Ought Quotes - Page 31

• Writers ought to be regarded as wrongdoers who deserve to be acquitted or pardoned only in the rarest cases: that would be a way to keep books from getting out of hand.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Book, Hands, Would Be

  6 Copy quote

• A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savor of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Strength, Wise, Hope

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2017). “The Prince”, p.38, BookRix

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's usually pointed out that women are not fit for political power, and ought not to be trusted with a vote because they are politically ignorant, socially prejudiced, narrow-minded, and selfish. True enough, but precisely the same is true of men!

  George Bernard Shaw

  Selfish, Men, Political

  Tribune (London), 12 Mar. 1906

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A power above all human responsibility ought to be above all human attainment.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Responsibility, Attainment, Humans

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.215

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists--believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Government, Body, Socialism

  Woodrow Wilson (1898). “The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The low level which commercial morality has reached in America is deplorable. We have humble God fearing Christian men among us who will stoop to do things for a million dollars that they ought not to be willing to do for less than 2 millions.

  Mark Twain

  Christian, Humble, Men

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.284, Courier Corporation

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• They ought to be gentle to their friends and dangerous to their enemies.

  Plato

  Friendship, Enemy, Dangerous

  Plato, Charles Henry Augustus Bulkley (1876). “Plato's Best Thoughts: Compiled from Prof. Jowett's Translation of the Dialogues of Plato”, p.196

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• So let us love, dear Love, like as we ought;
  Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

  Edmund Spenser

  God, Love Is, Taught

  'Amoretti' (1595) sonnet 68

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bolkenstein, a Minister, was speaking on the Dutch programme from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course, they all made a rush at my diary immediately. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the "Secret Annexe." The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.

  Anne Frank

  War, Thinking, People

  Anne Frank (1954). “The Diary of Anne Frank”, Pan

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The terrible newly imported American doctrine that everyone ought to do something.

  Osbert Sitwell

  Work, Doctrine, Terrible

  Osbert Sitwell (1977). “Left Hand, Right Hand!: An Autobiography”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself.

  Gore Vidal

  Book, Writing, Done

  5 Copy quote

• ... God allows the wheat and the tares to grow up together, andthe tares frequently get the start of the wheat and kill it out. The only difference between the wheat and human beings is that the latter have intellect and ought to combine and pull out the tares, root and branch.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Growing Up, Responsibility, Roots

  8 Copy quote

• Men cry because things are not what they ought to be.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Suffering, Cry

  7 Copy quote

• The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places.The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Poetry, Attention, Definitions

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge: In Two Volumes”, p.214

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Men, Ideas, Opposites

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1913*). “Golden Hours with Samuel Taylor Coleridge”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A sustained engagement with the world, a sense of how it was and how it ought to be, and what has been lost, is imperative to good writing - I just don't know how you can be a serious writer without it.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Writing, Engagement, World

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end.

  Blaise Pascal

  Thoughtful, Men, Thinking

  20 Copy quote

• We thought philosophy ought to be patient and unravel people's mental blocks. Trouble with doing that is, once you've unravelled them, their heads fall off.

  Frederic Raphael

  Block, Philosophy, Fall

  4 Copy quote

• My big dream back then was to buy an IBM Selectric. I still have that dream. I really ought to buy a word-processor. Half the cabbies at Rocky own computers. They tell me they can write failed novels ten times faster on a PC.

  Gary Reilly

  Dream, Writing, Half

  4 Copy quote

• The Government is able to afford a suitable army and a suitable navy. It may maintain them without the slightest danger to the Republic or the cause of free institutions, and fear of additional taxation ought not to change a proper policy in this regard.

  William Howard Taft

  Army, Government, Navy

  William Howard Taft (2002). “The Collected Works of William Howard Taft: Presidential addresses and state papers”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Roosevelt could always keep ahead with his work, but I cannot do it, and I know it is a grievous fault, but it is too late to remedy it. The country must take me as it found me. Wasn't it your mother who had a servant girl who said it was no use for her to try to hurry, that she was a "Sunday chil" and no "Sunday chil" could hurry? I don't think I am a Sunday child, but I ought to have been; then I would have had an excuse for always being late.

  William Howard Taft

  Funny, Girl, Mother

  4 Copy quote

• My books have sold largely in England, have been translated into many languages, and passed through several editions in foreign countries. I have heard it said that the success of a work abroad is the best test of its enduring value. I doubt whether this is at all trustworthy; but judged by this standard my name ought to last for a few years.

  Charles Darwin

  Country, Book, Years

  Charles Darwin (2010). “The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 29: “Erasmus Darwin” by Ernest Krause, with a Preliminary Notice by Charles Darwin; “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin” Edited by Nora Barlow; and Consolidated Index”, p.159, NYU Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... we may remember what the Romansthought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.

  Hannah Arendt

  Past, Men, May

  5 Copy quote

• The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
  The facts: nothing matters but the facts: worship of the facts leads to everything, to happiness first of all and then to wealth.

  Edmond de Goncourt

  Men, Artist, Past

  11 Copy quote

• On the theory of the soul's mortality, the inferiority of women's capacity is easily accounted for: Their domestic life requires no higher faculties either of mind or body. This circumstance vanishes and becomes absolutely insignificant, on the religious theory: The one sex has an equal task to perform as the other: Their powers of reason and resolution ought also to have been equal, and both of them infinitely greater than at present.

  David Hume

  Religious, Sex, Women

  David Hume, Richard H. Popkin (1998). “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Second Edition)”, p.93, Hackett Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source