Complacency Quotes - Page 10

• In the midst of our applauding the feats of civilization, the Bible flings itself like a knife slashing our complacency; remind us that God, too, has a voice in history.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Knives, Civilization, Voice

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “God in search of man: a philosophy of Judaism”

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• Nothing about his life is more strange to [man] or more unaccountable in purely mundane terms than the stirrings he finds in himself, usually fitful but sometimes overwhelming, to look beyond his animal existence and not be fully satisfied with its immediate substance. He lacks the complacency of the other animals: he is obsessed by pride and guilt, pride at being something more than a mere animal, built at falling short of the high aims he sets for himself.

  Lewis Mumford

  Fall, Pride, Men

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• As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Military, War, Victory

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• Sometimes mistakes are the best thing that can happen, because they might lift you...out of your complacency, and open your mind up to a whole other area that you wouldn't have gone to intentionally.

  Bobby McFerrin

  Mistake, Growth, Mind

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• The benevolent have the advantage of the envious, even in this present life; for the envious man is tormented not only by all the ill that befalls himself, but by all the good that happens to another; whereas the benevolent man is the better prepared to bear his own calamities unruffled, from the complacency and serenity he has secured from contemplating the prosperity of all around him.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Gratitude, Men, Serenity

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• Progress toward a more abundant material life does not come like manna from heaven. . . . My message certainly is not one of complacency. In this I agree with the doomsayers: our world needs the best efforts of all humanity to improve our lot.

  Julian Simon

  Our World, Best Effort, Heaven

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• There is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Apathy, Too Late, Action

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• I have been fortunate to have been brought up on a diet of adventure and privileged to take part in number of challenges. My training in the Royal Marines taught me to be professional at all times, even in dangerous and frightening circumstances. But fear can be dispelled by knowledge and preparation. Life hangs on a very thin thread and the cancer of time is complacency. If you are going to do something, do it now. Tomorrow is too late.

  Pete Goss

  Cancer, Adventure, Marine

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• The technical phase can be boring because there is little opportunity for creavivity, for art. Boredom leads to complacency and mistakes.

  Garry Kasparov

  Art, Mistake, Opportunity

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• One of the deep fundamentals of poetry is the recurrence of sounds, syllables, words, phrases, lines, and stanzas. Repetition can be one of the most intoxicating features of poetry. It creates expectations, which can be fulfilled or frustrated. It can create a sense of boredom and complacency, but it can also incite enchantment and inspire bliss.

  Edward Hirsch

  Expectations, Boredom, Inspire

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• The unexpected action of deep listening can create a space of transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Space, Listening, Despair

  Terry Tempest Williams (2012). “When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice”, p.59, Macmillan

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• Longing for the ideal while criticizing the real is evidence of immaturity. On the other hand, settling for the real without striving for the ideal is complacency. Maturity is living with the tension.

  Rick Warren

  Real, Maturity, Hands

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• America faces many challenges...but the enemy I fear most is complacency. We are about to be hit by the full force of global competition. If we continue to ignore the obvious task at hand while others beat us at our own game, our children and grandchildren will pay the price. We must now establish a sense of urgency.

  Charles M. Vest

  Children, Science, Math

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• Experiments in the visual arts (the invention of new ways of seeing things), are made because, due to the way the apparatus that makes up the mind is made, old processes and patterns have continually to be broken up in order to make it possible to perceive the new aspects and arrangements of evolving consciousness. The great enemy of intelligence is complacency.

  John Dos Passos

  Art, Order, Broken

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• I just feel like, with rappers, there's so much complacency. It's like, 'Oh, I'm a rapper. I'm successful. I make money. That's all that matters.' But there's a lot of stuff going on in the world. Whether or not you're aware of it, it's happening.

  J. Cole

  Successful, Rapper, World

  "Hot Topic: J. Cole" by Katie Amey, www.elle.com. June 17, 2013.

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• It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch-antirevolutionaries.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Comfort, Breaking Silence, Arches

  Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

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• The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Women, Tears, Addresses

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• There is nothing spiritual about complacency.

  Marianne Williamson

  Spiritual

  Twitter post from Jul 31, 2016

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• Suffering is a privilege. It moves us toward thinking of essential things and shakes us out of complacency. Calamity cracks you open, moves you to change your ways.

  Pico Iyer

  Moving, Thinking, Suffering

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• I don't think the state will allow people to occupy a particular space unless it feels that allowing that will end up in a kind of complacency, and the effectiveness and urgency of the protest will be lost.

  Arundhati Roy

  Thinking, Effectiveness, Space

  "Arundhati Roy: 'The people who created the crisis will not be the ones that come up with a solution'". Interview with Arun Gupta, www.theguardian.com. November 30, 2011.

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• People are taking it for granted that [the Negro] ought not to work with his head. And it is so easy for these people among whom we are living to believe this; it flatters and satisfies their self-complacency.

  Paul Laurence Dunbar

  Believe, Self, People

  Paul Laurence Dunbar (2010). “The Sport of the Gods: and Other Essential Writings”, p.358, Modern Library

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• We are going to have to continue to keep the pressure on the enemy. There is no room for complacency on this.

  James Mattis

  Enemy

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• I think the sign of complacency in the stock market is when people don't worry. At the moment, everyone worries about everything. They worry about geopolitical risk, about political risk, they worry that the markets are too high. The time to really worry is when everyone thinks that markets are going up and everything is going really well.

  Martin Gilbert

  Thinking, People, Worry

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• I think people are complacent. But complacency is like any other metric. It's easy to measure where it is, but it's hard to tell how persistent it is. What causes really big bear markets is not just when people are overly complacent - it's when that complacency is sticky. As long as the skepticism can refresh itself, I think that the markets are still quite viable.

  John Manley

  Thinking, Long, People

  Source: uk.businessinsider.com

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• Success is one of the worst enemies of success, because success tends to breed complacency and lack of humility.

  Charles Koch

  Humility, Worst Enemy, Enemy

  Source: freebeacon.com

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