Obstinacy Quotes - Page 3

• I have always had the urge to open forbidden doors: with a curiosity and an obstinacy that verge on masochism.

  Jeanne Moreau

  Doors, Curiosity, Forbidden

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• Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt.

  Isaac Barrow

  Mistake, Ignorance, Causes

  Isaac Barrow, James Hamilton (1861). “The works of Isaac Barrow”, p.163

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• [The Germans] so easily confuse obstinacy with energy, and rudeness with firmness.

  Madame de Stael

  Europe, Energy, Rudeness

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• If each side had been frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and each side is fighting the other side’s battle, all the bitterness which really flows from thwarted self-righteousness and obstinacy and from the accumulated grudges of the last ten years is concealed from them by the nominal or official "Unselfishness" of what they are doing or, at least, held to be excused by it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Fighting, Self

  C. S. LEWIS (1961). “The Screwtape Letters & Screwtape Proposes a Toast”

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• Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small; yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence.

  Edward Gibbon

  Lying, Differences, History

  Edward Gibbon (1840). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire”, p.13

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• The Master was entirely free from four things: prejudice, foregone conclusions, obstinacy, and egoism.

  Confucius

  Prejudice, Four, Masters

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• In trying to explain our political paralysis, analysts cite President Obama's tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for important legislation. These are large factors to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit of all: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.

  Jacob Weisberg

  Ignorance, Political, Important

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• I owe as much of my success to an uncompromising obstinacy as to any original ideas.

  Albert Einstein

  Ideas, Originals, Uncompromising

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• A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice; his profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness.

  Edward Gibbon

  Character, Law, Justice

  Edward Gibbon (2016). “The Collected Works of Edward Gibbon: Historical Works, Autobiographical Writings and Private Letters, Including The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.3359, e-artnow

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• At the moment we have a critical situation in Greece. Even as we speak, where there is an open attempt by the EU to destroy Syriza by splitting it. There is a German obstinacy and utter refusal to seriously consider an alternative. The reason isn't even a lack of money, because money swims around the EU coffers endlessly, and they could write off the debt tomorrow if they wanted. But they don't want to do so, because of the election of a left-wing government. They want to punish Syriza in public, to humiliate it so that this model doesn't go any further than Greece.

  Tariq Ali

  Writing, Wings, Government

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• The despotism of will in ideas is styled plan, project, character, obstinacy; its despotism in desires is called passion.

  Antoine Rivarol

  Passion, Character, Ideas

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• How much must I overcome before I triumph?

  Pierre Corneille

  Overcoming, Triumph

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• ... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The short story, as I see it to be, allows for what is crazy about humanity: obstinacies, inordinate heroisms, "immortal longings.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Crazy, Humanity, Taste

  Elizabeth Bowen (1959). “Stories”

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• General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.

  William James

  Attitude, Details, Logic

  William James (2015). “The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding”, p.75, 谷月社

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• The Roman world is in collapse but we do not bend our neck.

  St. Jerome

  World, Necks, Collapse

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• No man is defeated without some resentment which will be continued with obstinacy while he believes himself in the right, and asserted with bitterness, if even to his own conscience he is detected in the wrong.

  Samuel Johnson

  Believe, Men, Bitterness

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• Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.

  Voltaire

  Optimistic, Optimism, Maintaining

  Francois Marie Arouet De Voltaire (2004). “Candide (Sparklesoup Classics)”, p.48, Sparklesoup LLC

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• It is not error which opposes the progress of truth; it is indolence, obstinacy, the spirit of routine, every thing which favors inaction.

  Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune

  Truth, Science, Errors

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• These are the men who, without virtue, labour, or hazard, are growing rich, as their country is impoverished; they rejoice, when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh, from their desks, at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or tempest.

  Samuel Johnson

  Country, Honesty, Integrity

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1811). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, L. L. D.: In Twelve Volumes”, p.115

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• Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life.

  Philip Roth

  Morning, Jobs, Real

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• Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy.

  Jan Tschichold

  Art, Perfect, Design

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• Make something, a kind of object, which as it changes or falls apart (dies as it were) or increases in its parts (grows as it were) offers no clue as to what its state or form or nature was at any previous time. Physical and Metaphysical. Obstinacy. Could this be a useful object?

  Jasper Johns

  Fall, Kind, Clue

  "Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews". Book edited by Kirk Varnedoe and Christel Hollevoet, 1996.

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• Steadfastness is a noble quality, but unguided by knowledge or humility, it becomes rashness, or obstinacy.

  Aaron Swartz

  Humility, Understanding, Quality

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• Hitherto the plans of the educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted, and indeed we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mother, Wisdom, Children

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• For a bag of pepper, they could cut each other's throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls... The bizarre obstinacy of that desire made them defy death in a thousand shapes; the unknown seas, the loathsome diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence and despair. It made them great! By heavens! It made them heroic; and it made them pathetic, too, in their craving for trade with the inflexible death levying its toll on young and old

  Joseph Conrad

  Cutting, Sea, Heaven

  Joseph Conrad (2014). “Joseph Conrad: Selected Novels”, p.284, Anthem Press

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