Seems Quotes - Page 15

• It seems proper, at all events, that by an early enactment similar to that of other countries the application of public money by an officer of Government to private uses should be made a felony and visited with severe and ignominious punishment.

  Martin Van Buren

  Country, Government, Punishment

  United States. President (1837-1841 : Van Buren), Martin Van Buren (1838). “Message from the President of the United States to the Two Houses of Congress: At the Commencement of the Third Session of the Twenty-fifth Congress”, p.11

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• The head of the CIA, it seems to me, would think long and hard before he admitted that former employees of his had been involved in the murder of the President of the United States-even if they weren't acting on behalf of the Agency when they did it.

  Jim Garrison

  Thinking, Agency, Long

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• I know of few men over 50 that seem to me entirely human, virtually none who has long exercised authority.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Men, Long, Authority

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• To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.

  Ouida

  Vices, Innocence, Kind

  Ouida (2016). “Wisdom, Wit and Pathos of Ouida”, p.149, Ouida

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• To narrate is to give oneself: it seems obvious that literature, as an effort to communicate fully, will continue to be blocked so long as misery and illiteracy exist, and so long as the possessors of power continue to carry on with impunity their policy of collective imbecilization through the mass media.

  Eduardo Galeano

  Media, Long, Giving

  Eduardo Galeano (1997). “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent”, p.14, NYU Press

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• Death used to announce itself in the thick of life but now people drag on so long it sometimes seems that we are reaching the stage when we may have to announce ourselves to death. It is as though one needs a special strength to die, and not a final weakness.

  Ronald Blythe

  Long, People, Special

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• Too many people in government seem to think they are above regular folks, and I said I would expect humility in the way each member of my team served- that they would recognize that the taxpayer is boss.

  Mark Sanford

  Team, Humility, Thinking

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• One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better

  Daniel Berrigan

  Inability, Favors, May

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• There is a certain indolence in us, a wish not to be disturbed, which tempts us to think that when things are quiet, all is well. Subconsciously, we tend to give the preference to 'social peace,' though it be only apparent, because our lives and possessions seem then secure. Actually, human beings acquiesce too easily in evil conditions; they rebel far too little and too seldom. There is nothing noble about acquiescence in a cramped life or mere submission to superior force.

  A. J. Muste

  Thinking, Evil, Giving

  "The Essays of A. J. Muste (Pacifism and Class War)". Book edited by Nat Hentoff, 1967.

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• Nowadays people seem to switch schools, either because they have to, and certain schools only serve certain grades, or because they move to a different place or have some particular interest, but I was in the same school for 13 years

  Steve Case

  Moving, School, Years

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• All great ideas start as weird ideas. What now seems obvious, early on, is not obvious to anybody.

  Steve Case

  Ideas, Obvious, Great Idea

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• You know, as you get older, the first thing you lose is memory. It seems to be happening with me.

  Bernhard Langer

  Memories, Firsts, Knows

  Interview with Julius Mason, www.rydercup.com. September 14, 2004.

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• It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in this universe.

  James Gleick

  Purpose, Sometimes, Quixotic

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• My first published novel was written for teenagers, and there were rules laid down by the publisher: no sex, no smoking, no swearing. I blew up entire solar systems, I consigned billions of people to horrible death; they didn't seem to mind that at all. But no hanky-panky.

  Ben Bova

  Sex, Teenager, People

  "Men on Mars, Women on Venus". Interview with Jay McDonald, Bookpage, June 1999.

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• No matter how unreasonable others may seem, I am responsible for not reacting negatively. Regardless of what is happening around me I will always have the prerogative, and the responsibility, of choosing what happens within me. I am the creator of my own reality. When I [review my day], I know that I must stop judging others. If I judge others, I am probably judging myself. Whoever is upsetting me most is my best teacher. I have much to learn from him or her, and in my hearts, I should thank that person.

  Bill W.

  Teacher, Heart, Responsibility

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• I do get a bit of a sense, just from e-mails some people send me, just a little sense of how people in different countries seem to respond differently to certain lines in a song.

  Gotye

  Country, Song, People

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• We shall find in our troubled hearts, where discord reigns, two needs which seem at variance, but which merge, as I think, in a common source - the love of the true, and the love of the fabulous.

  Alfred de Vigny

  Heart, Thinking, Two

  Alfred De Vigny (2018). “Cinq Mars”, p.12, BoD – Books on Demand

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• Oak trees come out of acorns, no matter how unlikely that seems. An acorn is just a tree's way back into the ground. For another try. Another trip through. One life for another.

  Shirley Ann Grau

  Life, Tree, Trying

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• All that was required to measure the planet was a man with a stick and a brain. In other words, couple an intellect with some experimental apparatus and almost anything seems achievable.

  Simon Singh

  Couple, Men, Brain

  Simon Singh (2004). “Big Bang: The Most Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and why You Need to Know about it”

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• It is not only visitors to the zoo who are fascinated but uneasy in the presence of chimpanzees; the same is true of scientists. The more they learn about these great apes, the deeper our identity crisis seems to become. The resemblance between humans and chimpanzees is not only external. If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee’s eyes, an intelligent, self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?

  Frans de Waal

  Zoos, Eye, Animal

  Frans de Waal (2007). “Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes”, p.3, JHU Press

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• Paleontologist Niles Eldredge, a prominent evolutionist, said: 'The doubt that has infiltrated the previous, smugly confident certitude of evolutionary biology’s last twenty years has inflamed passions.' He spoke of the 'lack of total agreement even within the warring camps,' and added, 'things really are in an uproar these days . . . Sometimes it seems as though there are as many variations on each [evolutionary] theme as there are individual biologists.'

  Niles Eldredge

  Passion, Years, Agreement

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• When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.

  Thomas Piketty

  Growth, Democracy, Society

  Thomas Piketty (2017). “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, p.1, Harvard University Press

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• The footnote would seem to be the smallest detail in a work of history. Yet it carries a large burden of responsibility, testifying to the validity of the work, the integrity (and the humility) of the historian, and to the dignity of the discipline.

  Gertrude Himmelfarb

  Integrity, Humility, Responsibility

  Gertrude Himmelfarb (1995). “On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society”, Vintage

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• I would like to make a confession which may seem immoral: I do not believe absolutely in Hilbert space any more.

  John von Neumann

  Believe, Space, May

  "John Von Neumann: Selected Letters".

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• Mathematics, however, is, as it were, its own explanation; this, although it may seem hard to accept, is nevertheless true, for the recognition that a fact is so is the cause upon which we base the proof.

  Gerolamo Cardano

  Causes, Facts, May

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