Blank Slates Quotes

• The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate... is a totalitarian's dream.

  Steven Pinker

  Dream, Pursuit Of Happiness, Desire

  "Steven Pinker: the optimistic voice of science" by Andrew Anthony, www.theguardian.com. September 17, 2011.

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• I am a blank slate - therefore I can create anything I want.

  Tobey Maguire

  Want, Blank, Slate

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• As a matter of principle, I always come to a film like a blank slate, I don't learn my lines in advance. With this approach, I feel clean.

  Jeanne Moreau

  Principles, Lines, Matter

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• When a dancer comes onstage, he is not just a blank slate that the choreographer has written on.  Behind him he has all the decisions he has made in life. Each time, he has chosen, and in what he is onstage, you see the result of those choices.  You are looking at the person he is, and the person who, at this point, he cannot help but be  Exceptional dancers, in my experience, are also exceptional people, people with an attitude toward life, a kind of quest, and an internal quality.  They know who they are, and they show this to you, willingly.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Attitude, People, Choices

  "Loners". www.newyorker.com. December 12, 2005.

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• The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.

  Steven Pinker

  Zero, Simple, Mind

  "A biological understanding of human nature". Edge Interview, www.edge.org. September 8, 2002.

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• I got to college and saw all of my friends going to these other schools and thought, 'You know, college is just a blank slate.' And I had an opportunity to go to different schools, but I chose Brown because it was unique and allowed you to be yourself as an individual and like I said, it's a blank slate.

  Masi Oka

  Being Yourself, School, Unique

  "Interview: Acting, Gaming, And Math Science With 'searching For Sonny' Star Masi Oka". Interview with Charles Webb, www.mtv.com. August 29, 2012.

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• Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.

  Erik Larson

  Book, Ideas, Blank

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• I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.

  Juan Cole

  Pigs, Use, Administration

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• I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.

  Ben Kingsley

  Creativity, Creative, Trying

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• Most people have a blank slate and can start from nothing. But for me, I had to break a bad habit that I've been doing all of my life, which is freestyle hip-hop.

  Roshon Fegan

  People, Hip Hop, Hips

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• With violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution.

  Steven Pinker

  Violence, Problem, Human Nature

  "What Comes Naturally" by Louis Menand, www.newyorker.com. November 25, 2002.

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• Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

  Anton Chekhov

  Men, Insight, Shows

  Note-Book of Anton Chekhov, 1921.

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• My loneliness...still comes over me sometimes...It's a liminal, lost sensation of having wandered wide, endless boulevards, among rows of orange trees, winter butterflies, seasons reversed and out of order, dogs barking from behind fences meant to keep out intruders. It's not the place that impoverishes me but I who bring my own sense of poverty, of loss, to the place. It's a sense of near nothingness, as though I were not so much a blank slate as an erased chalkboard, still bearing illegible smudges of smoothed-over writing.

  Marco Roth

  Dog, Loneliness, Writing

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• We are here to inscribe ourselves on the universe, and it is not inappropriate to remind ourselves of this when blank slates are given us.

  Kim Stanley

  Inappropriate, Blank, Given

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• I no longer believe the conservative message that children are naturally selfish and destructive creatures who need civilizing by hierarchies or painful controls. On the contrary, I believe that hierarchy and painful controls create destructive people. And I no longer believe the liberal message that children are blank slates on which society can write anything. On the contrary, I believe a unique core self is born into every human being; the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again.

  Gloria Steinem

  Family, Children, Selfish

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• You can sit in front of a computer and have a blank slate and be completely overwhelmed by the possibilities and not get anywhere.

  Rob Brown

  Overwhelmed, Computer, Possibility

  "Autechre". Interview with Mark Richardson, pitchfork.com. February 18, 2008.

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• Music is the chalk to the blackboard of life. Without it everything is a blank slate

  Ray Charles

  Blank, Chalk, Music Is

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• Contrary to what some parents might believe or hope for, children are not born a blank slate. Rather, they come into the world with predetermined abilities, proclivities and temperaments that nurturing parents may be able to foster or modify, but can rarely reverse.

  Jane Brody

  Children, Believe, Adoption

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• When absolutes are abandoned for principles, the U.S. Constitution becomes a blank slate for anyone’s graffiti.

  Wayne LaPierre

  Graffiti, Principles, Constitution

  "NRA chief: Obama makes 'mockery' of American freedoms" by Lateef Mungin, www.cnn.com. January 28, 2013.

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• The desirable virgin is sexy but not sexual. She's young, white, and skinny. She's a cheerleader, a babysitter; she's accessible and eager to please (remember those ethics of passivity!). She's never a woman of color. SHe's never a low-income girl or a fat girl. She's never disabled. "Virgin" is a designation for those who meet a certain standard of what women, especially young women, are supposed to look like. As for how these young women are supposed to act? A blank slate is best.

  Jessica Valenti

  Girl, Sexy, Color

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• I've heard some designers talk about the design process being centred on invention, starting with a blank slate. I admire that and occasionally I'm capable of that, but I have to admit that I really have trouble working with completely open briefs.

  Michael Bierut

  Design Process, Trouble, Designer

  Source: facingsideways.com

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• Blank-slate friendships were thin and temperamental. She knew that. There was no history there to cement people together, for better or worse.

  Sarah Addison Allen

  People, Together, Blank

  Sarah Addison Allen (2010). “The Girl Who Chased the Moon: A Novel”, p.113, Bantam

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• A baby is such a blank slate, like training the understudy for a role you're planning to leave. You truly hope your replacement will do the play justice, but in secret you want future critics to say you played the character better.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Baby, Character, Play

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• My room is cleared. My head is cleared. Earlier, around dawn, I took out the last load of trash. I look around and see what's left. Nothing. There is no more Daelyn Rice. As I was. As I am. Or will become. I'm a blank slate

  Julie Anne Peters

  Dawn, Looks, Lasts

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• There's nothing so attractive as a blank slate. Take one attractive man, slap on a thick coat of daydream, and voila, the perfect man. With absolutely no resemblance to reality.

  Lauren Willig

  Reality, Men, Perfect

  Lauren Willig (2007). “The Deception of the Emerald Ring”, p.112, Penguin

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