Extremes Quotes - Page 40

• 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.

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• 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

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• Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.

  William Shakespeare

  Fear, Fighting

  Cross, William Shakespeare (1989). “William Shakespeare: The Complete Works”, p.1209, Barnes & Noble Publishing

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• People who always feel jolly, no matter where they are or what happens to them—who have the organ of hope preposterously developed—who are endowed with an uncongealable sanguine temperament—who never feel concerned about the price of corn—and who cannot, by any possibility, discover any but the bright side of a picture—are very apt to go to extremes, and exaggerate with 40-horse microscopic power.

  Mark Twain

  Horse, People, Matter

  Mark Twain (2017). “Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn – The Great American Adventure (Illustrated): Complete 4 Novels: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer Abroad & Tom Sawyer, Detective (Including Author’s Biography)”, p.871, e-artnow

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• Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness.

  Charles Lamb

  Book, Eye, Modern Novel

  Charles Lamb, Thomas Noon Talfourd (1838). “Essays of Elia. Rosamund Gray. Recollections of Chirst's hospital. Essays on the tragedies of Shakspeare [etc.] Letters under assumed signatures published in the Reflector. Curious fragments. Mr. H”, p.192

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• Orientation in time, space, and status are the essentials of social existence, and the Balinese, although they make very strong spirits for ceremonial occasions, with a few startling exceptions resist alcohol, because if one drinks one loses one's orientation. Orientation is felt as a protection rather than as a strait jacket and its loss provokes extreme anxiety.

  Margaret Mead

  Strong, Loss, Space

  Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead (1942). “Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis”

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• There is nothing in the nature of a miracle that should render it incredible:;: its credibility depends upon the nature of the evidence by which it is supported. An event of extreme probability will not necessarily command our belief unless upon a sufficiency of proof; and so an event which we may regard as highly improbable may command our belief if it is sustained by sufficient evidence. So that the credibility or incredibility of an event does not rest upon the nature of the event itself, but depends upon the nature and sufficiency of the proof which sustains it.

  Charles Babbage

  Miracle, Events, Doe

  Charles Babbage (1864). “Passages from the Life of a Philosopher”, p.476, London : Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green

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• Disgust is expressed by violence, and it is to be noted of our intellectual temper that violence is a quality which is felt to have a peculiarly intellectual sanction. Our preference, even as articulated by those who are most mild in their persons, is increasingly for the absolute and extreme, of which we feel violence to be the true sign. The gentlest of us will know that the tigers of wrath are to be preferred to the horses of instruction and will consider it intellectual cowardice to take into account what happens to those who ride tigers.

  Lionel Trilling

  Horse, Wrath, Intellectual

  "The Portable Matthew Arnold " by Lionel Trilling, Viking Press, 1949.

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• Being different is ... interesting; there's nothing implicitly inferior or superior about it. Great difference, of course, produces natural caution; and if the differences are too extreme ... well, then, reality tends to fade away.

  Edward Albee

  Reality, Differences, Interesting

  Edward Albee (2007). “Seascape: The Entire Appalling Business”, p.69, The Overlook Press

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• The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood. This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid.

  Antonin Artaud

  Order, Theatre, Passionate

  Antonin Artaud (1958). “The Theater and Its Double”, p.122, Grove Press

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• Victorian society was homogeneous without being homogenized. It was, to paraphrase the epigram about Parliament, a society of extreme eccentrics who agreed so well that they could afford to differ.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Parliament, Wells, Paraphrase

  Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow (1989). “More Classics Revisited”, p.120, New Directions Publishing

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• Many consider that Shostakovich is the greatest 20th-century composer. In his 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, and in other works he demonstrated mastery of the largest and most challenging forms with music of great emotional power and technical invention...All his works are marked by emotional extremes - tragic intensity, grotesque and bizarre wit, humour, parody, and savage sarcasm.

  Dmitri Shostakovich

  Sarcasm, Emotional, Symphony

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• There is no golden mean between these two extremes; either this early life must become low in our estimation, or it will have our inordinate love.

  John Calvin

  Mean, Two, Golden

  "Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life". Book by John Calvin, 1550.

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• Röntgen has familiarized us with an order of vibrations of extreme minuteness compared with the smallest waves with which we have hitherto been acquainted, and of dimensions comparable with the distances between the centers of the atoms of which the material universe is built up; and there is no reason to suppose that we have here reached the limit of frequency.

  Wilhelm Rontgen

  Distance, Order, Atoms

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• In our imaginations the adults of our childhood remain extreme, essential - we might say radical since they are the roots that fed luxuriant later systems. Those first bohemians, for instance, stay operatic in memory even though were we to meet them today - well, what would we think, we who've elaborated our eccentricities with a patience, a professionalism they never knew?

  Edmund White

  Memories, Thinking, Roots

  "A Boy's Own Story". Book by Edmund White, E.P. Dutton, Chapter Four, p. 92, 1982.

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• One should try to locate power at the extreme of its exercise, where it is always less legal in character.

  Michel Foucault

  Character, Exercise, Power

  Michael Kelly, Michel Foucault (1994). “Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate”, p.35, MIT Press

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• I don't see makeup as a defense. I see it as a creative outlet. I am a woman who has my extreme vulnerable side and my baggage--and at times I feel extremely weak. And who's to say a little mascara doesn't make you feel more confident when you pop it on and look in the mirror? It helps, especially in my position, where I have people waiting down the street to take pictures of me so they can evaluate and criticize every little flaw on my face.

  Christina Aguilera

  Makeup, Mirrors, People

  "Christina: Intimate Talk About a Past That Still Hurts". Interview with Laurie Sandell, www.glamour.com. November 30, 2006.

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• I believe that the biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power. It incites to "counterpower," to "positive" criticism, to an irreducible dialogue (like that between king and prophet in Israel), to antistatism, to a decentralizing of the relation, to an extreme relativizing of everything political, to an anti-ideology, to a questioning of all that claims either power or dominion (in other words, of all things political), and finally, if we may use a modern term, to a kind of "anarchism" (so long as we do not relate the term to the anarchist teaching of the nineteenth century).

  Jacques Ellul

  Kings, Teaching, Biblical

  "The Subversion of Christianity" by Jacques Ellul, translated by G. Bromiley, (p. 116), 1986.

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• When [my friend] had her kid, she was like, "9:30?! I'm not living in Barcelona. I need dinner at 6." I never got that until now. Four years ago, when I met her, I thought that was extreme. I was like, "I love Barcelona!" Now, I'm so mad when someone suggests an 8 pm reservation because that means we won't eat until 8:30 or 9 pm. Forget it!

  Drew Barrymore

  Mean, Kids, Years

  "Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore Talk Blended, Their Evolving Friendship and Chemistry, Their Families, Making Comedies with Heart, and Parenting". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. May 20, 2014.

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• Russia had to take the necessary measures in order to prevent the situation in Crimea unfolding the way it is now unfolding in southeastern Ukraine. We didn't want any tanks, any nationalist combat units or people with extreme views armed with automatic weapons.

  Vladimir Putin

  Russia, Ukraine, Views

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• The issue I focus on the most is extreme poverty. I think it's kind of out of sight out of mind. I wish there would be more stories about that to connect people to what's happening. To personalize it, to make it real to people, to inspire them to action.

  John Legend

  Real, Thinking, Sight

  "Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. with John Legend". Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. April 4, 2008.

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• There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.

  Eric Hoffer

  Selfish, Passion, Exercise

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• Technically speaking, since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents,they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. These disruptions can, with minimum expense, have considerably destructive consequences. Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Opportunity, Goal, Cynical

  "Philosophy in a Time of Terror". Book by Giovanna Borradori, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, 2003.

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• Thus must we toil in other men's extremes, That know not how to remedy our own.

  Thomas Kyd

  Men, Toil, Remedy

  'The Spanish Tragedy' (1592) act 3, sc. 6, l. 1

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• The immaterial blue colour shown at Iris Clert's in April had in short made me inhuman, had excluded me from the world of tangible reality; I was an extreme element of society who lived in space and who had no means of coming back to earth. Jean Tinguely saw me in space and signaled to me in speed to show me the last machine to take to return to the ephemerality of material life.

  Yves Klein

  Mean, Reality, Blue

  "Yves Klein, 1928 - 1962". Book by Yves Klein, p. 47, 1974.

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