Premature Quotes - Page 7

• There is no question that al-Qaida operatives are currently active in Iraq. A premature exit before the threat they represent has been dealt with would endanger America and the prospects of eventual peace in the Middle East.

  Robert Foster Bennett

  Iraq, America, Middle East

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• Two premature babies was not a genetic thing; we were just unlucky.

  Sophie Ellis Bextor

  Baby, Two, Unlucky

  Interview with Nick Duerden, www.theguardian.com. July 15, 2011.

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• Premature burial works just fine as a cure for adolescence.

  George Alec Effinger

  Cures, Fine, Adolescence

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• My career started young and I was really ambitious, and then I had success and I hung out with people who were much older. I think I might have been temporally misplaced, so I thought I was 40. It was a premature midlife crisis.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Thinking, Careers, People

  "Lucky me" by Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. January 9, 2009.

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• Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%.

  Donald Knuth

  Strong, Opportunity, Thinking

  "Computer Programming as an Art". Communications of the ACM, Volume 17, Issue 12, December 1974.

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• Irritable Judges suffer from a bad case of premature adjudication.

  John Mortimer

  Justice, Judging, Suffering

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• I am the father of twin sons that were born in Philadelphia at Pennsylvania Hospital in 1983. They were 13 weeks premature. Gerry weighed 1 pound 14 ounces, and Zachary 1 pound 11 ounces. They were the first male twins to ever survive at Pennsylvania Hospital.

  Buzz Bissinger

  Father, Son, Philadelphia

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• Artists should be aware that petty stroking could be the source of arrested productivity. An artist's job includes the avoidance of premature closure by the begged or gratuitous approval of others.

  Robert Genn

  Jobs, Artist, Approval Of Others

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• That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: "Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side.

  Horace Walpole

  Religion, Genius, Lines

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• Faith transcends reason because divine truth is not only higher, but also wider than the human mind, and the rationalist in his haste for premature simplification always tends to shut his eyes to one aspect of the truth and to seek a false harmony of thought by the sacrifice of an essential element of reality.

  Christopher Dawson

  Eye, Sacrifice, Reality

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• Childhood in large parts of modern Britain, at any rate, has been replaced by premature adulthood, or rather adolescence

  Anthony Daniels

  Childhood, Modern, Britain

  "Our Culture, What’s Left Of It". Frontpage Magazine interview, archive.frontpagemag.com. August 31, 2005.

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• I think all the obituaries for newspapers we're hearing are premature. Many papers are belatedly but successfully adapting to the new news environment. I

  Arianna Huffington

  Thinking, News, Paper

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• Utopias are often just premature truths.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Utopia

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• In economics, unlike fiction and the theater, there is no harm in a premature disclosure of the plot: it is to see the changes just mentioned and others as an interlocked whole.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Plot, Fiction, Economics

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2015). “The New Industrial State”, p.7, Princeton University Press

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• All Dickens's humour couldn't save Dickens, save him from his overcrowded life, its sordid and neurotic central tragedy and its premature collapse. But Dickens's humour, and all such humour, has saved or at least greatly served the world.

  Stephen Leacock

  Tragedy, World, Humour

  Stephen Leacock (2010). “My Remarkable Uncle”, p.114, New Canadian Library

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• Even the relatively small amount of trans fats are likely to be causing around 7,000 premature deaths from heart disease per year.

  Walter Willett

  Heart, Years, Disease

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• My mother took too much, a great deal too much, care of me; she over-educated, over-instructed, over-dosed me with premature lessons of prudence: she was so afraid that I should ever do a foolish thing, or not say a wise one, that she prompted my every word, and guided my every action. So I grew up, seeing with her eyes, hearing with her ears, and judging with her understanding, till, at length, it was found out that I had not eyes, ears or understanding of my own.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Wise, Mother, Eye

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1826). “Works of Maria Edgeworth: Tales of fashionable life. 1826.- -v. 7. Patronage. 1825”, p.2

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• Men of science have made abundant mistakes of every kind; their knowledge has improved only because of their gradual abandonment of ancient errors, poor approximations, and premature conclusions.

  George Sarton

  Mistake, Men, Errors

  George Sarton (1959). “A History of Science: Hellenistic science and culture in the last three centuries B.C”

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• The practice of first developing a clear and precise definition of a process without regard for efficiency, and then using it as a guide and a test in exploring equivalent processes possessing other characteristics, such as greater efficiency, is very common in mathematics. It is a very fruitful practice which should not be blighted by premature emphasis on efficiency in computer execution.

  Kenneth E. Iverson

  Practice, Definitions, Tests

  "Notation as a Tool of Thought". Cvommunications of the ACM, 23 (8), (pp. 444 - 465), August 1980.

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• He was born early. But he was born within a safe range of premature.

  Paul Reiser

  Safe, Comedy, Range

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• Perhaps, if prematurely we dismiss ourselves from this world, all may even have to be suffered through again - the premature birth may not contribute to the production of another being, which must be begun again from the beginning.

  Florence Nightingale

  World, May, Birth

  Florence Nightingale (1993). “Cassandra and Other Selections from Suggestions for Thought”, NYU Press

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• Premature independence is the daughter of conceit.

  Idries Shah

  Daughter, Independence, Conceit

  Idries Shah (1978). “Learning how to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way”, p.109, Octagon Press Ltd

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• Giese was an unemotional man, but then in the study of Solaris emotion is a hindrance to the explorer. Imagination and premature theorizing are positive disadvantages in approaching a planet where-as has become clear-anything is possible... The fact is that in spite of his cautious nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to premature conclusions. Even when on their guard, human beings inevitably theorize.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Men, Imagination, Facts

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• The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius marks the final establishment of the empire of the East, which, from the reign of Arcadius to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, subsisted one thousand and fifty-eight years in a state of premature and perpetual decay.

  Edward Gibbon

  Son, Eight, Years

  Edward Gibbon (2000). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.304, Modern Library

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• The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In all other cases, I plod and tromp along. My knuckles? Well dragged.

  Colson Whitehead

  Knuckles, Cases, Existence

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