Inconvenient Quotes

• The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

  Anthony Kennedy

  Freedom, Government, Doe

  International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672, caselaw.lp.findlaw.com. June 26, 1992.

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• There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

  Denis Diderot

  Inspirational, Literature, Doe

  "Dictionary of Foreign Quotations" by Mary Collison, p. 235, 1980.

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• He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.

  Walter Lippmann

  Honor, Duty, Dangerous

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface to Morals”, p.224, Transaction Publishers

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• President Barack Obama has stood watch over the greatest job loss in modern American history. And that, my friends, is one inconvenient truth that will haunt this President throughout history.

  Mitt Romney

  Jobs, Loss, President

  "It's All About the Jobs". Mitt Romney's speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, www.foxnews.com. February 11, 2011.

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• Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, "What were our parents thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?" We have to hear that question from them, now.

  Al Gore

  Thinking, Parent, Generations

  "An Inconvenient Truth". Documentary, www.imdb.com. June 30, 2006.

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• It is just human nature to take time to connect the dots, I know that.  But I also know that there can be a day of reckoning when you wish you had connected the dots more quickly.

  Al Gore

  Wish, Dots, Human Nature

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• Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Truth, Trying, Ifs

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.554, Routledge

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• You see that pale, blue dot? That's us. Everything that has ever happened in all of human history, has happened on that pixel. All the triumphs and all the tragedies, all the wars all the famines, all the major advances... it's our only home. And that is what is at stake, our ability to live on planet Earth, to have a future as a civilization. I believe this is a moral issue, it is your time to seize this issue, it is our time to rise again to secure our future.

  Al Gore

  War, Believe, Home

  "An Inconvenient Truth". Documentary, www.imdb.com. June 30, 2006.

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• It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

  Upton Sinclair

  Wisdom, Men, People

  Quoted in Evan Esar, The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949)

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• Because most Christians want it both ways. They want to be able to proudly declare they are believers in the Bible and yet simply ignore those parts they find too difficult or too inconvenient to believe.

  Dan Brown

  Christian, Believe, Want

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• People who live with OCD drag a mental sea anchor around. Obsession is a brake, a source of drag, not a badge of creativity, a mark of genius or an inconvenient side effect of some greater function.

  David Adam

  Creativity, Anchors, Sea

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• It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

  James Weldon Johnson

  Black, Disgrace

  James Weldon Johnson (2012). “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”, p.72, Courier Corporation

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• It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them, they always purr: "If they would only purr for 'yes,' and mew for 'no,; or any rule of that sort," she had said, "so that one could keep up a conversation! But how can you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?

  Lewis Carroll

  Habit, Kitten, Made

  "Through the Looking-Glass". Book by Lewis Carroll, Chapter 12: Which Dreamed it?, 1871.

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• No matter how high are one's estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one's activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.

  Carlo M. Cipolla

  Stupid, Intelligent, People

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• Liberals and leftists have been dismissing inconvenient facts by attacking motives for generations. In the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, Soviet spies and abettors attacked the motives of their accusers because the fact of their guilt was undeniable. In the 1960s, over a thousand psychiatrists who'd never even met Barry Goldwater signed a petition saying the GOP candidate was too mentally unstable to be president.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Guilt, Spy, President

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• Almost all systems of economic thought are premised on the idea of continued economic growth, which would be fine and dandy if we lived on an infinite planet, but there's this small, niggling, inconvenient fact that the planet is, in fact, finite, and that, unlike economic theory, it is governed by physical and biological reality

  George Monbiot

  Business, Reality, Ideas

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• When a denomination begins to consider doctrine divisive, theology troublesome, and convictions inconvenient, consider that denomination on its way to a well-deserved death.

  Albert Mohler

  Doctrine, Way, Conviction

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• Prison is quite literally a ghetto in the most classic sense of the word, a place where the U.S. government now puts not only the dangerous but also the inconvenient—people who are mentally ill, people who are addicts, people who are poor and uneducated and unskilled. Meanwhile the ghetto in the outside world is a prison as well, and a much more difficult one to escape from than this correctional compound. In fact, there is basically a revolving door between our urban and rural ghettos and the formal ghetto of our prison system.

  Piper Kerman

  Ghetto, Government, Doors

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• You, too, will someday die, perhaps under inconvenient circumstances, at a time when you do not particularly wish to, and for causes that you cannot yet predict.

  Mallory Ortberg

  Wish, Causes, Someday

  Source: www.slate.com

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• Too often, we have failed to enforce international norms when it's inconvenient to do so.

  Barack Obama

  Norm, International

  Remarks As Prepared for Delivery by President Barack Obama, Address to the United Nations General Assembly, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. September 24, 2014.

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• The myth of the dead Indian goes back to the Protestant settlement of the U.S. The Pilgrims wanted to start a new life in America. They wanted to believe that in some sense they had come to a new Eden and that they could leave history behind in Europe. So they convinced themselves that this land had no history, that this was "virgin" land. This made the Indians' presence inconvenient.

  Richard Rodriguez

  Believe, Europe, Land

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• There is no peace precisely because there has been no justice. As painful and inconvenient as justice may be, we have seen that the alternative allowing accountability to fall by the wayside is worse.

  Desmond Tutu

  Fall, Justice, Accountability

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• Everyone works hard when they want to, when they get quick results, when it's convenient to put forth effort. The best work hard when they don't want to, when it's inconvenient to give it that little extra effort... and that extra effort might be just what they need to place them on top.

  Peter Vidmar

  Work, Gymnastics, Giving

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• Physicists, being in no way different from the rest of the population, have short memories for what is inconvenient.

  Anthony Standen

  Memories, Population, Different

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• The society wants you to have beautiful personalities; the society wants you to have personalities which are comfortable for the society, convenient for the society. But the person is not the real thing, the individual is the real thing. The individual is not necessarily always comfortable to the society - in fact he is very inconvenient.

  Rajneesh

  Beautiful, Real, Personality

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