Impossibility Quotes - Page 9

• It is impossible that the whisper of a faction should prevail against the voice of a nation.

  John Russell, 1st Earl Russell

  Voice, Impossible, Factions

  Letter to T. Attwood, October 1831, after the rejection in the House of Lords of the Reform Bill (7 October 1831)

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• Marriage is a unified institution. Marriage means a committed, legally sanctioned relationship between a man and a woman. That's what it means. That's what it means in the revelations. That's what it means in the secular law. You cannot have that marriage coexisting institutionally with something else called same-gender marriage. It simply is a definitional impossibility.

  Lance B. Wickman

  Mean, Men, Law

  Source: www.mormonnewsroom.org

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• Some things are impossible.

  Alex Van Halen

  Impossible

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• What should we do? We have no wish to interrupt the destroyer's work of saving lives... But war is war and the people being picked up out of the water are soldiers bound for the front; soldiers who are to shoot at our German brothers... The question whether we are to perish in despair or defiance, or survive all trails with a live conscience, depends wholly and solely on whether we believe in the forgiveness of sins. This 25th January was the turning point in my life, because it opened my eyes to the utter impossibility of a moral universe.

  Martin Niemoller

  Brother, War, Believe

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• The system he (President Hosni Mubarak) is recommending would make it virtually impossible for truly independent parties to participate. Sham democracy should be exposed for what it truly is.

  Madeleine Albright

  Party, Independent, President

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• Every nation sincerely desires peace; and all nations pursue courses which if persisted in, must make peace impossible.

  Norman Angell

  Desire, Impossible, Making Peace

  Norman Angell, Sir Norman Angell (1939). “The great illusion--now”

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• In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.

  Whittaker Chambers

  Lazarus, Return, Impossible

  Whittaker Chambers (2014). “Witness”, p.25, Regnery Publishing

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• The only difference between elements and compounds consists in the supposed impossibility of proving the so-called elements to be compounds.

  Wolfgang Ostwald

  Science, Differences, Elements

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• Peace without justice is an impossibility.

  Desmond Tutu

  Peace, Justice

  Desmond Tutu, Naomi Tutu (1989). “The words of Desmond Tutu”, Newmarket Pr

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• I am highly favored by God, I experience great victories, supernatural turnarounds, and miraculous breakthroughs in the midst of great impossibilities.

  DMX

  Victory, Midst, Breakthrough

  Song: The Prayer V, Album: Grand Champ

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• There is a mortal breed most full of futility. In contempt of what is at hand, they strain into the future, hunting impossibilities on the wings of ineffectual hopes.

  Pindar

  Ambition, Hunting, Hands

  Pindar (1942). “Some Odes of Pindar: In New English Versions”

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• Too many people today believe that you can fight fascism with fascism. This of course is an impossibility. Fascism times any other number always equals fascism.

  Derek R. Audette

  Believe, Fighting, Numbers

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• It is impossible, maybe undesirable, to take partisanship out of the political process.

  David Souter

  Political, Impossible, Process

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• It seemed like an impossible task to do full justice to all Luther classics. And yet these landmark artists have done just that. Memorable performances of wonderful songs that ensure Luther's legacy will live on forever.

  Clive Davis

  Song, Memorable, Artist

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• The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Life, Fiction, Facts

  Jerome K. Jerome “The Selected Work of Jerome K. Jerome”, Library of Alexandria

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• Never lie to a child about doctors or medicine or anything else; but if you feel, as some people seem to feel, that life without lying is an impossibility, at least don't lie about the amount of pain likely to result from a surgical procedure, or about the taste of some medicine. If you know that something to be done will hurt, say so; if a mixture to be swallowed is unpleasant, say so. If you deceive a child once in such matters, do not imagine that it will trust you again. You do not deserve trust, and you will not get it.

  Lyman Abbott

  Hurt, Children, Pain

  Lyman Abbott (1896). “The House and Home: A Practical Book”

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• Men of warm imaginations and towering thoughts are apt to overlook the goods of fortune which are near them, for something that glitters in the sight at a distance; to neglect solid and substantial happiness for what is showy and superficial; and to contemn that good which lies within their reach, for that which they are not capable of attaining. Hope calculates its schemes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin, and dishonour.

  Joseph Addison

  Happiness, Distance, Lying

  Joseph Addison (1837). “The Works of Joseph Addison: The Spectator, no. 315-635”, p.308

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• Do not mathematics and all sciences seem full of contradictions and impossibilities to the ignorant, which are all resolved and cleared to those that understand them?

  Richard Baxter

  Ignorant, Contradiction, Mathematics

  Richard Baxter (1830). “The Practical Works of Richard Baxter: with a Life of the Author and a Critical Examination of His Writings by William Orme”, p.206

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• I've come to realize that the mark is the primal gesture, the internal connection of the caveman to the cosmos; an impossibility similar to an impulse in an insect's nervous system that it could somehow reduce to dust a steel beam by endlessly crawling over it.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Dust, Connections, Cosmos

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• Much of the magical effect that poetry gives of rendering everything it touches pellucid comes from the necessity of compression that it imposes. The impossibility of pausing in poetry as long as may be needed to make sense clear causes many a set of words actually deficient in linguistic workmanship to pass for an eloquent brevity.

  Laura Riding

  Long, Giving, May

  "The Promise of Words". London Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 17, p. 23, September 07, 1995.

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• A mature mind is one who understands the impossibility of knowing the ultimate, and with this understanding there is a new dimension: the dimension of being.

  Rajneesh

  Knowing, Understanding, Mind

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• An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands. Passion swells by gratification; and the impossibility of satisfying every one of his demands will oblige you to stop short at last, after he has become a little headstrong.

  Henry Home, Lord Kames

  Children, Passion, Childhood

  Henry Home (lord Kames.) (1818). “Introduction to the art of thinking, to which is prefixed an original life of the author”, p.55

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• There is a physical, not moral, impossibility of supplying the wants of the intellect in the state of civilisation at which we have arrived.

  Florence Nightingale

  Want, Moral, States

  Florence Nightingale (2008). “The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale”

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• Waiting for opportunities in the entertainment industry is an impossibility; they are not coming. You have to make your own.

  Thomas Lennon

  Opportunity, Waiting, Entertainment

  Source: collider.com

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• The war on drugs was an ideology the government came up with, and there never really was a war on drugs. I mean, to stop the importation of drugs into the United States of America is an impossibility.

  George Jung

  War, Mean, Government

  Source: www.pbs.org

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