Would Be Quotes - Page 34

• When the worst student hears about the Way, he laughs out loud. If he did not laugh, it would be unworthy of being the Way.

  Laozi

  Laughing, Way, Students

  Laozi, D. C. Lau (1989). “Tao Te Ching”, p.61, Chinese University Press

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• We set ourselves to achieve a society that would be maximally tolerant. But that resolve not only gives maximum scope to the activities of those who have set themselves to achieve the maximally intolerant society. It also... paralyses our powers of resistance to them.

  David Stove

  Giving, Resistance, Achieve

  David Stove (2017). “On Enlightenment”, p.164, Routledge

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• I didn't resolve the questions... and I find that entertaining. And if my life were to end tomorrow, it would be fulfilled in that manner. I would say, 'The questions have been terrific.'

  Jack Kirby

  Tomorrow, Ends, Resolve

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• Four experts had an appointment with an ordinary man. They needed him to ratify their findings, or anything they achieved would be meaningless. As they drove to meet him, they knocked down a man on the road. He was dying. If they tried to save him, they might miss their appointment. They decided that their appointment, which concerned all of us, was more important than the life of one man. They drove on to keep their appointment. They did not know that the man they were to meet was the man they had left to die.

  William McIlvanney

  Men, Missing, Important

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• The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send another man into the tide pools and force him to try to report what he finds there.... It would be good to know the impulse truly, not to be confused by the 'services to science' platitudes or the other little mazes into which we entice our minds so that they will not know what we are doing.

  John Steinbeck

  Confused, Book, Reality

  John Steinbeck (1995). “The Log from the Sea of Cortez”, p.29, Penguin

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• A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.

  Thomas Paine

  Government, Principles, Arbitrary

  Thomas Paine (1830). “The Political Writings of Thomas Paine ...: Prospects on the Rubicon. Rights of man, part I. Rights of man, part II. Letter to the authors of the Republican. Letter to the Abbe Sieyes. Address to the addressers. Letters to Lord Onslow. Dissertation on the first principles of government. Speech delivered in the French National convention. Letter to Mr. Secretary Dundas. The decline and fall of the English system of finance. Letter to the people of France. Reasons for preserving the life of Louis”, p.77

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• A random group of homeless people under a bridge would be far more intellectually sound and principled than anything I've encountered at the university so far.

  Ward Churchill

  Bridges, People, Sound

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• If it were not so frightening it would be amusing to observe the pride and complacency with which we, like children, take apart the watch, pull out the spring and make a toy of it, and are then surprised when the watch stops working.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Children, Spring, Pride

  Leo Tolstoy (1987). “A Confession and Other Religious Writings”, p.86, Penguin UK

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• If women ran the world there would be no wars. However every 28 days there would be some very intense negotiations.

  Robin Williams

  War, World, Intense

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• I could not write about a subject sacred to me because I would be too flippant. Fortunately, there are no subjects sacred to me.

  Joseph Heller

  Writing, Flippant, Sacred

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• I've been lucky enough to win an Oscar, write a best-seller - my other dream would be to have a painting in the Louvre. The only way that's going to happen is if I paint a dirty one on the wall of the gentlemen's lavatory.

  David Niven

  Dream, Wall, Dirty

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Most people I know feel that life would be complete if they could just lose ten pounds.

  Betty Jane Wylie

  People, Pounds, Feels

  Betty Jane Wylie (1986). “Successfully single: how to live alone and like it”

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• We are a feelingless people. If we could really feel, the pain would be so great that we would stop all the suffering. If we could feel that one person every six seconds dies of starvation ... we would stop it. ... If we could really feel it in the bowels, the groin, in the throat, in the breast, we would go into the streets and stop the war, stop slavery, stop the prisons, stop the killing, stop destruction.

  Julian Beck

  Pain, War, People

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• Gould carried the art of bending over backward to positively supine lengths. Why shouldn't we comment on God, as scientists? ... A universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a scientific matter?

  Richard Dawkins

  Art, Creative, Matter

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.78, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The most important thing I would learn in school was that almost everything I would learn in school would be utterly useless. When I was fifteen I knew the principal industries of the Ruhr Valley, the underlying causes of World War One and what Peig Sayers had for her dinner every day...What I wanted to know when I was fifteen was the best way to chat up girls. That is what I still want to know.

  Joseph O'Connor

  Girl, War, School

  Joseph O'Connor (1994). “The secret world of the Irish male”

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• Today, shooting wars are won or lost before they start. If they are fought at all, they would be fought principally to confirm which side had won at the outset.

  Curtis LeMay

  War, Shooting, Today

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• Nothing can preserve the integrity of contact between individuals, except a discretionary authority in the state to revise what has become intolerable. The powers of uninterrupted usury are too great. If the accretions of vested interests were to grow without mitigation for many generations, half the population would be no better than slaves to the other half.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Integrity, Generations, Half

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes”

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• What is there to regret? I'm a committed Nazi, and if I had to be born a thousand times over, I would be a thousand times what I have been.

  Klaus Barbie

  Regret, Nazi, Born

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• Markets are born free, yet no sooner are they born than some would-be emperor is forging chains. Paradoxically, it sometimes happens that the only way to preserve freedom is through judicious controls on the exercise of private power. If we believe in liberty, it must be freedom from both private and public coercion.

  Tim Wu

  Believe, Exercise, Liberty

  Tim Wu (2010). “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires”, p.223, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Love would never be a promise of a rose garden unless it is showered with light of faith, water of sincerity and air of passion. Sometimes we make love with our eyes. Sometimes we make love with our hands. Sometimes we make love with our bodies. Always we make love with our hearts. If I could reach up and hold a star for every time you've made me smile, the entire evening sky would be in the palm of my hand. To love another person is to see the face of God.

  Victor Hugo

  Stars, Eye, Passion

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• To be original you must listen to the voice of your heart rather than the clamor of the world - and have the courage to teach publicly what you have learned. The source of all genius is sincerity; men would be wiser if they were more moral.

  Ludwig Borne

  Heart, Men, Voice

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• A period of silence on your part would be welcome.

  Clement Attlee

  Silence, Appreciated, Periods

  "Twentieth Century British Political Facts" by David Butler and Gareth Butler, (p. 289), 2005.

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• The world would be a healthier place if oral contraceptives were available in every corner store and cigarettes were limited to prescription use.

  Malcolm Potts

  Use, World, Cigarette

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• Our founders understood that divine authority was necessary in order to establish a ground on which the weak, the defenseless, the powerless, the poor and the wretched would be able to stand, in the face of every human power whatsoever, and demand respect for their human rights and dignity.

  Alan Keyes

  Rights, Order, Demand

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• I've been asked to write my autobiography and really they only want 8 years (1962-1970), and I keep saying it would be five volumes before I even got into the band!

  Ringo Starr

  Writing, Years, Band

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