Disinterested Quotes - Page 4

• The modern moralists extol ... the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life.

  Julien Benda

  Modern, Defiance, Cult

  Julien Benda (2011). “The Treason of the Intellectuals”, p.146, Transaction Publishers

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• The disinterested imaginative core of mythology is what develops into literature, science, philosophy. Religion is applied mythology.

  Northrop Frye

  Philosophy, Literature, Mythology

  Northrop Frye, Robert D. Denham (2003). “Northrop Frye's Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts”, p.158, University of Toronto Press

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• You know, I think everybody I've seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it's very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They're not really interested in the person, he doesn't relate to the person. All these things I've written so much about. That's why I've made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Book, Home, Writing

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• Skepticism literally means a thoughtful inquiry, the looking at a problem in a disinterested spirit, the surveying of a question from many sides. In this sense it is the very essence of philosophy and science.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Philosophy, Mean, Thoughtful

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1918). “The Field of Philosophy: An Outline of Lectures on Introduction to Philosophy”

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• I got sort of disinterested in working for the system.

  Todd McFarlane

  Interview with Helen Keier, www.ign.com. February 10, 2000.

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• Human beings function better if they are deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a disinterested objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey.

  E. O. Wilson

  Thinking, Morality, Function

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• The soul is a temple; and God is silently building it by night and by day. Precious thoughts are building it; disinterested love is building it; all-penetrating faith is building it.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Night, Love Is, Soul

  Henry Ward Beecher, Truman Jeremiah Ellinwood (1872). “The Original Plymouth Pulpit: Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn”

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• There is nothing wanting to make all rational and disinterested people in the world of one religion, but that they should talk together every day.

  Alexander Pope

  People, Religion, Together

  Alexander Pope, Alexander Chalmers (1807). “A Supplementary Volume to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq: Containing Pieces of Poetry, Not Inserted in Warburton's and Warton's Editions : and a Collection of Letters, Now First Published”, p.128

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• The cure-alls of the present day are infinitely various and infinitely obliging. Applied psychology, autosuggestion, and royal roads to learning or to wealth are urged upon us by kindly, if not altogether disinterested, reformers. Simple and easy systems for the dissolution of discord and strife; simple and easy systems for the development of personality and power. Booklets of counsel on 'How to Get What We Want,' which is impossible; booklets on 'Visualization,' warranted to make us want what we get, which is ignoble.

  Agnes Repplier

  Simple, Thinking, Personality

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• All greatness in style begins, I imagine, with such respect, deep and passionate enough to produce a humility which will not assert itself at the expense even of inanimate things: out of which submissiveness a desire to serve is born, in disinterested accuracy toward the object, whatever it may be.

  Freya Stark

  Humility, Greatness, Style

  Freya Stark (2013). “Perseus In The Wind: A Life of Travel”, p.84, Tauris Parke Paperbacks

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• The slightest emotion of disinterested kindness that passes through the mind improves and refreshes that mind, producing generous thought and noble feeling, as the sun and rain foster your favourite flowers. Cherish kind wishes, my children; for a time may come when you may be enabled to put them in practice.

  Mary Russell Mitford

  Kindness, Children, Rain

  Mary Russell Mitford (1870). “Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery”, p.439

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• For extending its sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary submission of weaker tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and slaves, both of which, by relieving some classes from the perpetual struggle for a bare subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument to ameliorate the lot of man.

  James G. Frazer

  Powerful, Struggle, Men

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• The national research effort, upon which so much depends, will remain healthy only so long as there is sound core of disinterested search for new knowledge and an adequate number of men and women trained for carrying on such research and for teaching young scientists.

  Alan Tower Waterman

  Teaching, Men, Numbers

  "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" Vol. 9, No. 2, published by by Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, Inc., (p. 38), March 1953.

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• We're not disinterested in politics. It's just that politicians are disinteresting.

  John Lennon

  Political, Religion, Politician

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• I think it is immensely difficult to get the U.S. interested in non-U.S. topics. I dont think this is because the average American reader is disinterested, but more because of publishers playing it safe: if a thriller based in L.A. is a sure winner, why spend money plugging one based in Paris - or Bangkok?

  John Burdett

  Thinking, Average, Paris

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• The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name.... We must be impartial in thought as well as in actiona nationthat neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Names, United States, Neutrality

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• You have lived longer than I have and perhaps may have formed a different judgment on better grounds; but my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest and more disinterested than those of wealthy men.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Integrity, Believe, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.278, Penguin

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• Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Love, Self, Kind

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• Sade has a curious ability to render every aspect of sexuality suspect, so that we see how the chaste kiss of the sentimental lover differs only in degree from the vampirish love-bite that draws blood, we understand that a disinterested caress is only quantitatively different from a disinterested flogging.

  Angela Carter

  Kissing, Blood, Degrees

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• It is in the faculty of noble, disinterested, unselfish love that lies the true gift and power of womanhood,--a power which makes us, not the equal of men (I never care to claim such equality), but their equivalents; more than their equivalents in a moral sense.

  Frances Power Cobbe

  Lying, Power, Men

  Frances Power Cobbe (1882). “The Duties of Women: A Course of Lectures”

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• Till the hour when the trump of the Archangel shall sound to announce that Time shall be no more, the name of Lafayette shall stand enrolled upon the annals of our race, high on the list of the pure and disinterested benefactors of mankind.

  Marquis de Lafayette

  Race, Names, Sound

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• Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud--and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Two, Feelings, Forgiving

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• Man is a willful and covetous animal, who makes use of his intellect to satisfy his inclinations, but who cares nothing for truth, who rebels against personal discipline, who hates disinterested thought and the idea of self-education. Wisdom offends him, because it rouses in him disturbance and confusion, and because he will not see himself as he is.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Hate, Men, Animal

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• . . . if I had been a man, self-respect, family pressure and the public opinion of my class would have pushed me into a money-making profession; as a mere woman I could carve out a career of disinterested research.

  Beatrice Webb

  Men, Class, Careers

  Beatrice Webb, Beatrice Potter Webb (1979). “My Apprenticeship”, p.355, Cambridge University Press

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• Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people, and her example, her assistance, her encouragement, has thrilled two continents in this western world with all those fine impulses which have built up human liberty on sides of the water. She stands, therefore, as an example of independence, as an example of free institutions, and as an example of disinterested international action in the main tenets of justice.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Encouragement, Self, Two

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