Offensive Quotes - Page 22

• The transition from the defensive to the offensive is one of the most delicate operations in war.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  War, Transition, Operations

  Napoleon Bonaparte (2012). “Napoleon's Military Maxims”, p.26, Courier Corporation

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• The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness.

  Alexander von Humboldt

  Vanity, Self, Expression

  Alexander von Humboldt, Aimè Bonpland (1852). “Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804”, p.415

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• Real racist jokes or sexist jokes aren't funny - not because they're offensive, but because they're not true. As soon as a joke is based on an untruth, it's not funny.

  Ricky Gervais

  Real, Racist Jokes, Sexist

  "Ricky Gervais: The ESQ+A". Interview with Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. January 12, 2012.

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• Act with the greatest determination and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Determination, Rising

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• Anthemic rock music is inherently fascist - anything intended to move huge masses of people is politically offensive to me.

  Donald Fagen

  Moving, Rocks, People

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• Offensive linemen are like salt. Nobody ever remembers the brand they buy.

  Blaine Nye

  Salt, Remember, Linemen

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• To better understand God we must first shatter our own idea of God - maybe even day after day. Maybe he's too great to stay compressed in the human mind. Maybe he splits it wide open; this is why pretentious intellectualism so often fails to comprehend the concept of God: it is only accepting of what it can explain while in the process finding higher sources offensive. What we may confidently assert is that faith is the opening that allows God, this unpredictable, unseen power, to travel in and out of the mind without all the pains of confusion.

  Criss Jami

  Pain, Ideas, Confusion

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• Christianity, like genius, is one of the hardest concepts to forgive. We hear what we want to hear and accept what we want to accept, for the most part, simply because there is nothing more offensive than feeling like you have to re-evaluate your own train of thought and purpose in life. You have to die to an extent in your hunger for faith, for wisdom, and quite frankly, most people aren't ready to die.

  Criss Jami

  Train Of Thought, People, Feelings

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.64, Criss Jami

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• When a man has a gift in speaking the truth, brute aggression is no longer his security blanket for approval. He, on the contrary, spends most of his energy trying to tone it down because his very nature is already offensive enough.

  Criss Jami

  Men, Trying, Energy

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.116, Criss Jami

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• When we try to imagine what God is like we must of necessity use that-which-is-not- God as the raw material for our minds to work on; hence whatever we visualize God to be, He is not, for we have constructed our image out of that which He has made and what He has made is not God. If we insist upon trying to imagine Him, we end with an idol, made not with hands but with thoughts; and an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Hands, Idols, Mind

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• I would do nightclubs and concerts - particularly concerts, which is mostly what I did - and only people who already agreed with me would show up. People weren't going to come and inadvertently turn on their television set and find this offensive stuff coming out.

  Tom Lehrer

  People, Television, Stuff

  Interview with Stephen Thompson, www.avclub.com. May 24, 2000.

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• As an artist, I try and be controversial, and I have been a bit offensive at times. I have a view on the burka, and I'm sure a few of the Muslim girls and their families would have a view of me on stage in next to nothing!

  Jessie J

  Girl, Artist, Views

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance dis contented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity.

  John Ruskin

  Ignorance, Humanity, Imperfect

  John Ruskin (1873). “The Eagle's Nest: Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art, Given Before the University of Oxford in Lent Term, 1872”, p.80

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• I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book.... One feels cleaner this way. When someone asks that his book be reviewed he risks running up against a vulgarity offensive to authorial sensibilities.

  Anton Chekhov

  Running, Book, Writing

  Letter to N. M. Ezhov, March 22, 1893.

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• When I see that man on the telly - 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?' No! I'm definitely not! I find most of it quite offensive!

  John Prescott

  Men, Thinking

  "Election 2005: Aggressive and Voluble - but the Real Thing" by Oliver Burkeman, April 21, 2005.

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• In order to preserve a balance, while we aren't planning to build a missile defence of our own, as it's very expensive and its efficiency is not quite clear yet, we have to develop offensive strike systems. They [U.S.] should give us all the information about the missile defence, and we will be ready then to provide some information about offensive weapons.

  Vladimir Putin

  Order, Giving, Balance

  "Putin Says Russia Will Build Weapons to Offset Planned US Missile Defences". Associated Press, www.theguardian.com. December 29, 2009.

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• Crocker's Rules didn't give you the right to say anything offensive, but other people could say potentially offensive things to you, and it was your responsibility not to be offended. This was surprisingly hard to explain to people; many people would read the careful explanation and hear, "Crocker's Rules mean you can say offensive things to other people."

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Responsibility, Mean, People

  "Radical Honesty". lesswrong.com. September 10, 2007.

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• Doctrine is the frame-work of life; it is the skeleton of truth, to be clothed and rounded out by the living graces of a holy life. It is only the lean creature whose bones become offensive.

  Adoniram Judson Gordon

  Skeletons, Grace, Doctrine

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 194), 1895.

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• The German air offensives against British cities in World Wars I and II not only failed to coerce the United Kingdom to surrender, but Germany also lost both wars.

  John Mearsheimer

  War, Air, Cities

  "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics". Book by John Mearsheimer, 2001.

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• Offensive realism predicts that the United States will send its army across the Atlantic when there is a potential hegemon in Europe that the local great powers cannot contain by themselves.

  John Mearsheimer

  Army, Europe, United States

  "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics". Book by John Mearsheimer, 2001.

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• I've read The Satanic Verses and I thought it a nasty, sneering, free-thinking book... I can understand why the book is offensive and it didn't seem to me to be anything but offensive when I read it.

  Maurice Cowling

  Book, Thinking, Satanic

  "Singular Encounters" by Naim Attallah, Quartet Books, (p. 142), 1990.

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• The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe-straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment toward us.

  Ron Paul

  Military, Reality, Texas

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• What a general could do, Thomas did; no more dependable soldier for a moment of crisis existed on the North American continent, or ever did exist... Thomas comes down in history as the Rock of Chickamauga, the great defensive fighter, the man who could never be driven away but who was not much on the offensive. That may be a correct appraisal, Yet it may also be worth making note that just twice in all the war was a major Confederate army driven away from a prepared position in complete rout - at Chattanooga and at Nashville. Each time the blow that routed it was launched by Thomas.

  Bruce Catton

  War, Army, Blow

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• Political correctness is one of the engines of nannyism. Allowing and even encouraging offensive ideas is vital for the intellectually health of a free society.

  David Harsanyi

  Ideas, Political, Correctness

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• Uses are always much broader than functions, and usually far less contentious. The word function carries overtones of purpose andpropriety, of concern with why something was developed rather than with how it has actually been found useful. The function of automobiles is to transport people and objects, but they are used for a variety of other purposes--as homes, offices, bedrooms, henhouses, jetties, breakwaters, even offensive weapons.

  Frank Smith

  Home, Office, People

  Frank Smith (2014). “To Think: In Language, Learning and Education”, p.108, Routledge

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