Unthinkable Quotes - Page 4

• What kind of America do people want to leave for their children? What horrors are down the road, stuff that was unthinkable 30 years ago?

  Randall Terry

  Children, Years, America

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• It would be as unthinkable to try to construct the Labour Party without Marx as it would to be to establish university faculties of astronomy,anthropology or psychology without permitting the study of Copernicus, Darwin or Freud, and still expect such faculties to be taken seriously

  Tony Benn

  Party, Taken, Psychology

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• Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.

  Frans de Waal

  Empathy, Morality, Humans

  "Science overturns view of humans as naturally 'nasty'". phys.org. February 20, 2012.

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• I don't feel that way anymore," Nico muttered. "I mean... I gave up on Percy. I was young and impressionable, and I- I don't..." His voice cracked, and Jason could tell the guy was about to get teary-eyed. Whether Nico had really given up on Percy or not, Jason couldn't imagine what it had been like for Nico all those years, keeping a secret that would've been unthinkable to share in the 1940s, denying who he was, feeling completely alone- even more isolated than other demigods. "Nico," he said gently, "I've seen a lot of brave things. But what you did? That was maybe the bravest.

  Rick Riordan

  Mean, Years, Voice

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• Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.

  Clarice Lispector

  Reality, Silence, One Day

  Clarice Lispector (1988). “The Passion According to G.H.”, p.169, U of Minnesota Press

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• It is not by great acts but by small failures that freedom dies. The sense of justice dies slowly in a people. They grow used to the unthinkable, and sometimes they may look back and even wonder when things changed. They will not find a day or a time or a place. Justice and liberty die quietly, because men first learn to ignore injustice and then no longer recognize it.

  Charles Morgan

  Men, People, Justice

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• Through Nic's drug addiction, I have learned that parents can bear almost anything....I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. The rationalizations escalate....It's only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he's not using hard drugs.

  David Sheff

  Weekend, Marijuana, Addiction

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• It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Knowledge, Complaining, Absurd

  "St. Thomas Aquinas". Book by G.K. Chesterton, 1933.

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• It wasn't awful to be dead. The stillness would almost be a relief. She wouldn't want pain, she wouldn't want to be wounded or mutilated. She could never shoot herself or jump off a building. But being dead wasn't unthinkable.

  Janet Fitch

  Pain, Relief, Want

  Janet Fitch (2013). “Paint It Black”, p.106, Hachette UK

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• It is unthinkable to have a British countryside that doesn't have actual functioning farmers riding tractors, cows in fields, things like that.

  Bill Bryson

  Riding, Cows, Fields

  "How clean is my valley?". Interview with Tim Dowling, www.theguardian.com. May 5, 2007.

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• During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba.

  Amin Maalouf

  Uncles, Moving, Egypt

  "A son of the road" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. November 15, 2002.

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• But it is not at all unthinkable for anyone to tell a writer how to write. It comes with the territory.

  Ernest Lehman

  Writing, Territory

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• If you want to change people by talking about God, then there is only one way: instead of teaching God, you must live God. Because: "teaching" God is unthinkable in any other way than the way you would teach love or poetry. You teach love only through love, poetry only through writing poetry, faith in God only through a contagious way of trusting.

  Eugen Drewermann

  Teaching, Writing, Talking

  "Jesus von Nazareth". Book by Eugen Drewermann, 1996.

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• You don't think of yourself as your external representation, or even your national origin or anything like that. You don't reduce yourself to that. That's kind of unthinkable.

  Vijay Seshadri

  Thinking, Kind, Think Of You

  "You Are Vijay Seshadri". Interview with Laura Standley, logger.believermag.com. June 10, 2014.

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• The unthinkable is that we're distorting this atmospheric balance. We're shifting the chemical balance so that we have more poisons in the atmosphere - ozones and acid rain on ground level - while we're also changing the thermal climate of the earth through the greenhouse effect and - get this - simultaneously causing destruction of our primary filter of ultraviolet light. It's incredible. Talk about the national-debt crisis - we're piling up debts in the atmosphere, and the piper will want to be paid.

  Michael Oppenheimer

  Rain, Ozone, Light

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• Being fat is the absolute nadir of the misfit. You're a misfit because nothing fits. You don't fit in. You're not fit. You're fat. Fat doesn't have the poetic cachet of alcohol, the whiff of danger in the drug of choice. You're just fat. Being fat is so un-American, so unattractive, unerotic, unfashionable, undisciplined, unthinkable, uncool. It makes you invisible. It makes you conspicuous.

  Claudia Shear

  Alcohol, Choices, Drug

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• My weight fluctuated when I was 30, and I did the unthinkable - I stepped out as a plus-sized model.

  Carre Otis

  Weight, Plus, Models

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• In horror stories or in fairy tales, the fascination with the morbid is also, at least for me, a way to prepare for the unthinkable… That’s why it’s very important for me to show the artificiality of it all, because the real horrors of the world are unmatchable, and they’re too profound.  It’s much easier to absorb – to be entertained by it, but also to let it affect you psychologically – if it’s done in a fake, humorous, artificial way.

  Cindy Sherman

  Real, Humorous, Horror Stories

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• Imagine a State occasion where the Queen is wearing trainers with her tiara because she thinks it will make people like her better, more folksy. It's unthinkable. But that's patently the thought process Gordon Brown (or his spin doctor) went through before the Prime Minister appeared on the world stage in Beijing without his suit and tie.

  Peter York

  Queens, Thinking, Ties

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• I think life without Coronation Street would be unthinkable. It's part of all our lives.

  Michael Parkinson

  Thinking, Would Be, Streets

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• A lot of the things that until now seemed unthinkable are starting to be thinkable.

  Nick Johnson

  Starting, Thinkable

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• The once-unthinkable loss of the AAA rating will constitute a further hit to already fragile business and consumer confidence.

  Mohamed El-Erian

  Loss, Rating, Consumers

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• Telling people not to have children is unthinkable and inhumane.

  Gary Ackerman

  Children, People, Inhumane

  "House Hunting in the West Bank" by Gershom Gorenberg, prospect.org. June 4, 2009.

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• If we deny our awesome challenge; turn our backs on the living universe, and forsake our cosmic destiny, we will commit a crime of unutterable magnitude. Mankind alone has the power to carry out this fundamental change in the universe. Our failure would lead to consequences unthinkable. This is perhaps the first and only chance the universe will ever have to awaken from its long night and live. We are the caretakers of this delicate spark of Life. To let it flicker and die through ignorance, neglect, or lack of imagination is a horror too great to contemplate.

  Marshall Savage

  Ignorance, Moon, Night

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• What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better. The former assumption, I believe is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Effort, Political

  H.L. MENCKEN (1958). “PREJUDICES A SELECTION”

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