Standards Quotes - Page 7

• Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.

  Alan Paton

  Life, Asks, Ifs

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• If all human lives depended upon their usefulness - as might be judged by certain standards - there would be a sudden and terrific mortality in the world.

  Gene Tunney

  Sports, Making A Difference, Charity

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• Reality is what kicks back when you kick it. This is just what physicists do with their particle accelerators. We kick reality and feel it kick back. From the intensity and duration of thousands of those kicks over many years, we have formed a coherent theory of matter and forces, called the standard model, that currently agrees with all observations.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Science, Reality, Agreement

  Victor J. Stenger (2003). “Has Science Found God?: The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe”, Pyr Books

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• In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer in any language will reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West.

  Sugata Mitra

  Children, Motivation, Inspiration

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• The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Nothing worthwhile is easy. Your ability to overcome unfavorable situations will provide you with time to demonstrate your true strength and determination for success. Always set your standards high, your greatest achievements lie within the infinite feats you achieve in your life.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Meaningful, Determination, Lying

  Strength to Love (1963) ch. 3

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• Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.

  John W. Gardner

  Excellence, Mediocrity, Phases

  Dr. John W. Gardner (2015). “Excellence: Can We Be Equal And Excellent Too?”, p.171, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions.

  C. Wright Mills

  Technology, Media, Fiction

  C. Wright Mills (2002). “White Collar: The American Middle Classes”, p.333, Oxford University Press

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• No gold-digging for me; I take diamonds! We may be off the gold standard someday.

  Mae West

  Jewels, Gold, Digging

  Mae West (1967). “The wit and wisdom of Mae West”

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• Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man's well-being is not their goal.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, East Berlin, Goal

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.126, Penguin

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• The monetary managers are fond of telling us that they have substituted 'responsible money management' for the gold standard. But there is no historic record of responsible paper money management ... The record taken, as a whole is one of hyperinflation, devaluation and monetary chaos.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Taken, Liberty, Gold

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• Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for years we have been writing the numeral five backward. This has led to reevaluation of counting as a method of getting from one to ten. Students are taught advanced concepts of Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.

  Woody Allen

  Education, Writing, Science

  Woody Allen (2007). “The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose”, Random House Incorporated

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• I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world... Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life is nil; and outside mathematics it is trivial anyhow. I have just one chance of escaping a verdict of complete triviality, that I may be judged to have created something worth creating. And that I have created something is undeniable: the question is about its value.

  G. H. Hardy

  Differences, Creating, Escaping

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• Labor is the true standard of value.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Work, Labor, Values

  "Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 4" by Abraham Lincoln, New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1953.

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• Retiring for good wasn't difficult. I knew at the time it was right. I was no longer capable of achieving the standards I'd set myself and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

  Ian Botham

  Retirement, Tunnels, Light

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• It is to be observed that every case of war averted is a gain in general, for it helps to form a habit of peace, and community habits long continued become standards of conduct.

  Elihu Root

  War, Long, Community

  Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

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• "Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be nuns and monks, but the standard reply is 'prisoners'"

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

  Spiritual, Food, Jail

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1990). “Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot”, Gateway Books

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• Our culture has few taboos that can't be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place. Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing. This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that "bravely" trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.

  Ross Douthat

  Self, Political, Islam

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• We ... tend to evaluate others on the basis of physical, outward appearance: their "good looks," their social status, their family pedigrees, their degrees, or their economic situations. The Lord, however, has a different standard by which he measures a person. When it came time to choose a king to replace King Saul, the Lord gave this criteria to his prophet Samuel: "Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; ... for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."

  Marvin J. Ashton

  Kings, Heart, Men

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• Service standards keep rising. As competitors render better and better service, customers become more demanding. Their expectations grow. When every company's service is shoddy, doing a few things well can earn you a reputation as the customer's savior. But when a competitor emerges from the pack as a service leader, you have to do a lot of things right. Suddenly achieving service leadership costs more and takes longer. It may even be impossible if the competition has too much of a head start. The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding service.

  Bill Davidow

  Educational, Expectations, Leader

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• If courage wasn't a standard result of aging it meant that the young could somehow acquire it as well.

  Lawana Blackwell

  Aging, Results, Young

  Lawana Blackwell (2007). “Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter, The”, p.263, Bethany House

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• Any first-order, substantive normative theory worth its salt will require attention to the mental states of agents in a variety of quite complex ways. But realism, being a view about the status of such normative theories, insists that the truth of any firstorder normative standard is not a function of what anyone happens to think of it.

  Russ Shafer-Landau

  Thinking, Views, Order

  Russ Shafer-Landau (2003). “Moral Realism: A Defence”, p.15, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Know you that Allah has made Islam the most sublime path for attainment of His supreme pleasure and the highest standards of his worship and obedience. He has favoured it with noble precepts, exalted principles, undoubtable arguments, unchallengeable supremacy and undeniable wisdom. It is up to you to maintain the eminence and dignity granted to it by the Lord, to follow it sincerely, to do justice to its articles of faith and belief, to obey implicitly its tenets and orders and to give it the proper place in your lives.

  Ali ibn Abi Talib

  Wisdom, Islamic, Order

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• My mother told me, you don't have to put anything in your mouth you don't want to. Then she made me eat broccoli, which felt like double standards.

  Sarah Millican

  Mother, Double Standard, Mouths

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• I have commanded that my [titulary] abide like the mountains; when the sun shines its rays are bright upon the titulary of my majesty; my Horus is high upon the standard ... forever.

  Hatshepsut

  Sunshine, Egypt, Forever

  Inscriptions at Djeser-Djeseru, as quoted in "Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest" by James Henry Breasted, 1906.

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• Excellence is a process, not just an outcome. Sure, we have to hold out for high standards in the products or services we provide. The goods must be more than "good enough." But so must our approach - you know, our methodology, the way we do business and deal with people. How could the ends be considered excellent if we can't be proud of the means?

  Price Pritchett

  Business, Mean, People

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