Sheer Quotes - Page 7

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness... Political language [is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.

George Orwell

Lying, Writing, Political Language

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You have to have a sense of humor if you follow politics. Otherwise, the sheer fraudulence of it all will get you down.

Thomas Sowell

Political, Sense Of Humor, Ifs

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The dissolution of the pictorial into sheer texture, into apparently sheer sensation, into an accumulation of repetitions, seems to speak for and answer something profound in contemporary sensibility.

Clement Greenberg

Profound, Texture, Answers

Clement Greenberg (1971). “Art and Culture: Critical Essays”, p.157, Beacon Press

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Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on Earth! I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him. Mayhap in mercy He shall give me a host of children that I may lead them through the vast star fields to explore His delicacies whose finger ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see Him, touch His garments, smile into His eyes - ah then, not stars nor children shall matter, only Himself.

Jim Elliot

Stars, Children, Eye

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There are two ways of avoiding fear: one is by persuading ourselves that we are immune from disaster, and the other is by the practice of sheer courage. The latter is difficult, and to everybody becomes impossible at a certain point. The former has therefore always been more popular. Primitive magic has the purpose of securing safety, either by injuring enemies, or by protecting oneself by talismans, spells, or incantations.

Bertrand Russell

Practice, Two, Safety

Bertrand Russell (1986). “Bertrand Russell on God and Religion”

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God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Science, Keeping Secrets, Boredom

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1966). “Conversations and encounters”

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The only thing I do worry about is that the more films I do the more visible I am going to become as a personality because of press and because of the sheer quantity of films.

Vincent D'Onofrio

Worry, Personality, Film

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Undeveloped though the science [of chemistry] is, it already has great power to bring benefits. Those accruing to physical welfare are readily recognized, as in providing cures, improving the materials needed for everyday living, moving to ameliorate the harm which mankind by its sheer numbers does to the environment, to say nothing of that which even today attends industrial development. And as we continue to improve our understanding of the basic science on which applications increasingly depend, material benefits of this and other kinds are secured for the future.

Henry Taube

Moving, Science, Numbers

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Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties

Susan Sontag

Loss, Culture, Modern Life

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

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It was not noisy prejudice that caused the work of Mendel to lie dead for thirty years, but the sheer inability of contemporary opinion to distinguish between a new idea and nonsense.

Wilfred Trotter

Lying, Hard Work, Ideas

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Sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure.

Donald Trump

Motivational, Success, Life Lesson

Donald J. Trump, Tony Schwartz (2009). “Trump: The Art of the Deal”, p.147, Ballantine Books

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It is sheer madness to live in want in order to be wealthy when you die.

Juvenal

Order, Want, Madness

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The decisive step in evolution, the first step toward macroevolution, the step from one species to another, requires another evolutionary method than that of sheer accumulation of micromutations.

Richard Goldschmidt

Science, Firsts, Steps

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Basically, the Buddhist attitude is that you should not accept certain things through sheer faith. And for that you need a skeptical attitude. Buddha himself made this clear to his followers. He said you should not accept those things I taught out of respect for me, but rather through investigation by yourself.

Dalai Lama

Buddhist, Attitude, Needs

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Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror.

Pappy Boyington

Funny, Humorous, Airplane

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You do not become a master musician by playing just as you please, by imagining that learning the scales is sheer legalism and bondage! No, true freedom in any area of life is the consequence of regular discipline. It is no less true of the life of prayer.

Sinclair B. Ferguson

Prayer, Discipline, Musician

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In war, numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power.

Sun Tzu

Art, Military, War

Sun Tzu, Shang Yang (1997). “The Art of War”, p.41, Wordsworth Editions

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Intelligence is a valuable thing, but it is not usually the key to survival. Sheer fecundity ... usually counts. The intelligent gorilla doesn't do as well as the less intelligent but more-fecund rat, which doesn't do as well as the still-less-intelligent but still-more-fecund cockroach, which doesn't do as well as the minimally-intelligent but maximally-fecund bacterium.

Isaac Asimov

Intelligent, Keys, Survival

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Beauty is excrescence, superabundance, random ebulience, and sheer delightful waste to be enjoyed in its own right.

Donald C. Peattie

Beauty, Waste, Delightful

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There is no room in your mind for negative thoughts. The busier you keep yourself with the particulars of shot assessment and execution, the less chance your mind has to dwell on the emotional. This is sheer intensity.

Jack Nicklaus

Sports, Golf, Emotional

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Today we are crushed by the sheer weight of the mechanized forces hurled against us, but we can still look to the future in which even greater mechanized forces will bring us victory. Therein lies the destiny of the world.

Charles de Gaulle

War, Lying, Destiny

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In Randori we teach the pupil to act on the fundamental principles of Judo, no matter how physically inferior his opponent may seem to him, and even if by sheer strength he can easily overcome him; because if he acts contrary to principle his opponent will never be convinced of defeat, no matter what brute strength he may have used.

Kano Jigoro

Fundamentals, May, Opponents

"Judo: The Japanese Art of Self Defense". "A Complete Guide to Judo: Its Story and Practice" by Robert W. Smith, judoinfo.com. 1958.

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I'd been an expert at taking beatings. Then I had a lucky break where I did a bully in, by total sheer luck. ... One minute I was the mark, and with just one swift move, I put the big man in school down. ... Once he was down, the whole atmosphere in the schoolyard changed. A huge cloud seemed to be lifted from me. ... I'd never been aware the cloud was so large.

Keith Richards

Bullying, Moving, School

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Laurie Lewis' songs combine passion and sheer craft in a way you don't hear very often. Whatever country music is supposed to be, she's at the center of it.

Utah Phillips

Country, Song, Passion

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Today I live on an island, in a house that is sad, hard, severe, that I built for myself, solitary on a sheer rock over the sea: a house that is the spectre, the secret image of prison. The image of my nostalgia. Maybe I never desired, not even then, to escape from jail. Man is not meant to live freely in freedom, but to be free inside a prison.

Curzio Malaparte

Men, Islands, Rocks

Curzio Malaparte (2007). “Woman Like Me”, p.7, Troubador Publishing Ltd

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