Overstatement Quotes

• What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement.

  Fred Allen

  Inspirational, Sarcastic, Sarcasm

  85 Copy quote

• In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Humor, Vulgarity Is, Sin

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

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• The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Philosophy, Errors, Chiefs

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• Those of you who have spent time with Australians know that we are not given to overstatement. By nature we are laconic speakers and by conviction we are realistic thinkers.

  Julia Gillard

  Realistic, Conviction, Given

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons as they were in fact used dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Philosophy, War, Responsibility

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

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• A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.

  E. B. White

  Enthusiasm, Carefree, Reader

  William Strunk Jr., E.B. White (1962). “the Elements of Style”

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• Reserve is strength; overstatement is weakness. No one cares to hear the singer's topmost notes when the voice is 'nigh onto breaking.

  John F. Carlson

  Strength, Voice, Weakness

  10 Copy quote

• You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Christian, Hate, Media

  345 Copy quote

• Most people don't realize how important librarians are. I ran across a book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture was solely related to how many librarians it contained. Possibly a slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn't value its librarians doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?

  Neil Gaiman

  Book, Ideas, People

  19 Copy quote

• The term itself--my life--is a desperate overstatement.

  Don DeLillo

  Life Is, Desperate, Term

  Don DeLillo (2011). “Valparaiso”, p.44, Pan Macmillan

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• There's been this attempt to block Donald Trump, in primary candidates and Democrats, that - to try to make everything he says some sort of extreme overstatement.

  Jeff Sessions

  Block, Trying, Trump

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• "Simpler is always better" is an overstatement.

  Elliott Sober

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  War, Vulgarity Is, World

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

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• You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.

  Steven Pressfield

  War, Artist, Squares

  Steven Pressfield (2002). “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles”, p.23, Black Irish Entertainment LLC

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• It is a gross overstatement, but in chess, it can be said I play against my opponent over the board and against myself on the clock.

  Viktor Korchnoi

  Play, Boards, Opponents

  66 Copy quote

• Leaving out the gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement. If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would put their trust in The Health Board.

  Mark Twain

  God, Fashion, Leaving

  Mark Twain (2016). “Mark Twain's Speeches”, p.95, Xist Publishing

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• Photography is a kind of overstatement, a heroic copulation with the material world.

  Susan Sontag

  Photography, World, Heroic

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.29, Macmillan

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• The term ignorant is indeed perhaps an overstatement, implying as it does that something is known somewhere, whereas in reality we are not even sure of this: we in fact cannot aver with any degree of certainty that we are ignorant. Yet this is not so bad; we have at any rate kept our open-mindedness -- that, at least, we may be sure that we have -- and are not in any danger, or so it seems, of freezing into the pious attitudes of those true spiritual bigots whose faces are turned toward eternity and who therefore can see nothing.

  John Ashbery

  Spiritual, Attitude, Reality

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