer Lopez

  Fall, Boxes, Get Back

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• You're going to write straight and simple and good now. That's the start.''What if I'm not straight and simple and good? Do you think I can write that way?''Write how you are but make it straight.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Simple, Thinking

  Ernest Hemingway (1970). “Islands in the stream”, Scribner Book Company

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• And what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps, Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the soul of each, and God of all?

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Soul, Intellectual, Framed

  'The Eolian Harp' (1796) l. 44

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• What if English toil and blood Was poured forth, even as a flood? It availed, Oh, Liberty, To dim, but not extinguish thee.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Blood, Liberty, Toil

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1842). “The Masque of Anarchy: To which is Added, Queen Liberty; Song--to the Men of England”, p.18

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• What if you take a human mind, and upload it into one of these machines?

  Gary Marcus

  Mind, Machines, Humans

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• Certainly here in the U.S., we've had fundamentalist movements that have taken very critical and hostile attitudes toward immigration and the assimilation of immigrants into our society and culture. So these tendencies are fairly universal. The problem is what if they get out of hand and become the dominant factor in a society, which can only lead to the oppression of minorities or even to war with neighboring societies with differing cultures. That's why it seems to me it's important to try to keep these tendencies toward extremism under control.

  Samuel P. Huntington

  Attitude, War, Taken

  Interview with Amina Chaudary, www.theislamicmonthly.com. 2006.

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• What if I am wrong? Any rational investment plan has to start with that question.

  Peter L. Bernstein

  Investment, Rational, Plans

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• I think a good writer is a mix of confidence (sure that what they're writing is going to appeal to their readers) and uncertainty (what if all these words are crap?). If you're too confident, you get an attitude that seeps through into your writing, affecting the characters and the story. If you're too uncertain, you'll never finish anything.

  Charles de Lint

  Attitude, Writing, Character

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• What if I have it all upside down? What if I'm the one who knows nothing of God, and the people in the world are actually interceding on my behalf with their ordinary daily struggles

  Mark Salzman

  Struggle, People, World

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• What if Van Gogh had taken medication for his mental illness? Would the world have been deprived of a great artist?

  Peter D. Kramer

  Taken, Artist, World

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