Literal Quotes - Page 8

• Cross-pollination and "contamination" is really important to the health of fiction, and sometimes it's a literal conversation, too, in that writers who might never otherwise meet and talk do so because of our anthologies.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Important, Fiction, Might

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

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• In the modern corporation the decisive power, that of the managers , is derived from no one but the managers themselves controlled by nobody and nothing and responsible to no one. It is in the most literal sense unfounded, unjustified, uncontrolled and irresponsible power.

  Peter Drucker

  Corporations, Modern, Responsible

  Peter F. Drucker (2017). “The Future of Industrial Man”, p.74, Routledge

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• There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.

  Edmund Burke

  Witty, Knowledge, Important

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• Departure from the literal aspect, rather than mechanical exactness, is the code of the true artist. However, departures are the result of studied intent rather than inability.

  Edgar Alwin Payne

  Artist, Inability, Departure

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• The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia [was] the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced.

  Ayn Rand

  Russia, Roots, Anxiety

  Ayn Rand (1984). “Philosophy: Who Needs It”, p.71, Penguin

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• I have grounded my preaching upon the literal word; he that pleases may follow me; he that will not may stay.

  Martin Luther

  May, Follow Me, Preaching

  Martin Luther (2012). “The Table Talk of Martin Luther”, p.4, Courier Corporation

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• I am a terrible and lazy Christian. I do not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. I just skip about a third of it. I love the parts I love so much, but I find a lot of it just appalling. When a right-wing person quotes a passage in order to attack and stigmatize another person--or group of people--I just roll my eyes.

  Anne Lamott

  Christian, Believe, Eye

  "Interview with Anne Lamott, Author of Help, Thanks, Wow". Interview with Jana Llewellyn, www.friendsjournal.org. January 30, 2013.

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• I have always endeavoured, as my double duty of believer and sovereign dictated, to follow the precepts of the sacred Book of Islam: precepts of balance, justice and moderation. Although my religious education was very literal, in that I learnt to understand the precepts of the Koran precisely according to the text, we have seen that on several occasions throughout my life, I have felt myself to be very particularly in the hands of the Almighty.

  Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

  Religious, Book, Hands

  "The Shah's Story". Book by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, p. 166, 1980.

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• Though beauty is, with the most apt similitude, I had almost said with the most literal truth, called a flower that fades and dies almost in the very moment of its maturity; yet there is, methinks, a kind of beauty which lives even to old age; a beauty that is not in the features, but, if I may be allowed the expression, shines through them. As it is not merely corporeal it is not the object of mere sense, nor is it to be discovered but by persons of true taste and refined sentiment.

  Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

  Beauty, Flower, Maturity

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• I do not know why one should not hunt two hares even in the literal sense....

  Anton Chekhov

  Determination, Hunting, Two

  "Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends: With Biographical Sketch". Book by Anton Chekhov, 1920.

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• In the performance of an illocutionary act in the literal utterance of a sentence, the speaker intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect; and furthermore, if he is using the words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expression with the production of that effect.

  John Searle

  Mean, Expression, Utterance

  "Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language". Book by John Searle, 1969.

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• Faith is from within; it is the outbreaking of human spontaneity; it is force of soul, grandeur of sentiment, magnanimity, generosity, courage. Its formulas are naturally unintelligible in their literal tenor; for, otherwise, they would represent that which is scientifically known, and would not be the mere provisional clothing of that which is not objectively given, but subjectively projected from the inmost depth of the soul.

  William Batchelder Greene

  Generosity, Soul, Depth

  William Batchelder Greene (1871). “The Blazing Star”, p.6

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• I tell you, Heaven is a real, literal, physical place, a city as material, as physical, as literal as Chicago or London or New York or Tokyo.

  John R. Rice

  New York, Real, Cities

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• The devil, as a master of deceit, does everything he can to keep people from believing in the existence of a hell; but hell is a literal state of existence that will be the plight of all those who reject the Lord Jesus Christ.

  Tim LaHaye

  Jesus, Believe, People

  Tim LaHaye (2010). “Revelation Unveiled”, p.418, Zondervan

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• I’d like to see a forklift lift a crate of forks. It’d be so damn literal! You are using that machine to it’s exact purpose!

  Mitch Hedberg

  Purpose, Machines, Forks

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• A knowledge of the true age of the Earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do.

  Francis Crick

  Believe, Age, Records

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• Compulsion in the literal Sense is maliciously misrepresented, by supposing it authorizes Violences committed against the Truth. The Answer to this; by which it is prov'd, that the literal Sense does in reality authorize the stirring up Persecutions against the Cause of Truth, and that an erroneous Conscience has the same Rights as an enlighten'd Conscience.

  Pierre Bayle

  Reality, Rights, Atheism

  Pierre Bayle, John Kilcullen, Chandran Kukathas (2005). “A philosophical commentary on these words of the Gospel, Luke 14.23: "Compel them to come in, that My house may be full"”, Liberty Fund Inc.

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• Space and force pervade language. Many cognitive scientists (including me) have concluded from their research on language that a handful of concepts about places, paths, motions, agency, and causation underlie the literal or figurative meanings of tens of thousands of words and constructions, not only in English but in every other language that has been studied.

  Steven Pinker

  Agency, Space, Research

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.355, W. W. Norton & Company

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• When every event was a miracle, when there was no order or system or law, there was no occasion for studying any subject, or being interested in anything excepting a religion which took care of the soul. As man doubted the primitive conceptions about religion, and no longer accepted the literal, miraculous teachings of ancient books, he set himself to understand nature.

  Clarence Darrow

  Book, Teaching, Men

  "Why I Am an Agnostic: Including Expressions of Faith from a Protestant, a Catholic and a Jew". Book by Clarence Darrow, 1929.

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• The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Biblical, Order, Years

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• It is evident, indeed, that such a doctrine, taken by itself in a literal manner, had no future. The world, in continuing to exist, caused it to crumble. One generation of man at the most was the limit of its endurance. The faith of the first Christian generation is intelligible, but the faith of the second generation is no longer so. After the death of John, or of the last survivor, whoever he might be, of the group which had seen the master, the word of Jesus was convicted of falsehood.

  Ernest Renan

  Christian, Jesus, Taken

  Ernest Renan (2015). “The Life of Jesus: Works of Renan”, 谷月社

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• Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people - as may be noticed of most young children - does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Children, Self, Years

  "A Woman's Thoughts About Women" by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik, (Ch. 8), 1858.

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• God's truth is literal truth. The illumined mind has more operative cells. In reclaiming the mystical, we take back our whole selves. Formerly barren mental lands spring to new life through the planting of spiritual seeds.

  Marianne Williamson

  Spiritual, Spring, Self

  Marianne Williamson (1994). “Illuminata: A Return to Prayer”, Riverhead Trade (Paperbacks)

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• Language is power, in ways more literal than most people think. When we speak, we exercise the power of language to transform reality. Why don't more of us realize the connection between language and power?

  Julia Penelope

  Exercise, Thinking, Reality

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• I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.

  W. Eugene Smith

  Attitude, Artist, Odds

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