Insufficient Quotes - Page 3

• When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.

  Emile Durkheim

  Law, Unnecessary, Sufficient

  Attributed to Emile Durkheim in "Readings in Renewing American Civilization" edited by Jeffrey A. Eisenach and Albert Stephen Hanser (p. 54), 1993.

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• Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain -- from cosmology to psychology to economics -- has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture. Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.

  Sam Harris

  Book, Our World, Self

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• It is often said that reading is a gift, but to my mind that is an insufficient description, for the size of the gift of reading is so vast that it is difficult to see what is outside its wrapping.

  Daniel Handler

  Reading, Mind, Size

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• For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one's strength, and both eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right quantity produces, increases and preserves it. So it is the same with temperance, courage and the other virtues. This much then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended.

  Aristotle

  Drinking, Mean, Exercise

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• Virtue is insufficient temptation.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Temptation, Virtue

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• Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.

  George Santayana

  Clouds, Air, Wind

  George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2013). “The The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Society, Volume VII, Book Two”, p.115, MIT Press

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• In the '90s, there was scant presidential leadership and insufficient domestic political mobilization for foreign policy grounded in human rights.

  Samantha Power

  Rights, Presidential, Political

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• While one man can discover a certain thing by himself, another is never able to understand it, even if taught by means of all possible expressions and metaphors, and during a long period; his mind can in no way grasp it, his capacity is insufficient for it.

  Maimonides

  Mean, Men, Expression

  Moses Maimonides, Aeterna Press (1948). “The Guide for the Perplexed”, p.123, Aeterna Press

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• It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

  William James

  Believe, Philosophical, Government

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.9, 谷月社

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• What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.

  Sam Harris

  Inspirational, Motivational, Spiritual

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• The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, Atheism, Belief

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• The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.

  Steven Pinker

  Blow, Oxygen, Knives

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.64, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It is possible that these may all be insufficient to control the caprice and wickedness of man. But are they not all that government will admit, and all that human prudence can devise?

  James Madison

  Men, Wickedness, May

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Henry Barton Dawson (1864). “The Fœderalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favor of the New Constitution, as Agreed Upon by the Fœderal Convention, September 17, 1787. Reprinted from the Original Text. With an Historical Introduction and Notes”, p.399, New York : C. Scribner ; London : Sampson Low

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• A total spiritual direction given to the whole life and the whole nature can alone lift humanity beyond itself. . . It is only the full emergence of the soul, the full descent of the native light and power of the Spirit and the consequent replacement or transformation and uplifting of our insufficient mental and vital nature by a spiritual and supramental Supernature that can effect this evolutionary miracle.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Uplifting, Spiritual, Light

  Sri Aurobindo (2016). “The Future Evolution of Man: The Divine Life on Earth”, p.39, editionNEXT.com

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• You have heard of the new chemical nomenclature endeavored to be introduced by Lavoisier, Fourcroy, &c. Other chemists of this country, of equal note, reject it, and prove in my opinion that it is premature, insufficient and false. These latter are joined by the British chemists; and upon the whole, I think the new nomenclature will be rejected, after doing more harm than good. There are some good publications in it, which must be translated into the ordinary chemical language before they will be useful.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Science, Thinking

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• Courage is the human virtue that counts most-courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have.

  Robert Frost

  Courage, Knowledge, Challenges

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• [Sherlock Holmes:] The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Data, Temptation, Form

  Arthur Conan Doyle (1993). “The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes”, p.852, Wordsworth Editions

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• Whoever aims publicly at great things and at length perceives secretly that he is too weak to achieve them, has usually also insufficient strength to renounce his aims publicly, and then inevitably becomes a hypocrite.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Hypocrite, Hypocrisy, Achieve

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two”, p.217, Courier Corporation

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• Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, inpregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children.

  David Hume

  Nature, Children, Science

  David Hume (1874). “A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, p.452

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• Intelligence is an extremely subtle concept. It's a kind of understanding that flourishes if it's combined with a good memory, but exists anyway even in the absence of good memory. It's the ability to draw consequences from causes, to make correct inferences, to foresee what might be the result, to work out logical problems, to be reasonable, rational, to have the ability to understand the solution from perhaps insufficient information. You know when a person is intelligent, but you can be easily fooled if you are not yourself intelligent.

  Isaac Asimov

  Memories, Science, Intelligent

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• There are no bad people, there are people with insufficient information to make appropriate decisions.

  Jacque Fresco

  People, Decision, Information

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• In my small way, I preserved and catalogued, and dipped into the vast ocean of learning that awaited, knowing all the time that the life of one man was insufficient for even the smallest part of the wonders that lay within. It is cruel that we are granted the desire to know, but denied the time to do so properly. We all die frustrated; it is the greatest lesson we have to learn.

  Iain Pears

  Ocean, Men, Knowing

  Iain Pears (1999). “An Instance of the Fingerpost”, Berkley Publishing Group

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• School was more than academics; an education prepared you for the humdrum of real life: working with others, tempering one's personality to assimilate with the group but without losing your individual identity, understading the factors of logic, reasoning, and debate. For a person - vampire or human - to succeed in the world, unlocking the mysteries of the universe was insufficient. One would also need to grasp the mysteries of human nature.

  Melissa de la Cruz

  Real, School, Personality

  Melissa de la Cruz (2010). “The Van Alen Legacy: Number 4 in series”, p.165, Hachette UK

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• Yes, of course, there's something fishy about describing people's feelings. You try hard to be accurate, but as soon as you start to define such and such a feeling, language lets you down. It's really a machine for making falsehoods. When we really speak the truth, words are insufficient. Almost everything except things like "pass the gravy" is a lie of a sort. And that being the case, I shall shut up. Oh, and... pass the gravy.

  Iris Murdoch

  Lying, People, Feelings

  "Fictional character: Iris Murdoch". "Iris", www.imdb.com. 2001.

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• Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

  Samuel Butler

  Life, Wisdom, Art

  Notebooks "Life" (1912)

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