Inertia Quotes - Page 5

• I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.

  James Lovelock

  Meaningful, Clever, Thinking

  "James Lovelock on the value of sceptics and why Copenhagen was doomed". Interview with Leo Hickman, www.theguardian.com. March 29, 2010.

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• It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Thinking, Doe, Alive

  Rainer Maria Rilke, “Fear Of The Inexplicable”

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• My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language. . . . Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world--qualities that stick to the writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them.

  Italo Calvino

  Writing, Cities, People

  "Six Memos For This Millennium" by Sam Cooney, therumpus.net. November 22, 2010.

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• This fall I think you're riding for—it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.

  J. D. Salinger

  Fall, Men, Thinking

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• Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature's phenomena-magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams-which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote a friend later in life. "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.

  Walter Isaacson

  Children, Light, Later In Life

  Walter Isaacson (2008). “Einstein: His Life and Universe”, p.40, Simon and Schuster

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• Our self discoveries make us each a microcosm of the larger pattern of history. The inertia of introspection leads toward recollection, for only through memory is the past recaptured and understood. In the fact of experiencing and making the present, we are all actors.

  Terence McKenna

  Memories, Past, Discovery

  Terence McKenna (1998). “True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival”, M J F Books

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• Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.

  Milan Kundera

  Years, Knowing, Decision

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• Moreover, I would like to say that the sort of polar inertia we witnessed in the Kosovo War, the polar inertia involving 'automated war' and 'war-at-a-distance' is also terribly weak in the face of terrorism. For instance, in such situations, any individual who decides to place or throw a bomb can simply walk away. He or she has the freedom to move. This also applies to militant political groups and their actions.

  Paul Virilio

  Distance, War, Moving

  Source: ctheory.net

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• There were two unpleasant surprises [about Washington]. One was the inertia of Congress, the length of time it takes to get a complicated piece of legislation through ... and the other was the irresponsibility of the press.

  Jimmy Carter

  Two, Pieces, Surprise

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• We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country, or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia.

  Bill Moyers

  Country, Independent, Democracy

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• Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity; it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Creativity, Government, Machines

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• The different policies reduce damages by only a modest amount. Indeed, one of the surprises is how little the policies affect the damages from global warming. The reasons are that, because there is so much inertia in the climate system and because the Protocol reduced the global temperature increase by only a fraction of a degree over the next century.

  Henry Sylvester Jacoby

  Kyoto Protocol, Littles, Next

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• You must be prepared for further efforts of mind and body and further sacrifices to great causes, if you are not to fall back into the rut if inertia, the confusion of aim and the craven fear of being great.

  Winston Churchill

  Fall, Sacrifice, Confusion

  Winston Churchill (1986). “Triumph and Tragedy”, p.672, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Under a socialist mode of production all personal incentives which selfishness provides under capitalism are removed, and a premium is put upon laziness and negligence. Whereas in a capitalist society selfishness incites everyone to the utmost diligence, in a socialist society it makes for inertia and laxity.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Selfishness, Incentives, Laziness

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• To begin is easy; to persevere is sanctity.- Let your perseverance not be a blind consequence of the first impulse, the work of inertia: let it be a reflective perseverance.

  Josemaria Escriva

  Perseverance, Firsts, Persevere

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• The human mind is scattered. We have become negligent about our distractions, inertia, confusion, doubt, fear, and anger.

  Rajmani Tigunait

  Confusion, Doubt, Mind

  "The Secret of the Yoga Sutra: A Q&A with Pandit Rajmani Tigunait". SYF Interview, sedonayogafestival.com. April 25, 2014.

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• Unbreakable Productions (my company) provides fun, uplifting and inspirational content (and products soon!) on a regular basis to help viewers discover their inner strength, utilize the power of inner-inertia, and remain Unbreakable through life's challenges.

  Rachele Brooke Smith

  Uplifting, Fun, Challenges

  Source: www.nerdprobs.com

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• As each man's strength gives out, as it no longer responds to his will, the inertia of the whole gradually comes to rest on the commander's will alone. The ardor of his spirit must rekindle the flame of purpose in all others; his inward fire must revive their hope.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  Men, Fire, Flames

  Carl von Clausewitz, Michael Howard, Peter Paret (1989). “On War”, p.104, Princeton University Press

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• You see often it's not ideas, it's inertia, it's bureaucratism, it's all the other things that sometimes come in the way of a good idea.

  Vijay Prashad

  Ideas, Way, Sometimes

  "'Exiles From the Future': An Interview with Vijay Prashad". Interview with Andrew Stewart, www.counterpunch.org. August 17, 2016.

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• Americans, more than most people, believe that history is the result of individual decisions to implement conscious intentions. For Americans, more than most people, history has been that.... This sense of openness, of possibility and autonomy, has been a national asset as precious as the topsoil of the Middle West. But like topsoil, it is subject to erosion; it requires tending. And it is not bad for Americans to come to terms with the fact that for them too, history is a story of inertia and the unforeseen.

  George Will

  Believe, Erosion, People

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• The idea of salvation through some one or some thing outside of ourselves came from love of inertia. We want God or his Son to save us. We thought that Hapi would give us immortality if we flattered his vanity by praying to him.

  Alice Moore Hubbard

  Son, Vanity, Ideas

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• Just do right. Right may not be expedient, it may not be profitable, but it will satisfy your soul. It brings you the kind of protection that bodyguards can’t give you. So try to live your life in a way that you will not regret years of useless virtue and inertia and timidity.
  Take up the battle. Take it up.
  It’s yours. This is your life.
  This is your world.

  Maya Angelou

  Regret, Years, Giving

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• Being on a set where the director has lost control is just sickening. No one goes the extra mile, theres a lot of eye-rolling... it just breeds inertia. If a director is in control, the crew follow their leader. But the second anyone senses the directors are not sure, people just swoop in.

  Christine Vachon

  Eye, People, Leader

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• A nonviolent struggle necessarily involves construction on a small scale. It cannot therefore lead to tamas or darkness or inertia.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Struggle, Darkness, Construction

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• We have to tackle the triple malady which holds our villages fast in its grip; want of corporate sanitation, deficient diet and inertia.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Village, Want, Sanitation

  Mahatma Gandhi (1959). “India of My Dreams”, p.95, Rajpal & Sons

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