Default Quotes - Page 6

• The stillness and stasis of bed are the perfect opposite of travel: inertia is what I've come to consider the default mode, existentially and electronically speaking. Bed, its utter inactivity, offers a glimpse of eternity, without the drawback of being dead.

  Lynne Sharon Schwartz

  Opposites, Perfect, Bed

  Lynne Sharon Schwartz (2009). “Not Now, Voyager: A Memoir”, p.27, Counterpoint

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• Marc didn’t want to win by default. He wanted to win for real. Forever.

  Rachel Vincent

  Real, Winning, Forever

  Rachel Vincent (2010). “Alpha”, p.39, MIRA

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• How, then, has Obama been saddled with an image of being long on inspiration and short on details? The answer is that journalists are not accustomed to covering a candidate who moves crowds the way Obama does, who uses speech cadences and rhythm like Martin Luther King Jr. without making his talk explicitly about race. Sen. Clinton already owned the policy-wonk slot, so by default, Obama was cast as the poetic one.

  Howard Kurtz

  Kings, Inspiration, Moving

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• The same with the mortgage brokers that were selling people mortgages they couldn't afford. We shouldn't pay them on each mortgage they write. They should have what they call "skin in the game," where they've got to reimburse us if the guy who sold the mortgage defaults.

  Richard Thaler

  Writing, Should Have, Games

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The money has to be deferred with what they call "clawback," which means they can get it back if I lose it all. So that guy making ten million a year selling credit default swaps, if we're going to keep five million of it in escrow for ten years, and with the right to go back and get it, if he starts losing money, then we're going to give people the right incentives not too take so much risk.

  Richard Thaler

  Mean, Years, People

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I've always been an outsider. I am an outsider in Garbage. I'm the odd one out by default.

  Shirley Manson

  Odd One, Garbage, Outsiders

  Source: www.spin.com

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• If I have learned one thing from life, it is that race is the engine that drives the political Left. When all else fails, that segment of America goes to the default position of using race to achieve its objectives. In the courtrooms, on college campuses, and, most especially, in our politics, race is a central theme. Where it does not naturally rise to the surface, there are those who will manufacture and amplify it.

  Ward Connerly

  College, America, Race

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• When it comes time to default, they’re not going to remember any of the Republicans’ names. They are going to remember in history books one name, and that's Obama.

  Donald Trump

  Book, Names, Remember

  "Donald Trump To Republicans: Don’t Raise Debt Ceiling, Default Will Prevent Obama’s Reelection (VIDEO)". "Fox and Friends" with Brian Kilmead, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 25, 2011.

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• Sadness is a very interesting idea, this idea of sadness being some kind of default setting that artists will go into. And then I started thinking about this idea of sadness and happiness, and the idea that sadness is very loud, and happiness is quiet.

  Glen Hansard

  Sadness, Artist, Thinking

  "Glen Hansard of The Swell Season". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. November 10, 2009.

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• The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

  David Foster

  Real, Sacrifice, Thinking

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• For my entire career, I wanted to be a director. When I was in the theater, it was very difficult to get directing jobs, and I fell into the acting by default. I got in the habit of accepting whatever came my way. Not things that I disagreed with, though. It's not like I had aspirations - well, I did have aspirations to play Hamlet, which I ended up doing.

  James Cromwell

  Jobs, Play, Careers

  "The Construction of James Cromwell". Interview with Drew Fortune, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 12, 2013.

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• I've always been and will always be very private about my personal life. If anything ever goes public, it is by default, because I happened to be in a place where I was being watched. But for the most part, I honestly don't care what people think. I never have. If I did, I'd probably present myself a little more carefully.

  Michelle Rodriguez

  Thinking, People, Care

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I had to stop linking every single thing that happened to me with Kennedy. Realization dawned then, that he was still my default. Over the past three years, we’d become each other’s habit. And though he’d broken his habit of me when he walked away, I’d not broken my habit of him. I was still tethering him to my present, to my future. The truth was, he now belonged only to my past, and it was time I began to accept it, as much as it hurt to do so.

  Tammara Webber

  Hurt, Past, Years

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• I felt deeply tricked. Stunned. And furious. I also felt my default emotion: numbness.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Numbness, Emotion, Furious

  Augusten Burroughs (2010). “Running with Scissors: A Memoir”, p.312, Macmillan

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• If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default-setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying.

  David Foster Wallace

  Reality, Important, Want

  "One Speech by This 90s Literary Giant Holds the Key to Ending Polarization in America" by Philip Perry, bigthink.com.

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• This is not a matter of virtue-it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.

  David Foster Wallace

  Self, Lenses, Matter

  David Foster Wallace (2009). “This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life”, p.46, Hachette UK

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• Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default. ... The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Should Have, Careers

  "Bailout Politics" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. September 30, 2008.

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• When Obama's economic advisers - a greater group of schlemiels would be hard to find - warn that failure to raise the limit will trigger default and horrific consequences for the global economy, Republicans should reply that if this is so, tell it to your president and get him to approve the spending cuts along with the debt-limit increase.

  Dick Morris

  Cutting, President, Groups

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• The web is at a really important turning point right now. Up until recently, the default on the web has been that most things aren’t social and most things don’t use your real identity. We’re building toward a web where the default is social.

  Mark Zuckerberg

  Real, Important, Identity

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• After the risky mortgage-lending practices fostered by government intervention led to massive defaults and foreclosures that caused financial institutions to collapse or be bailed out, Congressman Frank changed his tune completely.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Practice, Tunes

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.21, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home.

  David Foster Wallace

  Home, Thinking, Giving

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

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• Fabricating answers to unanswerable questions is the domain of religion. A deity model is not the default alternative to a scientific mystery.

  Graham Kendall

  Alternatives, Answers, Deities

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• To be engaged in some small way in the revival of one of the great cities of the world is to live a meaningful existence by default.

  Chris Rose

  Meaningful, New Orleans, Cities

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• In any high stress situation you are going to default to your level of training...period.

  Joe Teti

  Stress, Survival, Training

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• The exact process you use to build courage isn't important. What's important is that you consciously do it. Just as your muscles will atrophy if you don't regularly stress them, your courage will atrophy if you don't consistently challenge yourself to face down your fears. In the absence of this kind of conscious conditioning, you'll automatically become weak in both body and mind. If you aren't regularly exercising your courage, then you are strengthening your fear by default; there is no middle ground.

  Steve Pavlina

  Fear, Stress, Exercise

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