Asks Quotes - Page 28

• The greatest men May ask a foolish question, now and then.

  John Wolcot

  Men, May, Foolish

  John Wolcot (1812). “The works of Peter Pindar”, p.460

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• To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Book, Past, Long

  "V.S. Naipaul in Search of Himself: A Conversation" with Mel Gussow, "The New York Times", April 24, 1994.

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• It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.

  Alain de Botton

  Ordinary, Example, Purpose

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, 2000.

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• Man is sitting disconsolate on an anthill one morning. God asks him what the matter is and man replies that the soil is too swampy for the cultivation of the yams which God has directed him to grow. God tells him to bring in a blacksmith to dry the soil with his bellows. The contribution of humanity to this creation is so important. God could have made the world perfect if he had wanted. But he made it the way it is. So that there is a constant need for us to discuss and cooperate to make it more habitable, so the soil can yield, you see.

  Chinua Achebe

  Morning, Men, Yield

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• What really worries me is that those who are in positions of power are not really affected by what we are writing. In the moral dialogue you want to start, you really want to involve the leaders. People ask me: "Why were you so bold as to publish A Man of the People? How did you think the Government was going to take it? You didn't know there was going to be a coup?" I said rather flippantly that nobody was going to read it anyway, so I wasn't likely to be fired from my official position. It's a distressing thought that we cannot engage our leaders in the kind of moral debate we need.

  Chinua Achebe

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  Chinua Achebe, Bernth Lindfors (1997). “Conversations with Chinua Achebe”, p.19, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• "You sound as if you question the authority and the decision of the Oracle, who said he should die."
  "I do not. Why should I? But the Oracle did not ask me to carry out its decision." [...]
  "The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her mesenger," Okonkwo said. "A child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm."

  Chinua Achebe

  Mother, Children, Yams

  "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe, Fawcett Premier edition, (p. 64), 1969.

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• The human mind has to ask "Who, what, whence, whither, why am I?" And it is very doubtful if the human mind can answer any of these questions.

  R. D. Laing

  Mind, Answers, Doubtful

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• I ask you to forgive me for not fulfilling some hopes of those people who believed that we would be able to jump from the totalitarian past into a bright, rich and civilized future in one go.

  Boris Yeltsin

  Past, People, Forgive Me

  2000 On his retirement. In the Observer, 2 Jan.

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• You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book — if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them.

  Philip Roth

  Book, Reading, Mean

  Philip Roth, George John Searles (1992). “Conversations with Philip Roth”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

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• Why pray? Evidently, God likes to be asked. God certainly does not need our wisdom or our knowledge, nor even the information contained in our prayers ("your Father knows what you need before you ask him"). But by inviting us into the partnership of creation, God also invites us into relationship. God is love, said the apostle John. God does not merely have love or feel love. God is love and cannot not love. As such, God yearns for relationship with the creatures made in his image.

  Philip Yancey

  Prayer, Father, Doe

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• Thanks to the scientific method, most people in "developed" countries have an outlook of mild deism. We assume things like weather and disease operate according to fixed natural laws. Every so often, though, problems impinge on us so directly that we stretch beyond that mildly deistic stance and ask God to intervene. When a drought drags on too long, we pray for rain. When a young mother gets a diagnosis of cervical cancer, we solicit prayers for her healing. We beseech God as if trying to talk God into something God otherwise might not want to do.

  Philip Yancey

  Country, Mother, Prayer

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• Our program is simple: we wish to govern Italy. They ask us for programs but there are already too many. It is not programs that are wanting for the salvation of Italy but men and will power.

  Benito Mussolini

  Simple, Men, Wish

  "A History of Civilization" by Crane Brinton, John B. Christopher, and Robert Lee Wolff, (p. 520), 1955.

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• In the networks' endless pursuit of controversy, we should ask what is the end value ... to enlighten or to profit? What is the end result ... to inform or to confuse? How does the ongoing exploration for more action, more excitements, more drama, serve our national search for internal peace and stability.

  Spiro T. Agnew

  Drama, Doe, Ongoing

  John R. Coyne, Spiro T. Agnew (1972). “The Impudent Snobs: Agnew Vs. the Intellectual Establishment”, New Rochelle, N.Y. : Arlington House

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• We cannot embrace His cross, and yet refuse our own. We cannot raise the cup of His remembrance to our lips, without a secret pledge to Him, to one another, to the great company of the faithful in every age that we, too, hold ourselves at God's disposal, that we will ask nothing on our own account, that we will pass simply into the Divine hand to take us whither it will.

  James Martineau

  Hands, Remembrance, Faithful

  James Martineau (1879). “Hours of thought on sacred things, sermons”

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• I would never use God to promote foreign policy decisions. I recognize that in the eyes of an almighty, I am a lowly sinner, and I ask for strength and wisdom and I pray for calmness when the seas are storming, and I pray for others.

  George W. Bush

  Eye, Sea, Decision

  "An Exclusive Interview With President Bush". Interview with Brit Hume, www.foxnews.com. September 23, 2003.

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• People ask me how I stay happy and sane: I never google myself.

  Miley Cyrus

  People, Google, Stay Happy

  "Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman: the Two Sides of Miley Cyrus". Interview with Tavi Gevinson, www.elle.com. April 30, 2014.

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• No man is an island. You can ask people for help and they can ask for your help in return.

  Mr Hudson

  Men, Islands, People

  Source: ca.complex.com

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• It [RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE] has definitely been the biggest learning curve for me. As an actor, whenever I start on a movie, different things that I perform in ask for different skill sets. And this one is definitely the technological side of it. You have to hit your mark. You can't weave back and forth because your nose is jutting at you in 3-D. It's really been learning how to do that and also it's exciting to be on the forefront of this technology.

  Ali Larter

  Technology, Skills, Afterlife

  "Ali Larter On-Set Interview RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE – Read or Listen Here". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. April 20, 2010.

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• Everybody always asks me what the big surprises were that I discovered about Woody and I never have a good stock answer for that, I never know quite what to tell them other than generally that he's much less neurotic and quirky than I would have expected.

  Robert B. Weide

  Quirky, Answers, Surprise

  "Director Robert Weide Talks WOODY ALLEN: A DOCUMENTARY, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, and His Kurt Vonnegut Documentary". Interview with Adam Chitwood, collider.com. February 15, 2012.

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• Too often, we just ask for help instead of really giving thanks for the many things that we've had and are so helpful to us that we did nothing to deserve, so we should give thanks each and every day and pray for guidance in helping us along the proper path.

  John Wooden

  Giving, Path, Helping

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• People ask me, "Are you right wing or are you left wing?" and I always say, "I'm for the whole bird." A one-winged bird didn't ever get off the ground.

  Rick Warren

  Wings, People, Bird

  "Rick & Kay Warren Extended Interview". Interview with Kim Lawton, www.pbs.org. September 01, 2006.

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• Retirement is not a dirty word, I am just enjoying what I am doing. If they want me to retire, then stop asking me. Ask and I will say yes unless it is something I really don't like.

  Betty White

  Retirement, Dirty, Asking

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• I get bored very easily. I find most movies boring. I go to movies and ask, "How do they stay awake making this?"

  Paul Schrader

  Bored, Boring, Awake

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• People ask me whether I think that one day I might wake up one morning and run dry, but I've had the opposite feeling - that I would die before I had time to write all the ideas in my drawer.

  Woody Allen

  Running, Morning, Writing

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 27, 2001.

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• I'm going to make decisions that I think are best for me and my family. So, when I make these decisions, of course I'm going to ask people for advice, but at the end of the day, Brandon Jennings makes the decisions. And I feel like the decisions that I've made so far have been successful.

  Brandon Jennings

  Successful, Thinking, People

  Source: www.complex.com

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