Preventing Quotes - Page 10

• I paint a little and keep sketchbooks because it has the effect of preventing me becoming lazy about looking. The subject could be anything.

  Richard Billingham

  Lazy, Littles, Becoming

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• Nine-tenths of our measures for preventing vice are really protective towards it, because they ward off the penalty.

  William Graham Sumner

  Vices, Nine, Penalties

  William Graham Sumner (2007). “The Forgotten Man and Other Essays”, p.480, Cosimo, Inc.

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• In the United States, liberals have made it virtually impossible [to increase the supply of oil] by banning drilling in all sorts of places and preventing any new refinery from being built anywhere in the country in the last 30 years.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Years, Oil

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• The surgeon general is responsible for sharing scientifically-based information with the public so that they can improve their health. But I will say personally that my goal as surgeon general is to help build a culture of prevention in America so that we are a nation that is as good at preventing illness as we are at treating it.

  Vivek Murthy

  America, Goal, Information

  "Not My Job: Surgeon General Vivek Murthy Gets Quizzed On 'General Hospital'". "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" with Peter Sagal, www.npr.org. July 25, 2015.

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• Citizens as conceived by governments are persons who admire the status quo and are prepared to exert themselves for its preservation. Oddly enough, while all governments aim at producing men of this type to the exclusion of all other types, their heroes in the past are of exactly the sort that they aim at preventing in the present. Americans admire George Washington and Jefferson, but imprison those who share their political opinions.

  Bertrand Russell

  Hero, Men, Past

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Education and the Social Order”, p.11, Routledge

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• Intercessors constitute the greatest unseen group of spiritual heroes in world history. Their labors are not seen, but the results are. Those who pray for the spiritual needs of others do immeasurable good in the world, often preventing (at least for a time) divine judgment.

  Max Anders

  Spiritual, Hero, Unseen

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• True prevention is not waiting for bad things to happen, it's preventing things from happening in the first place.

  Don McPherson

  Waiting, Prevention, Firsts

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• The perspective that law enforcement is presenting seems to be a very narrow one that's focused very, very heavily on investigations of past crimes rather than on preventing future crimes. It's very important for policymakers to take that broader view because they're the ones who are trusted to look at the big picture.

  Matt Blaze

  Past, Views, Law

  Source: www.politico.com

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• Who will govern the governors? There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, People, Honest

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• It's usually a spiritual thing that's preventing somebody from having happiness.

  Sandra Bernhard

  Happiness, Spiritual

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• The stock market crashed in October 1929. But that was not the cause of what caused the Great Depression. It was, in my opinion, a very minor element of it. What happened was that from 1929 to 1933 you had a major contraction which, in my opinion, was caused primarily by the failure of the Federal Reserve System, to follow the course of action for which it was set up. It was set up to prevent exactly what happened from 1929 to 1933. But instead of preventing it, they facilitated it.

  Milton Friedman

  Elements, October, Causes

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• What happened was that for every $100 of money, by which I mean the cash that people keep in their pockets, and the deposits they have in the bank, for every $100 of money that there was in 1929, by 1933 there was only $67. The Federal Reserve allowed the quantity of money to decline by a third. While, at all times, it had the possibilities and the power of preventing that from happening.

  Milton Friedman

  Mean, People, Pockets

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Here in California, we passed a law against texting while driving. But there's no law preventing you from writing a letter while driving.

  Craig Ferguson

  Writing, Law, California

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• Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Enemy, Tradition, Savior

  "Master Race" by William Phillips in Partisan Review 50th Anniversary Edition, 1985.

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• The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beauty, Country, Art

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1653, Delphi Classics

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• To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic.

  Ted Nugent

  Gun, Mind, World

  Ted Nugent (2000). “God, guns, and rock 'n' roll”, Regnery Press

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• Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Discipline, Serenity, Energy

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.180, A&C Black

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• In my view, the pro-life movement at this point should focus on seeking to reduce the number of abortions. At times it will require political education and legal fights, at times it will require education and the establishment of alternatives to abortion, such as adoption centers. Unfortunately, such measures are sometimes opposed by so-called hard-liners in the pro-life movement. These hard-liners are fools. Because they want to outlaw all abortions, they refuse to settle for stopping some abortions; the consequence is that they end up preventing no abortions.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Fighting, Views, Numbers

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• But, historians, and even common sense, may inform us, that, however specious these ideas of perfect equality may seem, they are really, at bottom, impracticable; and were they not so, would be extremely pernicious to human society. Render possessions ever so equal, men's different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality. Or if you check these virtues, you reduce society to the most extreme indigence; and instead of preventing want and beggary in a few, render it unavoidable to the whole community.

  David Hume

  Art, Men, Ideas

  David Hume (2013). “Essays and Treatises on Philosophical Subjects”, p.290, Broadview Press

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• The act of writing bears something in common with the act of love. The writer, at his most productive moments, just flows. He gives of that which is uniquely himself. He makes himself naked, recording his nakedness in the written word. Herein lies some of the terror which frequently freezes a writer, preventing him from producing. Herein, too, lies some of the courage that must be entailed in letting others learn how one has experienced or is experiencing the world.

  Sidney Jourard

  Love, Lying, Writing

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• Short of preventing harm to the child, the standard of 'best interest of the child' is insufficient to serve as a compelling state interest overruling a parent's fundamental rights.... To suggest otherwise would be the logical equivalent to asserting that the state has the authority to break up stable families and redistribute its infant population to provide each child with the 'best family.' It is not within the province of the state to make significant decisions concerning the custody of children merely because it could make a 'better' decision.

  Barbara Madsen

  Children, Rights, Adoption

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• Every belief that you hold manifests itself in some manner by either causing you to take some form of action or by preventing you from taking action. If you don't believe something is possible, you won't even attempt it.

  Chris Prentiss

  Believe, Belief, Action

  Chris Prentiss (2006). “Zen and the Art of Happiness”, p.18, BookBaby

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• Is neither a cure for AIDS nor a way of preventing infection with HIV.

  John Mills

  Hiv, Way, Aids

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• The events of September 11 would have been impossible if there were no airport security system at all. If average Americans were allowed to carry their personal firearms on board our aircraft ..., the chances that several passengers on each flight would have been armed-and thus able to shoot the hijackers, preventing the Trade Center and Pentagon hits-would have been quite substantial.

  Vin Suprynowicz

  Security Systems, Average, Airports

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• It is certain that despotism ruins individuals by preventing them from producing wealth much more than by depriving them of what they have already produced; it dries up the source of riches, while it usually respects acquired property. Freedom, on the contrary, produces far more goods than it destroys; and the nations which are favored by free institutions invariably find that their resources increase even more rapidly than their taxes.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Riches, Ruins, Wealth

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