Suitable Quotes

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  Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

  John Adams

  Suicide, Freedom, Suicidal

  Letter from John Adams to John Taylor, 15 Apr. 1814

  254 Copy quote

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• Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.

  Vikram Seth

  Book, Strive, Admirer

  16 Copy quote

• Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.

  John Adams

  Suicide, Selfish, Passion

  Letter to John Taylor, 15 Apr. 1814

  20 Copy quote

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• One of the principal obstacles to the rapid diffusion of a new idea lies in the difficulty of finding suitable expression to convey its essential point to other minds. Words may have to be strained into a new sense, and scientific controversies constantly resolve themselves into differences about the meaning of words. On the other hand, a happy nomenclature has sometimes been more powerful than rigorous logic in allowing a new train of thought to be quickly and generally accepted.

  Arthur Schuster

  Powerful, Lying, Science

  17 Copy quote

• In life, everything awaits in the shadows for the suitable time to come out! All waits silently in the nooks! Observe the shadows and the nooks to guess what will happen!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Life, Waiting, Shadow

  3 Copy quote

• Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don’t apply to you.

  Chuck Close

  Photography, Use, Defining

  64 Copy quote

• In a suitable temperature, an egg becomes a chicken, and there are no chickens born of stones.

  Mao Zedong

  Eggs, Stones, Temperature

  16 Copy quote

• There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.

  Scott Adams

  Wisdom, Problem, Dilbert

  7 Copy quote

• Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.

  Saul Bellow

  Taken, Keys, People

  Saul Bellow (2010). “Saul Bellow: Letters”, p.422, Penguin

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• We use the Air Force analogy: there were expensive things they had to do to get a cockpit suitable for a lot of pilots, like wraparound windshields, but their initial solutions, when they realized average didn't work, were adjustable seats. How in the world did they not already have adjustable seats in their planes? We're looking for adjustable seats for education, for basic things that we can do.

  L. Todd Rose

  Air, Average, World

  Source: www.macleans.ca

  6 Copy quote

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• I believe that life-saving, essential drugs should be freely available and the innovator should be paid a suitable royalty payment for his invention.

  Yusuf Hamied

  Believe, Drug, Essentials

  3 Copy quote

• Ignorance is not a suitable defense

  Roger Goodell

  Ignorance, Defense

  3 Copy quote

• Western-style multi-party democracy is possible but not suitable for Africa.

  George Ayittey

  Party, Style, Democracy

  "Why Western-style democracy is not suitable for Africa" by George Ayittey, www.cnn.com. August 20, 2010.

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• A ready means of being cherished by the English is to adopt the simple expedient of living a long time. I have little doubt that if, say, Oscar Wilde had lived into his nineties, instead of dying in his forties, he would have been considered a benign, distinguished figure suitable to preside at a school prize-giving or to instruct and exhort scout masters at their jamborees. He might even have been knighted.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  School, Mean, Simple

  Malcolm Muggeridge, Ian Hunter (2003). “The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge”, p.40, Regent College Publishing

  8 Copy quote

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• An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object.

  Georg Baselitz

  Painting, Upside Down, Objects

  Georg Baselitz (2010). “Georg Baselitz: Collected Writings and Interviews”

  12 Copy quote

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• Going to school is not the same as going shopping. Parents should not be burdened with locating a suitable school for their child. They should be able to take their child to the neighborhood public school as a matter of course and expect that it has well-educated teachers and a sound educational program.

  Diane Ravitch

  Teacher, Children, Educational

  "Education and the election: it's still all about the money" Lucy Clark, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2016.

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• How many young girls there are who do not see any wrongdoing in following certain shameless styles like so many sheep. They certainly would blush if they could guess the impression they make and the feelings they evoke in those who see them. Do they not see the harm resulting from excess in certain gymnastic exercises and sports not suitable for virtuous girls? What sins are committed or provoked by conversations which are too free, by immodest shows, by dangerous reading. How lax have consciences become, how pagan morals!

  Pope Pius XII

  Girl, Sports, Reading

  4 Copy quote

• February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long.

  Anna Quindlen

  Dirty, Winter, Two

  6 Copy quote

• The term "self" seems a suitable one for the unconscious substrate whose actual exponent in consciousness is the ego. The ego stands to the self as the moved to the mover, or as object to subject, because the determining factors that radiate outward from the self surround the ego on all sides and are therefore supraordinate to it. The self, like the unconscious, as an a priori existent out of which the ego evolves. It is, so to speak, an unconscious prefiguration of the ego. It is not I who create myself; rather, I happen to myself.

  Carl Jung

  Self, Psychology, Ego

  16 Copy quote

• We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognizance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea.

  Francis Galton

  Mean, Science, Men

  Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883)

  43 Copy quote

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• Your own gown is most delicately suitable, both to the occasion and to yourself,' to be translated: Your gown is insipid and entirely forgettable. If you wear it on every other occasion this entire season, no one will notice or care.

  Anne Perry

  Gowns, Care, Forgettable

  Anne Perry (2010). “Belgrave Square: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel”, p.83, Ballantine Books

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• But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes of this latter species, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence on the human mind.

  David Hume

  Art, Reflection, Order

  David Hume, J. B. Schneewind (1983). “An Enquiry Concerning The Principles of Morals”, p.15, Hackett Publishing

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• A white male child of perfect innocence and intelligence makes the most suitable victim.

  Aleister Crowley

  Children, White, Perfect

  8 Copy quote

• The New Yorker has always dealt with experience not by trying to understand it but by prescribing the attitude to be adopted toward it. This makes it possible to feel intelligent without thinking, and it is a way of making everything tolerable, for the assumption of a suitable attitude toward experience can give one the illusion of having dealt with it adequately.

  Robert Warshow

  Attitude, Intelligent, Thinking

  Robert Warshow (1962). “The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre & Other Aspects of Popular Culture”, p.75, Harvard University Press

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• For what St. Augustine said is true, that one can sing nothing worthy of God save what one has received from Him. Wherefore though we look far and wide we will find no better songs nor songs more suitable to that purpose than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit made and imparted to him. Thus, singing them we may be sure that our words come from God just as if He were to sing in us for His own exaltation. Wherefore, Chrysostom exhorts men, women, and children alike to get used to singing them, so as through this act of meditation to become as one with the choir of angels.

  William Romaine

  Song, Children, Angel

  14 Copy quote