Recalcitrant Quotes

• Soon I knew the craft of experimental physics was beyond me - it was the sublime quality of patience - patience in accumulating data, patience with recalcitrant equipment - which I sadly lacked.

  Abdus Salam

  Patience, Data, Sublime

  Abdus Salam, C. H. Lai (1987). “Ideals and Realities: Selected Essays of Abdus Salam”, p.279, World Scientific

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• Few intellectual tyrannies can be more recalcitrant than the truths that everybody knows and nearly no one can defend with any decent data (for who needs proof of anything so obvious). And few intellectual activities can be more salutary than attempts to find out whether these rocks of ages might crumble at the slightest tap of an informational hammer.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Data, Rocks, Intellectual

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Life's Grandeur: The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin”, p.280, Random House

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• Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.

  Gerald Brenan

  Animal, Circus, Cracks

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• Disobedience was man's Original Virtue.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Men, Virtue, Originals

  Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson (2012). “The Illuminatus! Trilogy”, p.597, Hachette UK

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• Every fact of science was once Damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and "progress," everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow to Authority.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Men, Discovery, Innovation

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• The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Drama, Persistence, Historical

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2010). “The Irony of American History”, p.3, University of Chicago Press

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• I felt, as I became a later and later bloomer, alienated not just from my own recalcitrant glabrous little body but in a way from the whole elemental exterior I'd come to see as my co-conspirator.

  David Foster Wallace

  Body, Littles, Way

  David Foster Wallace (2012). “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”, p.14, Hachette UK

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• [The current governing judicial philosophy is:] If you want something passionately enough, it is guaranteed by the Constitution. No need to fiddle around gathering votes from recalcitrant citizens.

  Robert Bork

  Philosophy, Want Something, Gathering

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• Although a firm swat could bring a recalcitrant child swiftly into line, the changes were usually external, lasting only as long as the swatter remained in view....Permanent transformation had to be internal....The habits of self discipline, as laborious and frustrating as they were to achieve, offered the only real possibility of keeping children safe from their own excesses as well as the omnipresent dangers of society.

  Mary Blakely

  Children, Real, Self

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• Advising Mrs. Harris was the least I could do," David said smoothly. "After all, she was the one who brought me and my late wife together.

  Sabrina Jeffries

  Marriage, Wife, Together

  Sabrina Jeffries (2009). “Wed Him Before You Bed Him”, p.164, Simon and Schuster

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• Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. Or they enlarge a reality that is felt to be shrunk, hollowed out, perishable, remote. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images.

  Susan Sontag

  Photography, Reality, Way

  Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

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• I used to think I had no will to power. Now I perceive that I vented it on thoughts, rather than people. Conquering an unknown province of knowledge. Getting the better of a problem. Forcing ideas to associate or come apart. Bullying recalcitrant words to assume a certain pattern. All the fun of being a dictator without any risks and responsibilities.

  Aldous Huxley

  Bullying, Fun, Responsibility

  Aldous Huxley (1955). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley”

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• The basic idea that incentives can be used to motivate behavior is a powerful one. It works for employees, and it has a clear place in parenting, as anyone who has tried to potty-train a recalcitrant toddler with sticker rewards knows.

  Emily Oster

  Powerful, Ideas, Incentives

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• That sort of reception - where everything is assimilated to the world of celebrity - makes me dream of becoming a more recalcitrant, harder to assimilate writer.

  Susan Sontag

  Dream, World, Becoming

  Source: ctheory.net

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• It's amazing how much time one can spend in a garden doing nothing at all. I sometimes think, in fact, that the nicest part of gardening is walking around in a daze, idly deadheading the odd dahlia, wondering where on earth to squeeze in yet another impulse buy, debating whether to move the recalcitrant artemisia one more time, or daydreaming about where to put the pergola.

  Jane Garmey

  Dream, Time, Moving

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• Advising Mrs. Harris was the least I could do," David said smoothly. "After all, she was the one who brought me and my late wife together." That was stretching it a bit, since all Charlotte had done was give Sarah lessons in how to avoid fortune hunters, thus ensuring that the recalcitrant girl went right out and married the first one who approached her.

  Sabrina Jeffries

  Girl, Giving, Wife

  Sabrina Jeffries (2009). “Wed Him Before You Bed Him”, p.164, Simon and Schuster

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• So I sent Halt to straighten matters out. Thought it might be a good idea to give him something to keep him busy." So what's Digby got to complain about?" Rodney asked. It was obvious from his tone that he felt no sympathy for the recalcitrant commander of Barga Hold. The Baron gestured for Lady Pauline to explain. Apparently," she said,"Halt threw him into the moat.

  John Flanagan

  Ideas, Giving, Complaining

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• A scientist sets out to conquer nature through knowledge - external nature, external knowledge. By these means he may split the atom and achieve external power. A yogi sets out to explore his own internal nature, to penetrate the atom (atma) of being. He does not gain dominion over wide lands and restless seas, but over his own recalcitrant flesh and febrile mind.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Mean, Sea, Land

  B.K.S. Iyengar (2006). “Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom”, p.19, Rodale

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• The raw material from which social institutions are fashioned is always more or less recalcitrant and any human society will tend to produce a caricature of itself.

  Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth

  Raw Materials, Social, Institutions

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• Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice. The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Dream, Drama, Moving

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2015). “Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)”, p.551, Library of America

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• But now his dry and silent grieving for his lost wife must end, for there she stood, the fierce, recalcitrant, and fragile stranger, forever to be won again.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Grieving, Wife, Forever

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “The Lathe Of Heaven: A Novel”, p.183, Simon and Schuster

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• I wonder if he really could rationalize what I did to him, really treat betrayal like the slight transgression of a recalcitrant business partner. I wonder if I hurt him. If he can rationalize what I did to him, it’s easy to imagine how he rationalized what he did to me.

  Holly Black

  Hurt, Betrayal, Wonder

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• The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way.

  Niles Eldredge

  Clothes, Yield, Long

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• ... until both employers' and workers' groups assume responsibility for chastising their own recalcitrant children, they can vainly bay the moon about "ignorant" and "unfair" public criticism. Moreover, their failure to impose voluntarily upon their own groups codes of decency and honor will result in more and more necessity for government control.

  Mary Barnett Gilson

  Children, Responsibility, Moon

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