Ambiguous Quotes - Page 4

• What if [Saddam] fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction? ... Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal.

  William J. Clinton

  Opportunity, Mass Destruction, Iraq

  Clinton, William J. (1999). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1998”, p.233, Best Books on

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• That no one dies of migraine seems, to someone deep into an attack, an ambiguous blessing.

  Joan Didion

  Pain, Blessing, Illness

  Joan Didion (2013). “The White Album”, p.113, Zola Books

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• a really good play is ambiguous - which is exactly why it endures. Every succeeding generation develops theories about it. The play's words provide very little clue. On the contrary, words are notoriously imprecise and open to every kind of interpretation, so you must search.

  Glenda Jackson

  Play, Generations, Littles

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• Labels not only free us from the obligation to think creatively; they numb our sensibilities, our power to feel. During the Vietnam War, the phrase body count entered our vocabulary. It is an ambiguous phrase, inorganic, even faintly sporty. It distanced us from the painful reality of corpses, of dead, mutilated people.

  Paula Fox

  War, Reality, Thinking

  Paula Fox (2011). “News from the World: Stories and Essays”, p.150, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Discrepancies between self-efficacy judgment and performance will arise when either the tasks or the circumstances under which they are performed are ambiguous

  Albert Bandura

  Discrepancies Between, Self, Tasks

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• TV is providing such amazing possibilities - you have such lively characters, fantastic stories and ambiguous messages, and viewers feel very satisfied.

  Fedor Bondarchuk

  Character, Stories, Messages

  Source: collider.com

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• What drivel it all is!... A string of words called religion. Another string of words called philosophy. Half a dozen other stringscalled political ideals. And all the words either ambiguous or meaningless. And people getting so excited about them they'll murder their neighbours for using a word they don't happen to like. A word that probably doesn't mean as much as a good belch. Just a noise without even the excuse of gas on the stomach.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Mean, People

  Aldous Huxley (2015). “After Many a Summer”, p.54, Random House

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• Even a cow creates ambiguous signifiers. The moo of mystery.

  Mason Cooley

  Cows, Mystery

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• The process of philosophizing, to my mind, consists mainly in passing from those obvious, vague, ambiguous things, that we feel quite sure of, to something precise, clear, definite, which by reflection and analysis we find is involved in the vague thing that we start from, and is, so to speak, the real truth of which that vague thing is a sort of shadow.

  Bertrand Russell

  Real, Philosophical, Reflection

  Bertrand Russell (1972). “Russell's Logical atomism”

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• Indira Gandhi had been this very powerful, dominating, ambiguous mother figure. Ambiguous because she was tyrannical, she had imposed...she had suspended Indian democracy for a few years but she also was the woman who had defeated Pakistan in war at a time when most male politicians in India had secretly feared fighting that war, so that here in India even today Indira Gandhi is called by Indian nationalists the only man ever to have governed India.

  Aravind Adiga

  Mother, Powerful, War

  "MoJo Interview: Aravind Adiga". Interview with Sonja Sharp, www.motherjones.com. June 19, 2009.

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• Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideals hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Men, Views, People

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1968). “I Have a Dream: The Quotations of Martin Luther King, Jr”

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• The sign stopped me-- or rather, this text stopped me. Words are my profession; I seized these and demanded that they explain themselves, that they cease to be ambiguous.

  Daniel Quinn

  Profession, Cease

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.9, Bantam

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• A map in the hands of a pilot is a testimony of a man's faith in other men; it is a symbol of confidence and trust. It is not like a printed page that bears mere words, ambiguous and artful, and whose most believing reader - even whose author, perhaps - must allow in his mind a recess for doubt. A map says to you, 'Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not.' It says, 'I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Without me, you are alone and lost.

  Beryl Markham

  Believe, Men, Hands

  Beryl Markham (2012). “West with the Night”, p.272, Open Road Media

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• A sneeze travels at a peak velocity of two hundred miles per hour. A burp, more slowly; a fart, slower yet. But a kiss thrown by fingers- its departure is sudden, its arrival ambiguous, and there is no source that can state with authority what speeds are reached in its flight.

  Tom Robbins

  Kissing, Two, Departure

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.148, Bantam

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• I don't think there is such a thing as a precise sexual orientation. I think we're all ambiguous sexually.

  Tennessee Williams

  Gay, Thinking, Lgbt

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• You will not kill my girlfriend today, International Terrorists of Ambiguous Nationality!

  John Green

  Girlfriend, Today, Terrorist

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• She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought.

  David Nicholls

  Pride, Two Sides, Issues

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• History is the only science enjoying the ambiguous fortune of being required to be at the same time an art.

  Johann Gustav Droysen

  Art, History, Fortune

  Johann Gustav Droysen (1893). “Outline of the Principles of History”

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• People usually complain that music is so ambiguous, and what they are supposed to think when they hear it is so unclear, while words are understood by everyone. But for me it is exactly the opposite...what the music I love expresses to me are thoughts not to indefinite for words, but rather too definite.

  Felix Mendelssohn

  Thinking, Opposites, People

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• The science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous... Based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert.

  Gregg Easterbrook

  Data, Sides, Global Warming

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• Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species - back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire - has been ethically ambiguous.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Fire, Religion

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.476, Ballantine Books

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• Alcohol is a pervasive fact of life, but an extraordinary fact-pleasurable and destructive, anathematized and adulated, and deeply ambiguous ... the genie in the bottle.

  Griffith Edwards

  Alcohol, Bottles, Facts

  Griffith Edwards (2013). “Alcohol: The World's Favorite Drug”, p.1, Macmillan

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• A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is in some way "trivial" mathematics. However, ingenious and intricate, however original and surprising the moves, there is something essential lacking. Chess problems are unimportant. The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful-"important" if you like, but the word is very ambiguous, and "serious" expresses what I mean much better.

  G. H. Hardy

  Beautiful, Moving, Mean

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• From all human oracles, however self-confident, we turn at last to the inspired Word, where instead of ambiguous and untrustworthy utterances, we find teachings distinct and definite, authoritative and infallible.

  Arthur Tappan Pierson

  Bible, Christian, Teaching

  Arthur Tappan Pierson (1910). “Knowing the Scriptures: Rules and Methods of Bible Study”

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• The hope that fuels the pursuit of endless economic growth - that billions of consumers in India & China will one day enjoy the lifestyles of Europeans and Americans - is as absurd & dangerous a fantasy as anything dreamt up by Al-Qaeda. It condemns the global environment to early destruction & looks set to create reservoirs of nihilistic rage & disappointment among hundreds of millions of have-nots - the bitter outcome of the universal triumph of Western Modernity, which turns the revenge of the East into something darkly ambiguous, and all its victories truly Pyrrhic.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Disappointment, Revenge, Growth

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