Descent Quotes - Page 4

Boys, the first drink is a boon, the second is a gamble, the third is poor judgment, and then the rate of descent gets steep

Garrison Keillor

Wine, Boys, Firsts

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In asking forgiveness of women for our mythologizing of their bodies, for being unreal about them, we can only appeal to their own sexuality, which is different but not basically different, perhaps, from our own. For women, too, there seems to be that tangle of supplication and possessiveness, that descent toward infantile undifferentiation, that omnipotent helplessness, that merger with the cosmic mother-warmth, that flushed pulse-quickened leap into overestimation, projection, general mix-up.

John Updike

Mother, War, Pulse

John Updike (1991). “Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism”, Alfred A. Knopf

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As Darwin puts it in The Descent of Man, 'Male snakes, though appearing so sluggish, are amorous.' Isn't that just like Darwin? It was one of his main ideas, you know, that the males of almost all animals have stronger passions than the females. Since then we've learned a thing or two. At any rate, the female snake is right there when spring arrives in the woods.

Will Cuppy

Spring, Passion, Men

Will Cuppy (1944). “The Great Bustard and Other People: Containing: How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes and How to Become Extinct”

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As to those other things which we hold on the authority, not of Scripture, but of tradition, and which are observed throughout the whole world, it may be understood that they are held as approved and instituted either by the apostles themselves, or by plenary Councils, whose authority in the Church is most useful, e.g. the annual commemoration, by special solemnities, of the Lord's passion, resurrection, and ascension, and of the descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven, and whatever else is in like manner observed by the whole Church wherever it has been established.

Saint Augustine

Passion, Heaven, Special

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Each sporadic burst of work, each minor success and disappointment, each moment of calm and relaxation, seemed merely a temporary halt on my steady descent through layer after layer of depression, like an elevator stopping for a moment on the way down to the basement.

Al Alvarez

Depression, Disappointment, Relaxation

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From yon blue heavens above us bent The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Smile, Heart, Simple

"Lady Clara Vere de Vere" l. 55 (1842)

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It has made mincemeat of Barack Obama's pose of thoughtfulness. It has demonstrated that he lacks even a rudimentary understanding of the most basic economic realities. It has dramatized environmentalism's descent into infantilism.

George Will

Reality, Understanding, Notable

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America as a setting seems inexhaustibly fascinating to me, and I think there's something about the outsider viewpoint that works for me. Being of Jewish descent in England always carried a vague sense of being foreign, while not being a practicing Jew made it hard to think of myself as fully Jewish either. So living here in a way just clarifies that terminal outsider position - makes it somehow official, which I like.

James Lasdun

Thinking, America, Viewpoints

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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All people of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or in any part of the world are Africans and belong to the African nation.

Kwame Nkrumah

America, People, World

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The total liberation and unification of Africa under an All-African Socialist Government must be the primary objective of all Black revolutionaries throughout the world. It is an objective which when achieved, will bring about the fulfillment of the aspirations of Africans and people of African descent everywhere. It will at the same time advance the triumph of the international socialist revolution.

Kwame Nkrumah

Socialist Government, People, Black

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We discovered that in connection with these figures the German national simpletons and money-grubbers of the Frankfurt parliamentary swamp always counted as Germans the Polish Jews as well, although this dirtiest of all races, neither by its jargon nor by its descent, but at most only through its lust for profit, could have any relation of kinship with Frankfurt.

Friedrich Engels

Race, Lust, Connections

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The balance is the penalty of being human: the danger of allowing yourself to feel. For this we walk a narrow path high above rocky ground. On one side we have the descent into animalism, on the other a godhead delusion. Both pulling at us, both tempting. But without these forces tugging at your psyche, stirring it into conflict, you can never love. They awaken us, you see, these warring sides, they arouse our passion.

Peter F. Hamilton

Passion, Balance, Path

"The Reality Dysfunction". Book by Peter F. Hamilton, October 8, 2008.

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In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery

Marvin Harris

World, Slavery, Way

Marvin Harris (2011). “Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures”, p.102, Vintage

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Compromise, while at times morally necessary or at least justifiable, is more often only the first permission for a person (or society) to begin a long downhill descent.

Dennis Prager

Long, Firsts, Compromise

Dennis Prager (1995). “Think a Second Time”, Harpercollins

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And the worst possible thing we could know — worse than knowing of our descent from a mass of microorganisms — is that we are nobodies not somebodies, puppets not people.

Thomas Ligotti

Knowing, People, Puppets

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The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.

Rutherford B. Hayes

Real, Men, Hands

Diary entry. "Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States". Book edited by Charles Richard Williams, The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, March 11, 1888.

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Of great interest to students and teachers of immigrant history as well as to those of Polish descent.

Florian Znaniecki

Teacher, Students, Interest

William Isaac Thomas, Florian Znaniecki, Eli Zaretsky (1996). “The Polish Peasant in Europe and America: A Classic Work in Immigration History”, p.132, University of Illinois Press

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I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it.

Michael Behe

Ideas, Doubt, Common

"Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution". Book by Michael Behe, 1996.

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I believe the evidence strongly supports common descent. But the root question remains unanswered: What has caused complex systems to form?

Michael Behe

Believe, Roots, Support

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So far has Athens left the rest of mankind behind in thought and expression that her pupils have become the teachers of the world, and she has made the name of Hellas distinctive no longer of race but of intellect, and the title of Hellene a badge of education rather than of common descent.

Isocrates

Teacher, Race, Expression

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I am the father of a 9 year-old son whose descent into the world of autism began at the age of 7 months old after receiving numerous vaccinations in a single day; the same story that is told by thousands of other parents of children throughout the country whose healthy, normally developing children have become autistic after vaccinations.

Rick Rollens

Country, Children, Father

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Hope changes everything. It changes winter into summer, darkness into dawn, descent into ascent, barrenness into creativity, agony into joy.

Daisaku Ikeda

Summer, Creativity, Winter

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Whereas the health of an individual depends on the ego's regular descent and return to and from the unconscious, a society's longevity depends on actual people journeying into the unknown and returning with ideas.

Dan Harmon

Ideas, People, Ego

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The pleasures of sin exist. We cannot deny them. But we also dare not deny what follows in their wake: a voracious appetite, inflamed with eroticism, demanding more indulgence more often until a degenerative spiral captures the soul and drags us on a never ending descent into deeper patterns of immorality and illicit behaviour... Lust goes beyond the sexual. Lust can show itself in a variety of forms: covetousness, gluttony, drunkeness, power hunger, or unbridled ambition, to name a few

Edwin Louis Cole

Ambition, Names, Soul

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If you surrender everything to the government and give it total power to plan the whole economy, this will not guarantee your economic security, but it will guarantee the descent of the entire nation to a level of miserable poverty--as the practical results of every totalitarian economy, communist or fascist, have demonstrated.

Ayn Rand

Government, Giving, Guarantees

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