Premature Quotes

• To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

  Isaac Asimov

  Religious, Atheist, Ignorance

  "The 'Threat' of Creationism". www.nytimes.com. June 14, 1981.

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• Never do today what you can do tomorrow, because something may occur to make you regret your premature action.

  Aaron Burr

  Regret, May, Today

  "Wit and Humor of Bench and Bar". Book by Marshall Brown, 1899.

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• Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.

  Tony Hoare

  Roots, Evil, Simplicity

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• Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

  Donald Knuth

  Science, Roots, Evil

  Donald Ervin Knuth (1986). “TEX: The Program”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• To be premature is to be perfect

  Oscar Wilde

  Perfect

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.31, Oberon Books

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• [Sherlock Holmes:] The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Data, Temptation, Form

  Arthur Conan Doyle (1993). “The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes”, p.852, Wordsworth Editions

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• Nature's instructions are always slow; those of men are generally premature.

  Henri Rousseau

  Nature, Men, Instruction

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• To see the best before I have properly begun would be somewhat premature.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Would Be

  Kazuo Ishiguro (2010). “The Remains of the Day”, p.25, Vintage

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• Hasty work and premature decisions may lead to penalties out of all proportion to the issues immediately involved.

  Winston Churchill

  Leadership, Issues, Decision

  Winston Churchill (1952). “War Speeches: From September 11, 1943 to August 16, 1945”

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• Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences.

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Emotional, Painful Experiences

  Maurice Sendak's acceptance speech upon being awarded the Caldecott Medal for "Where the Wild Things Are" (1964), as quoted in "Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books: 1956-65" edited by Lee Kingman, 1965.

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• They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.

  Anton Chekhov

  Wise, Men, Soul

  Anton Chekhov (2009). “Selected Stories of Anton Chekov”, p.104, Modern Library

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• He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.

  Edith Wharton

  Girl, Adventure, Men

  Edith Wharton (2016). “The Age of Innocence: American Literature”, p.144, VM eBooks

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• Anybody who knows about having a premature baby, it's horrific. He was part of a twin, and I lost his sister.

  Sherri Shepherd

  Baby, Twins, Lost

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• This perversion of the truth, familiar to the artist though it was, always unnerved him afresh and proved too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature ending of his fast was here presented as the cause of it! To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of nonunderstanding, was impossible.

  Franz Kafka

  Fighting, Artist, Understanding

  Franz Kafka (1979). “The Basic Kafka”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

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• If a given scientist had not made a given discovery, someone else would have done so a little later. Johann Mendel dies unknown after having discovered the laws of heredity: thirty-five years later, three men rediscover them. But the book that is not written will never be written. The premature death of a great scientist delays humanity; that of a great writer deprives it.

  Jean Rostand

  Book, Science, Men

  Jean Rostand (1962). “The substance of man”

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• I went to a meeting for premature ejactulators. I left early.

  Jack Benny

  Funny Love, Love You, Romantic Love

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• Science is not a system of certain, or -established, statements; nor is it a system which steadily advances towards a state of finality... And our guesses are guided by the unscientific, the metaphysical (though biologically explicable) faith in laws, in regularities which we can uncover-discover. Like Bacon, we might describe our own contemporary science-'the method of reasoning which men now ordinarily apply to nature'-as consisting of 'anticipations, rash and premature' and as 'prejudices'.

  Karl Popper

  Nature, Science, Men

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• Don't you make fun of me or my children! Some babies are premature. Mine were all postmature. That's why they're so smart. Their brains had longer to develop.

  Jeannette Walls

  Baby, Children, Fun

  Jeannette Walls (2009). “The Glass Castle: A Memoir”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

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• I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.

  Oscar Wilde

  Animal, Men, Definitions

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 2 (1891)

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• As a father and grandfather, I have witnessed firsthand the joy of new life entering the world. I know the pain and apprehension that goes along with premature births and birth defects.

  Solomon Ortiz

  Pain, Father, Birth Defects

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• History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; WHICH men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

  Joseph Heller

  Children, War, Men

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

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• We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Adults, Fierceness

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.8, Hamilton Books

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• (Ravic speaking of a butterfly caught in the Louvre) In the morning it would search for flowers and life and the light honey of blossoms and would not find them and later it would fall asleep on millennial marble, weakened by then, until the grip of the delicate, tenacious feet loosened and it fell, a thin leaf of premature autumn.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Morning, Flower, Fall

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  The only thing we don't have a god for is premature ejaculation... but I hear that it's coming quickly.

  Mel Brooks

  Sex, Ejaculation, Premature Ejaculation

  "History of the World: Part I". www.imdb.com. 1981.

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• And Father said, “There are no happy endings.” “Right!” cried Iowa Bob – an odd mixture of exuberance and stoicism in his cracked voice. “Death is horrible, final, and frequently premature,” Coach Bob declared. “So what?” my father said. “Right!” cried Iowa Bob. “That’s the point: So what?” Thus the family maxim was that an unhappy ending did not undermine a rich and energetic life. This was based on the belief that there were no happy endings.

  John Irving

  Father, Iowa, Voice

  "The Hotel New Hampshire". Book by John Irving, 1981.

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