Insistence Quotes - Page 4

• I associate the garden with the whole experience of being alive, and so, there is nothing in the range of human experience that is separate from what the garden can signify in its eagerness and its insistence, and in its driving energy to live -- to grow, to bear fruit.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Garden, Energy, Alive

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• Liberalism regards all absolutes with profound skepticism, including both moral imperatives and final solutions... Insistence upon any particular solution is the mark of an ideologue.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Faith, Freedom, Knowledge

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• Over the past fifty years or so, scientists have allowed the conventions of expression available to them to become entirely too confining, too confining. The insistence on bland impersonality and the widespread indifference to anything like the display of a unique human author in scientific exposition, have transformed the reading of most scientific papers into an act of tedious drudgery.

  David Mermin

  Reading, Science, Past

  "Boojums All the Way Through". Book by N. David Mermin, 1990.

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• It happens from time to time in every complex and active society, that certain persons feel the complexity and insistence as a tangle, and seek freedom in retirement, as Thoreau sought at Walden Pond. They do not, however, in this manner escape from the social institutions of their time, nor do they really mean to do so; what they gain, if they are successful, is a saner relation to them.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Retirement, Mean, Successful

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.429, Transaction Publishers

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• This insistence on "having his say upon the universe" is the profoundest motive of William James thinking as well as of his filial gratitude.

  Ralph Barton Perry

  Gratitude, Thinking, Motive

  "The Thought and Character of William James, Volume 1". Book by Ralph Barton Perry, 1935.

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• There is nothing in the basic principles of liberalism to make it a stationary creed; there are no hard-and-fast rules fixed once and for all. ... Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez faire.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Principles, Done, Thumbs

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 1 : The Abandoned Road, 1940 - 1943.

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• The real problem is not the religion itself, but its insistence that the interpretation it offers of the world is the only valid interpretation.

  Avtarjeet Singh Dhanjal

  Real, Religion, World

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• There is no ideal length, but you develop a little interior gauge that tells you whether or not you're supporting the house or detracting from it. When a piece gets too long, the tension goes out of it. That word—tension—has an animal insistence for me. A piece of writing rises and falls with tension. The writer holds one end of the rope and the reader holds the other end—is the rope slack, or is it tight? Does it matter to the reader what the next sentence is going to be?

  John Jeremiah Sullivan

  Fall, Writing, Animal

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• Personalism's insistence that only personality-finite and infinite-is ultimately real strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Real, Philosophical

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Alex Ayres (1993). “The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr”, Plume

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• The sorcerer's description of the world is perceivable. But our insistence on holding on to our standard version of reality renders us almost deaf and blind to it.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Reality, Deaf And Blind, World

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• Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.

  Paul Fussell

  Strong, Military, Discipline

  "Private Ryan was a hero, but there were bums, too" by Stephen Ambrose, www.cnn.com. August 5, 1998.

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• Obama's immigration legacy will be the juxtaposition of his serial insistence that he was not a king or an emperor, and could not contravene the Constitution by granting a blanket amnesty, with his efforts to do just that when it was no longer politically inexpedient. I don't think a president has ever quite so habitually warned the country of the dangers that would soon emanate from himself.

  Victor Davis Hanson

  Country, Kings, Thinking

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• Classical theology has erred in its insistence that theology be 'God-centered,' not 'man-centered'.

  Robert H. Schuller

  Men, Theology

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• The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?... With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?

  Emma Goldman

  Heart, Space, Soul

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• The insistence on truthfulness does not disturb the freedom of the individual. The social obligation implied in Satyagraha turns the freedom of the individual into moral freedom. An atheist is free to say or to do what he likes, provided he does what he says and says what he does. So, in the context of social relations, the freedom of the individual is moral freedom.

  Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

  Atheist, Atheism, Doe

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• The underlying motivation that drives all addiction is our insistence on avoiding pain. However, the pain you are avoiding is based in the past, and has nothing to do with the present moment.

  Leonard Jacobson

  Pain, Motivation, Past

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• The decision to attack the entire nation [of Yugoslavia] has been counterproductive, and our destruction of civilian life has now become senseless and excessively brutal. ... The United States' insistence on the use of cluster bombs, designed to kill or maim humans, is condemned almost universally and brings discredit on our nation (as does our refusal to support a ban on land mines). Even for the world's only superpower, the ends don't always justify the means.

  Jimmy Carter

  Mean, Land, Yugoslavia

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• Smoke veils the air like souls in drifting suspension, declining the war's insistence everyone move on.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  War, Moving, Air

  FaceBook post by Jayne Anne Phillips from Jun 20, 2011

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• Anyone familiar with the numerous accounts of the Buddha's extraordinary compassion and reverence for living beings - for example his insistence that his monks strain the water they drink lest they inadvertently cause the death of any micro-organisms - could never believe that he would be indifferent to the sufferings of domestic animals caused by their slaughter of food

  Philip Kapleau

  Believe, Animal, Compassion

  Philip Kapleau (1982). “To Cherish All Life: A Buddhist Case for Becoming Vegetarian”, Harper San Francisco

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• The mind's deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man's unconscious feeling in the face of his universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Feelings, Mind

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.17, Vintage

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• The clash between the aspirations of the people for a better life and the insistence of their rulers on building a powerful state, regardless of human sacrifice, runs through the whole of Russian history

  Harrison Salisbury

  Running, Powerful, Sacrifice

  Harrison Evans Salisbury (1965). “Russia”, Scribner

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• The insistence that the commercialisation of the body is a fit subject for political discussion and intervention is well overdue.

  Susie Orbach

  Political, Body, Fit

  "Ad men today are wrong on body size" by Susie Orbach, www.theguardian.com. July 30, 2010.

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• I fell into writing, I suppose, being one of those awful children who wrote verses. I went to a convent in New York-the Blessed Sacrament... I was fired from there, finally, for a lot of things, among them my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion.

  Dorothy Parker

  Hilarious, New York, Children

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• What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Deception, Needs, Irreverence

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• People who blame the Bible for the modern destruction of nature have failed to see its delight in the variety and individuality of creatures and its insistence upon their holiness. But that delight-in, say, the final chapters of Job or the 104th Psalm-is far more useful to the cause of conservation than the undifferentiating abstractions of science... Reverence gives standing to creatures, and to our perception of them, just as the law gives standing to a citizen.

  Wendell Berry

  Jobs, Animal, Law

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