Unthinkable Quotes - Page 6

• Moments ago, the U.S. Senate decided to do the unthinkable about gun violence - nothing at all. Over two years ago, when I was shot point-blank in the head, the U.S. Senate chose to do nothing. Four months ago, 20 first-graders lost their lives in a brutal attack on their school, and the U.S. Senate chose to do nothing. It's clear to me that if members of the U.S. Senate refuse to change the laws to reduce gun violence, then we need to change the members of the U.S. Senate.

  Gabrielle Giffords

  School, Gun, Two

  "Obama: 'shameful' Senate killed off gun control amendment" by Jim Newell, www.theguardian.com. April 17, 2013.

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• You staying home all alone on New Year's Eve? Unthinkable. Take my advice the countdown should be shared with someone, or it's just another set of numbers passing you by.

  E. A. Bucchianeri

  New Year, Home, Years

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• I would never have thought I was capable of sitting on the bench as the number two man. And it showed me that you can really achieve everything in life, even the unthinkable, as long as you're willing to work on yourself a little bit.

  Oliver Kahn

  Men, Two, Numbers

  "'Goalkeepers Need an Element of Insanity'". Interview with Lothar Gorris and Dirk Kurbjuweit, www.spiegel.de. May 15, 2008.

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• When I was growing up, you sort of did the unthinkable. You did something that has never really been replicated.

  Jason Wu

  Growing Up, Growing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• If we were made to watch a doctor pull off the little baby's legs and arms one by one and place them on the table like a dentist removing cotton from your mouth - if all Americans were made to see what it really is, the pro-life goal of abortion being unthinkable (not just illegal) would be much nearer.

  John Piper

  Baby, Doctors, Goal

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• Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe

  Sam Harris

  Believe, May, Would Be

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.129, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The implications of the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a World Organization. . .Political unification in some sort of World Government will be required. . .Even though. . . any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.

  Julian Huxley

  Government, Years, Organization

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• Some were paid solely for their ability to dream up the unthinkable.

  Olen Steinhauer

  Dream, Ability, Paid

  Olen Steinhauer (2010). “The Nearest Exit”, p.237, Macmillan

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• Tell me it's forbidden, unthinkable, and that's where I want to go. Because the chances are it's complicated, and the complications are meaningful.

  Dana Spiotta

  Meaningful, Want, Chance

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• The hatred I feel for him, for the phantom girl, for everything, is so real and immediate it chokes me. Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else is unthinkable. Why did it take him being whipped within an inch of his life to see it?

  Suzanne Collins

  Girl, Real, Hatred

  Suzanne Collins (2010). “Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)”, p.117, Scholastic Inc.

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• He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.

  Jack London

  Hurt, Animal, Essence

  Jack London (1992). “The Call of the Wild and White Fang”, p.116, Wordsworth Editions

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• Why does anyone do anything? Belief. A belief that they are right and just in their actions. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, because he believed that God had commanded it. To kill your son is unthinkable. A crime. But if you are acting in the belief that your God, your supreme deity whom you must obey, has demanded it of you, is it still a crime?

  Libba Bray

  Son, Sacrifice, Acting

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• Hurricane Charley is the worst natural disaster to befall our state in a dozen years, and it is unthinkable that anyone would try to take advantage of neighbors at a time like this,.

  Charlie Crist

  Years, Trying, Dozen

  "Florida lawsuits allege price gouging", www.cnn.com. August 18, 2004.

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• It is simply unthinkable that we will ever again send overseas a great expeditionary force of armed men.

  Frank Knox

  Men, Force

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• in reality we are one and all from the unthinkable first to the no less unthinkable last glued together in a vast imbrication of flesh without breach or fissure

  Samuel Beckett

  Reality, Together, Flesh

  Samuel Beckett (1964). “How it is”, p.140, Grove Press

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• All our rulers have said that war is unthinkable, and then we think about it almost all the time. We've got to make it unthinkable.

  Norman Thomas

  War, Thinking, Said

  Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961.

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• Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An "atonal" folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable.) Since we depend upon a tonal basis of this kind in our creative work, it is quite self-evident that our works are quite pronouncedly tonal in type. I must admit, however, that there was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable.

  Bela Bartok

  Self, Creative, Tone

  "The Listening Composer". Book by George Perle, pp. 46-47, 1996.

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• We must contemplate some extremely unpleasant possibilities, just because we want to avoid them and achieve something better. Nobody, however, likes to think about anything unpleasant, even to avoid it. And so the crucial problem of thermonuclear war is frequently dispatched with the label 'War is unthinkable' -- which, translated freely, means we don't want to think about it.

  Albert Wohlstetter

  War, Learning, Mean

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• Retirement is unthinkable to me. The future is bright and very exciting and I'm looking forward to playing a part in it.

  Hugh Hefner

  Retirement, Looking Forward, Exciting

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• I think of the people who commit these acts as children. They're in their 20s, but like certain children, they have been told only one story, over and over. Like most children, they believe in an easily identifiable good and evil, and like most children, they are capable of unthinkable cruelty.

  Michael Cunningham

  Children, Believe, Thinking

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• Consciousness, much like our feelings, is based on a representation of the body and how it changes when reacting to certain stimuli. Self-image would be unthinkable without this representation.

  Antonio Damasio

  Self, Feelings, Would Be

  "Feeling Our Emotions". Interview with Manuela Lenzen, www.scientificamerican.com.

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• For many, to live in a universe that may have no purpose, and no creator, is unthinkable.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Purpose, May, Creator

  "A Universe Without Purpose" by Lawrence M. Krauss, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 26, 2012.

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• I always got a bit pissed off with those broadsheet sceptics who make their living being passionately angry about homeopathy, God, synchronicity or whatever, because it's as if they can't get past their emotions, and in their rage they become as faith-driven as the beliefs they criticise. I always said they give scientists a bad name. After all, science has to be about asking unthinkable questions, not closing down debate.

  Scarlett Thomas

  Past, Names, Giving

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• One can know everything and still be unable to accept the fact that sex and murder are fused in the male consciousness, so that the one without the imminent possibly of the other is unthinkable and impossible.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Sex, Radical Feminism, Feminist

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• But sometimes it's good to dare yourself to do the unthinkable. And rather than stand in front of an audience with no clothes on, I decided to have a go at stand-up comedy.

  Evan Davis

  Clothes, Comedy, Sometimes

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