Irrelevance Quotes

• If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.

  Eric Shinseki

  Inspirational, Change, Innovation

  "No Longer a Soldier, Shinseki Has a New Mission". Article by James Dao, Thom Shanker, www.nytimes.com. November 10, 2009.

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• Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.

  Eric Schmidt

  Cost, Might, Information

  "Google Executive Chairman’s 3 World-Changing Predictions" by Robert Lockard, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 12, 2013.

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• Very often the law of extremity demands an attention to irrelevance.

  Janet Frame

  Law, Attention, Demand

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• Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Life, Window

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.10, Wesleyan University Press

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• I've never worked where it was hard to be gay. Besides, being gay is a spectacular irrelevance to getting on with your life.

  Clive Barker

  Gay, Spectacular, Hard

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• If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more.

  Eric Shinseki

  Ifs, Dislike

  "Marines Turned Soldiers". National Review Online, December 10, 2001.

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• What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Country, Hurt, Brave

  Christopher Hitchens (2014). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.253, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• To talk about religion except in terms of human psychology is an irrelevance.

  Aldous Huxley

  Psychology, Term, Humans

  Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1926-1929”, Ivan R Dee

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• Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.

  Angela Carter

  Life, Art, Mean

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• one could drown in irrelevance.

  Ian Mcewan

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• An irrelevance, and your life's altered.

  Aldous Huxley

  Altered

  Aldous Huxley “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley”

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• And this is how I know that it's all just words, words, words - that fundamentally, they make no difference... Our relationship, for as long as things were good, and in that moment when they could have been good again, was about the irrelevance of words. You feel what you feel, you act as you act, who in the history of the world has ever been convinced by a well-reasoned argument?

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Differences, Long, World

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• A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.

  Shashi Tharoor

  Wise, Philosophical, Fate

  "The Great Indian Novel". Book by Shashi Tharoor, August 24, 1989.

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• Innovation is the only insurance against irrelevance.

  Gary Hamel

  Innovation

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• Irrelevance happens when the speed of change outside an organization is greater than speed of change inside an organization.

  Rick Warren

  Leadership, Christian, Organization

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• We who advocate peace are becoming an irrelevance when we speak peace. The government speaks rubber bullets, live bullets, tear gas, police dogs, detention, and death.

  Desmond Tutu

  Dog, Government, Police

  Sunday Times Magazine, June 08, 1986.

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• Men have always been a prey to distractions, which arethe original sins of the mind; but never before today has an attempt been made to organize and exploit distractions, to make of them, because of their economic importance, the core and vital center of human life, to idealize them as the highest manifestations of mental activity. Ours is an age of systematized irrelevances, and the imbecile within us has become one of the Titans, upon whose shoulders rests the weight of the social and economic system

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Origin Of Life, Mind

  Aldous Huxley (1992). “Huxley and God: essays”, Harpercollins

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• The question of relevance comes before that of truth, because to ask whether a statement is true or false presupposes that it is relevant (so that to try to assert the truth or falsity of an irrelevant statement is a form of confusion).

  David Bohm

  Truth, Science, Confusion

  David Bohm (2005). “Wholeness and the Implicate Order”, p.42, Routledge

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• Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.

  Joe Abercrombie

  Lying, People, Purpose

  Joe Abercrombie (2009). “Last Argument Of Kings: The First Law: Book Three”, p.161, Hachette UK

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• As you learn more and more about the irrelevance of human life to the general mechanism of the universe, the idea of an interested god, becomes increasingly implausible.

  Steven Weinberg

  Ideas, Human Life, Humans

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• Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Truth, Philosophy, Arise

  Edgar Allan Poe, Stuart Levine, Susan Levine (1976). “The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition”, p.213, University of Illinois Press

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• What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

  Neil Postman

  Truth, Fear, Book

  "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business". Book by Neil Postman, 1985.

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• His response was remarkable for its irrelevance, if for nothing else.

  Elizabeth Kenny

  Community, Remarkable, Response

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• A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature.

  Charles Lamb

  Family, Poor, Relation

  'Last Essays of Elia' (1833) 'Poor Relations'

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• There are other great writers who are not read properly in their own day for the reason, perhaps, that their readers are not yet born. What they have to say to their own generation is said so at cross-purposes and with such apparent irrelevance that it is not understood. They are, as it were, giants who tower above their own age to cast their shadows across the next.

  Caroline Gordon

  Shadow, Age, Giants

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