Ifs Quotes - Page 4

• Pessimism is carefully cultivated in some intellectual circles, as if it were a precious plant that the human race could not afford to lose.

  Arthur Lynch

  Race, Circles, Intellectual

  Arthur Lynch (1921). “Moods of Life: Popular Psychological Studies of Affairs of Every Day”

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• The need for justice grows out of the conflict of human interests. That is to say, if there were no conflict of interests among mankind we should never have invented the word justice, nor conceived the idea for which it stands.

  Thomas Nixon Carver

  Ideas, Justice, Needs

  Thomas Nixon Carver (1915). “Essays in Social Justice”, Harvard university press

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• If the amount of money going into the war economy were invested in landscape restoration, we would be in a far more positive position. It may get a little dire before we pull together, but I think when the prosperous nations, and in particular the US, realise they're wrecking their own kids' lives, there will be a mass change in value. It will be a difficult century, and ugly, but I don't think that in the end people are so stupid as to kill themselves off.

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  War, Stupid, Kids

  "Future tense". Interview with Sarah Crown, www.theguardian.com. September 14, 2005.

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• The world operates by number, by physical laws, expressed mathematically. If you know these, you will have a better grasp of things. And some possible job skills.

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  Jobs, Law, Skills

  "The Years of Rice and Salt (Nsara)". Book by Kim Stanley Robinson, March 2002.

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• Fights over ideas are the most vicious of all. If it were merely food, or water, or shelter, we would work something out. But in the realm of ideas one can become idealistic .

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  Fighting, Ideas, Water

  Kim Stanley Robinson (2009). “Galileo's Dream”, p.423, Spectra

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• Women always think you need a man, you need a father, as if they'd be the slightest use. Men are a dead weight, they're clumsy and maladjusted.

  Yasmina Reza

  Father, Men, Thinking

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• There must be some unwritten law that says about fifty people have to move into your house when somebody dies. If it weren't for the smell of death clinging to the walls, you might think it was your family's turn to host the month neighborhood potluck supper.

  Adam Rapp

  Death, Wall, Moving

  Adam Rapp (2011). “Under the Wolf, Under the Dog”, p.82, Candlewick Press

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• When it comes to desiring, we are all experts. If there were an Olympics of desiring, we would all make the team.

  William Braxton Irvine

  Team, Experts, Olympics

  William Braxton Irvine (2007). “On Desire: Why We Want what We Want”, p.1, Oxford University Press

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• You are currently experiencing desire; otherwise, you wouldn't be reading these words. Even if you are reading them at the behest of someone else, you are motivated by your desire to please that person. And if you stop reading, you will not do so because you have stopped desiring but because your desires have changed.

  William Braxton Irvine

  Reading, Desire, Motivated

  William Braxton Irvine (2007). “On Desire: Why We Want what We Want”, p.1, Oxford University Press

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• Dogs are easy. If their tails are up and their eyes are soft, you're in.

  Paula McLain

  Dog, Eye, Tails

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• The American College of Sports Medicine found that the productivity of people after exercise was an average of 65 percent higher than those who did not exercise. If I have something that's really bothering me, so much that it almost hurts my head to try to sort it out, I always find the solution in a puddle of sweat! Intense exercise is like taking a magic pill that gives you the ability to solve problems like a superhero.

  Chalene Johnson

  Sports, Hurt, Exercise

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• A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of imporant things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the centre of his compass at his own home.

  Kobo Abe

  Home, Knowing, Glasses

  Kobo Abe (2011). “The Woman in the Dunes”, p.94, Vintage

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• Things have value Because somebody buys them, Because somebody pays money; If you can find a buyer, Even a lie is worth a thousand yen.

  Kobo Abe

  Lying, Pay, Buyers

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• I am ever Thine. If Thou cast me out, who shall take me in? If Thou disregard me, who shall look on me? More canst Thou remit, than I commit; more canst Thou spare, than I offend. Let not hurtful pleasures overcome me; at the least let not any perverse habit overwhelm me; From evil and unlawful desires; From vain, hurtful, impure imaginations; from the illusions of evil spirits; from pollutions of soul and of body; Good Lord, deliver me.

  Lancelot Andrewes

  Evil, Imagination, Soul

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• Many people talk as if they have all the answers, whereas I know I don't. That's probably why no one listens to me.

  John S. Hall

  People, Answers, Listen To Me

  "Daily Negations". Book by John S. Hall, 2007.

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• I didn't think [Ella Enchanted] would get published. Everything I'd written till then had been rejected. If it was published, I thought it might sell a few thousand copies and go out of print. I thought if I was lucky I could write more books and get them published, too. I still pinch myself over the way things have worked out.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• No music. No rituals. At home I write in my office or on the laptop in the kitchen where our puppy likes to sleep, and I love his company. But I've trained myself to be able to work anywhere, and I write on trains, planes, in automobiles (if I'm not the driver), airports, hotel rooms. I travel often. If I couldn't write wherever I was I would get little done. I also can write in short bursts. Fifteen minutes are enough to move a story forward.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Moving, Home, Writing

  Interview with Jessica Day George, www.bookshoptalk.com. September 22, 2011.

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• If the purpose of literature is to illuminate human nature, the purpose of fantastic literature is to do that from a wider perspective. You can say different things about what it means to be human if you can contrast that to what it means to be a robot, or an alien, or an elf.

  Jo Walton

  Mean, Perspective, Robots

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• Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of "somedays." Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all, it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English.

  Glen Cook

  Writing, Ideas, Giving

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• Fate knows all about you, it knows your fears and your weaknesses and your confidences and strengths, and it can be ready for all of them when it decides that the time is right. It can move you like a pawn in a terrible game of chess, sacrifice you for the good of others, drop you from a building you should never have been inside, give you a disease that no one has ever heard of. Luck and chance are impartial. Fate is active. It picks on people. Almost as if it thinks about things too much.

  Tim Lebbon

  Moving, Fate, Sacrifice

  Tim Lebbon (2003). “Face”, Dorchester Publishing Company Incorporated

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• The reaction to death is sometimes as violent as death itself. Shock throws a cautious coolness over your senses, but your stomach still has knots, your skin stings as if the Reaper is glaring at you as well.

  Tim Lebbon

  Over You, Skins, Sometimes

  Tim Lebbon (2003). “Fears Unnamed”

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• Moral capitalism is possible; if not, its strictures are only a kind of misleading vanity, the rhetoric of a secular piety.

  Stephen Young

  Vanity, Moral, Kind

  Stephen Young (2003). “Moral Capitalism: Reconciling Private Interest with the Public Good”, p.9, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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• Capitalism is of this material world; it provides us with the means to live; it empowers us within the known world of sense and human reason. If it is to be measured by a strict standard of holiness, by religious normativity alone, then there can never be a moral capitalism.

  Stephen Young

  Religious, Mean, Empowering

  Stephen Young (2003). “Moral Capitalism: Reconciling Private Interest with the Public Good”, p.9, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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• To think of the myriad ways that we live is to think of the ways that we die: Delinquent in our brains, in debt-- If we settle, then, our due account and walk through the forest, Will we finally be free?

  Katy Lederer

  Thinking, Brain, Debt

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• If God resides anywhere ... surely he shelters behind barricades of pure chance.

  Simon Mawer

  Shelter, Chance, Barricades

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