Obvious Quotes - Page 9

• To the question, "When were your spirits at the lowest ebb?" the obvious answer seemed to be, "When the gin gave out."

  Francis Chichester

  Sailing, Nautical, Answers

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• I'm sure it's very obvious . . . how upset I am with incompetence and the lack of common sense in life. If I can sum up the reason . . . it's that these characteristics are not benign. They are responsible for much, if not most, of the great problems, misery, and injustice in the world.

  Vincent Bugliosi

  Common Sense, Upset, World

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• And he supposed it might not be the best of days. But then, he was flying the mails and was not expected to squat on the ground like a frightened canary every time there was a cloud in the sky. If a pilot showed an obvious preference for flying only in the best conditions he soon found himself looking for work. This was the way of his life and he had always ascended when others had found excuse to keep their feet on the ground.

  Ernest K. Gann

  Clouds, Sky, Feet

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• You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is, you just don't see them.

  Jay Abraham

  Success, Business, Simple

  Jay Abraham (2000). “Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition”, p.8, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

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• What's becoming very obvious to me is that fashion is art.

  Lupita Nyong'o

  Fashion, Art, Becoming

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• And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.

  Amy Tan

  Blood, Chinese, Joy Luck Club

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club: A Novel”, p.222, Penguin

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• When a really new product comes along, it's almost always a mistake to hang a well-known name on it. The reason is obvious. A well-known name got well-known because it stood for something. It occupies a position in the prospect's mind. A really well-known name sits on the top rung of a sharply defined ladder. The new product, if it's going to be successful, is going to require a new name. New ladder, new name. It's as simple as that.

  Al Ries

  Mistake, Successful, Simple

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• Despite the obvious fault in the universe, it cannot be used as an excuse for not trying to be your best self. Instead, use unfairness as a starting point to be sure that your actions are the best you can muster, and find peace in navigating your time here with grace and humor whenever possible.

  Valerie Plame

  Self, Grace, Trying

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• Reality is painful -- it's so much easier to keep doing stuff you know you're good at or else to pick something so hard there's no point at which it's obvious you're failing -- but it's impossible to get better without confronting it.

  Aaron Swartz

  Reality, Get Better, Stuff

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• My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Limits, Intention, Methodology

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.23, Verso

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• I am running for President because it is obvious that no Democrat or Republican is ever going to stop the relentless growth of the federal government. Only a Libertarian will free you from the income tax.

  Harry Browne

  Running, Government, Growth

  Harry Browne's Acceptance Speech at the Libertarian National Convention in Anaheim, California, www.harrybrowne.org. July 2, 2000.

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• Turning fully toward the glass, I consider what I see. This reflected version of myself, wet, shaking, rumpled, pinched, and slightly stoop, would be alarming were it not for the self-satisfied expression pasted across my face. I would ask the obvious question, 'what are you smiling about?' But I already know the answer: 'It just gets better from here.'

  Michael J. Fox

  Glasses, Self, Expression

  "Always Looking Up". Book by Michael J. Fox, abcnews.go.com. September 2008.

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• I hadn’t seen any novel make the statement that entering the workforce was like entering the grave. That from then on, nothing happens and you have to pretend to be interested in your work. And, furthermore, that some people have a sex life and others don’t just because some are more attractive than others. I wanted to acknowledge that if people don’t have a sex life, it’s not for some moral reason, it’s just because they’re ugly. Once you’ve said it,
  it sounds obvious, but I wanted to say it.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Sex, People, Entering

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• Purity is not imposed upon us as though it were a kind of punishment, it is one of those mysterious but obvious conditions of that supernatural knowledge of ourselves in the Divine, which we speak of as faith. Impurity does not destroy this knowledge, it slays our need for it.

  Georges Bernanos

  Punishment, Doe, Needs

  Georges Bernanos, Rémy Rougeau (2002). “The Diary of a Country Priest”, p.126, Da Capo Press

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• It's not that I'm deliberately trying to shock people all the time. I'm just doing things that are obvious to me. It's because the public doesn't understand my way of thinking that they get surprised.

  Takafumi Horie

  Thinking, People, Innovation

  "Talk Asia" with Lorraine Hahn, www.cnn.com. November 23, 2005.

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• There are no variations except for those who know a norm, and no subtleties for those who have not grasped the obvious.

  C. S. Lewis

  Variation, Norm, Subtlety

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• Multiculturalism asserts that all cultures are equal and therefore none may criticize another; intellectuals and politicians are therefore reluctant to declare the obvious superiority of Western culture to Islamic culture.

  Edwin A. Locke

  Islamic, Political, Western Culture

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• Were not the disadvantages of slavery too obvious to stand in need of it, I might enumerate and describe the tedious train of calamities inseparable from it. I might show that it is fatal to religion and morality; that it tends to debase the mind, and corrupt its noblest springs of action. I might show that it relaxes the sinews of industry, clips the wings of commerce, and introduces misery and indigence in every shape.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Spring, Wings, Mind

  Alexander Hamilton (1850). “The works of Alexander Hamilton: comprising his correspondence, and his political and official writings, exclusive of the Federalist, civil and military. Published from the original manuscripts deposited in the Department of State, by order of the Joint Library Committee of Congress”, p.9

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• A second even more obvious sign is that the person will stop talking. If we are uncertain as to whether we have stayed long enough in the process, we can always ask, "Is there more that you wanted to say"?

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Talking, Long, Empathy

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• Many other such substitutes for war will be discovered, but perhaps precisely thereby it will become more and more obvious that such a highly cultivated and therefore necessarily enfeebled humanity as that of modern Europe not only needs wars, but the greatest and most terrible wars, consequently occasional relapses into barbarism, lest, by the means of culture, it should lose its culture and its very existence.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  War, Mean, Europe

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• There's no obvious reason to assume that the very same rare properties that allow for our existence would also provide the best overall setting to make discoveries about the world around us. We don't think this is merely coincidental. It cries out for another explanation, an explanation that... points to purpose and intelligent design in the cosmos.

  Guillermo Gonzalez

  Intelligent, Thinking, Discovery

  Guillermo Gonzalez, Jay Wesley Richards (2004). “The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery”, p.15, Regnery Publishing

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• The whole world knows that American TV companies have monopolized Olympic broadcasts and in order to please the fans in their country they do everything they can to keep American viewers interested in what is going on at the hockey rink in Sochi. According to their logic, Americans should always win, no matter what. It was absolutely obvious that [Fyodor] Tyutin's goal yesterday should have been allowed. This was clear to the whole world except the American referee, American TV and those officials with American passports who rule international hockey, grossly neglecting all Olympic principles.

  Ivan Ilyin

  Country, Hockey, Winning

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• In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word "frustration".

  Alan Perlis

  Frustration, Frustrated, Definitions

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• People ask me to describe how I play, and the most obvious answer is that I'm a jazz influenced guitar player. But I'm not a jazz guitar player. Wes Montgomery was a jazz guitarist, Joe Pass was a jazz guitarist (laughs).

  Larry Carlton

  Music, Player, Guitar

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• It was obvious that their profits were simply cash borrowed from destiny with some random payback time.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Destiny, Risk, Payback

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile”, p.831, Random House

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