Important Quotes - Page 40

• The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education.

  Erich Fromm

  Art, Needs, Literacy

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Sane Society Ils 252”, p.349, Routledge

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• 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.

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• I remember a very important lesson that my father gave me when I was twelve or thirteen. He said, "You know, today I welded a perfect seam and I signed my name to it." And I said, "But, Daddy, no one's going to see it!" And he said, "Yeah, but I know it's there." So when I was working in kitchens, I did good work.

  Toni Morrison

  Father, Names, Daddy

  FaceBook post by Toni Morrison from Dec 12, 2011

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• One of the many, many things I hate about war is how it trivializes the personal. The big themes, the broad sweep, the emergency measures, the national identity, all the things that a particular kind of man with a particular kind of power urge adores, these are the things that become important. War gives the lie to the personal, drowns it in meetings, alarms, sacrifices. The personal is only allowed to return as death.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lying, Hate, War

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• I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and silencing them forever.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Men, Forever, Inquiring

  Sinclair Lewis (2017). “It Can't Happen Here”, p.359, PublishDrive

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• The outstanding coach is a teacher that gets all his squad to accept the role that he considers to be the most important for the welfare of all.

  John Wooden

  Teacher, Squad, Roles

  Interview on "Charlie Rose Show", archive.org. June 14, 2000.

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• The most important factor in determining whether you will succeed isn’t your gender, it’s you. Be open to opportunity and take risks. In fact, take the worst, the messiest, the most challenging assignment you can find, and then take control.

  Angela Braly

  Opportunity, Challenges, Risk

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• So often in my life I've been with people and shared beautiful moments like travelling or staying up all night and watching the sunrise, and I knew it was a special moment, but something was always wrong. I wished I'd been with someone else. I knew that what I was feeling - exactly what was so important to me - they didn't understand.

  Julie Delpy

  Beautiful, Night, People

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• For carbon-neutral cities, there are things worth talking about in how our consumption patterns can change - sharing goods, etc. - but those are a fraction of the impacts of transportation and building energy use. If we need to choose priority actions, the most important things are to densify, provide transit, and green the buildings.

  Alex Steffen

  Talking, Cities, Impact

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• It's not a man's working hours that are important--it's his leisure hours. That's the mistake we all make.

  Agatha Christie

  Mistake, Men, Leisure

  Agatha Christie (2010). “The Labours of Hercules (Poirot)”, p.7, HarperCollins UK

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• The will the one thing it is most important to educate we neglect.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Neglect, Educate, One Thing

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• There are few things it is more important to learn than how to live on little and be therewith content: for the less we need what is without, the more leisure have we to live within.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Needs, Littles, Leisure

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight.

  Terry Pratchett

  Believe, Heart, Sight

  "Eric: A Novel of Discworld". Book by Terry Pratchett, 1990.

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• Like it or not, to reach middle age with less money or less prestige than our father had is somewhat to lose face. Stupid of course, when put like that, but who is prepared to argue that we are not stupid in several important ways?

  Robertson Davies

  Stupid, Father, Age

  "Haunted by Halloween". The New York Times, October 31, 1990.

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• Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. ... To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Order, Suffering Of Others

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.64, Penguin

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• It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamic action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects, whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially, or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by "semiosis" I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Mean, Two, Three

  "Pragmatism (1907)". "The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings". Book edited by the Peirce Edition Project, Volume 2, p. 411, 1998.

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• His [Turgot's] first important literary and scholastic effort was a treatise On the Existence of God. Few fragments of it remain, but we are helped to understand him when we learn that he asserted, and to the end of his life maintained, his belief in an Almighty Creator and Upholder of the Universe. It did, indeed, at a later period suit the purposes of his enemies, exasperated by his tolerant spirit and his reforming plans, to proclaim him an atheist; but that sort of charge has been the commonest of missiles against troublesome thinkers in all times.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Atheist, Effort, Enemy

  "Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason". Book by Andrew Dickson White, pp. 167-168, 1915.

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• This whole theory [of John Law and Jean Terrasson], as dear to French financial schemers in the eighteenth century as to American "Greenbackers" in the nineteenth, had resulted, under the Orleans Regency and Louis XV, in ruin to France financially and morally, had culminated in the utter destruction of all prosperity, the rooting out of great numbers of the most important industries, and the grinding down of the working people even to starvation.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Numbers, Law, People

  "Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason". Book by Andrew Dickson White, p. 169-170, 1915.

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• When I lie on the beach there naked, which I do sometimes, and I feel the wind coming over me and I see the stars up above and I am looking into this very deep, indescribable night, it is something that escapes my vocabulary to describe. Then I think: 'God, I have no importance. Whatever I do or don't do, or what anybody does, is not more important than the grains of sand that I am lying on, or the coconut that I am using for my pillow.' So I really don't think in the long sense.

  Marlon Brando

  Beach, Stars, Lying

  New York Times, July 2, 2004.

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• You are different from the really great man in only one thing: The great man, at one time, also was a very little man, but he developed one important ability: he learned to see where he was small in his thinking, and actions. Under the pressure of some task which was dear to him he learned better and better to sense the threat that comes from his smallness and pettiness. The great man, then, knows when and in what he is a little man.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Men, Thinking, Different

  "Listen, Little Man!". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1948.

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• It seems important that the social value factor be more generally recognized as a powerful causal agent in its own right and something to be dealt with directly as such. No more critical task can be projected for the 1970s than that of seeking for civilized society a new, elevated set of value guidelines more suited to man's expanded numbers and new powers over nature, a frame of reference for value priorities that will act to secure and conserve our world instead of destroying it.

  Roger Wolcott Sperry

  Powerful, Men, Numbers

  "Science and the Problem of Values". Book by Roger Wolcott Sperry, p. 119, 1972.

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• What's important is not just to develop the technology; it's to develop the processes.

  Hal Abelson

  Technology, What's Important, Process

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• Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy.

  Jack Welch

  Jobs, People, Strategy

  "Jack: Straight from the Gut". Book by Jack Welch, 2001.

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• It is so important for me to keep authentic Cuban sounds alive. All of these great artists have changed the landscape of Latin music and it's an honor to have them on this album ["90 Millas," released in September of 2007]. I believe this album will expose a new generation to the richness of Cuban music.

  Gloria Estefan

  Latin, Believe, Artist

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• While our responses to the problems facing us immediately are also important, we cannot forget to carve out the future of Japan ten or one hundred years into the future. In doing so, we must not resort to superficial measures. Instead, it is imperative to engage in true reforms that ascertain the state of society we seek to achieve.

  Shinzo Abe

  Japan, Years, Reform

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