Insignificant Quotes - Page 4

• I wake up like this, this sense that I've somehow been transported to an alternate universe where my life took a left instead of a right beacuse of some seeemingly insignificant yet cosmically crucial choice I've made, about a girl or a kiss or a date or a job or which Starbucks I went into...something.

  Jonathan Tropper

  Girl, Jobs, Kissing

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• CO2 is a minor player in the total system, and human CO2 emissions are insignificant compared to total natural greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, lowering human CO2 emissions will have no measurable effect on climate, and continued CO2 emissions will have little or no effect on future temperature....While controlling CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels may have some beneficial effects on air quality, it will have no measurable effect on climate, but great detrimental effects on the economy and our standard of living.

  Jonathan Duhamel

  Player, Air, Quality

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• Strict punctuality is perhaps the cheapest virtue which can give force to an otherwise utterly insignificant character.

  John Frederick Boyes

  Character, Giving, Punctuality

  John Frederick Boyes (1859). “Life and Books: Or, Records of Thought and Reading”, p.4

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• I believe in the possible. I believe, small though we are, insignificant though we may be, we can reach a full understanding of the universe. You were right when you said you felt small, looking up at all that up there. We are very, very small, but we are profoundly capable of very, very big things.

  Stephen Hawking

  Believe, Understanding, May

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• I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.

  John le Carre

  Fatherhood, Example, Able

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• We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

  Jimmy Carter

  People, Different, Sin

  "SUNDAY INTERVIEW - A Statesman And a Man Of Faith / With a lifetime of public service to his credit, the former president reflects on the beliefs that have sustained him". Interview with Don Lattin, www.sfgate.com. January 12, 1997.

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• It's like you have a child and you think, 'Everything that I've done up until this point is insignificant in comparison to being a father.' It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

  Vin Diesel

  Beautiful, Children, Father

  "Vin Diesel: I Want To Be A Good Dad". Parade Magazine Interview, parade.com. August 25, 2008.

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• I used to go to the Improvisation Comedy Club every night in Times Square. How I didn't get killed in that area either means that 1) God is watching over me or 2) I am so insignificant to God that he didn't bother having me killed.

  Gilbert Gottfried

  Mean, Night, Squares

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• Now here's what I'm saying: I've always believed that every other month we hear about compromisation of bank records, I think that's the CIA and the FBI. Now let me tell you why I'm saying this. I don't believe no insignificant pip-squeak is going to be able to pull this off month after month and we can't find out what's going on.

  Dick Gregory

  Believe, Thinking, Records

  "Dick Gregory's Role as Michael Jackson's Adviser". "News & Notes" with Ed Gordon, www.npr.org. July 12, 2005.

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• It means a great deal to those who are oppressed to know that they are not alone. And never let anyone tell you that what you are doing is insignificant.

  Desmond Tutu

  Ignorance, Mean, Rights

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• One penny may seem to you a very insignificant thing, but it is the small seed from which fortunes spring.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Money, Spring, Insignificant Things

  Orison Swett Marden (1907). “The Optimistic Life”

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• When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements … while remaining heedless of the world’s barbarism. I don’t say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn’t notice if they had. The old times were good because then we were young, and ignorant of how ignorant the young can be.

  Julian Barnes

  Regret, Thinking, Ignorant

  Julian Barnes (1984). “Flaubert's parrot”, Vintage

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• They would grow up grappling with ways of living with what happened. They would try to tell themselves that in terms of geological time it was an insignificant event. Just a blink of the Earth Woman's eye. That Worse Things had happened. That Worse Things kept happening. But they would find no comfort in the thought.

  Arundhati Roy

  Growing Up, Eye, Trying

  Arundhati Roy (2002). “The God of Small Things”, p.55, Penguin Books India

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• American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Achievement, Journalism

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.95, Knopf

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• The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star.

  Roland Barthes

  Stars, Real, Missing

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• I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

  Chaim Potok

  Eye, Men, Long

  Chaim Potok (2016). “The Chosen”, p.234, Simon and Schuster

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• All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest. Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Differences, Civilization, Political

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "The Value of Freedom". Chapter 2: "The Creative Power of a Free Civilization", 1960.

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• when we look up, it widens our horizons. we see what a little speck we are in the universe, so insignificant, and we all take ourselves so seriously, but in the sky, there are no boundaries. No differences of caste or religion or race.

  Julia Gregson

  Differences, Race, Sky

  Julia Gregson (2009). “East of the Sun: A Novel”, p.304, Simon and Schuster

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• It is hard to be angry when one has seen the sun rise,' she said. It seems to be true,' he admitted. 'I wonder why.' Because it makes one feel so small and insignificant. It has been rising forever and will rise forever no matter what we do or do not do. All our problems are as nothing to the sun.

  David Gemmell

  Forever, Rising, Matter

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• Nature is always lavish of her gifts even to the most insignificant forms. The butterflies and moths are richly dowered in this respect.

  Annie Besant

  Nature, Butterfly, Form

  Annie Wood Besant (1884). “Our Corner”

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• As much as I don't care about those things, I think it's human nature to not want to feel totally insignificant.

  Megan McCafferty

  Thinking, Care, Want

  Megan McCafferty (2007). “Second Helpings: A Jessica Darling Novel”, p.149, Broadway Books

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• I assure you, my children, that when a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God. That is why I have told you so often, and hammered away at it, that the Christian vocation consists in making heroic verse out of the prose of each day. Heaven and earth seem to merge, my children, on the horizon. But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday lives.

  Josemaria Escriva

  Faith, Christian, Children

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• Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again... Closed in the darkness, it was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Savior... Are these things minor or insignificant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state?

  Gregory of Nyssa

  Faith, Inspiration, Moving

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• I live for that exhilarating moment when I'm in an airplane rushing down the runway and pull on the stick and feel lift under its wings. It's a magical feeling to climb toward the heavens, seeing objects and people on the ground grow smaller and more insignificant. You have left that world beneath you. You are inside the sky.

  Gordon Cooper

  Airplane, Sky, Wings

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• I'd like to quit thinking of the present as some minor insignificant preamble to something else.

  Richard Linklater

  Confused, Thinking, Quitting

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