Simple Truths Quotes - Page 3

• Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred; also to choose such an opportunity for writing as it may be lawful to think what they will, and write what they think, which is a rare happiness of the time.

  Walter Raleigh

  Love, Writing, Opportunity

  Sir Walter Raleigh (1829). “Miscellaneous works”, p.111

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• It is a simple logic truth that, short of mass emigration into space, with rockets taking off at the rate of several million per second, uncontrolled birth-rates are bound to lead to horribly increased death –rates. It is hard to believe that this simple truth is not understood by those leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods. They express a preference for ‘natural’ methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Simple, Birth Rate

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• While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.

  Aimee Bender

  Moving, Cutting, Simple

  Aimee Bender (2009). “Willful Creatures”, p.90, Anchor

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• Brenna was fixing some kind of a small computronic device when he found her in her quarters. “Judd,” she said, putting down her tools. “You can’t be here. The dissonance—” He interrupted her panicked words. “I need to ask you something important.” “What could be more important than your life?” She sounded close to tears. “Your life. If you die, I don’t know if I’d stay sane.” A simple truth.

  Nalini Singh

  Simple, Important, Tears

  Nalini Singh (2007). “Caressed By Ice”, p.303, Penguin

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• Somewhere in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she'd see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her...and to Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth being.

  John Barth

  Girl, Simple, Civilization

  L. Rust Hills, John Barth (1974). “Writer's choice”, Modern Library

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• Authors also create lovable, friendly characters, then proceed to do terrible things to them, like throw them in unsightly librarian-controlled dungeons. This makes readers feel hurt and worried for the characters. The simple truth is that authors like making people squirm. If this weren't the case, all novels would be filled completely with cute bunnies having birthday parties.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Cute, Hurt, Party

  Brandon Sanderson (2016). “Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians”, p.164, Macmillan

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• Part of me aches at the thought of her being so close yet so untouchable, but her story and mine are different now. It wasn't easy for me to accept this simple truth, because there was a time when our stories were the same, but that was six years and two lifetimes ago.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Simple, Years, Two

  Nicholas Sparks (2010). “Dear John”, p.11, Hachette UK

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• I didn't have to scramble up and down the ladder from despair to euphoria anymore, trying to convince myself that life was either painful and terrible or joyous and wonderful. The simple truth was that life was both. p 214

  Melody Beattie

  Simple, Despair, Trying

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• Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.

  James Thurber

  Truth, Simple, Men

  James Thurber (1961). “Lanterns & Lances”, New York : Harper

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• 'How much longer will I live?'... Only one thing seems clear to me. Every day should be well-lived. What a simple truth! Still, it is worthy of my attention.

  Henri Nouwen

  Simple, Attention, Should

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• There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

  Charles Dickens

  Life, Strong, Truth

  Charles Dickens (2007). “David Copperfield”, Bloomsbury Pub Limited

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• Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.

  Mason Cooley

  Simple, Challenges, Irony

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• A person's looking for a simple truth to live by, there it is. CHOICE. To refuse to passively accept what we've been handed by nature or society, but to choose for ourselves. CHOICE. That's the difference between emptiness and substance, between a life actually lived and a wimpy shadow cast on an office wall.

  Tom Robbins

  Wall, Simple, Differences

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.241, Bantam

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• A joke is a good camouflage. Next best comes sentiment... But the best camouflage of all - in my opinion - is the plain and simple truth. Because nobody ever believes it.

  Max Frisch

  Believe, Simple, Camouflage

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• The language of truth is unadorned and always simple.

  Ammianus Marcellinus

  Truth, Communication, Simple

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• Later, I began to succeed in decisive games. Perhaps because I realized a very simple truth: not only was I worried, but also my opponent

  Mikhail Tal

  Simple, Games, Chess Game

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• The fact that people can forget these simple truths when intellectualizing about children shows how far modern doctrines have taken us. They make it easy to think of children as lumps of putty to be shaped instead of partners in a human relationship.

  Steven Pinker

  Children, Teaching, Taken

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.594, Penguin UK

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• Either one or the other [analysis or synthesis] may be direct or indirect. The direct procedure is when the point of departure is known-direct synthesis in the elements of geometry. By combining at random simple truths with each other, more complicated ones are deduced from them. This is the method of discovery, the special method of inventions, contrary to popular opinion.

  Andre-Marie Ampere

  Knowledge, Science, Simple

  "André-Marie Ampère: Enlightenment and Electrodynamics". Book by James R. Hofmann, p. 159, 1996.

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• And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Life, Loneliness, Simple

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• Because all the societies, all the nations, all the cultures, have taken it for granted that the individuals exist for them, not vice-versa. To me, just the opposite is the case: the society exists for the individual, the culture exists for the individual, the nation exists for the individual. Everything can be sacrificed, but the individual cannot be sacrificed for anything. Individuality is the very flowering of existence - nothing is higher than it. But no culture, no society, no civilization is ready to accept a simple truth.

  Rajneesh

  Taken, Simple, Opposites

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• This missing science of heredity, this unworked mine of knowledge on the borderland of biology and anthropology, which for all practical purposes is as unworked now as it was in the days of Plato, is, in simple truth, ten times more important to humanity than all the chemistry and physics, all the technical and indsutrial science that ever has been or ever will be discovered.

  George Herbert

  Plato, Knowledge, Science

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• But the simple truth is that we've lost control of our own borders, and no nation can do that and survive.

  Ronald Reagan

  Simple, Immigration, Borders

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), Ronald Reagan (1984). “Ronald Reagan”

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• Can it be that a generation of school children is growing up heedless of the simple truth that the Pentagon's centrla role for many years has been to buy weapons that don't work, against threats that don't exist?

  Alexander Cockburn

  Peace, Children, Growing Up

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• We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said that the only way to have a friend is to be one. We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion or mistrust or with fear.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Friendship, Trust, Fear

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

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• The simple truth is that balding African-American men look cool when they shave their heads, whereas balding white men look like giant thumbs.

  Dave Barry

  Birthday, Simple, Men

  Dave Barry (2009). “Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus”, p.264, Ballantine Books

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