Term Quotes - Page 23

• For a Russian to be chivalrous with an American is a spiritual impossibility, a conradiction in terms.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Spiritual, Inconsistency, Impossibility

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• Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Fighting, Loss

  Abraham Lincoln (2011). “Lincoln on the Civil War: Selected Speeches”, p.43, Penguin

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• A radical is one of whom people say ''He goes too far.'' A conservative, on the other hand, is one who ''doesn't go far enough.'' Then there is the reactionary, ''one who doesn't go at all.'' All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have

  Woodrow Wilson

  Hands, People, Progress

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link (1976). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• But I believe this: by and large, the United States ought to be able to choose for its President anybody that it wants, regardless of the number of terms he has served. That is what I believe. Now, some people have said, "You let him get enough power and this will lead toward a one-party government." That, I don't believe. I have got the utmost faith in the long-term common sense of the American people. Therefore, I don't think there should be any inhibitions other than those that were in the 35-year age limit and so on. I think that was enough, myself.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Believe, Party, Thinking

  News conference in Washington, D.C., on October 05, 1956. "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower". Book by Dwight D. Eisenhower, p. 862, 1961.

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• Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?

  Norman Cousins

  Death, People, Dying

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• It is not the Soviet Union or indeed any other big Powers who need the United Nations for their protection. It is all the others. In this sense, the Organization is first of all their Organization and I deeply believe in the wisdom with which they will be able to use it and guide it. I shall remain in my post during the term of my office as a servant of the Organization in the interests of all those other nations, as long as they wish me to do so.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Believe, Organization, Long

  Statement to the General Assembly of the United Nations, October 03, 1960.

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• Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.

  William Godwin

  Memories, Men, Life Is

  William Godwin (1831). “Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions, and Discoveries: Interspersed with Some Particulars Respecting the Author”, p.73

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• Cliches and stereotypes such as "beatnik" or "hippie" have been invented for the antitechnologists, the antisystem people, and will continue to be. But one does not convert individuals into mass people with the simple coining of a mass term.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Hippie, Simple, People

  Robert M. Pirsig (2009). “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values”, p.21, Harper Collins

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• Cyberspace' is a metaphorical idea which is supposed to be the space where your consciousness is located when you're using computer technology on the Internet, for example, and I'm not entirely sure it's such a useful term, but I think that's what most people mean by it.

  Neil Postman

  Mean, Technology, Thinking

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• The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music.

  John Drinkwater

  Expression, Perception, Musician

  John Drinkwater (1922). “The Lyric: An Essay”, p.33, Library of Alexandria

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• Mass communication communicates massively: its language lacks precise articulation and avoids demanding terms; it argues for the kind of behavior in life which will make a "good program": ethic equals showbiz.

  Frederic Raphael

  Communication, Ethics, Arguing

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• Well, I know I worked for Governor Rockefeller the last time he ran for his fourth term, and I obviously ran against Governor Cuomo the time he ran for his fourth term.

  George Pataki

  Lasts, Wells, Last Time

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• All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.

  Lynne Truss

  Book, People, Giving

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• But in terms of how people live together, how we minimize the prospects of conflict and maximize the prospects of peace, the place of religion in our society today is essential.

  Tony Blair

  People, Together, Essentials

  "Interview: Tony Blair, on his faith and religious ideology". Interview with John Geiger, www.theglobeandmail.com. November 29, 2010.

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• Synaptic summation is the technical term used in neurophysiology for those instances in which some neuron C is fired only by a combination of neurons A and B.

  Gregory Bateson

  Neurons, Used, Combination

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• Those who speak of our culture as dead or dying have a quarrel with life, and I think they cannot understand its terms, but must endlessly repeat the projection of their own desires.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Thinking, Dying, Desire

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• I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.

  Julian Barnes

  Grief, Fall, Writing

  "Julian Barnes: The sense of another ending". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. March 30, 2013.

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• If with open mind one reads and observes industriously and long; if in so doing one covers a wide field and so covering reflects in terms of realism, he is likely, soon or late, to be brought to a sudden consciousness that Man is an unknown quantity and his existence unsuspected.

  Louis Sullivan

  Men, Long, Mind

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• It is God that accomplishes all term to hopes, God, who overtakes the flying eagle, outpasses the dolphin in the sea; who bends under his strength the man with thoughts too high.

  Pindar

  God, Men, Eagles

  Pindar (1959). “The odes of Pindar”

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• Natural selection operates according to immediate cirumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendant of the first humans, but there was nothing inevitable about it.

  Richard Leakey

  Long, Goal, Firsts

  "The Origin of Humankind". Book by Richard Leakey, 1994.

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• The short-term international capital market is shrunken and erratic, and cannot be relied upon to cushion the effects of tendencies to disequilibrium in the balance of payments.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Balance, Banking, Erratic

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• Cosmologists have attempted to account for the day-to-day laws you find in textbooks in terms of fundamental 'superlaws,' but the superlaws themselves must still be accepted as brute facts. So maybe the ultimate laws of nature will always be off-limits to science.

  Paul Davies

  Law, Textbooks, Fundamentals

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• I lost touch with my son in terms of advice early on. Maybe it had to do with being gone so much, doing location films when he was at an age where he needed support and guidance.

  Gene Hackman

  Son, Advice, Support

  "Eighty-one Years. Seventy-nine Movies. Two Oscars. Not One Bad Performance". Interview with Michael Hainey, www.gq.com. June 1, 2011.

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• The second half of the '60s really was a kind of learning period, in terms of writing, for me.

  Bruce Cockburn

  Writing, Half, Kind

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• I don't tend to think in terms of a moral authority - be a good boy, do good things - more in terms of what feels right.

  John Cusack

  Boys, Thinking, Moral

  "Being John Cusack", www.theguardian.com. July 1, 2000.

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