Dubious Quotes - Page 3

• No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.

  H. L. Mencken

  Rights, Government, Class

  "Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks". Book by H. L. Mencken (p. 33), 1956.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• What I wound up doing, which I think is really journalistically dubious, is changing the order of some of the things I did, so that the things I ended up struggling with the most wind up being two-thirds of the way in.

  Joel Stein

  Struggle, Thinking, Order

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes it's a fraught, kind of laden world of performance that I think can be really dubious, but it's also super fun to almost desecrate an instrument that for 500 years has been associated with God.

  Tim Hecker

  Fun, Thinking, Years

  Source: thequietus.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It presents a really compelling case against the whole theory of anthropogenic global warming. From my point of view, it is a theory that has completely corrupted public policy making in most of the developed world. It confronts all the dubious claims that the warmists have put out there.

  Nick Minchin

  Views, Policy Making, World

  4 Copy quote

• Wholeness is sort of a dubious concept. Because in terms of the human body and literal wholeness and structures, you think: "here are the structures that help make me whole." Family, or school, or the city I live in. When those structures are dysfunctional or decaying, you end up kind of Frankensteining pieces from everywhere in order to make yourself sated and comfortable and alive.

  Carrie Brownstein

  School, Thinking, Order

  "Carrie Brownstein Discusses Her Memoir". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. October 27, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have known a number of Don Juans who were good studs and who cavorted between the sheets without a psychiatrist to guide them. But most of the busy love-makers I knew were looking for masculinity rather than practicing it. They were fellows of dubious lust.

  Ben Hecht

  Numbers, Lust, Juan

  Ben Hecht (1954). “A child of the century”, Signet

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most universal and effectual way of discovering the true meaning of law, when the words are dubious, is by considering the reason and spirit of it; or the cause which moved the legislator to enact it. for when this reason ceased, the law itself ought likewise to cease with it.

  William Blackstone

  Law, Way, Causes

  William Blackstone (2016). “Commentaries on the Laws of England: Of the Rights of People”, p.47, Oxford University Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Information obtained under dubious circumstances cannot play a role in legal proceedings in a constitutional state. But everything that's available must be taken into account in threat prevention.

  Angela Merkel

  Taken, Play, Information

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... the advantages of being a postman seemed more and more dubious. It is not a congenial profession for anyone who is at all sensitive, for people visit upon the postman all their first annoyance at receiving a couple of bills when they looked for a love-letter, and if a packet is insufficiently stamped they hand over the pennies as though to a despicable bandit, too outrageous to be denied, too groveling to be feared.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Couple, Hands, People

  6 Copy quote

• Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book, and go about trying to buy up all existing copies.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Book, Blessing, Giving

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art”, p.25, Zondervan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Because of mathematics precise, formal character, mathematical arguments remain sound even when they are long and complex. In contast, common sense arguments can generally be trusted only if they remain short; even moderately long nonmathematical arguments rapidly becomes farfetched an dubious.

  Jacob T. Schwartz

  Character, Long, Common Sense

  5 Copy quote

• I hear people say they're going to write. I ask, when? They give me vague statements. Indefinite plans get dubious results. When we're concrete about our writing time, it alleviates that thin constant feeling of anxiety that writers have - we're barbecuing hot dogs, riding a bike, sailing out in the bay, shopping for shoes, even helping a sick friend, but somewhere nervously at the periphery of our perception we know we belong somewhere else - at our desk!

  Natalie Goldberg

  Dog, Writing, Somewhere Else

  Natalie Goldberg (2011). “Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer’s Craft”, p.78, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by. To be 'intellectual' or 'artistic' or, in their own word, to be 'highbrow,' is to be priggish and of dubious virtue.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Ignorance, Achievement, Intellectual

  Sinclair Lewis (2008). “Main Street”, p.55, ReadHowYouWant.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The promises of pie-in-the-sky liberal environmentalists that we can convert to 'clean' energy sources and stimulate our economy are based on dubious environmental and economic assumptions, fantastic notions about alternative energy, and a disturbing acceptance of the tyrannies inherent in command-control economies.

  David Limbaugh

  Acceptance, Sky, Pie

  4 Copy quote

• New York congressmen have recently been plagued by a string of embarrassing scandals. Shirtless craigslist hunk Chris Lee, nonconsensual staff tickle monster, Eric Massa, naked texter Anthony Weiner, so this guy is now running to join those dubious ranks and win the Michael Grimm seat. And he`s campaigning on the promise that he`s too old to be too gross. And I`m not paraphrasing the campaign pledge.

  Rachel Maddow

  Running, New York, Winning

  4 Copy quote

• The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.

  Agnes Repplier

  Men, Thinking, Age

  7 Copy quote

• I personally have never trusted museums. ... It is because museums, broadly speaking, live off of the art and artifacts of others, often art and artifacts that have been obtained by dubious means. But they also manipulate whatever it is they present to the public; hence, until Judy Chicago, in the 1970s ... few women artists were hung in any major museum. Indian artists? Artifacts only, please. Black artists? Something musical, maybe? And so forth.

  Alice Walker

  Art, Mean, Museums

  9 Copy quote

• Scepticism commonly takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is the very quality of mind most likely to seek for sensual proof of supersensual things. If one came from the dead it could not believe; and yet it longs for such a witness, and will put up with a very dubious one.

  James Russell Lowell

  Believe, Imagination, Sensual

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.1162, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fact of the matter is that, for years, the restaurant and service industry has been, to a great extent, built on the backs of often underpaid immigrants of often dubious legal status.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Years, Matter, Facts

  "What's Eating Bourdain?". Interview with Leeanne Griffin, digitaledition.courant.com.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can be fairly optimistic, but I'm probably more a realist, I think. I mean, optimism's an interesting quality, isn't it, because I'm always slightly dubious as to what's behind it?

  Guy Pearce

  Optimistic, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You've had an extremely weak euro on the foreign exchange markets, you've had a very dubious policy being followed.

  John Major

  Weak, Foreign Exchange, Policy

  4 Copy quote

• For many, the regressive belief in superstitions and miracles is an escape from the hardships of life. Once trapped into irrationalism, they become more incapable of mastering reality. It is a vicious circle, like an addiction. They become vulnerable to exploitation by astrologers, godmen, dubious pseudo-psychologists, corrupt politicians and the whole mega-industry of irrationalism.

  Sanal Edamaruku

  Reality, Circles, Addiction

  7 Copy quote

• My point is, however, that churches do promote beliefs that would more appropriately find a place in a context of intellectual debate. They wind up cheerleading for highly dubious opinions on historical, scientific, and metaphysical matters, simply on the bases of emotional preference and the inertia of tradition. They demand conformity to these beliefs, and if you cannot swim with the current, then, well partner, maybe you'd be happier in another pool, another lake in fact, the one ablaze with burning sulfur.

  Robert M. Price

  Cheerleading, Emotional, Wind

  8 Copy quote

• Landscape pictures can offer us, I think, three verities: geography, autobiography, and metaphor. Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring, autobiography is frequently trivial, and metaphor can be dubious. But taken together, as in the best work of people like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, the three kinds of information strengthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact - the affection for life.

  Robert Adams

  Photography, Taken, Thinking

  Robert Adams (1989). “Beauty in photography: essays in defense of traditional values”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bernard Williams has been a distinctive presence on the intellectual scene for more than three decades. . . . His writings do not offer the dubious exhilaration of grand philosophical theory, in which messy reality is tamed and caged, but the thrill of seeing pretension punctured by a kind of high-voltage common sense (backed up by impressive erudition). . . . There is no one in philosophy quite like him.

  Colin McGinn

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Writing

  8 Copy quote