Complacent Quotes - Page 5

• We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent or self-satisfied; they are, if sound, the spearhead of progress. If they are fundamentally wrong, free discussion will in time put an end to them.

  Abraham Flexner

  Science, Self, Play

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• I think it's good to have pressure on yourself. The worst crime is to get kind of really complacent.

  Edgar Wright

  Thinking, Pressure, Kind

  "Edgar Wright Tackles Hot Fuzz". Movieweb Interview, movieweb.com. April 17, 2007.

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• With the persistence of tensions and conflicts in various parts of the world, the international community must never forget what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as a warning and in incentive to develop truly effective and peaceful means of settling tensions and disputes. Fifty years after the Second World War, the leaders of nations cannot become complacent but rather should renew their commitment to disarmament and to the banishment of all nuclear weapons.

  Pope John Paul II

  Religious, War, Commitment

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• This is a strange, little, complacent country [Switzerland], in many ways a USA in miniature but of course nearer the center of disturbance!

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Country, Usa, Switzerland

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• As to the human race. There are many pretty and winning things about the human race. It is perhaps the poorest of all the inventions of all the gods but it has never suspected it once. There is nothing prettier than its naive and complacent appreciation of itself. It comes out frankly and proclaims without bashfulness or any sign of a blush that it is the noblest work of God. It has had a billion opportunities to know better, but all signs fail with this ass. I could say harsh things about it but I cannot bring myself to do it-it is like hitting a child.

  Mark Twain

  Appreciation, Children, Winning

  Mark Twain, Charles Neider (1987). “The outrageous Mark Twain: some lesser-known but extraordinary works : with "Reflections on religion" now in book form for the first time”, Doubleday Books

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• All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in winter always the same low, sullen growl.

  John Burroughs

  Summer, Winter, Night

  John Burroughs (2012). “In the Catskills Selections from the Writings of John Burroughs”, p.17, tredition

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• Write from the heart, what has meaning to you personally; have the patience and discipline to sit down and do it every day whether you're feeling inspired or not; never be afraid to take chances, in fact, make sure you take chances. As soon as you become complacent, you become boring ... . Read as much as possible, not simply in the genre, or what you think you're interested in, but other things as well.

  Charles de Lint

  Heart, Writing, Thinking

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• The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians-when they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths.

  Joseph C. Aldrich

  Christian, Self, Joy

  Joseph C. Aldrich, Joe Aldrich (1993). “Lifestyle Evangelism: Learning to Open Your Life to Those Around You”, Multnomah

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• The Qur'an does not ask for human perfection, but rather
  asks that we persevere in striving for self-improvement and that we never
  become complacent or despondent about our progress.

  Jeffrey Lang

  Self, Perfection, Progress

  Jeffrey Lang (1997). “Even Angels Ask: A Journey to Islam in America”

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• I think that we, as human beings, always need to conquer our fears and reach beyond our grasp and I think it's very important that we don't become complacent or stagnant.

  Jonathan Nolan

  Thinking, Important, Needs

  Source: collider.com

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• Perhaps you don't desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I dare say poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you.

  Orson Scott Card

  Opportunity, Greatness, Knowing

  Orson Scott Card (2009). “Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker”, p.213, Macmillan

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• I wake up every morning excited. Rather than become complacent or overwhelmed, I've made a choice for life - and I can do something about it.

  Gary Holland

  Morning, Commitment, Choices

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• Identity for me is something that has to be played with and explored, and not become complacent about or uninterested in.

  Mika

  Identity, Uninterested

  "The Nowhere Boy: Mika Finds Confidence in Coming Out". Interview with Zack Rosen, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 18, 2013.

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• To fall for," "to be fallen for"--I feel in these words something unspeakably vulgar, farcical, and at the same time extraordinarily complacent. Once these expressions put in an appearance, no matter how solemn the place, the silent cathedrals of melancholy crumble, leaving nothing but an impression of fatuousness. It is curious, but the cathedrals of melancholy are not necessarily demolished if one can replace the vulgar "What a messy business it is to be fallen for" by the more literary "What uneasiness lies in being loved.

  Osamu Dazai

  Love, Lying, Fall

  Osamu Dazai (1973). “No Longer Human”, p.47, New Directions Publishing

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• I don't think there's any danger of my ever becoming complacent about losing. I always hated to lose, regardless of what it was, even when the family was playing Yahtzee.

  Darin Erstad

  Thinking, Becoming, Losing

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• Voltaire remarked that it is possible to kill a flock of sheep by witchcraft if you give them plenty of arsenic at the same time. The sheep, in this figure, may well stand for the complacent apologists of capitalism; Marx's penetrating insight and bitter hatred of oppression supply the arsenic, while the labour theory of value provides the incantations.

  Joan Robinson

  Sheep, Giving, Hatred

  Joan Robinson (1967). “Essay on Marxian Economics”, p.22, Springer

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• You can never pat yourself on the back during the season. Then you get complacent, stop working and let yourself slide.

  Mark Teixeira

  Slides, Seasons

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• I think that overall, ultimately the impact of advertisers calling the shots is a more cloying, complacent culture. For example, it was just announced that Unilever is branding environmental content at The Guardian. How radical or pointed can that content be?

  Astra Taylor

  Thinking, Impact, Environmental

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I had some downtime with my career and I got complacent.

  Jake Busey

  Careers, Downtime

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• My father grew up in an era when to be an American - a white American, at least - was to be yourself. In some respects, his generation was more ignorant, complacent, self-centered and parochial than mine.

  William T. Vollmann

  Being Yourself, Father, White

  William T. Vollmann (2009). “Riding Toward Everywhere”, p.1, Harper Collins

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• The conservative revolution that Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan's central insight - that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie - contained a good deal of truth.

  Barack Obama

  Pie, Growing, Revolution

  Barack Obama (2007). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.156, Canongate Books

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• Sheldon Vanauken wrote that the strongest argument for Christianity is Christians, when they are drawing life from God. The strongest argument against Christianity? Also Christians, when they become exclusive, self-righteous, and complacent.

  John Ortberg

  Christian, Self, Drawing

  John Ortberg (1997). “The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People”, p.38, Harper Collins

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• Here is the mistake of the cut-and-dried man of culture. He goes about with the secret of having learned to appreciate the "grandstyle." He has lived in Homer till he can recall the roll of that many-sounding sea. He has pored over the lofty and pictorial thought of Plato till he begins to pique himself upon its grandeur. His fancy has been fed on the quaint old-world genius of Herodotus, his judgment on the melancholy wisdom of Tacitus and the complacent cynicism of Gibbon--and of all this he is conscious and proud.

  Richard Holt Hutton

  Plato, Mistake, Cutting

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• The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arouse the sleeper, to shake the complacent pillars of the world. He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, and shows the world its present and points the way to its new birth. He is at once the product and preceptor of his times.

  Norman Bethune

  Dark, Artist, Way

  1937 Letter from Madrid, 5 May. Quoted in Ted Allen and Sydney Gordon The Scalpel, The S word (1952).

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• If I feel like I've reached this greatness in my career than there's no more room for growth. I don't think I'm ever going to get there. If I ever get complacent, it's time for me to bow out.

  Taraji P. Henson

  Greatness, Thinking, Careers

  "Taraji P. Henson Talks THINK LIKE A MAN, PERSON OF INTEREST, Upcoming NO GOOD DEED, and Her Wish to Play Either Whitney Houston or a Superhero". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. April 16, 2012.

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