Predecessors Quotes - Page 2

• Young Americans today are no more learned or skilful than their predecessors, no more knowledgeable, fluent, up-to-date, or inquisitive, except in the materials of youth culture.

  Mark Bauerlein

  Culture, Today, Youth

  Mark Bauerlein (2008). “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future(Or, Don 't Trust Anyone Under 30)”, p.9, Penguin

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• Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors.

  C. S. Lewis

  Exercise, Thought Provoking, Rebel

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

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• I had toward the poetic art a peculiar relation which was only practical after I had cherished in my mind for a long time a subject which possessed me, a model which inspired me, a predecessor who attracted me, until at length, after I had molded it

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Long, Mind

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• The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.

  Samuel Beckett

  Our Generation, Somewhere Else, Laughing

  Samuel Beckett (1970). “The collected works of Samuel Beckett”

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• Seeing there are many who think they hold the opinions of Christ, and yet some of these think differently from their predecessors, yet as the teaching of the Church, transmitted in orderly succession from the apostles, and remaining in the Churches to the present day, is still preserved, that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs in no respect from ecclesiastical and apostolica tradition.

  Origen

  Teaching, Thinking, Church

  Origen (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Origen (Annotated Edition)”, p.54, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Philosophy would long ago have reached a high level if our predecessors and fathers had put this into practice; and we would not waste time on the primary difficulties, which appear now as severe as in the first centuries which noticed them. We would have the experience of assured phenomena, which would serve as principles for a solid reasoning; truth would not be so deeply sunken; nature would have taken off most of her envelopes; one would see the marvels she contains in all her individuals.

  Marin Mersenne

  Nature, Truth, Father

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• I wish to reiterate all the reasons which [my predecessor] has presented in favor of the policy of maintaining a strong navy as the best conservator of our peace with other nations and the best means of securing respect for the assertion of our rights of the defense of our interests, and the exercise of our influence in international matters.

  William Howard Taft

  Peace, Strong, Mean

  William Howard Taft (1910). “Presidential Addresses and State Papers, from March 4, 1909 to March 4, 1910”

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• Our predecessors understood that the ties that bind America are far stronger than disagreements over any particular policy and far more durable and profound than any party affiliation.

  Madeleine Albright

  Party, America, Ties

  Remarks and Question and Answer Session at the Chamber of Commerce Dinner, 1997-2001.state.gov. June 8, 1997.

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• Taking into account these distinctions, in harmony with the Magisterium of my Predecessors[81] and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person.

  Pope John Paul II

  Law, Abortion, Catholic

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• Reagan took an approach to the Cold War dramatically different from any other US President. To wit, he thought we should win. This was a fresh concept. At the time, it was widely ridiculed as a dangerous alteration of US policy. Only after it worked was Reagan's dangerous foreign policy recast as merely a continuation of the policies of his predecessors.

  Ann Coulter

  War, Winning, President

  Ann Coulter (2003). “Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism”, p.202, Crown Forum

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• Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Progress, Generations, Injustice

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

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• I have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method of processing material that retains too many connections to life to be approached strictly and aesthetically. A memoir is a risk, a one-off, a bastard child.

  Rachel Cusk

  Children, Writing, Risk

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• Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

  Emile Durkheim

  Order, Movement, Generations

  John A. Spaulding, George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (2010). “Suicide”, p.372, Simon and Schuster

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• You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination - at the same time, you want to be truthful to the predecessors, because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent.

  Renny Harlin

  Imagination, Individuality, Want

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• The lesson of the last year is this: foreign policy can't be managed through the politics of personality, and our President would do well to take note of an observation John F. Kennedy made once he was in office - that all of the world's problems aren't his predecessor's fault.

  Sarah Palin

  Years, Office, Personality

  Keynote Speech at the Inaugural Tea Party Convention, delivered 6 February 2010, Nashville, Tennessee

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• For Obama to save himself, he should be thinking about the example of an unlikely Republican predecessor: Richard Nixon.

  John Podhoretz

  Thinking, Example, Republican

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• Scientists may be in the business of laughing at their predecessors, but owing to an array of human mental dispositions, few realize that someone will laugh at their beliefs in the (disappointingly near) future.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Laughing, Owing, May

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile”, p.827, Random House

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• Maybe she still was a pretty-head, making up irrational stories about the empty forest. The longer she stayed alone out here, the more Tally understood why the Rusties and their predecessors had believed in invisible beings, praying to placate spirits as they trashed the natural world around them.

  Scott Westerfeld

  Stories, World, Forests

  Scott Westerfeld (2008). “Pretties”, p.253, Simon and Schuster

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• Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Powerful, Knowing, Majority

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• it is easy to surpass a predecessor, but difficult to avoid being surpassed by a successor.

  Eiji Yoshikawa

  Easy, Difficult, Successors

  Eiji Yoshikawa, Charles S. Terry (1989). “Way of Life and Death”, Pocket

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• It is folly to believe that Congress and the president, on their own, will make the necessary and difficult decisions to address the impending financial debacle. After all, they and their predecessors engineered the approaching tsunami. As the situation becomes direr, the federal government's actions will grow more oppressive.

  Mark Levin

  Believe, Government, Congress And The President

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• High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor, only to be surpassed by his successor. Without this relay race called history there would be no European art and what characterizes it: a longing for originality, a longing for change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, they're all runners in the relay race, they all belong to the same stadium.

  Milan Kundera

  Art, Children, Race

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• The Saints are Louisiana's team and have been since the late '60s when my predecessor Pete Rozelle welcomed them to the league as New Orleans' team and Louisiana's team. Our focus continues to be on having the Saints in Louisiana.

  Paul Tagliabue

  Team, New Orleans, League

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• Today I stand before the world organization which has succeeded to the mantle discarded by its discredited predecessor.

  Haile Selassie

  Organization, World, Today

  Address to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered 6 October 1963

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• To Yelena, our newest food taster. May you last longer than your predecessor.

  Maria V. Snyder

  May, Lasts

  Maria V. Snyder (2012). “Poison Study”, p.20, Harlequin

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