Would Be Quotes - Page 33

• A writer without a sense of justice or injustice would be better off editing the yearbook for a school for exceptional children.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Children, School, Yearbook

  5 Copy quote

• The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Book, Banned Books, Banned

  4 Copy quote

• The simple is carefully shunned by those who labour to seem what they would be.

  Paul Fussell

  Simple, Seems, Labour

  4 Copy quote

• Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: We are our own Huns.

  Bertrand de Jouvenel

  Invasion, Barbarians, Superfluous

  Bertrand de Jouvenel (1949). “On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We can conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of abuse of free will by His creatures: so that a wooden beam became soft as grass when used as a weapon... But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and therefore, freedom of the will would be void.

  C. S. Lewis

  Abuse, Weapons, Void

  10 Copy quote

• After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise, it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity.

  Immanuel Kant

  Spiritual, Self, Personality

  Immanuel Kant (2016). “Delphi Collected Works of Immanuel Kant (Illustrated)”, p.165, Delphi Classics

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The state is a vast enterprise for declaring all sorts of things legal for itself that would be illegal for us.

  Llewellyn Rockwell

  States, Illegal, Enterprise

  7 Copy quote

• The bottom line is that if politicians weren't in the business of granting favors and exacting tribute, every single issue surrounding campaign finance reform would be irrelevant. After all, why would anyone spend money for influence, access, favors and tribute if the only thing that politicians do is to live up to their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution?

  Walter E. Williams

  Issues, Reform, Campaigns

  20 Copy quote

• We are a feelingless people. If we could really feel, the pain would be so great that we would stop all the suffering at once.

  Julian Beck

  Pain, People, Suffering

  Julian Beck (1972). “The Life of the Theatre: The Relation of the Artist to the Struggle of the People”, Amadeus Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you would be a poet, write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance for bullshit.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  Believe, Writing, Editors

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti (2007). “Poetry as Insurgent Art”, p.4, New Directions Publishing

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do you ever wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges?

  Stephen Hawking

  Ocean, Wonder, Sponges

  17 Copy quote

• Yet it would be unfair to the generality of our kind to ascribe to their intellectual and moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their primitive patterns. For it should not be forgotten that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at the root not merely of civil society but of human existence. The blow was parried by the wisdom or the folly of the vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a chance of saving their souls with the certainty of extinguishing the species.

  James G. Frazer

  Buddhism, Blow, Roots

  6 Copy quote

• Even if animal experimentation was proved to be of value, it would be morally wrong.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Animal, Ifs, Experimentation

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.

  Lewis Thomas

  Technology, Space, May

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I somehow instinctively knew it would be much better to win.

  Susan Lucci

  Winning

  4 Copy quote

• If cathedrals had been universities If dungeons of the Inquisition had been laboratories If Christians had believed in character instead of creed If they had taken from the bible only that which is GOOD and thrown away the wicked and absurd If temple domes had been observatories If priests had been philosophers If missionaries had taught useful arts instead of bible lore If astrology had been astronomy If the black arts had been chemistry If superstition had been science If religion had been humanity The world then would be a heaven filled with love, and liberty and joy

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Christian, Art, Taken

  8 Copy quote

• God knows, I'm not the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be Just for a screen.

  Robert Burns

  Atheist, Twenties, Clean

  Robert Burns, James Currie (1847). “Works: With an Account of His Life and Criticism on His Writings, to which are Prefixed Some Observations on the Character and Condition of the Scottish Peasantry”, p.131

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.

  Carl Sagan

  Doe, Pseudoscience, Adequate

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.23, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The theologians also should not be irritated. For if they find that this opinion is false, then they would be free to condemn it; and if they discover that it is true, they ought to thank those who have opened the way to finding the true sense of the Scriptures and who have prevented them from falling into the grave scandal of condemning a true proposition.

  Galileo Galilei

  Fall, Scandal, Way

  8 Copy quote

• Everything must not always be said, for that would be folly.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Said, Folly

  Michel de Montaigne (1925). “The Essays of Montaigne”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we could believe that Jesus...countenanced the follies, falsehoods and charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, ...the conclusion would be irresistible...that he was an imposter.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Father, Believe

  4 Copy quote

• It would be a good thing if young people were wise and old people were strong, but God has arranged things better.

  Martin Luther

  Wise, Strong, People

  Martin Luther (1967). “Table Talk”

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction.

  Antonin Scalia

  Self, Important, Clarity

  "Bells Lose High Court Ruling" by Joanna Glasner, www.wired.com. January 25, 1999.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't think people ought to believe only one news medium. They ought to read and they ought to go to opinion journals and all the rest of it. I think it's terribly important that this be taught in the public schools, because otherwise, we're gonna get to a situation because of economic pressures and other things where television's all you've got left. And that would be disastrous. We can't cover the news in a half-hour event evening. That's ridiculous.

  Walter Cronkite

  Believe, School, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• Yes, the cost is high, but the price of neglect would be infinitely higher.

  Ronald Reagan

  Cost, Neglect, Higher

  Ronald Reagan (2004). “Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches”, p.129, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

  Show source