Insufficient Quotes - Page 4

• A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behavior, and strong communities are essential for human happiness. And yet our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous. While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it.

  Sam Harris

  Spiritual, Religious, Strong

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.221, W. W. Norton & Company

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• But pain seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Pain, Winning, Disability

  "Barrayar". Book by Lois McMaster Bujold, 1991.

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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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• 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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• 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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• It's imprecise and insufficient, defining the homosexual as a person whose gender expression is at odds with his or her sex.

  Alison Bechdel

  Sex, Odds, Expression

  Alison Bechdel (2007). “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic”, p.96, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.

  Eric Hoffer

  Failure, Inspiration, Persistence

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• A scientist strives to understand the work of Nature. But with our insufficient talents as scientists, we do not hit upon the truth all at once. We must content ourselves with tracking it down, enveloped in considerable darkness, which leads us to make new mistakes and errors. By diligent examination, we may at length little by little peel off the thickest layers, but we seldom get the core quite free, so that finally we have to be satisfied with a little incomplete knowledge.

  Torbern Bergman

  Mistake, Knowledge, Science

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• Time is in itself [not] a difficulty, but a time-rate, assumed on very insufficient grounds, is used as a master-key, whether or not it fits, to unravel all difficulties. What if it were suggested that the brick-built Pyramid of Hawara had been laid brick by brick by a single workman? Given time, this would not be beyond the bounds of possibility. But Nature, like the Pharaohs, had greater forces at her command to do the work better and more expeditiously than is admitted by Uniformitarians.

  Joseph Prestwich

  Nature, Science, Keys

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• The main problem with those who deny the existence of God is not intellectual. It is not because of insufficient information, or that God's manifestation of himself in nature has been obscured. The atheists' problem is not that they cannot know God, rather it is they do not want to know him. Man's problem with the existence of God is not an intellectual problem; it is a moral problem." For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men - Rom. 1:18"

  R. C. Sproul

  Atheist, Philosophical, Men

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• No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Criticism, Analysis, Adequate

  Henry David Thoreau (1962). “The journal of Henry D. Thoreau”

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• This fight has nothing to do with soldierly gallantry or principles of the Geneva Convention. If the fight against the partisans is not waged with the most brutal means, we will shortly reach the point where the available forces are insufficient to control the area. It is therefore not only justified, but it is the duty of the troops to use all means without restriction, even against women and children, so long as it ensures success.

  Wilhelm Keitel

  Children, War, Mean

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• Given the nature and magnitude of the challenge, national action alone is insufficient. No nation can address this challenge on its own. No region can insulate itself from these climate changes. That is why we need to confront climate change within a global framework, one that guarantees the highest level of international cooperation.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Challenges, Climate, Needs

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• In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Fall, Men, Pursuit Of Happiness

  I Have a Dream, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

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• The Cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble labourer in the vineyard of the Lord. The fact that the Lord knows how to work and to act even with inadequate instruments comforts me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Prayer, Humble, Mean

  Pope Benedict XVI's First Greeting as Pope, w2.vatican.va. April 19, 2005.

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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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• You must know, then, that there are two methods of fighting, the one by law, the other by force: the first method is that of men, the second of beasts; but as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Art, War, Fighting

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2017). “The Prince”, p.55, Knickerbocker Classics

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• It is necessary but insufficient to stay married for the children's sake. It is also
  necessary to stay happily married for the children's sake. I'm so glad someone
  noticed that marriage doesn't have to make you miserable. It is just so easy to
  be happy I don't understand why it isn't more popular.

  Frank Pittman

  Marriage, Children, Sake

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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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• 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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• 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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• Technical perfection is insufficient. It is an orphan without the true soul of the dancer.

  Sylvie Guillem

  Dance, Dancing, Perfection

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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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