Mere Quotes - Page 34

• Mere change is not growth. Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity there is no growth.

  C. S. Lewis

  Growth, Synthesis, Continuity

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “Selected Literary Essays”, p.105, Cambridge University Press

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• Not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes; tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice.

  Barack Obama

  Opportunity, Justice, Pro Life

  Second Presidential Inaugural Address, delivered 21 January 2013, Washington, D.C.

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• Happiness, to some, is elation; to others it is mere stagnation.

  Amy Lowell

  Happiness, Elation, Stagnation

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• ... the community suffers nothing very terrible if its cobblers are bad and become degenerate and pretentious; but if the Guardians of its laws and constitution, who alone have the opportunity to bring it good government and prosperity, become a mere sham, then clearly it is completely ruined.

  Plato

  Opportunity, Government, Law

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• Their military training will ensure success in war, but they must maintain unity by not allowing the state to grow to large, and by ensuring that the measures for promotion and demotion from one class to another are carried out. Above all they must maintain the educational system unchanged; for on education everything else depends, and it is an illusion to imagine that mere legislation without it can effect anything of consequence.

  Plato

  Military, War, Educational

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• History will never change because of politics or conquests or theories or wars; that's mere repitition, it's been going on since the beginning of time. History will only change when we are able to use the energy of love, just as we use energy of the wind, the seas, the atom.

  Paulo Coelho

  War, Wind, Sea

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• It [the scientific revolution] outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom. . . . It looms so large as the real origin of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance.

  Herbert Butterfield

  Real, Science, Historical

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• Go for the moon. If you don't get it, you'll still be heading for a star. Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of the creative effort.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Inspirational, Success, Stars

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• Whatever the lengths to which others may go, His Majesty's Government will never resort to the deliberate attack on women and children and other civilians for purposes of mere terrorism.

  Neville Chamberlain

  Children, Government, May

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• It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed...I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.

  Winston Churchill

  Military, Communication, Land

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood between sincere men of all denominations.

  Helen Keller

  Men, Tolerance, Brotherhood

  Helen Keller (2012). “Optimism”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

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• People who are so dreadfully "devoted" to their wives are so apt, from mere habit, to get devoted to other people's wives as well.

  Jane Welsh Carlyle

  People, Wife, Infidelity

  Jane Welsh Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle, James Anthony Froude (2011). “Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle”, p.101, Cambridge University Press

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• There is a way in which the collective knowledge of mankind expresses itself, for the finite individual, through mere daily living . . . a way in which life itself is sheer knowing.

  Laurens van der Post

  Life, Knowing, Individuality

  Laurens Van der Post (1979). “Venture to the interior”, Harcourt

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• The way life manages information involves a logical structure that differs fundamentally from mere complex chemistry. Therefore chemistry alone will not explain life's origin, any more than a study of silicon, copper and plastic will explain how a computer can execute a program.

  Paul Davies

  Information, Way, Study

  "The secret of life won't be cooked up in a chemistry lab" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. January 13, 2013.

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• In Western society, and particularly in American society, imagination is stulified from infancy. The imaginative child is discouraged and upbraided. He is told that the process is mere dreaming, that it wastes time and leads nowhere. It is said to be "impractical." As the child grows and its imagination inevitably leads it to express unconventional ideas and to try new behavior, it is chided and even viciously punished for such signs of unorthodoxy.

  Philip Wylie

  Dream, Children, Ideas

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• I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the South is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity…a shelter under…which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection

  Frederick Douglass

  Covering, Shelter, Deeds

  Frederick Douglass (1846). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”, p.77

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• The mere word freedom is the only one that still excites me. I deem it capable of indefinitely sustaining the old human fanaticism. It doubtless satisfies my only legitimate aspiration. Among all the many misfortunes to which we are heir, it is only fair to admit that we are allowed the greatest degree of freedom of thought. It is up to us not to misuse it. To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery-even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness-is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself.

  Andre Breton

  Mean, Justice, Imagination

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• Nature is a mere pretext for a decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art.

  Georges Braque

  Art, Emotion, Plus

  Raymond Cogniat, Georges Braque, Joanne Greenspun (1980). “Georges Braque”

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• This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer or maker; yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?

  Isaac Newton

  Believe, Taken, Law

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• The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.

  David Ogilvy

  Giving, Wife, Vapid

  Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963) ch. 5

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• Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal process──which is eternal, and must be felt for its own sake.

  Lytton Strachey

  Independent, Past, Important

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• No matter the specific techniques involved, historically mass surveillance has had several constant attributes. Initially, it is always the country’s dissidents and marginalized who bear the brunt of the surveillance, leading those who support the government or are merely apathetic to mistakenly believe they are immune. And history shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Country, Believe, Government

  Glenn Greenwald (2014). “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State”, p.10, Penguin UK

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• My other bodily ailments have become mere matters of history.

  William Banting

  Matter, Ailments

  William Banting (2005). “Letter on Corpulence”, p.50, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.

  Lucian Freud

  Lying, Would Be, Bits

  Lucian Freud, Rolf Lauter, Jean Christophe Ammann, Craig Hartley, Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) (2001). “Lucian Freud: naked portraits : Werke der 40er bis 90er Jahre”, Hatje Cantz Publishers

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• Wealth, if not a mere flash in the pan, compels the wealthy to become wealthier.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Wealth, Flash, Ifs

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