Term Quotes - Page 5

• If it were felt that the free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being; that it is not only a coordinate element with all that is designated by the terms civilisation, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part and condition of all those things; there would be no danger that liberty should be undervalued.

  John Stuart Mill

  Individuality, Liberty, Essentials

  John Stuart Mill (1989). “J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings”, p.57, Cambridge University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cliches and stereotypes such as "beatnik" or "hippie" have been invented for the antitechnologists, the antisystem people, and will continue to be. But one does not convert individuals into mass people with the simple coining of a mass term.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Hippie, Simple, People

  Robert M. Pirsig (2009). “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values”, p.21, Harper Collins

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cyberspace' is a metaphorical idea which is supposed to be the space where your consciousness is located when you're using computer technology on the Internet, for example, and I'm not entirely sure it's such a useful term, but I think that's what most people mean by it.

  Neil Postman

  Mean, Technology, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

• Monks, nuns, long-term spinsters and bachelors and permanent homosexuals are all, in a reproductive sense, aberrant. Society has bred them, but they have failed to return the compliment.

  Desmond Morris

  Long, Return, Compliment

  desmond morris (1967). “tha naked ape”

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• A quiet city is a contradiction in terms. It is a thing uncanny, spectral.

  Max Beerbohm

  Cities, Quiet, Contradiction

  Sir Max Beerbohm (1958). “Selected essays”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.

  William Safire

  Tired, Needs, Nuance

  "Dictionaurus" by William Safire, www.nytimes.com. June 10, 2009.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every mutation through a new combination of genetic factors that provides the organism with a new opportunity for coming to terms with the conditions of its environment signifies no more and no less than that new information about this environment has got into that organic system. Adaptation is essentially a cognitive process.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Opportunity, Mutation, Information

  19 Copy quote

• The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music.

  John Drinkwater

  Expression, Perception, Musician

  John Drinkwater (1922). “The Lyric: An Essay”, p.33, Library of Alexandria

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mass communication communicates massively: its language lacks precise articulation and avoids demanding terms; it argues for the kind of behavior in life which will make a "good program": ethic equals showbiz.

  Frederic Raphael

  Communication, Ethics, Arguing

  13 Copy quote

• There is only one thing I want to say about Ohio that has a political tinge, and that is that I think a mistake has been made of recent years in Ohio in failing to continue as our representatives the same people term after term. I do not need to tell a Washington audience, among whom there are certainly some who have been interested in legislation, that length of service in the House and in the Senate is what gives influence.

  William Howard Taft

  Mistake, Thinking, Ohio

  Speech before the Ohio Society, Washington, D.C. "Congressional Record", Volume 53, p. 8527, May 23, 1916.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, I know I worked for Governor Rockefeller the last time he ran for his fourth term, and I obviously ran against Governor Cuomo the time he ran for his fourth term.

  George Pataki

  Lasts, Wells, Last Time

  7 Copy quote

• All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.

  Lynne Truss

  Book, People, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• The curse of modern times is the preponderance of male hormones in places where they can do long-term damage. Even if were not talking about wars between nations or assaults on nature, there's still that aggressiveness that keeps us apart from each other and the problems we need to be working on.

  Robert James Waller

  War, Talking, Long

  22 Copy quote

• Goodness that comes out of hiding and assumes a public role is no longer good, but corrupt in its own terms and will carry its own corruption wherever it goes.

  Hannah Arendt

  Roles, Assuming, Corruption

  Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.77, University of Chicago Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• But in terms of how people live together, how we minimize the prospects of conflict and maximize the prospects of peace, the place of religion in our society today is essential.

  Tony Blair

  People, Together, Essentials

  "Interview: Tony Blair, on his faith and religious ideology". Interview with John Geiger, www.theglobeandmail.com. November 29, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Synaptic summation is the technical term used in neurophysiology for those instances in which some neuron C is fired only by a combination of neurons A and B.

  Gregory Bateson

  Neurons, Used, Combination

  8 Copy quote

• Any man who does not see everything in terms of self, that is to say who wants to be something in respect of other men, to do good to them or simply give them something to do, is unhappy, disconsolate, and accursed.

  Edmond de Goncourt

  Men, Self, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• Those who speak of our culture as dead or dying have a quarrel with life, and I think they cannot understand its terms, but must endlessly repeat the projection of their own desires.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Thinking, Dying, Desire

  4 Copy quote

• I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.

  Julian Barnes

  Grief, Fall, Writing

  "Julian Barnes: The sense of another ending". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. March 30, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Democrat

  4 Copy quote

• We were postwar middle-class white kids living in the slipstream of the greatest per-capita rise in income in the history of Western civilization; we were 'teen-agers' - a term, coined in 1941, that was in common usage a decade later - a new, recognizable franchise. We had money, mobility, and problems all our own.

  John Lahr

  Kids, Civilization, Class

  "Can’t Stop the Beat" by John Lahr, www.newyorker.com. October 26, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I suppose if I had my time again I would refuse it and stay at Fulham because I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and secondly I would have taken it on my own terms.

  Kevin Keegan

  Taken, Fulham, Refuse

  "Keggy: I wish I'd turned England job down". www.mirror.co.uk. May 5, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If with open mind one reads and observes industriously and long; if in so doing one covers a wide field and so covering reflects in terms of realism, he is likely, soon or late, to be brought to a sudden consciousness that Man is an unknown quantity and his existence unsuspected.

  Louis Sullivan

  Men, Long, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• It is God that accomplishes all term to hopes, God, who overtakes the flying eagle, outpasses the dolphin in the sea; who bends under his strength the man with thoughts too high.

  Pindar

  God, Men, Eagles

  Pindar (1959). “The odes of Pindar”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we violate the law ourselves, whatever short-term advantage may be gained, we are obviously encouraging others to violate the law; we thus encourage disorder and instability and thereby do incalculable damage to our own long-term interests.

  J. William Fulbright

  Law, Long, May

  J. William Fulbright (2011). “The Arrogance of Power”, p.114, Random House

  8 Copy quote

  Show source