Ancient Quotes - Page 15

• I’ve often been accused of being too emotional and sentimental, but I believe in honest sentiment, and the need to purge ourselves at certain times, which is ancient. Men would live at least five or six more years and not have ulcers if they could cry better.

  Ray Bradbury

  Believe, Men, Emotional

  Tangent Interview, www.tangentonline.com. June 9, 2012.

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• To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Together, Age, Empires

  Zbigniew Brzezinski (2007). “The Grand Chessboard”, p.43, Basic Books

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• MEMRI allows an audience far beyond the Arabic-speaking world to observe the wide variety of Arab voices speaking through the media, schoolbooks, and pulpits to their own people. What one hears is often astonishing, sometimes frightening, and always important. Most importantly, it includes the newly-emerging liberal voices of reform and hope, as well as disturbing echoes of ancient hatreds. Without the valuable research of MEMRI, the non-Arabic speaking world would not have this indispensable window.

  Richard Holbrooke

  Echoes, Media, Voice

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• I remember myself, that when I was young, I had sometime the company of one ancient godly minister, who was of weaker parts than many others, but yet did profit me more than most; because he would never in prayer or conference speak of God, or the life to come, but with such marvelous seriousness and reverence, as if he had seen the majesty and glory which he talked of.

  Richard Baxter

  Prayer, Godly, Majesty

  Richard Baxter, William Orme (1830). “The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, with a Life of the Author, and a Critical Examination of His Writings”, p.256

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• The art of beautiful motion is far and away the oldest. Before man learned how to use any instruments at all, he moved the most perfect instrument of all, his body. He did this with such abandon that the cultural history of prehistoric and ancient man is, for the most part, nothing but the history of the dance.

  Gerard van der Leeuw

  Beautiful, Dance, Art

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• The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species.

  Alfred Kinsey

  Sex, Opposites, Culture

  Alfred C. Kinsey (1998). “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male”, p.660, Indiana University Press

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• Truth is, most of us contain a splashing, giggling, squealing child who knows without thinking that bare skin and water go together as wings go with air, roots with earth, and the phoenix with incendiary sun. And innocence belongs to us as it did to ancient Greek athletes, who never wore clothes for their footraces or boxing matches but rather oiled themselves until their nude bodies glistened in the sunlight.

  Janet Lembke

  Children, Athlete, Thinking

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• You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time, not only with the votes we cast, but the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideas.

  Barack Obama

  Ideas, Voice, Pro Life

  Second Presidential Inaugural Address, delivered 21 January 2013, Washington, D.C.

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• Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.

  Gautama Buddha

  Inspirational, Wise, Truth

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• Remember that feelings or emotions emanate from the more ancient, less evolved, lower part of the human brain, while thoughts are a product of our highly evolved, uniquely human, outer part of the brain.

  Laura Schlessinger

  Feelings, Brain, Emotion

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• Greek customs such as wine drinking were regarded as worthy of imitation by other cultures. So the ships that carried Greek wine were carrying Greek civilization, distributing it around the Mediterranean and beyond, one amphora at a time. Wine displaced beer to become the most civilized and sophisticated of drinks—a status it has maintained ever since, thanks to its association with the intellectual achievements of Ancient Greece.

  Tom Standage

  Drinking, Wine, Beer

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• Those who attempt to conquer hatred by hatred are like warriors who take weapons to overcome others who bear arms. This does not end hatred, but gives it room to grow. But, ancient wisdom has advocated a different timeless strategy to overcome hatred. This eternal wisdom is to meet hatred with non-hatred. The method of trying to conquer hatred through hatred never succeeds in overcoming hatred. But, the method of overcoming hatred through non-hatred is eternally effective. That is why that method is described as eternal wisdom.

  Gautama Buddha

  Warrior, Giving, Hatred

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• The teaching of their ancient belief is filled with truth for the present day. Its profound sense of justice, nation to nation, man to man, is an essential part of every religious and social order. The health of our society depends upon a deep and abiding respect for the basic commandments of the God of Israel.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Religious, Teaching, Men

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• It is like most other ancient books - a mingling of falsehood and truth, of philosophy and folly - all written by men, and most of the men only partially civilized. Some of its laws are good - some infinitely barbarous. None of the miracles related were performed. . . . Take out the absurdities, the miracles, all that pertains to the supernatural - all the cruel and barbaric laws - and to the remainder I have no objection. Neither would I have for it any great admiration.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Philosophy, Book, Men

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1952). “Life and Letters”

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• Idiom is larger than geography it is the hot breath of a people singing, slashing, explorative. Imagery becomes the magic denominator, the language of a passage, saying the ancient unchanging particulars.

  Mari Evans

  People, Magic, Singing

  Mari Evans (2006). “Clarity as Concept: A Poet's Perspective : a Collection of Essays”

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• This devotion, so great and so confident, to the august Queen of Heaven, has never forth with such brilliancy as when the militant Church of Go has seemed to be endangered by the violence of heresy spread abroad, or by an intolerable moral corruption, or by the attacks of powerful enemies. Ancient and modern history and the more sacred annals of the Church bears witness to public and private supplications addressed to the Mother of God, to help She has granted in return, and to the peace and tranquillity which She has obtained from God.

  Pope Leo X

  Mother, Queens, Powerful

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• The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity. The wits of these happy days have discovered a way to fame, which the dull caution of our laborious ancestors durst never attempt; they cut the knots of sophistry, which it was formerly the business of years to untie, solve difficulties by sudden irradiations of intelligence, and comprehend long processes of argument by immediate intuition.

  Samuel Johnson

  Cutting, Years, Long

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.237

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• These days too many of us seem inclined to cover our ears, close our eyes, and blindly follow the most narrow, conservative tenets of religion or else seek comfort in the ancient traditions of New Age ritual.

  Joan D. Vinge

  Eye, Age, Comfort

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• We stand todaybefore the awful proposition: either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of socialism.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Rome, Victory, Triumph

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• I think [forgiveness] may be the greatest virtue on earth, and certainly the most needed. There is so much of meanness and abuse, of intolerance and hatred. There is so great a need for repentance and forgiveness. It is the great principle emphasized in all of scripture, both ancient and modern. Somehow forgiveness, with love and tolerance, accomplishes miracles that can happen in no other way.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Thinking, Repentance And Forgiveness, Hatred

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• Sports is to war as pornography is to sex. We get to exercise some ancient, ancient drives.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Sports, Sex, Motivation

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• In ancient times before the divine sojourn of the Savior took place, even to the saints death was terrible; all wept for the dead as though they perished. But now that the Savior has raised his body, death is no longer terrible; for all who believe in Christ trample on it as it were nothing and choose rather to die than deny their faith in Christ. And that devil that once maliciously exulted in death, now that its pains were loosed, remained the only one truly dead.

  Athanasius of Alexandria

  Pain, Believe, Devil

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• Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Eye, Gay

  'From Oedipus at Colonus'.

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• The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Past, Errors, Ideas

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.6, Crown Business

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• In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.

  Nikola Tesla

  Slave Labor, Civilization, Twenties

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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