Characteristics Quotes - Page 19

• Freedom only for supporters of the government, only for the members of one party - however numerous they may be - is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of 'justice' but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when 'freedom' becomes a special privilege.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Party, Thinking, Government

  Rosa Luxemburg (1961). “The Russian Revolution, and Leninism Or Marxism?”, p.69, University of Michigan Press

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• Every effective drug provokes in the human body a sort of disease of its own, and the stronger the drug, the more characteristic, and the more marked and more violent the disease. We should imitate nature, which sometimes cures a chronic affliction with another supervening disease, and prescribe for the illness we wish to cure, especially if chronic, a drug with power to provoke another, artificial disease, as similar as possible, and the former disease will be cured: fight like with like.

  Samuel Hahnemann

  Fighting, Drug, Wish

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• The radical left is doing everything they can to destroy the moral fiber of America. They want to do away with the family. I am absolutely persuaded one of the reasons so many lesbians are at the forefront of the pro-choice movement is because being a mother is the unique
  characteristic of womanhood, and these lesbians will never be mothers naturally, so they don't want anybody else to have that privilege either.

  Pat Robertson

  Mother, Unique, Moral Fiber

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• The basic function of the government everywhere in all times, whatever title it adopts and whatever its origin and organisation may be, is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, of defending the oppressors and the exploiters: and it's principal, characteristic and indispensable instruments are the police agent and the tax-collector, the soldier and the gaoler - to whom must be invariably added the trader in lies, be he priest of schoolmaster, remunerated or protected by the government to enslave minds and make them docilely accept the yoke.

  Errico Malatesta

  Lying, Government, Police

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• It may be said that the basic characteristic of human behavior in general is that humans personally influence their relations with the environment and through that environment personally change their behavior, subjugating it to their control.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  May, Influence, Environment

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• The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe that bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world, think about misfortune in the opposite way. They tend to believe that defeat is just a temporary setback or a challenge, that its causes are just confined to this one case.

  Martin Seligman

  Believe, Thinking, Opposites

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• The characteristics of a good musician can be summarized as follows: 1. A well-trained ear. 2. A well-trained intelligence. 3. A well-trained heart. 4. A well-trained hand. All four must develop together, in constant equilibrium. As soon as one lags behind or rushes ahead, there is something wrong. So far most of you have met only the requirement of the fourth point: the training of your fingers has left the rest far behind. You would have achieved the same results more quickly and easily, however, if your training in the other three had kept pace.

  Zoltan Kodaly

  Heart, Hands, Training

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• I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.

  G. M Gilbert

  Men, Thinking, Evil

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• A refined simplicity is the characteristic of all high bred deportment, in every country, and a considerate humanity should be the aim of all beneath it.

  James F. Cooper

  Country, Simplicity, Humanity

  "The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.

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• Diversity is its most consistent characteristic....The characteristics of freely improvised music are established only by the sonic-musical identity of the person or persons playing it.

  Derek Bailey

  Music, Diversity, Identity

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• The characteristic feature of militarism is not the fact that a nation has a powerful army or navy. It is the paramount role assigned to the army within the political structure. Even in peacetime the army is supreme; it is the predominant factor in political life. The subjects must obey the government as soldiers must obey their superiors. Within a militarist community there is no freedom; there are only obedience and discipline.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Powerful, Army, Government

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

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• The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Civilization, America, Essentials

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method”

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• Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Giving, Catholic

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• Start by identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from your competitors - or your colleagues. What have you done lately - this week - to make yourself stand out? What would your colleagues or your customers say is your greatest and clearest strength? Your most noteworthy (as in, worthy of note) personal trait?

  Tom Peters

  Quality, Done, Week

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• One of the most significant characteristics of healthy self esteem is that it is the state of one who is not at war either with himself or with others.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Inspirational, War, Self Esteem

  Nathaniel Branden (2011). “How to Raise Your Self-Esteem: The Proven Action-Oriented Approach to Greater Self-Respect and Self-Confidence”, p.10, Bantam

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• Propriety of manners, and consideration for others, are the two main characteristics of a gentleman.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Two, Gentleman, Consideration

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• As more and more people wake up to the fact that further growth does not necessarily bring improvements in quality of life (and often exactly the opposite), sustainability is going to become one of the key characteristics with which places want to be associated.

  Jonathon Porritt

  Business, Opposites, Keys

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• The gnosis of God is intermediate between immoderation, which is ascribing human characteristics to God, and negligence, which is denying any attributes to God. . . The Truth lies in the balance between the two extremes.

  Ibn Ata Allah

  Lying, Two, Gnosis

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• Nevertheless, if we contemplate a society with a somewhat stable wage-unit, with national characteristics which determine the propensity to consume and the preference for liquidity, and with a monetary system which rigidly links the quantity of money to the stock of the precious metals, it will be essential for the maintenance of prosperity that the authorities should pay close attention to the state of the balance of trade. For a favourable balance, provided it is not too large, will prove extremely stimulating; whilst an unfavourable balance may soon produce a state of persistent depression.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Balance, Essentials, Attention

  John Maynard Keynes (2006). “General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money”, p.307, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson, etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic features of capitalism. Anarchism means peace and tranquility to all.

  August Spies

  Mean, Doe, Arson

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• I do not deny certain kinds of biological differences. But I always ask under what conditions, under what discursive and institutional conditions, do certain biological differences - and they're not necessary ones, given the anomalous state of bodies in the world - become the salient characteristics of sex.

  Judith Butler

  Sex, Differences, World

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• The characteristic place to find Christians is among their enemies. The first place to look for Christ is in Hell.

  William Stringfellow

  Christian, Enemy, Looks

  William Stringfellow, Bill Wylie Kellermann (1994). “A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow”, p.165, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• One can only understand history and all of social life, including today’s social life, if one pays attention to people’s racial characteristics. And one can only understand all that is spiritual in the correct sense if one first examines how this spiritual element operates within people precisely through the color of their skin.

  Rudolf Steiner

  Spiritual, Color, People

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• Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Running, Socialist Government, People

  "This Week" with Llew Gardner, www.margaretthatcher.org. February 5, 1976.

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• Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Mean, Thinking, Effort

  "The Character of Physical Law". Book by Richard P. Feynman, 1965.

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