Possibility Quotes - Page 25

• There is no formula. We all must become spirited inventors. There's no single answer - not even a single starting point. Even the 'teachers' ... don't offer us the answer. They do offer us approaches, ways of thinking, possibilities we can adapt, and hope that might generate in us wholly new ideas.

  Frances Moore Lappé

  Teacher, Simple, Thinking

  Frances Moore Lappé, Paul Martin Du Bois (1994). “The quickening of America: rebuilding our nation, remaking our lives”, Jossey-Bass

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• What I think about when I frequent the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan [Museum of Art], and I look at these artifacts that are taken out of context and how we're forced to view them as objects, as relics, as sculpture- static. But what's interesting is what it allows me to do in my head in terms of imagining what the possibilities are or imagining the role in which they played within a particular culture which I'm fascinated by.

  Nick Cave

  Art, Taken, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability, or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better.

  Atul Gawande

  Opportunity, Medicine, Way

  Atul Gawande (2010). “Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science”, p.251, Profile Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The disaster... is what escapes the very possibility of experience—it is the limit of writing. This must be repeated: the disaster de-scribes.

  Maurice Blanchot

  Writing, Limits, Disaster

  Maurice Blanchot (2015). “The Writing of the Disaster”, p.16, U of Nebraska Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I've regarded his existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Dream, Integrity, Men

  "Pageant" Magazine, July 1968.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the best safeguards of our hopes, I have suggested, is to be able to mark off the areas of hopelessness and to acknowledge them, to face them directly, not with despair but with the creative intent of keeping them from polluting all the areas of possibility.

  William F. Lynch

  Creative, Hopeful, Despair

  William F. Lynch (1974). “Images of Hope: Imagination as Healer of the Hopeless”

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Either you look at the universe as a very poor creation out of which no one can make anything, or you look at your own life and your own part in the universe as infinitely rich, full of inexhaustible interest, opening out into the infinite further responsibilities for study and contemplation and interest and praise. Beyond all and in all is God.

  Thomas Merton

  Looks, Study, Infinite

  "Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation".

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thanks to our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman. She is an anomaly, and Nature herself, obedient to the laws of heredity, aids us in complicating and enervating her. We carefully keep her in a state of nervous weakness and muscular inferiority, and in guarding her from fatigue, we take away from her possibilities of development. Thus modeled on a bizarre ideal of slenderness to which, strangely enough, we continue to adhere, our women have nothing in common with us, and this, perhaps, may not be without grave moral and social disadvantages.

  Paul Gauguin

  Law, Weakness, Anomalies

  Paul Gauguin (1987). “Gauguin: a retrospective”, Hugh Lauter Levin Associates

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• My hope that the Church will emerge as a strong leader in society is just that a hope. What I described in The Catholic Moment is not a prophecy but the outline of a possibility. There are no guarantees that my hopes expressed in The Catholic Moment will ever be realised.

  Richard John Neuhaus

  Strong, Guarantees That, Leader

  9 Copy quote

• What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Paradox, Eternal, Hereafter

  Aurobindo Ghose, Sri Aurobindo (1989). “The Supramental Manifestation, and Other Writings”, Lotus Press (WI)

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select? Does she say to herself, 'Go to! here is a distinguished statesman with presidential possibilities; I shall proceed to fall in love with him.' or, 'I shall set my heart upon this musician, whose fame is on every tongue?' or 'this financier, who controls the world's money markets?'

  Kate Chopin

  Falling In Love, Heart, Presidential

  Kate Chopin (2013). “The Awakening: And Selected Short Stories - Beyond the Bayou, Ma'ame Pelagie, Desiree's Baby, Respectable Woman, Kiss, Pair of Silk Stockings, Locket, Reflection (Beloved Books Edition)”, p.115, Lulu Press, Inc

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• One possibility is: God is nothing but the power of the universe to organize itself.

  Lee Smolin

  Organize, Universe

  12 Copy quote

• Having loving and supporting parents didn't make me feel any better about the possibility of seeing my personal life splashed across newspapers and tabloids.

  Mary Cheney

  Loving Life, Parent, Tabloids

  Mary Cheney (2006). “Now It's My Turn: A Daughter's Chronicle of Political Life”, Pocket Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Opening Up, Entrepreneur, Reform

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.132, Routledge

  193 Copy quote

  Show source

• A blank canvas...has unlimited possibilities.

  Stephanie Perkins

  Canvas, Unlimited Possibilities, Blank

  7 Copy quote

• We believe that the possibility of the future far exceeds the accomplishment of the past. We review the past with the common sense, but we anticipate the future with transcendental senses. In our sanest moments we find ourselves naturally expecting or prepared for far greater changes than any which we have experienced within the period of distinct memory, only to be paralleled by experiences which are forgotten.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Memories, Believe, Past

  Henry David Thoreau (1968). “Reflections at Walden: Selected Writings”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The possibility of saying anything about a thing rests on the assumption that it preserves its identity, or continues to be the same thing in the respect described, that it will behave in future situations as it has in past.

  Frank Knight

  Past, Swag, Identity

  Frank Hyneman Knight (1997). “The Ethics of Competition”, p.179, Transaction Publishers

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• In religious belief as elsewhere, we must take our chances, recognizing that we could be wrong, dreadfully wrong. There are no guarantees; the religious life is a venture; foolish and debilitating error is a permanent possibility. (If we can be wrong, however, we can also be right.)

  Alvin Plantinga

  Religious, Errors, Guarantees

  Alvin Plantinga (2000). “Warranted Christian Belief”, p.81, Oxford University Press

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• For though we stubbornly cling, believing in our moment of hunger that there is no other possibility of love, we only have to let go of what we want so badly and our life will unfold. For love is everywhere.

  Mark Nepo

  Letting Go, Believe, Love Is

  12 Copy quote

• The arts open your heart and mind to possibilities that are limitless. They are pathways that touch upon our brains and emotions and bring sustenance to imagination. Human beings' greatest form of communication, they walk in tandem with science and play, and best describe what it is to be human.

  Jacques d'Amboise

  Art, Communication, Play

  16 Copy quote

• Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.

  Bill Mollison

  Agriculture, Order, Ecosystems

  128 Copy quote

• I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out.

  Aime Cesaire

  Talking, Land, Essence

  63 Copy quote

• Stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted side-ways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire, to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy.

  Colum McCann

  Art, Recovery, Joy

  "Author, author: Stories are there to be told" by Colum McCann, www.theguardian.com. September 4, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.

  Franz Kafka

  Two, Perfection, Firsts

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are things that a woman sings, and only a woman knows the full meaning. You may sing for men as well as for women, but only a woman knows your full meaning. I am not a feminista. I only think a woman should be true to who she believes herself to be. Or who she wants herself to be. Or who she imagines herself to be. I don't know what I mean, or whether I'm true myself to any of that. I don't think there are many of us who are true to our possibilities.

  Gayl Jones

  Believe, Mean, Men

  8 Copy quote