Extremes Quotes - Page 28

• Some have a violent and turgid manner of talking and thinking; they are always in extremes, and pronounce concerning everything in the superlative.

  Isaac Watts

  Thinking, Talking, Violent

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• An artist has to go to every extreme, to stretch his sensibility through excess and suffering in order to feel and to communicate more. I have always been fascinated by blood. Pain can be vitalizing; it gives intensity in the place of vagueness and emptiness. If we don't suffer, how do we know that we live?

  Sebastian Horsley

  Pain, Artist, Blood

  "Horsley's cross is a painful one to bare" by Jack Foley, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• Weather can kill you so fast. The first priority of survival is getting protection from the extreme weather.

  Bear Grylls

  Weather, Priorities, Survival

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• I never thought very many people in the world were very much like John Laroche, but I realized more and more that he was only an extreme, not an aberration - that most people in some way or another do strive for something exceptional, something to pursue, even at their peril, rather than abide an ordinary life.

  Susan Orlean

  People, Way, Ordinary

  Susan Orlean (2000). “The Orchid Thief”, Ballantine Books

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• All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Interesting, Situation, Involved

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• If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.

  Dani Shapiro

  Waiting, Missing, Special

  "Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life". Book by Dani Shapiro, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2013.

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• Groups become more extreme and entrenched in their beliefs and polarized from others when members only exchange information that reinforces their views and filter out all else or never learn of alternatives. Thus they narrow their options, and magnify each other's prejudices and misconceptions. This trend leads to blind spots in decision making and to extreme behavior, even terrorism.

  Cass Sunstein

  Blind Spots, Views, Decision

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• Some [intentional communities], like the Shakers and the Harmony Society, have endured for a century or even longer. The Hutterians, to cite an extreme example, are today still strongly committed to communal living after practicing it, punctuated only by occasional lapses into private enterprise, for 450 years. The Hutterian rate of membership turnover has been only about 0.0006 per year.

  Benjamin Zablocki

  Years, Community, Membership

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• But, historians, and even common sense, may inform us, that, however specious these ideas of perfect equality may seem, they are really, at bottom, impracticable; and were they not so, would be extremely pernicious to human society. Render possessions ever so equal, men's different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality. Or if you check these virtues, you reduce society to the most extreme indigence; and instead of preventing want and beggary in a few, render it unavoidable to the whole community.

  David Hume

  Art, Men, Ideas

  David Hume (2013). “Essays and Treatises on Philosophical Subjects”, p.290, Broadview Press

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• A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire. Thither by harpy-footed Furies hal'd, At certain revolutions all the damn'd Are brought, and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes,-extremes by change more fierce; From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, infix'd, and frozen round, Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire.

  John Milton

  Time, Army, Ice

  John Milton, “Paradise Lost: Book 02”

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• I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expect everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate good. . . . If we will take the good we find, . . . we shall have heaping measures. . . .

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Thanks, I Am Thankful

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• But Friedman seemed to share Friedrich Hayek's extreme and inaccurate view that socialism of the sort that Britain embraced under the old Labour Party was incompatible with democracy, and I don't think that there is a good theoretical or empirical basis for that view. The Road to Serfdom flunks the test of accuracy of prediction!

  Richard Posner

  Party, Thinking, Views

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• There's always the danger that the extreme feminist will end up quite unfulfilled as a girl.

  Catherine Marshall

  Girl, Feminist, Danger

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• Cast between the extremes of happiness and misfortune, uncertainty is a cruel torment.

  Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

  Casts, Torment, Uncertainty

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• When Heaven is about to confer a great office on a man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil ; it exposes his body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme poverty ; it confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies.

  Mencius

  Exercise, Men, Office

  Confucius, Mencius, Ming Zuoqiu, Tso-ch'iu Ming (1861). “The Chinese Classics”, p.323

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• We are only as good as our most extreme experiences

  Sloane Crosley

  Sloane Crosley (2010). “How Did You Get This Number”, p.56, Penguin

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• Bad luck and (extreme) misfortune will infest your pathetic soul for all eternity.

  Rocko

  Soul, Luck, Modern Life

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• Change is most sluggish at the extremes precisely because the derivative is zero there.

  Steven Strogatz

  Zero, Derivatives, Sluggish

  Steven Strogatz (2012). “The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Mathematics, from One to Infinity”, p.116, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Being engaged is a way of doing life, a way of living and loving. It's about going to extremes and expressing the bright hope that life offers us, a hope that makes us brave and expels darkness with light. That's what I want my life to be all about - full of abandon, whimsy, and in love.

  Bob Goff

  Light, Brave, Darkness

  Bob Goff (2012). “Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World”, p.24, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• If we can live and prosper without killing, why would we not do so? I do not see veganism as 'extreme' in any way. I see killing for no reason as extreme in every way.

  Gary L. Francione

  Way, Killing, Reason

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• It is extreme evil to depart from the company of the living before you die.

  Seneca the Younger

  Life, Evil, Company

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• Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality.

  Douglas Adams

  Writing, Expression, Personality

  Douglas Adams (2010). “The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.516, Del Rey

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• Evil is an extreme manifestation of human unconsciousness.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Love, Evil, Consciousness

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• Genius of AND. Embrace both extremes on a number of dimensions at the same time. Instead of choosing a OR B, figure out how to have A AND B-purpose AND profit, continuity AND change, freedom AND responsibility, etc.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Responsibility, Numbers

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• The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence -while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Opposites, Two

  "Stride Toward Freedom". Book by Martin Luther King, Jr., November 30, 1957.

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