Might Quotes - Page 21

• In our system, at about 11:30 on election night, they just push you off the edge of the cliff-and that's it. You might scream on the way down, but you're going to hit the bottom, and you're not going to be in elective office.

  Walter F. Mondale

  Night, Office, Political

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• Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.

  William Carlos Williams

  Philosophy, Writing, Men

  William Carlos Williams, John C. Thirlwall (1957). “The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams”, p.219, New Directions Publishing

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• It doesn't look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary dietary advice. And then we hear that she's out eating ribs at 1500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat ... No, I'm trying to say that our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date every six months or what have you.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Sports, Stupid, Issues

  "Does Rush Limbaugh's Criticism Of First Lady Cross The Line?". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. February 24, 2011.

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• I'm horrified of leprechauns. I'm horrified that I might be leprechauns.

  Thom Yorke

  Leprechaun

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• My art is about paying attention - about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Art, Attention, Possibility

  Walter Hopps, Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Davidson, Trisha Brown (1997). “Robert Rauschenberg, a retrospective”, Guggenheim Museum Pubns

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• I think my father thought I might be president of the United States. I think he would've been satisfied with secretary of state. I'm a foreign policy person and to have a chance to serve my country as the nation's chief diplomat at a time of peril and consequence, that was enough.

  Condoleezza Rice

  Country, Father, Thinking

  "Rice speech sparks 2016 speculation" by Kevin Cirilli, Mackenzie Weinger, www.politico.com. August 29, 2012.

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• Certainly there’s a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It doesn’t surprise me at all that they would be talking to Al Qaeda, that there would be some Al Qaeda there or that Saddam Hussein might even be, you know, discussing gee, I wonder since I don’t have any scuds and since the Americans are coming at me, I wonder if I could take advantage of Al Qaeda? How would I do it? Is it worth the risk? What could they do for me?

  Wesley Clark

  Talking, Iraq, Risk

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• So might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures repeat with naive zest dramas learned by their ancestors æons ago.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Drama, Rocks, Zest

  Olaf Stapledon (1931). “Last and First Men, & Star Maker: Two Science-fiction Novels”, p.364, Courier Corporation

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• Anyone who clings to the historically untrue-and thoroughly immoral-doctrine that, 'violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Thinking, Issues, Never Settle

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Starship Troopers”, p.27, Penguin

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• I don't like to show my emotions at the board, not because they might give something away to an opponent, but because that's my style: I like to keep it to myself.

  Vladimir Kramnik

  Giving, Style, Boards

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• A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done . . . something.

  Guy Gavriel Kay

  Impact, Self, Needs

  Guy Gavriel Kay (2005). “The Last Light of the Sun”, p.335, Penguin

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• The mystery of life--its inexplicability, beauty, cruelty, tenderness, folly . . . has occupied the greater part of my waking thoughts; and in reverence or rage or irony, as the moment or situation might dictate, I have pondered and even demanded of cosmic energy to know Why.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Energy, Waking, Irony

  Theodore Dreiser (1977). “Theodore Dreiser: a selection of uncollected prose”, Wayne State Univ Pr

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• Without discipline, no matter how good you are, you are nothing! One day, and I might not be around; you're going to meet a tough guy who takes your best shot. He'll keep coming because he's tough. Don't get discouraged. That's when the discipline comes in.

  Mike Tyson

  Discipline, Guy, One Day

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• I was smart enough to use pot without getting caught, and now I'm on the Supreme Court. If you were stupid enough to get caught, that's your problem. Your appeal is denied. This 40 year sentence just might teach you a lesson.

  Clarence Thomas

  Stupid, Smart, Years

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• If there is an ‘overabundance’ of an idea in the absence of direct governmental action - which there well might be when compared with some ideal state of public debate - then action disfavoring that idea might ‘un-skew,’ rather than skew, public discourse.

  Elena Kagan

  Ideas, Action, Debate

  "Kagan Argued for Government 'Redistribution of Speech'" by Matt Cover, www.cnsnews.com. May 11, 2010.

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• Films might get to you and your subconscious and make a little difference, but when the vigilante drum beats, the mob screams and the conformists go along with it. There have to be people who are non-conformists.

  Oliver Stone

  Differences, People, Littles

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• If the afternoon had been blue,
  there might have been less desire.

  Carlos Drummond de Andrade

  Blue, Desire, Afternoon

  Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Thomas Colchie, Mark Strand (1986). “Travelling in the Family: Selected Poems”, New York : Random House

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• Apparently Brooklyn needn't always push itself to be something else, something conscious and anxious, something pointed toward Manhattan.... Brooklyn might sometimes also be pleased, as here on Flatbush, to be its grubby, enduring self.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Self, Manhattan, Brooklyn

  Jonathan Lethem (2004). “The Fortress of Solitude”, p.50, Vintage

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• Seriously, I think it is a grave fault in life that so much time is wasted in social matters, because it not only takes up time when you might be doing individual private things, but it prevents you storing up the psychic energy that can then be released to create art or whatever it is. It's terrible the way we scotch silence & solitude at every turn, quite suicidal. I can't see how to avoid it, without being very rich or very unpopular, & it does worry me, for time is slipping by , and nothing is done. It isn't as if anything was gained by this social frivolity, It isn't: it's just a waste.

  Philip Larkin

  Art, Suicidal, Thinking

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica”, Faber & Faber

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• What is the best music is impossible to define. Just because it's played by a virtuoso player, doesn't mean it's great music. It might not reflect the soul of a people, which is really my criteria for great music.

  Mickey Hart

  Mean, Player, People

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• In The Bob Hope Golf Classic (LWT) the participation of President Gerald Ford was more than enough to remind you that the nuclear button was at one stage at the disposal of a man who might have either pressed it by mistake or else pressed it deliberately in order to obtain room service.

  Clive James

  Mistake, Golf, Men

  Clive James (2017). “Clive James On Television”, p.503, Pan Macmillan

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• If you listen to really deep ambient records that don't move too much, very still records, long after those records are finished, you might find yourself listening for hours to the sound of the room.

  Bill Laswell

  Moving, Long, Listening

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• The departure of our boys to foreign parts with the ever-present possibility that they might never return, taught the real value of photography to every father and mother. To many a mother the photograph of her boy in his country's uniform was the one never-failing consolation.

  Louis Fabian Bachrach, Jr.

  Photography, Mother, Country

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• Humanity cannot afford to acknowledge all of the blood that it spills and the destruction it inflicts on the world in its effort to perpetuate itself. Desacralization is a process that allows us to sever any relationship we might feel to other living things. By draining the aliveness out of things, we can pretend that our control and manipulation are of little consequence. Man the trapper becomes man the taxidermist, disemboweling nature of its spontaneity and movement, and stuffing it with a leaden inanimateness.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Animal, Men, Blood

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• If penicillin had been judged by its toxicity to guinea pigs, it might never have been used by man.

  Peter Singer

  Animal, Men, Pigs

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

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