Checks Quotes - Page 15

• Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Mind, Possibility, Come Up

  Alexander McCall Smith (2007). “The Careful Use of Compliments”, p.184, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Promises were like bad checks, easy to write and hard to cash.

  Robert Charles Wilson

  Writing, Promise, Cash

  Robert Charles Wilson (2004). “Blind Lake”, p.114, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Vitality springs from diversity -- which makes for real progress so long as there is mutual toleration, based on the recognition that worse may come from an attempt to suppress differences than from acceptance of them. For this reason, the kind of peace that makes progress possible is best assured by the mutual checks created by a balance of forces-alike in the sphere of internal politics and of international relations.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Peace, Spring, Real

  B.H. Liddell Hart (2015). “Why Don't We Learn from History?”, p.77, Lulu Press, Inc

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fit for a high civilisation.

  Francis Galton

  Race, Class, Generations

  "Hereditary Genius". Book by Francis Galton, p. 414, 1869.

  41 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I get up, the first thing I do is open up Gmail and check my personal email.

  James G. Stavridis

  Email, Firsts, Get Up

  4 Copy quote

• When I sit down to the feast of life ... I'm so busy planning on how to pick up the check, and wondering what the other people think of me for paying it, and wondering if I have enough money in my pocket to pay the bill, that I don't get around to eating.

  Frederik Pohl

  Life, Thinking, People

  5 Copy quote

• There are no checks and balances if the gov is wrong. If a private entrepreneur makes a mistake, he goes bankrupt, the losses are cut; if he bets wrong, he loses; if the gov bets wrong, they just get bigger, they just appropriate more money. It's a bottomless pit, because they either get it from the tax payers or run it off a printing press.

  Peter Schiff

  Running, Mistake, Cutting

  Authors@Google Event, 2009.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• In effect the people were present through their representatives, and were themselves, step by step and point by point, acting in the conduct of public affairs. No longer merely an ultimate check on government, they were in some sense the government.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Government, People, Acting

  Bernard Bailyn (1992). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.173, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nietzsche himself was a great moralist; his writings abound with value judgments about individuals, character types, modes of thinking, and national traits. It is as if he develops immoralist psychology in order to tame his own nature, to keep his own greatest vice in check.

  John Carroll

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  John Carroll (2010). “Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky”, p.31, Taylor & Francis

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Prostitution is criminal, and bad things happen because it's run illegally by dirt-bags who are criminals. If it's legal, then the girls could have health checks, unions, benefits, anything any other worker gets, and it would be far better.

  Jesse Ventura

  Girl, Running, Law

  Interview in "Playboy", November 1999.

  44 Copy quote

  Show source

• The nice men in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment were recklessly naive to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve to check one another.

  Ilana Mercer

  Nice, Men, Branches

  "Quacking Over Ducksters As Freedoms Go Poof". www.wnd.com. January 3, 2014.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you're not smiling at yourself in the mirror, you probably need to check that the life you're building is aligned to the life you dreamed for yourself. And if you're not dreaming, you need to start dreaming.

  Alice Bag

  Dream, Mirrors, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• Sean Taylor is a wonderfully talented modern troubadour whose sincere, thoughtful songs pull you in. I've had the pleasure of sharing the stage with him. He swings. Check him out!

  Eric Bibb

  Song, Thoughtful, Swings

  4 Copy quote

• There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This, within certain limits, is probably true, and, in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged.

  George Washington

  Country, Party, Character

  Mississippi. Constitutional Convention, George Washington (1851). “Journal of the convention of the state of Mississippi, and the act calling the same: with the Constitution of the United States, and Washington's Farewell Address”, p.73

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says he will not seek re-election. Harry said he wants to spend more time with his family. As I always say, check with your family.

  David Letterman

  Leader, Want, Minorities

  9 Copy quote

• How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: The Renaissance pencilled in for right after the Dark Ages. The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Post-Modern Era, then The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  War, Dark, Years

  8 Copy quote

• Remember, government is not an enlightened organization designed to promote public welfare. It is barbaric, uncivilized force…military and police power put to the service of the insiders who control it. Yes, there are constraints on the way the insiders use their power. There are ‘checks and balances,’ built into the constitution, for example. And there are cultural norms and traditional prohibitions. But eventually, the norms and traditions wear off, like painkillers. And then, the pain of raw government begins again.

  Bill Bonner

  Pain, Government, Organization

  "Careful Steps to Avoid a 'Dystopian Future'" by Bill Bonner, dailyreckoning.com. January 12, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most bloggers have no institutional credibility, and so they must build it, by linking transparently, and allowing you to easily double check their work. But more than anything, because linking sources is such an easy thing to do, and the motivations for avoiding links are so dubious, I've detected myself using a new rule of thumb: if you don't link to primary sources, I just don't trust you.

  Ben Goldacre

  Pain, Motivation, Dubious

  7 Copy quote

• All the other editors at DC never gave me a moment's time. They would take the thing and give me a check and say, 'I'll see you in two weeks.' They never gave any kind of encouragement or information. They were very competitive with each other. They didn't want to teach an artist and then lose him to some other editor.

  John Romita, Sr.

  Encouragement, Book, Artist

  4 Copy quote

• Since it is to the advantage of the wage-payer to pay as little as possible, even well-paid labor will have no more than what is regarded in a particular society as the reasonable level of subsistence. The lower ranks of labor will commonly have less, and if public relief were afforded even up to the wage-level of the lowest ranks of labor, that relief would compete in the labor market; check or dry up the supply of wage-labor. It would tend to render the performance of work by the wage-earner redundant.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Dry Up, Relief, Levels

  12 Copy quote

• We still check in with each other. She was a big part of my life, and me hers. I don't see how there cannot be [that]. That's life, man. That's life.

  Brad Pitt

  Men, Bigs, Stills

  "Brad Pitt Defends Angelina: There Wasn’t Some “Dastardly Affair”, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 7, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Second, we're spending a huge amount of money on technology so that everyone can check out laptops and portable phones. We're spending more money to write our existing information into databases or onto CD-ROM.

  Jay Chiat

  Writing, Technology, Phones

  "Virtual Chiat". Interview with David Dix, www.wired.com. July 1, 1994.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The work that most people do in the world tends to deaden them, deadens their mind, uses up their energy and they get a paycheck and old age and not much energy. You get the check and they get your energy. That energy is translated into corporate dollars.

  Frederick Lenz

  Success, Buddhism, Careers

  4 Copy quote

• It is probably true that almost all atheists stand for the values of reason and freethought. I will attempt to put these values in more substantial terms. There is the belief that inquiry and doubt are essential checks against deception, self deception, and error. There is the belief that logic and the scientific method is the only way the world can arrive at an agreement on the truth about anything.

  Richard Carrier

  Atheist, Errors, Self

  17 Copy quote

• Nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument ... which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations. I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument ... which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures. For so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane.

  David Hume

  Wise, Long, Silence

  David Hume, Eric Steinberg (1992). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature”, p.73, Hackett Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source