Imposing Quotes - Page 4

• Certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideoologues, dogmatists, and bullies--people who think that their rigtness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to suscribe to their particular ideology, dogma or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful enough, resistance to it will be met, sooner or later by force. There are people like this in every sphere of life, and it is natural to feel that the world would be a better place without them!

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Powerful, Thinking, People

  116 Copy quote

• Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that this is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not bring us any closer to the secrets of the "Old One." I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice.

  Albert Einstein

  God, Real, Voice

  Quoted in Ronald W. Clark's Einstein: The Life and Times (p. 340)

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The gas-cylinders had by this time been put into position on the front line. A special order came round imposing severe penalties on anyone who used any word but "accessory" in speaking of the gas. This was to keep it secret, but the French civilians knew all about the scheme long before this.

  Robert Graves

  War, Order, Long

  Robert Graves, Steven Trout (2008). “Goodbye to all that: and other great war writings”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Writing is the act of saying "I," of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying "listen to me, see it my way, change your mind."

  Joan Didion

  Writing, People, Mind

  Joan Didion (1984). “Joan Didion: Essays & Conversations”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.

  Doris Lessing

  Party, Views, Self

  "The Sunday Times", May 10, 1992.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Standing alone among great democratic nations in imposing the death penalty is another moral decision that Americansare being forced to confront.

  Jimmy Carter

  Decision, Death Penalty, Moral

  Jimmy Carter (2005). “Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Governments do not necessarily act in the national interest, especially when making detailed microeconomic interventions. Instead, they are influenced by interest group pressures. The kinds of interventions that new trade theory suggests can raise national income will typically raise the welfare of small, fortunate groups by large amounts, while imposing costs on larger, more diffuse groups.

  Paul Krugman

  Philosophy, Government, Political

  8 Copy quote

• This king [Sesostris] divided the land among all Egyptians so as to give each one a quadrangle of equal size and to draw from each his revenues, by imposing a tax to be levied yearly. But everyone from whose part the river tore anything away, had to go to him to notify what had happened; he then sent overseers who had to measure out how much the land had become smaller, in order that the owner might pay on what was left, in proportion to the entire tax imposed. In this way, it appears to me, geometry originated, which passed thence to Hellas.

  Herodotus

  Kings, Science, Egypt

  17 Copy quote

• Being young and trying to catch a glimpse of the depths, of the true self, of the soul, or whatever human beings have called it over the centuries, we often find ourselves surrounded by bossy, hectoring voices trying to short-circuit our personal experience by super-imposing their own disappointments. Much of this bossiness masquerades as an education.

  David Whyte

  Inspirational, Disappointment, Self

  David Whyte (2009). “The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship”, p.59, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If duties are too high, they lessen the consumption; the collection is eluded; and the product to the treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. This forms a complete barrier against any material oppression of the citizens by taxes of this class, and is itself a natural limitation of the power of imposing them.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Class, Citizens, Taxation

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2009). “The Federalist”, p.130, Harvard University Press

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.

  James A. Baldwin

  Music, Men, Air

  9 Copy quote

• Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful.

  Gertrude Stein

  Life, Happiness, Beautiful

  Gertrude Stein (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of Gertrude Stein (Illustrated)”, p.6135, Delphi Classics

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is hardly any one so insignificant that he does not seem imposing to some one at some time.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Doe, Seems, Insignificant

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.329, Transaction Publishers

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I liked Germany; I'm not into Berlin, it's too huge and empty and imposing, but Munich was good.

  Graham Coxon

  Munich, Berlin, Germany

  87 Copy quote

• When I was 2, we moved into an imposing country mansion 8 miles west of Cardiff, Wales.

  Roald Dahl

  Country, West, 8 Mile

  8 Copy quote

• F.D.R. achieved greatness not by means of imposing his temperament and intellect on the world but by reacting to what the world threw at him.

  Maureen Dowd

  Mean, Greatness, World

  4 Copy quote

• Many Americans simply don't want the pinheads in Washington or the various state capitals to be telling us how to live. But we are absolutely going in that direction. President Obama is hell-bent on imposing a bureaucracy that levels all playing fields at great expense in coin and in freedom.

  Bill O'Reilly

  President, Coins, Levels

  5 Copy quote

• The mistake that straight people made was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous.

  Dan Savage

  Mistake, Men, People

  "Dan Savage Savages the Bible Over Homosexuality" by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 2, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our castle is not imposing, but is well built, and surrounded by a very fine garden. I live in the bailiff's house.

  Franz Schubert

  Garden, House, Castles

  9 Copy quote

• I want a guy who is masculine, good with his hands, and able to build stuff and who has survival skills. Facial hair is a big turn-on... I like a stronger, more physically imposing man - like a lumberjack.

  Chloe Sevigny

  New York, Hipster, Kids

  "Chloe Sevigny 'describes ideal boyfriend'" by Justin Harp, www.digitalspy.com. December 22, 2010.

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Art, Patterns, Recognition

  Dialogues (1954) (entry for 10 June 1943)

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.

  Paulo Freire

  People, Decision, Leader

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.126, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  141 Copy quote

  Show source

• For what are myths if not the imposing of order on phenomena that do not possess order in themselves? And all myths, however they differ from philosophical systems and scientific theories, share this with them, that they negate the principle of randomness in the world.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Philosophical, Order, Principles

  Stanislaw Lem (1996). “Highcastle: A Remembrance”, Mariner Books

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.

  Fisher Ames

  Freedom, Liberty, Habit

  Fisher Ames (1809). “Works of Fisher Ames, compiled by a number of his friends”, p.244

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm for democracy, but imposing democracy is an oxymoron. People have to choose democracy, and it has to come up from below.

  Madeleine Albright

  People, Democracy, Come Up

  "QUESTIONS FOR MADELEINE ALBRIGHT; State of the Secretary". Interview with Deborah Solomon, query.nytimes.com. April 23, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source