Pompous Quotes - Page 3

• I am not afraid of retaliations. I don't have kids. I don't have a wife, no car, no credit. It may seem pompous, but I'd rather die standing than live on my knees.

  Charb

  Kids, Wife, Car

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• If there's anything I'm not pompous about, it's myself or my work. But I seem to be able to play it.

  William Shatner

  Work, Play, Able

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• What is necessary for 'the very existence of science,' and what the characteristics of nature are, are not to be determined by pompous preconditions, they are determined always by the material with which we work, by nature herself. We look, and we see what we find, and we cannot say ahead of time successfully what it is going to look like. ... It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Math, Science, Mind

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• Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and ‘the public’s right to know’; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living.

  Janet Malcolm

  Art, Freedom Of Speech, Earning

  Janet Malcolm (2011). “The Journalist And The Murderer”, p.14, Granta Books

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• Funeral expenses are the curse of the poor everywhere on earth, they are wasteful and unnecessary, they are the price of foolish ostentation and a display that is less an evidence of grief than a vulgar travesty of those pompous obsequies where no grief is.

  Joyce Cary

  Grief, Funeral, Earth

  Joyce Cary (1985). “Except the Lord”, p.39, New Directions Publishing

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• This means that we have barely disembarked into life, that we've only just now been born, let's not fill our mouths with so many uncertain names, with so many sad labels, with so many pompous letters, with so much yours and mine, with so much signing of papers. I intend to confuse things, to unite them, make them new-born intermingle them, undress them, until the light of the world has the unity of the ocean, a generous wholeness, a fragrance alive and crackling.

  Pablo Neruda

  Beauty, Ocean, Mean

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• I do find London exciting. Much as I hate to agree with that tedious old git Samuel Johnson, and despite the pompous imbecility of his famous remark about when a man is tired of London he is tired of life...I can't dispute it.

  Bill Bryson

  Hate, Tired, Men

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• Prison is a crash course in the darker side of life. Few survive it without becoming a different person: more cynical, jaded, fearful, angry. Its hard to trust again, hard to believe, easy to hate a system that destroyed your life behind the pompous pretense of saving you from yourself, for your own good.

  Peter McWilliams

  Hate, Believe, Cynical

  Peter McWilliams (1996). “Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country”, Mary Book / Prelude Press

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• The Patriot Post not only does the best job of putting important news, policy and opinion in proper context, but also of cutting down to size the pompous praters and propagandists on the left.

  Lyn Nofziger

  Jobs, Cutting, Best Job

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• The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It’s perceived as an accolade to be published as a ‘literary’ writer, but, actually, it’s pompous and it’s fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself. I’d always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s, as substitutes for experience.

  Neil Cross

  Men, Fake, Way

  "Neil Cross: 'I don't get on with novelists'". Interview with Euan Ferguson, www.theguardian.com. August 6, 2011.

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• Hidden behind the facade of pompous jargon and noble affections, there is more sheer larceny per square foot on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange than any place else in the world.

  Richard Ney

  New York, Squares, Feet

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• Pride is a fault that great men blush not to own: it is the ennobled offspring of self-love; though, it must be confessed, grave and pompous vanity, Iike a fat plebeian in a rove of office, does very often assume its name.

  Joanna Baillie

  Pride, Men, Names

  Joanna Baillie (1851). “The Dramatic and Poetical Works of Joanna Baillie ; Complete in One Volume”, p.209

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• I don't mind being accused of being a bad comedian and I don't even mind being accused of being a bad talk-show host, but I never want to be accused of being an arrogant, pompous showbiz asshole.

  David Letterman

  Comedian, Mind, Arrogant

  "David Letterman's 1984 Playboy Interview. A Candid Conversation with the Comedy Genius In His Youth". Playboy Interview, playboysfw.kinja.com. April 3, 2014.

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• I'm intelligent enough and capable enough to understand that you are ignorant, pompous, egotistical, cretin. I'm going to crush you on here because I'm tired of hearing about it.

  Richard Sherman

  Crush, Tired, Intelligent

  "Richard Sherman Still Talking, Taunting This Morning" by Colleen Curry, abcnews.go.com. January 20, 2014.

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• The camel carries on his dreary circular task with his usual slow and pompous step and head poised superciliously, as if it were a ritual affair above the comprehension of the vulgar; and no doubt he comforts himself for the dullness of life by a sense of virtue, like many other formalists beside him.

  Freya Stark

  Doubt, Usual, Comfort

  Freya Stark (1964). “The Journey's Echo: Selections”

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• There are so few people who can really take hold of art and sort of eat and chew it up. Somehow it's got to be held special, sacred in a corner, and if you don't do the same thing with it, if you're not equally reverential, serious, and pompous about it, well, then you're not a great artist. Who needs that?

  Twyla Tharp

  Art, People, Special

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• You need philosophy. It sounds a little pompous but I think when you direct a film, the only way to find a response to the questions you keep asking yourself is to have a philosophy.

  Michel Gondry

  Philosophy, Thinking, Sound

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• I still audition a lot - it depends on the medium. For film, I audition just like everyone else, because it's a different set of casting directors. For television and theatre - well, for theater, there's some auditioning that has to happen, just for them to know that you can sing it, and how you'd take on the part. But for TV, things are getting a little better with, "Would you like to be a part of this?" But that's really for one - night things. It sounds like a pompous answer, if I say people are calling me to ask me to do things.

  Neil Patrick Harris

  Night, People, Theatre

  Source: tv.avclub.com

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• I first think of intelligence. You need it for surviving in Italy because Italy is so pompous.

  Francesco Clemente

  Thinking, Needs, Firsts

  "New Again: Francesco Clemente". Interview with Edit deAk, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 6, 2014.

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• Astronomy is a cold, desert science, with all its pompous figures,-depends a little too much on the glass-grinder, too little on the mind. 'T is of no use to show us more planets and systems. We know already what matter is, and more or less of it does not signify.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, What Matters, Glasses

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Waldo Emerson (1904). “The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”

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• Mental bearing (calmness), not skill, is the sign of a matured samurai. A Samurai therefore should neither be pompous nor arrogant.

  Tsukahara Bokuden

  Warrior, Skills, Arrogant

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• There is a type of snobbish, pompous journalist who thinks that the only news that has any validity is war, famine, pestilence or politics. I don’t come from that school.

  Piers Morgan

  War, School, Thinking

  "POLITICO interviews Piers Morgan". Interview with Dylan Byers, www.politico.com. January 17, 2013.

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• I'm more pompous and self-assured and determined that if - you know - if the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed.

  Marcus Brigstocke

  Self, Determined, Understood

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• James Lipton: The most pompous arrogant failure in history.

  David Cross

  Funny, Humor, Arrogant

  "David Cross: The Pride Is Back". TV Special, September 18, 1999.

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• No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Men, Boredom, Capacity

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1998). “The Affluent Society”, p.16, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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