Ancient Quotes - Page 11

• The plow is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly plowed, and still continues to be thus plowed by earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures.

  Charles Darwin

  Inspirational, Men, Garden

  Charles Darwin (1884). “Darwinism Stated by Darwin Himself: Characteristic Passages from the Writings of Charles Darwin”

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• Japan is a wonderful country, a strange mixture of ancient mystique and cyberpunk saturation. It's a monolith of society's achievements, yet maintains a foothold in the past, creating an amazing backdrop for tourings and natives alive. Japan captures the imagination like no other. You never feel quite so far from home as you do in Japan, yet there are no other people on the planet that make you feel as comfortable.

  Corey Taylor

  Country, Home, Memorable

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• There is an ancient Indian saying: "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." If we use this ethic as a moral compass, then our rendezvous with reality can also become a rendezvous with opportunity.

  Patricia Schroeder

  Children, Opportunity, Reality

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• We remember the specter of sectarian violence -- al Qaeda's attacks on mosques and pilgrims, militias that carried out campaigns of intimidation and campaigns of assassination. And in the face of ancient divisions, you stood firm to help those Iraqis who put their faith in the future.

  Barack Obama

  War, Campaigns, Division

  Remarks on the End of the War in Iraq, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. December 14, 2011.

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• What we call fiction is the ancient way of knowing, the total discourse that antedates all the special vocabularies....Fiction is democratic, it reasserts the authority of the single mind to make and remake the world.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Vocabulary, Knowing

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• The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Novelists, Fiction

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.838, GENERAL PRESS

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• I write at eighty-five for the same reasons that impelled me to write at forty-five; I was born with a passionate desire to communicate, to organize experience, to tell tales that dramatize the adventures which readers might have had. I have been that ancient man who sat by the campfire at night and regaled the hunters with imaginative recitations about their prowess. The job of an apple tree is to bear apples. The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.

  James A. Michener

  Jobs, Writing, Adventure

  James A. Michener (2014). “The World Is My Home: A Memoir”, p.17, Dial Press

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• It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Character, Democracies Have, Government

  Alexander Hamilton (1850). “The works of Alexander Hamilton; compris. his corresp. and his polit. and official writings, excl. of the federalist, civil and military. Ed. by John C. Hamilton”, p.440

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• Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes; nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Sky, Weather, Clothes

  "Complete Essays".

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• Gratitude is not a spiritual or moral dessert which we may take or push away according to the whims of the moment, and in either case without material consequences. Gratitude is the very bread and meat of spiritual and moral health, individually and collectively. What was the seed of disintegration that corrupted the heart of the ancient world beyond the point of divine remedy...? What was it but ingratitude?

  Noel 'Razor' Smith

  Thanksgiving, Spiritual, Gratitude

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• It is not a zero sum game. The simple idea of the gains from trade lies at the heart of the modern and the ancient economy, not the power of capital. There is nothing else to it.

  Matt Ridley

  Zero, Lying, Heart

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• The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes.

  Noah Webster

  Rome, Republic, Causes

  Noah Webster (1790). “A collection of Essays and fugitive writings on moral, historical, polictical and literary subjects”, p.331

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• Since the time of the ancient Greeks a democracy has depended on its philosophers and creative artists. It can only flourish by continuous probing, prodding, and questioning of the social conditions under which man exists and tries to better himself. One of the first moves of a dictatorship is to stifle the artists and thinkers who have the ability to stir up dissent from any prescribed dogma which might enslave them. Because the artist can arouse the curiosity and conscience of his community, he becomes a threat to those who have taken power.

  Uta Hagen

  Women, Moving, Taken

  Uta Hagen (1991). “Challenge For The Actor”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

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• The mystic and the physicist arrive at the same conclusion; one starting from the inner realm, the other from the outer world. The harmony between their views confirms the ancient Indian wisdom that Brahman, the ultimate reality without, is identical to Atman, the reality within.

  Fritjof Capra

  Science, Reality, Views

  Fritjof Capra, Pier Luigi Luisi (2014). “The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision”, p.286, Cambridge University Press

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• To be sure, the use of force by one party in a market transaction in order to improve his price was no invention of capitalism. Unequal exchange is an ancient practice. What was remarkable about capitalism as a historical system was the way in which this unequal exchange could be hidden; indeed, hidden so well that it is only after five hundred years of the operation of this mechanism that even the avowed opponents of the system have begun to unveil it systematically.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Party, Order, Years

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• The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine.

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, Lying, Philosophical

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We need to make our own the ancient pastoral wisdom which... encouraged Pastors to listen more widely to the entire People of God. Significant is Saint Benedict's reminder to the Abbot of a monastery, inviting him to consult even the youngest members of the community: "By the Lord's inspiration, it is often a younger person who knows what is best".

  Pope John Paul II

  Faith, Inspiration, People

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• There is truth in little corners of our lives. There are hints of it in songs and children's eyes. It's familiar, like an ancient lullaby; What do I live for? If we've eyes to see... If we've ears to hear... To find it in our hearts and mouths the word that saves is near. Shed that shallow skin... Come and live again... Leave all you were before... To believe is to begin.

  Brooke Fraser

  Faith, Song, Children

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• Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons. The possession of a good rifle, as well as the skill to use it well, truly makes a man the monarch of all he surveys. It realizes the ancient dream of the Jovian thunderbolt, and as such it is the embodiment of personal power. For this reason it exercises a curious influence over the minds of most men, and in its best examples it constitutes an object of affection unmatched by any other inanimate object.

  Jeff Cooper

  Dream, Queens, Exercise

  Jeff Cooper (2002). “Art of the Rifle: Special Colour Edition”, p.8, Paladin Press

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• According to Herodotus, the ancient Persians felt that what was necessary in the background of a young man entering adulthood was his ability to ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth. Perhaps we should now grant our college degrees to young men who measure up to that standard.

  Jeff Cooper

  Gun, College, Men

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• I believe in logic, the sequence of cause and effect, and in science its only begotten son our law, which was conceived by the ancient Greeks, thrived under Isaac Newton, suffered under Albert Einstein...
  That fragment of a 'creed for materialism' which a friend in college had once shown him rose through Donald's confused mind.

  John Brunner

  Confused, Believe, Son

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• When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?

  Seneca the Younger

  Science, Sky, Tree

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• Today the thing I find myself thinking about the most is our landscape...I think it's something a lot of us take for granted; for many of us Australia is just there but how many of us have really seen it, have seen Kakadu or Kings Canyon? I know I hope to at some stage, to see Uluru at sunset and the ancient art in the Abrakurrie caves. I think it's our landscape which defines our identity and it's what I'm most grateful for.

  Mick Dodson

  Art, Kings, Grateful

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• Hinduism has made marvelous discoveries in things of religion, of the spirit, of the soul. We have no eye for these great and fine discoveries. We are dazzled by the material progress that Western science has made. Ancient India has survived because Hinduism was not developed along material but spiritual lines.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Spiritual, Eye, Discovery

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• The political tradition of ancient thought, filtered in Italy by Machiavelli, says one thing clearly: every prince needs allies, and the bigger the responsibility, the more allies he needs.

  Silvio Berlusconi

  Responsibility, Political, Allies

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