Insistence Quotes - Page 5

• Ruskin's much-derided moral theory of art was part of an attempt to show that this human activity, which we value so highly, engaged the whole of human personality. His insistence on the sanctity of nature was part of an attempt to develop Goethe's intuition that form cannot be put together in the mind by an additive process, but is to be deduced from the laws of growth in living organisms, and their resistance to the elements.

  Kenneth Clark

  Art, Law, Personality

  John Ruskin, Kenneth Clark (1991). “Selected writings”, Penguin Group USA

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• When students are first at the Kerouac School we harp on Gertrude Stein's very basic poetic insistence that words are things . Not to invalidate your experience or all the great feelings you have, I tell them. Although poetry may be good for you, it's not therapy. You're making something with words which are visceral, muscular, active, not just markers of how you feel. And we have classes studying William Blake, Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Stein.

  Anne Waldman

  School, Class, Feelings

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• I am encouraged by the president-elect's [Donald Trump] insistence that NATO is a commitment that does not change. And his full commitment to NATO as the foundation for our international security I think is very important.

  Barack Obama

  Commitment, Thinking, President

  Source: time.com

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• I was not going to surrender to the status quo and corporate insistence that ordinary people have no power and influence.

  Rebecca Solnit

  People, Ordinary, Influence

  Source: therumpus.net

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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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• I might have arguments with the size of Reagan's military buildup, but given the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, staying ahead of the Soviets militarily seemed a sensible thing to do. Pride in our country, respect for our armed services, a healthy appreciation for the dangers beyond our borders, an insistence that there was no easy equivalence between East and West--in all this I had no quarrel with Reagan. And when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, I had to give the old man his due, even if I never gave him my vote.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Appreciation, Wall

  Barack Obama (2007). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.289, Canongate Books

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

  Robert H. Schuller

  Men, Theology

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Woodrow Wilson administration ended in tragedy, with his insistence on governing following his disabling stroke. I suspect President Wilson is often graded on a special curve, because many academic historians identify with him as one of their own.

  James M Strock

  Special, Tragedy, President

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• Laughter is spiritual health. And laughter is very unburdening. While you laugh, you can put your mind aside very easily. For a man who cannot laugh the doors of the buddha are closed. To me, laughter is one of the greatest values. No religion has ever thought about it. They have always been insisting on seriousness, and because of their insistence the whole world is psychologically sick.

  Rajneesh

  Spiritual, Laughter, Men

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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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• The material memories are not usually part of what is said about a picture, and that is a fault in interpretation because every painting captures a certain resistance of paint, a prodding gesture of the brush, a speed and insistence in the face of mindless matter.

  James Elkins

  Memories, Gestures, Matter

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.2, Routledge

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• The rhythmic pattern of the poem, which forces continuity of attention - incites a pleasurable compulsion to 'follow' - is either a tried metrical suasion-contrivance or a specially invented pattern of physical insistences, equally, if not more, binding in its effect on the reader. From a straight linguistic point of view, there is room for wonder if there is not latent vice in this environment in which pleasurable physically-compelled responses, produced by incidents of poetic utterance, are identified with the Good.

  Laura Riding

  Views, Vices, Attention

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

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• Part of the power of Emerson's individualism is his insistence, at crucial moments, that individualism does not mean isolation or self-sufficiency. This is not a paradox, for it is only the strong individual who can frankly concede the sometimes surprising extent of his own dependence.

  Robert D. Richardson

  Strong, Mean, Thinking

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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 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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