Characteristics Quotes - Page 8

• Beyond doubt, the most salient characteristic of life in this latter half of the 19th Century is its SPEED

  William Rathbone Greg

  Time, Doubt, Half

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• Most people don't like to think. This is why human religions are so popular. It almost doesn't matter what the belief system is, as long as it's firm, consistent, clear in its expectation of the follower, and rigid. Given those characteristics, you can find people who believe in almost anything. It's God's way, they say. God's word. And there are those who will accept that. Gladly. Because, you see, it eliminates the need to think.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Believe, Thinking, Long

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• If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, ''Here comes number seventy-one!''

  Richard DeVos

  Perseverance, Determination, Adversity

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• Tell the truth. Do your best no matter how trivial the task. Choose the difficult right over the easy wrong. Look out for the group before you look out for yourself. Don't whine or make excuses. Judge others by their actions and not by their race or other characteristics.

  James F. Amos

  Character, Race, Judging

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• Essential characteristics of a gentleman: The will to put himself in the place of others; the horror of forcing others into positions from which he would himself recoil; and the power to do what seems to him to be right without considering what others may say or think.

  John Galsworthy

  Character, Power, Thinking

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• Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are “poor and blank”. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for changes, the desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.

  Mao Zedong

  Beautiful, Character, Reality

  "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works".

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• The main characteristic of collectivism is that it does not take notice of the individual's will and moral self-determination. In the light of its philosophy the individual is born into a collective and it is "natural" and proper for him to behave as members of this collective are expected to behave. Expected by whom? Of course, by those individuals to whom, by the mysterious decrees of some mysterious agency, the task of determining the collective will and directing the actions of the collective has been entrusted.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Determination, Philosophy, Agency

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• My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends.

  Larry Flynt

  Friendship, Mother, Hate

  "Larry Flynt's Official Response to Jerry Falwell's Death". Pine Magazine, May 16, 2007.

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• The most valuable things in life are priceless. They are courage, compassion, wisdom, respect for ourselves and others, and a host of characteristics that we call the beauty of the human spirit.

  Herbie Hancock

  Compassion, Carpe Diem, Things In Life

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• Traces of nobility, gentleness, and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly.

  Walt Kelly

  People, Ugly, Trends

  Walt Kelly (1974). “Pogo revisited: containing the complete volumes of The Pogo poop book, Instant Pogo [and] The Jack Acid Society black book”, Simon & Schuster

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• The will to power, as the modern age from Hobbes to Nietzsche understood it, far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one. Power corrupts indeed when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before.

  Hannah Arendt

  Strong, Order, Envy

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• Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics... The group thinks, feels, and acts quite differently from the way in which its members would were they isolated. If, then, we begin with the individual, we shall be able to understand nothing of what takes place in the group.

  Emile Durkheim

  Reality, Thinking, Groups

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• However, if we consider that all the characteristics which have been cited are only differences in degree of structure, may we not suppose that this special condition of organization of man has been gradually acquired at the close of a long period of time, with the aid of circumstances which have proved favorable? What a subject for reflection for those who have the courage to enter into it!

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Reflection, Men

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• A characteristic of those who are still progressing in blessed mourning is temperance and silence of the lips; and of those who have made progress - freedom from anger and patient endurance of injuries; and of the perfect - humility, thirst for dishonors, voluntary craving for involuntary afflictions, non- condemnation of sinners, compassion even beyond one's strength. The first are acceptable, the second laudable; but blessed are those who hunger for hardship and thirst for dishonor, for they shall be filled with the food whereof there can be no satiety.

  John Climacus

  Blessed, Humility, Compassion

  Saint John (Climacus) (1959). “The Ladder of Divine Ascent”

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• Religion divides us, while it is our human characteristics that bind us to each other.

  Hermann Bondi

  Science, Religion, Human Nature

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• It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much ... to forget it

  James Madison

  Exercise, America, Waiting

  James Madison (1999). “Writings”

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• Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them." Mark Twain "...every literature, in its main lines, reflects the chief characteristics of the people for whom, and about whom, it is written.

  Edith Wharton

  Lying, People, Firsts

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• Nothing is more characteristically juvenile than contempt for juvenility. . . youth's characteristic chronological snobbery.

  C. S. Lewis

  Children, Humorous, Parenting

  C. S. Lewis (1992). “An Experiment in Criticism”, p.73, Cambridge University Press

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• No one has ever proved that a human being, through his descent from a certain group of people, must of necessity have certain mental characteristics.

  Franz Boas

  People, Justice, Diversity

  Race and Democratic Society ch. 7 (1945)

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• Equality and justice, the two great distinguishing characteristics of democracy, follow inevitably from the conception of men, all men, as rational and spiritual beings.

  Robert M. Hutchins

  Spiritual, Men, Two

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• Coffee in Brazil is always made fresh and, except at breakfast time, drunk jet black from demitasses first filled almost to the brim with the characteristic moist, soft coffee sugar of the country, which melts five times as fast as our hard granulated. For breakfast larger cups are used, and they're more than half filled with cream. This cafe con leite doesn't re-quire so much sugar as cafe preto-black coffee.

  Bob Brown

  Country, Coffee, Drunk

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• Aging is no accident. It is necessary to the human
  condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose: the fulfillment and confirmation of one’s character.

  James Hillman

  Character, Years, Soul

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• And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another.

  C. S. Lewis

  Cutting, Errors, Race

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Paved with Good Intentions: A Demon’s Road Map to Your Soul”, p.9, Harper Collins

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• People who are optimistic see a failure as due to something that can be changed so that they can succeed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for the failure, ascribing it to some characteristic they are helpless to change.

  Daniel Goleman

  Optimistic, People, Succeed

  Daniel Goleman (2012). “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ”, p.147, Bantam

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• Strength is an excellent example of a physical characteristic that drives improvement in other athletic parameters. More strength means more power, more endurance, better coordination, and better everything else. This is why, all other things being equal, the stronger athlete is the better athlete.

  Mark Rippetoe

  Mean, Athlete, Athletic

  "CrossFit: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" by Mark Rippetoe, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 10, 2013.

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