Extremes Quotes - Page 36

• For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.

  Hippocrates

  Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures, Disease, Restriction

  Hippocrates (1849). “The Genuine Works of Hippocrates”, p.699

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings? Can men fly?

  Salman Rushdie

  Betrayal, Fall, Angel

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Vegas is the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements, bizarre and beautiful in its venality and in its devotion to immediate gratification.

  Joan Didion

  Beautiful, Vegas, Devotion

  Joan Didion (2013). “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, p.64, Zola Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We're all going to face extreme stress in our lives, there's no one who is going to escape that. That's the one thing, rich or poor, I don't care who you are, you're going to lose.

  Tony Robbins

  Stress, Rich Or Poor, Care

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Extreme things are like miracles. Nothing is as boring as a person who is just okay.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Miracle, Boring, Okay

  8 Copy quote

• Any color works if you push it to the extreme.

  Massimo Vignelli

  Color, Ifs

  16 Copy quote

• Whatever power may be necessary for the National Government a certain portion must necessarily be left in the States. It is impossible for one power to pervade the extreme parts of the U.S. so as to carry equal justice to them.

  George Mason

  Government, Justice, May

  "The Journal of the Debates in the Convention which Framed the Constitution of the United States, May-September, 1787", Volume 2, as recorded by James Madison, 1908.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it's necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and-perhaps-we all need some measure of unmerited grace.

  Bryan Stevenson

  Believe, Compassion, Punishment

  296 Copy quote

• If you wish to feign confusion in order to lure the enemy on, you must first have perfect discipline; if you wish to display timidity in order to entrap the enemy, you must have extreme courage; if you wish to parade your weakness in order to make the enemy over-confident, you must have exceeding strength.

  Du Mu

  Military, Order, Discipline

  16 Copy quote

• Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.

  William Gibson

  Running, Baby, Eye

  William Gibson (2003). “Idoru”, p.32, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to extreme old age.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Children, Thinking, Years

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.439, Yale University Press

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• To call out for the hand of the enemy is a rather extreme measure, yet a better one, I think, than to remain in continual fever over an accident that has no remedy. But since all the precautions that a man can take are full of uneasiness and uncertainty, it is better to prepare with fine assurance for the worst that can happen, and derive some consolation from the fact that we are not sure that it will happen.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Thinking, Hands

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.97, Stanford University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either/Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities.

  John Dewey

  Education, Truth, Thinking

  John Dewey (1998). “Experience and Education, 60th Anniversary Edition”, p.1, Kappa Delta Pi

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are, then, three states of mind ... two vices--that of excess, and that of defect; and one virtue--the mean; and all these are in a certain sense opposed to one another; for the extremes are not only opposed to the mean, but also to one another; and the mean is opposed to the extremes.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Two, Mind

  Aristotle (1869). “The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle”, p.54

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Extreme justice is often injustice.

  Jean Racine

  Justice, Injustice

  27 Copy quote

• There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes.

  Allan Bloom

  Philosophy, Ignorance, Two

  "Giants and Dwarfs". Book by Allan Bloom. Chapter: "Western Civ," p. 18, 1990.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Facilitative attitudes (and skills) can help a therapist gain entry into the group Freedom from a desire to control the outcome, and respect for the capacity of the group, and skills in releasing individual expression Openness to all attitudes no matter how extreme or unrealistic they may seem Acceptance of the problems experienced by the group where they are clearly defined as issues Allowance of the freedom of choices in direction, either for the group or individuals particularly in the near future

  Carl Rogers

  Attitude, Acceptance, Expression

  14 Copy quote

• In a man like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years, became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part.

  Paul Tillich

  Men, Self, Years

  "The Courage to Be" by Paul Tillich, (p. 117), 1952.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Few, as I have said, are the humorists who can induce this state. To master and dissolve us, to give us the joy of being worn down and tired out with laughter, is a success to be won by no man save in virtue of a rare staying-power. Laughter becomes extreme only if it be consecutive. There must be no pauses for recovery. Touch-and-go humour, however happy, is not enough. The jester must be able to grapple his theme and hang on to it, twisting it this way and that, and making it yield magically all manner of strange and precious things.

  Max Beerbohm

  Laughter, Tired, Recovery

  Max Beerbohm (2006). “And Even Now”, p.184, 1st World Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The extreme positions of the Crossfire Syndrome require extreme simplification - framing the debate in terms which ignore the real issues.

  Michael Crichton

  Real, Issues, Debate

  "Mediasaurus: the Decline of Conventional Media". Speech at the National Press Club, Washington D.C., April 07, 1993.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• Society mediates between the extremes of, on the one hand, intolerably strict morality and, on the other, dangerously anarchic permissiveness through an unspoken agreement whereby we are given leave to bend the rules of the strictest morality, provided we do so quietly and discreetly. Hypocrisy is the grease that keeps society functioning in an agreeable way, by allowing for human fallibility and reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable human needs for order and pleasure.

  Janet Malcolm

  Agreement, Hands, Order

  "The Journalist and the Murderer". Book by Janet Malcolm, 1989.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm working on the Star Wars script today and the people in my office have covered up all my windows with black paper. I guess they wanted to make sure no one could see what I was doing. It seems rather extreme.

  J. J. Abrams

  Stars, War, Covered Up

  "JJ Abrams: Hollywood's Renaissance man" by Horatia Harrod, www.telegraph.co.uk. January 25, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Democrats and Republicans stand at two extremes, characterized by which parts of our lives they emphasize their desire to control.  Libertarians reject both extremes in favor of the government leaving control of your life to you.

  Michael Badnarik

  Two, Control Of Your Life, Government

  9 Copy quote

• Yet in a society of conflicting interests the only democratic way in which matters can be improved is through politics, and politics means the compromising of extremes in order to achieve that notorious half loaf which the passionate and the outraged never find sufficient.

  Gore Vidal

  Mean, Order, Matter

  Gore Vidal (1969). “Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship. (1. Ed.)”, Boston : Little, Brown

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We think in youth that our bodies are identical to ourselves and have the same interests, but discover later in life that they are heartless companions who have been accidentally yoked with us, and who are as likely as not, in our extreme sickness or old age, to treat us with less mercy than we would have received at the hands of the worst bandits.

  Rebecca West

  Thinking, Later In Life, Hands

  Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.382, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source